The University of Utah's new president, Arthur K. Smith, has been taking a crash course on Utah, but now the president/student can do his homework closer to home.
When Smith, 54, was appointed the U.'s 12th president by the state Board of Regents in June, his ties to Utah were non-existent. He'd never been to Salt Lake City before he arrived in late May as a finalist for the U. job.He admits he knew little then about the school, the state or its people.
That has changed. In the past two months, while finishing up his responsibilities at the University of South Carolina, where he was provost, Smith read books about the U., including "Remembering" and "Crisis on Campus," plus several others about Utah and the state's predominant church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Also on Smith's heavy reading schedule were numerous university studies and memoranda. Of course, there were also the conference calls to U. administrators with this question or that.
The study still goes on. Tuesday, he tucked "The University of Utah" by Ralph V. Chamberlain, the definitive work on the U.'s first 100 years, into his briefcase for more nighttime reading.
But his immersion into his new state has left the strictly academic. He began his new job last Thursday, immediately stepping into days full of appointments with administrators, faculty, higher education officials and community leaders.
Tuesday, after meeting with the new dean of undergraduate education and others on campus, the U.'s first non-Mormon president visited with the LDS Church's First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve.
The coming weeks will include more get-acquainted visits with the state's other college and university presidents, including President Rex Lee of Brigham Young University, and with everyday Utahns in towns across the state, where he'll deliver the message that his institution is the University of Utah, not the University of Salt Lake City.
In these visits, he will continue to be Smith the student. "I'm in a learning mode, a listening mode," he said. "I want to find out what people around the state think of the U., its potential and what it does for them."
Smith is not ready to announce any specific agenda for the U. yet. But, in a far-ranging conversation with the Deseret News Tuesday, the new presidentoffered a few thoughts about issues affecting the U.
- Faculty: Smith's predecessor, Chase N. Peterson, had his communication problems with the faculty, who questioned his effectiveness in a vote of the Academic Senate.
Smith rose through the faculty ranks, having been a tenured professor at two institutions, South Carolina and the State University of New York at Binghamton, a provost (a university's chief academic officer) and South Carolina's interim president.
The new president believes the faculty gives the institution its "intellectual vigor and strength."
"I feel part of the faculty. I don't feel an adversarial relationship with the faculty. That would be disastrous for any university," he said.
Smith plans to maintain an office open to faculty and faculty groups, and he also will attend every meeting of the Academic Senate, where he will address the faculty if invited and will answer questions.
- Students: This same openness will extend to students. Smith plans to initiate a "Breakfast with the President" program like the one he had while he served as South Carolina's interim president for nine months.
"It will be an opportunity for them to meet me and for me to meet them. It will be an opportunity for us to stay in touch," he said.
On a first-come, first-served basis, students will be able to sign up to eat breakfast with the president. Any U. student will be eligible to participate. At South Carolina, these informal discussions lead to some policy changes, particularly with issues such as parking, registration and residential life. "Those issues are very important to students, but they're often ones that I wouldn't see."
- Undergraduate education: The Smith administration will expand the efforts toward improving undergraduate education that were initiated during the Peterson years.
At South Carolina, Smith was known as a champion of reforms in undergraduate education. Under the Smith administration, the U.'s efforts will specifically focus on freshmen, who sometimes find difficult the transition from high school to college and from home to living on their own.
"I've been especially concerned about the freshman-year experience, because research has shown that the first five weeks of the fall quarter for freshmen are really crucial . . .. The success with which they make the adjustment, not only academically but socially, to the university will have a heavy bearing in how well they will be successful overall," the president said.
"I want to make sure that we're as user-friendly to students as we can possibly be," he added.
- Cold fusion: While saying he must study the U. and its involvement with cold fusion in more depth, Smith also commented that the issue isn't dead at the U., despite the closing of the National Cold Fusion Institute. In the next six months, the U. will have to deal with a number of cold-fusion issues, particularly patent rights, he said.
- Salaries: Faculty and staff have been frustrated with little or minimal pay raises in the past few years.
Utah's problem, he said, is one common to state institutions across the nation, including South Carolina. Making the case for competitive salaries to hire and retain faculty is "an annual challenge. There is no magical solution," Smith said.
- U. library: Smith said he is "alarmed" about what he's read concerning the deterioration of the Marriott Library.
At the same time, he said, the focus of university libraries is shifting from not only providing access to information on the printed page but also to access to data bases and digitized information.
A university library could soak up all available new resources, so "faculty have to make priority judgments to decide what kind of library collection they need to support the University's programs," he said.
- Parking: Smith said he hopes to lessen the U.'s parking hassles, but he doesn't profess to know how to universally solve campus parking woes. Parking has been a problem at every campus where he's worked, he said.
"Maybe there is a university somewhere where parking is not a problem," he said. "If there is, I've not heard of it, and it's a very well-kept secret."