A20 A pr i l 17, 2015 | t h e c h ron ic l e of h igh e r e duc At ion

Laurie A. Leshin, president of Worcester Polytechnic Insti-tute, spoke with The Chron-icles Audrey Williams June about her first 10 months on the campus. Here is an edited version of the transcript. The video can be seen at chronicle.com.

Q. Many presidents work their way up the academic ladder all the way to provost before

becoming president, but you didnt take that traditional career path. How does your background affect your approach to the presidency?

A. Before I left academia to join the government, I did take a traditional academic path. I started answering phones at the local university in the registrars office when I was 16 years old. I didnt work in fast food; I worked on university campuses. Ive really grown up with them. My last academic job before becoming president was as a dean at Rensselaer.

But I had the opportunity to get some great experience as a feder-al employee at NASA for six years, leading large and complex scien-tific organizations, working at the very top of the human-spaceflight program. I got to work on complex problems and complex budgets, in highly political environments, and

on discoveries and activities that are at the forefront of innovation.

Theres a lot of commonality with leading a technological uni-versity, but the best part about leading Worcester Polytechnic In-stitute is that the students are add-ed back in. I get to use the skills I learned in leading large, complex organizations in a way that ben-efits the future innovators of our country.

Q. What was the learning curve like when you started as president?

A. I am just coming to the end of my first year, so I feel as if Im still on that learning curve. Im someone who loves drinking from the fire hose, though.

One of the things Ive loved about many of my jobs is that you do get to learn all the time about things you dont know about. In the presidency, the biggest learn-ing curve is the nonacademic side. You get calls in the middle of the night about student life and other activities.

Its like being a mayor of a small town. I have 2,000 people living on the campus and a police force. To learn, I talk to people and lis-ten a lot. At staff retreats, I heard about what had worked well in the past, maybe where we had missed the mark, and what we see as our opportunities for the future. I did those kinds of conversations in groups with faculty, too, and weve

used those to set the direction for our strategic planning.

Q. Youre the first female president at WPI. Only one in four college presidents is a woman. What do you think it will take to really move the needle when it comes to female leaders in higher education?

A. I think reaching 25 percent is making quite a lot of progress, but theres more work to do. One of the things that surprised me when my appointment was announced was that there was so much focus on my being the first woman. Were a technological university, and so at some level thats what makes it more interesting. But Susan Hockfield at MIT, and Shirley Jackson at Rensselaer, and Maria Klawe at Harvey Mudd have all been at this a while. Im certainly not the first woman president of a technological university.

Since starting at WPI and get-ting to know our community, es-pecially our women students and women faculty, I can see how spe-cial it is to them to have a woman in the leadership role and what it means to them to watch someone in a higher position really, hope-fully, do a great job. And I remem-bered how important mentors were in my own history and past, so Ive embraced that opportunity to try to be that role model.

Evidence shows that we need role models, we need critical mass,

to see whats possible. And so Im happy to be able to provide that opportunity for the women of WPI, but also the men of WPI. The idea of our wonderful male students getting to see women in leadership positions in technolog-ical organizations can only help with some of the challenges that we all know are out there in the tech industry.

Q. How does your vantage point as president change the advice that you might give to the people you mentor?

A. Ive always tried to help people see the bigger picture, the broader context. The role of president gives you a very big context of the entire organization and also of higher education and science and technology in general, and where our fields are going. It allows me to give better advice.

What drew me to WPI in the first place is that it is a place that values that broader context. It val-ues putting science and technolo-gy and engineering in real-world contexts. Our students work all over the world, and the work they do, whether its in Namibia, New Zealand, or Worcester, is providing them with that real-world context to use STEM to make a difference.

Q. If someone came to you and said, Im on the fence about whether to pursue a presidency, because a president is constantly under the microscope and it appears to be an around-the-clock job, what would you say to that person?

A. Its a great job. Im pinching myself every day. But things happen. In the middle of the night once, we got a call from a sister college in Worcester saying, We have a bomb threat. Can we bring a thousand students and let them sleep in your gym overnight? And we said, Sure, of course you can, and figured out how to accommodate many of their students who needed a place to stay.

The thing that makes the job so wonderful and compelling is the interaction with faculty, students, and alumni. The love that people have for their college makes it worth working hard for. Thats what I al-ways say: Its a job where its easy to work hard because the students, faculty, and alumni make it so.

ON LEADERSHIP

CHANGE STARTSWITH SERVICEAND COMMITMENTIt starts with people like Elizabeth McVicker (Ph.D. and J.D.), an associate professor in the MSU Denver College of Business. A practicing attorney, McVicker champions constitutional rights by offering pro bono legal services for indigent people and community organizations. Her commitment to environmental stewardship extends to campus, where she has developed courses in water law and sustainability as part of a new water studies minor.

MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN. BEGIN AT MSU DENVER.

MSU

DENV

ER.E

DU

New Leader Shows Tech Students, Female and Male, Whats Possible

JULIA SCHMALZ

Laurie A. Leshin