| Photo by Jane Scherr |
David Ward Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
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Looking back at your days as chancellor, what do you think surprised you most in terms of the task of leadership of running a university? What did you learn that you might not have brought to the table when you came in?
The fact that when resources are on the table, it seems that there's as much passion about one dollar as a million dollars. The lack of a sense of priority, as we deal with this one-and-a half-billion dollar enterprise, that you can be at a meeting in which $5,000 can take three hours, and $5 million can take five minutes. There's such weak understanding of the relationship of the political economy of the enterprise to the functioning of the enterprise by so many people, you're almost privileged as a chancellor to become aware of that. I would be in meetings where frequently I would stop them after five minutes; I'd say, "Go away and do it." You know, for $5000, I could risk it. Now, it's very irresponsible of me to have sometimes done that, and I only would ever do that with endowment money, and when I was pretty secure that people had a good proposal.
At the event celebrating my departure, a named professor of history -- they had several people saying nice things about me on video -- said that his most memorable meeting was a proposal for freshman seminars that would be held in the dorms to enhance the life of the dorms. And he said "We came in with this proposal, which we thought, as historians, was a huge amount of money. And we prepared this, that, and the other; we thought it was going to be a three-hour meeting. After five minutes, he said, 'Stop. You can have the money. Go away and do it.'"
I did take risks that way, where frequently some of the most impressive things we achieved were rounding error in a $1.5 billion budget. And my ability to understand that early on helped me to not waste a lot of time on good things that cost virtually nothing, and worrying about real things, like how much is the state going to provide ten years from now.
Looking back at your career, I would be fascinated to know how these pieces came together -- your background from Manchester, your education as a geographer, your work as a lower level administrator in the university? How do think these things, these pieces, came together to make you an effective leader?
I'm sure it's all unconscious. I'm now reflecting consciously about things that may have happened unconsciously. I think growing up in a small business does give you a certain sense of accountability, a kind of commonsense attitude for managing something that's in your blood. I don't think anybody can grow up behind a store and not have that. Obviously, it's scaled disproportionately. I do think the depth of my understanding and participation in the academic enterprise, I will never underestimate. I was a scholar, a serious scholar; without that, it would have been very hard to run a university And then I would say, the third thing may have been being a geographer. Geographers are very integrative people. They cross-wire things, they have a close relationship to regional planning. There is a kind of underlying organic planning that goes in the mentality of a geographer. So I think all three of those, if I were to look backwards, quite unconsciously probably played in a positive way in making me, allegedly, effective as a chancellor.
What are your future plans?
After leaving Berkeley, I had intended to return to Madison as Director of WISCAPE (Wisconsin Center for the Study of Post Secondary Education) a newly established center in the School of Education at UW-Madison. However, an exciting intervening opportunity presented itself just one month ago when I was appointed President of the American Council of Education in DC. I had been encouraged to apply for this position by many of my presidential-chancellor colleagues. ACE co-ordinates the advocacy of higher education to congress, the business community and the public in collaboration with other associations representing specific kinds of higher education institutions. ACE is a comprehensive organization with almost 1800 members and has for long been in forefront of policy developments and legislation in areas such as financial aid, research funding, affirmative action and international relations in higher education. I look forward to enhancing that agenda.
One final question. Let's draw on your knowledge as a chancellor. What advice would you have for students who want to get the most out of their education, on the one hand, and to prepare for the future, on the other?
My advice is always be pushy. I think most students, on the whole, are very restrained; on the whole, don't ask questions when they should; and often don't get the right advice the first time they [ask]. I think persistence is very important in finding out what the situation is. Many students write examinations, for example, when the instructor would probably give them clues about questions. There's much more knowledge out there that you can access by being somewhat pushy. So I think: ask, ask, ask again, would be number one.
Number two would be to learn how to summarize and connect. These are skills people often take, I think, just to complete a record -- if they're listening to a lecture, taking notes maybe every five minutes. I think that that's this capacity, to listen and summarize, and to connect. I would say that would be very important.
The other thing would be to find recreational or even service work, find something which fulfills other sides of your personality. Because as an undergraduate and graduate student, your intellect is being engaged pretty completely, and, in addition to whatever emotional life you have, there's also a kind of priestly, sort of a service function, which should be met. I think that you become a much more balanced person by figuring out whether that's through the arts, whether it's through service, whether it's through athletics, whatever it is, that that ends up creating a more educated person. Most students, I think, let that fall by the wayside.
Chancellor Ward, on that word of advice, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to be here today. And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation with History.
Thank you, Harry
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