There is a secret sauce: presidential salaries are high, but this guy doesn’t need that money. He’s doing this for another reason.
That is actually incorrect - the trustees will do this regardless of whether they believe a priori that an internal hire is best. It’s pretty standard to do a national or even international search when seeking to fill such a position. Your other points are good and there are certainly more viable candidates outside a university than within. However, I’d like to think that UChicago simply chose the best person. Their past decisions reveal that they are not stuck in a particular pattern, other than perhaps favoring those who have already been there at some point. And of course that may be a revealed advantage rather than a “check the box” thing.
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There’s a lot to take away from this seemingly innocuous “hello there” video:
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This top scholar in STEM puts a lot of value on a UChicago liberal education. Right away he mentions his experience taking the Common Core as well as electives in the humanities and the social sciences. During those courses, they “learned to grapple with problems that are genuinely important but have no simple solutions.”
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He believes this education endows one with skills that serve beyond the choice of career - to touch on all aspects of life - “as a human being, as a citizen, (and in his case) as a scientist.” And as a leader. This is no highly concentrated or technical training with some un-fun non-stem mixed in there at the beginning. Easy to forget when you are a first or second year but you are receiving a transformative education.
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There is genuine enjoyment and celebration in teaching and learning “not what to think, but how to think.” And yes, this process is a contact sport at UChicago - you will get covered in chalk! No one there is “too cool for school" - not even Zimmer.
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The distinctive traditions and style characterized by the university’s commitment to intellectual rigor, joy in discovery and new ideas, and fierce commitment to free speech and vigorous debate is a “special combination that anyone anywhere will recognize as UChicago.” I would agree with this. These characteristics have been upheld and honored by his predecessors throughout many decades of leadership at the university. While Alivisatos rattles off an impressive list of names, these all seem to be from his time there and forward. So perhaps he can be forgiven for leaving Hutchins - or Harper! - off the list.
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Yes, there’s work to be done at the university, in the community, in the greater world. Crises are everywhere, and opportunities await. But he gets to of all that later. First order of business is not just to jump in and try to solve problems or make discoveries but to understand how the University of Chicago’s unique attributes can contribute to and even lead those efforts. As he pointed out, all of these challenges and upheavals bring to mind the seal: Crescat Scientia, Vita Excolatur. The university’s mandate is to grow knowledge and ensure that it helps human life to improve. He invites all in the community to recommit to and renew that mandate.
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One of the things I “took away” was a glimpse of California living - green growing things beyond a casually open door onto a sunny veranda. It’s a set-up that looks made for sipping cool drinks on a warm afternoon. If the guy is willing to give up all that to go live in a drafty hulk of a house on the snow-covered UChicago Midway he must have the right stuff.
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I wonder if we can see his vision for UChicago as he starts out. The press release said that they liked his vision for the university – I wonder if each individual they interviewed had a unique vision which was different, or if that’s just a generic thing they say about liking his vision and no one can really have a separate vision (after all, how much variation can there be – the task of a university president seems to be quite specific)
Good point grreat.
I hope he publishes some thoughts sometime before the next class starts.
By the way, you know that autocorrect makes your name hard to type!
lol I think great was already taken!
Not sure I want the new pres. to get too funky too soon, although Bio Sciences can probably use some shoring up. Right now, his public comments suggest that he holds consistent ideals with what they were looking for and presumably was able to articulate them well enough to snag the position. His credentials as both an academic leader and a money raiser are outstanding - and of course Zimmer will also be handling that latter aspect as he is able to for the time being. Over the past year there has been increasing public comment on the university’s desire to improving the lives of those in the surrounding south side community; I see this as perhaps getting a higher weight under the new pres. going forward than what’s been done in the past. It’s not that Zimmer didn’t have this goal as well, but I’m guessing the new guy will be giving the issue increased focus - as would Zimmer, by the way, had he not felt it was time to step down.
