Partnerships key, chancellor tells leadership group
Oakland has a mojo — one that Chancellor Patrick Gallagher said didn’t exist when he was a graduate student at Pitt three decades ago.
“There’s an attitude now here that’s quite different,” Gallagher said in a recent panel discussion among new leaders of five Oakland anchor institutions. “In the ’80s there was this sense of ‘Are we going to go anywhere?’
“There is a sense now that we’re here and there’s enormous possibility. There’s a confidence. I think people sense … that Pittsburgh and Oakland are at an inflection point and that we’re about to see something remarkable happen right before our very eyes.
“That excitement and that enthusiasm and that confidence, I think, is palpable.”
Gallagher was joined by Leslie C. Davis, senior vice president of UPMC and executive vice president and chief operating officer of its Health Services Division; Suzanne K. Mellon, president of Carlow University; Jo Ellen Parker, president of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, and Subra Suresh, president of Carnegie Mellon University, who shared their observations as part of the Oakland Leadership Celebration hosted by the Oakland Task Force and Oakland Business Improvement District.
From left: Bill Flanagan of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, moderator; panelists Subra Suresh, president of Carnegie Mellon; Jo Ellen Parker, president of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh; Suzanne K. Mellon, president of Carlow; Patrick Gallagher, chancellor of Pitt, and Leslie C. Davis, senior vice president of UPMC and executive vice president and chief operating officer of its Health Services Division.
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Bill Flanagan of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development moderated the Dec. 15 roundtable.
What strategy is needed for Oakland to realize its full potential? “Some of the most exciting things that are going to happen are going to happen not in any silos that exist today, they’re going to happen when things are rubbing shoulders with something else,” Gallagher said.
“It’s always at the seams that the magic happens, whether it’s technology and art, whether it’s the humanities and science, whether it’s business and nonprofits, public versus private.
“There’s always for me a fascination with the fact that one of the strategies has to be nurturing an environment where that kind of shoulder-rubbing happens.”
Silos themselves aren’t unnatural, he said.
“As humans we organize them to get our arms around things and create specialties. The problem is when they become an excuse to not look broader. Any time you create a silo to make something easy, like with any tool you can’t let the tool take over,” said Gallagher.
Today’s communication and computational technologies have made connectivity possible in powerful new ways that can be both good and bad, he noted.
“The best way to reap the benefits and manage the risks, I think, is to lean in and be part of the transformation and take advantage of it. What’s exciting is that Pittsburgh and Oakland in particular are so well suited to play such a key role with the technology, the talent, the data, the information, the health care — a data-driven business these days, we see it in museums and curation, in education. We’re in the middle of this in a way that’s very powerful. I think there’s a lot of reasons why often, when we see each other, we’re talking about these potential areas of interaction.”
Strategies must focus on partnerships and community-building, he said, noting that institutions can be “organizationally myopic” at times.
“The truth of the matter is no university sits on its own. It’s not just in a community, it’s part of a community. The issues facing the community are just as real within the university.
“We live there; we work there. We want to have fun there. We want our students to participate there. The vitality and health of that community is just as essential to our well-being as it is to the community,” Gallagher said.
He said we need to question whether we can work with others. Can we take the friction out of the system? Can we partner?
The University was created to make the region better, Gallagher said. “Knowledge was a pathway to a better life and better quality of life. I think that mission is just as true today as it ever was.”
Gallagher said institutions must identify the strengths they have to offer.
“We always have to come back to the fact that this is a team sport and we have to design things so that we can work together,” he said. “The acid test of our effectiveness is whether we make a difference.”
—Kimberly K. Barlow