The new UW president, Robert Sternberg, stopped by the faculty senate meeting on Monday to briefly discuss his style of governance, philosophies and tentative plans for when he succeeds President Tom Buchanan in July.
Sternberg began by listing the 12 values that he thinks are most important in running a university. Those values include academic excellence, academic freedom, academic integrity, diversity, service, promotion of active citizenship and leadership, shared governance, passion, modifiability, community, globalization, and mutual respect and dignity.
Though he listed the values in no particular order, Sternberg began with his belief in academic excellence.
“One of the things that excites me about Wyoming is that it really strives for the highest level of academic excellence and that means excellence in research and excellence in teaching,” Sternberg said.
He went on to discuss why he feels that academic freedom also is an important component for a university.
“You can’t have a great university without academic freedom and that means people have to be free to say and express ideas — whatever they think — to do the research they want to do within boundaries,” he said. “We don’t want people to be purposely rude or purposely try to undercut each other, but I think academic freedom is very important.”
Sternberg also defined what diversity means to him and the importance of it at a university.
“I think that’s an important value because if you imagine a university where everyone were a clone of yourself you would be at a maximum comfort level, but you wouldn’t learn anything,” Sternberg said. “If you want to learn, whether you’re a student, or a professor, or a staff member or whoever you are, you need to be in an environment where there are a diversity of people and a diversity of opinions.”
Sternberg also said that he believes in a system of shared governance and openness when it comes to running a university.
“I don’t believe in secrets. Secrets don’t last. If there’s something confidential, I’ll tell you that, but I don’t believe in secrets,” Sternberg said.
Sternberg also briefly discussed his plans to enhance research on campus and look into the possibility of staff and faculty salary increases. Following his introduction, Sternberg opened up the floor for questions from faculty and staff members. When asked how he intends to get to know faculty and staff members from different departments, he said he intends to occasionally participate in faculty senate meetings and host town hall style meetings to better address concerns of faculty and staff.
He also says he feels he can relate to faculty because he still considers himself a faculty member as he has continued to teach courses during his time as Provost of Oklahoma State University.
When asked by a faculty member how Sternberg intends to evade pressures from certain industries in the state, he noted that Wyoming and Oklahoma have several similarities.
“Oklahoma is not so different from Wyoming. It’s primarily an energy state and an agricultural state. I do believe in the importance of service to the state. And I also believe in the importance of partnerships. I think that we as a university can learn from everybody and that means corporations, people who clean streets, and people who are CEOs. We can learn from everybody and they can learn from us,” he said.
Sternberg explained that he believes forming partnerships is the best way to solve problems for the university and for the state and that forming bonds with corporations around the state could help the university, but the university should be run separately from those corporations.
“I think things work best when you engage in group problem solving. They certainly wouldn’t want us running their corporations and we wouldn’t want them running our university, but I think if you engage in a dialogue with people and you share ideas often you reach a mutual accommodation,” he said.
Faculty Senate also briefly discussed a bill to revise several UW regulations, but decided to postpone the discussion and voting until its April 29 meeting in light of Sternberg’s presentation.