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I think he’s saying he sees ways to strengthen UChicago across the board, and I think he’s right. At some point in its history, UChicago has been number one in every single field. He realizes the University’s increased social prestige, which some people think is just about ego-stroking, can be used to strengthen the faculty across the board. Zimmer has done a lot–the heavy lifting. And now Alivisatos can take it to the next level, as they say.
That’s interesting because I often think of Berkeley as being the one great university in the country (in the world?) that’s almost at the top at nearly everything. If you look at graduate research rankings, in almost every field (engineering, history, chemistry, English, political science, computer science, you name it) Berkeley is almost at the very top, and I don’t think any other university compares (HYP are weaker in engineering; Stanford is lacking in some of the humanities, etc.). Of course, there are plenty of schools that might be better in one specific subject than Berkeley, but I struggle to think of a school that has such comprehensive excellence. Anyway, the point is that perhaps you’re right WRHarper that the new president, given his Berkeley background, might want to strengthen UChicago across the board – I think that would be an amazing step to take if possible, to try to make UChicago, like Berkeley, at the pinnacle of research in each and every field.
Actually I must slightly disagree with @grreat. Berkeley may be the strongest University in the world at the PhD level (although I also disagree and think Stanford and Harvard with the exception are engineering are comparable) but that is not true at the professional school level. Berkeley has no medical school and while its other professional schools such as law and business are very good, they generally rank outside the top 10. Alivisatos could and should try to improve UChicago across the board, the real work needs to come in the biological sciences and the Medical School. He really needs to get the professional schools out of the middle of the top 10 and in to the top 3. While the prestige of the College has increased immeasurably under Zimmer, as long as it uses binding early decision and EDII it will never really be considered to be in the top five.
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ED1 and ED2 aren’t going anywhere, nor has Alivisatos been hired to eliminate them or tinker much with the College. Berkeley is a premier research institution with a deep field of top programs - both academic and professional - and an endowment that’s about half the size of UChicago’s despite its size, and a stipend situation that will only see more cuts as funds are diverted to pay the state’s public pension liabilities. So this was a smart move on Alivisatos’s part; he can do a lot more good at UChicago. And they were smart to hire the chief academic officer of one of the premier research institutions in the world; it’s far less an upward move than Zimmer’s promotion from Brown.
IMO, the fortunes of the professional schools are tied to the strength of the academic divisions. That’s probably true everywhere but at UChicago specifically, no one academic division or school exists in a vacuum. Keep econ tops and improve the other social sciences, and law/bus/Harris will retain or improve their own rankings. Strengthen the physical and bio sciences, and you’ll put PME on the map and see the med school’s academic reputation improve. (Harris too, as a center for top health policy work). UChicago’s particular niche is that their professional endeavors are so strongly grounded in theoretical scholarship. Shore up those academic departments, and you will attract top people and funding for the professional schools.
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Here are UChicago’s current rankings for graduate and professional schools (per US News):
Booth (Business): 3
Law School: 4
Pritzker (Medicine): 17
Biological Sciences: 13
Chemistry: 14
Computer Science: 30
Earth Science: 19
Economics: 7
English: 1
Fine Arts: 42
History: 6
Mathematics: 6
Physics: 7
Political Science: 12
Psychology: 17
Public Affairs: 13
Social Work: 3
Sociology: 8
Statistics: 6
What these suggest is that while there are some clear standout areas, on the whole there is a lot of room for improvement. UChicago is a solid top-20 in most fields, but it doesn’t clearly come across as the top intellectual destination in the world. It doesn’t have many top-3 programs.
Now if we look at Berkeley’s rankings:
Haas (business): 7
Education: 20
Engineering: 3
Law School: 9
Biological Sciences: 1
Chemistry: 2
Clinical Psychology: 3
Computer Science: 1
Earth Science: 2
Economics: 1
English: 1
Fine Arts: 15
History: 4
Mathematics: 2
Physics: 3
Political Science: 4
Psychology: 1
Public Affairs: 3
Public Health: 9
Social Work: 3
Sociology: 1
Statistics: 2
What the rankings here suggest is that even though for two of the professional schools Berkeley ranks a bit lower than Chicago (3 vs 7 for business, 4 vs 9 for law), on the whole Berkeley performs A LOT better. I’m not sure how Berkeley does it but they’re near the top for almost everything – plus they have fields and rankings that Chicago doesn’t even have (education, engineering, clinical psychology, public health). In other words, you don’t have to think twice about going to Berkeley if you have a graduate school offer from there. Nearly all of its programs are top-3. If someone is there at the grad level, you know they’re at one of the very top programs there can be. And I agree with JBStillFlying that if Chicago is able to do that for its departments, across the board, that will be the best investment for the professional schools as well because on the whole Chicago’s image will improve. Right now it’s a more confusing image of very strong professional programs with top-20ish grad programs.
So I think if Alivisatos is able to bring some of that Berkeley magic, establish top-notch research even with a limited budget and one much smaller than HYP, then that will truly be a step forward for Chicago,
Being anywhere in the T10 for law is excellent and while I don’t know Haas very well, my guess is that their grads have no trouble finding top employment. UChicago had a department of Ed but shut it down in the '80’s due to problems with quality.
Why is UCB a superior research institution? Well, a lot of this is due to long-standing stuff. The state set up their public university system very well in order to concentrate top faculty and top students in one tier. Another reason is that CA historically was a growth state - people went and never left. The third reason is that it’s big with lots of faculty! UChicago really can’t do much about any of that. Chicago isn’t as pleasant to live in as the Bay Area, and it can’t hire the same number of faculty as UCB. However, Alivisatos identified UChicago as the one school for which he’d leave Berkeley. Presumably, he thinks that UChicago has something about it that Cal Berkeley doesn’t have. That needs to be his focus: turning the place into such an exciting institution of inquiry and discovery that top faculty from all over the place (including the financially troubled UC system) are willing to flock to Chicago and make their home there.
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How is Berkeley able to hire so many faculty (financially)? I’m don’t know much about how these things work, so I’d appreciate someone helping me out on that. Just looking at the endowment, Berkeley’s is about half of Chicago’s – how are they able to afford so many? Is there some kind of larger support from the state for that?
@grreat Don’t want to rain on your parade and I do agree that Berkeley is one of the great intellectual centers and PhD producers in the world. OTOH in the Business School world there is the mystique of the M7 business school (The Magnificent 7 of Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Northwestern, Penn and Stanford) Other schools such as Fuqua at Duke, Tuck at Dartmouth and Darden at Virginia are usually thought superior to Haas although that may be with the exception of UVA the bias against public institutions. For all its strength in the humanities and sciences, Berkeley does not have any undisputed top 10 professional schools
There is a state stipend, similar to how all public institutions are supported by their respective states, and OOS tuition is pretty steep . . . but it’s a good question. I’ve been wondering this myself, when the UC system has to deal with salary freezes and other problems over the years, how they retain top faculty. @grreat, I’ll ask my contacts in academia who can probably only speak for their own departments but might still be able to give some insight. Another issue is that as a public institution they simply can’t pay their grad students what HYPS are paying. So how do they do it? One answer has to be that there exists a deeper well of intellectual and other resources to attract and retain top faculty and grad students. Size might matter too; maybe a larger size of any department means more chances to hire and promote talented faculty. It will certainly help attract a variety of top grad students. But there are plenty of flagships in other states, as well as a good share of larger privates, that don’t have the quality of faculty that Cal Berkeley has. So it’s a very interesting question, IMO.
But @grreat’s point about the deep field of “top rank” still seems to stand. Berkeley hardly has any program - professional or academic - that’s NOT in the top 10. Most are in the top 5. How can that be?
Edit to ask: Are their rankings accurate? I’ve heard some say they are over ranked for Econ, for instance (and that’s a PhD program).