University Times

The June 22 meeting of Pitt's Board of Trustees was J. Wray Connolly's first as chairperson of the board. It also was the last board meeting for J. Dennis O'Connor as Pitt chancellor.

The timing was not coincidental. Connolly was a leading member of the trustee group that grew increasingly dissatisfied with O'Connor's job performance and eventually forced his resignation. As chairperson-elect last spring, Connolly helped to negotiate a severance package for O'Connor as well as the agreement to hire law professor Mark Nordenberg as interim chancellor.

A Pitt law school alumnus himself, Connolly retired as senior vice president of H.J. Heinz Co. in December 1993. He divides his time between Pittsburgh and his ranch in Montana. Connolly began his service to the University in 1980 when he joined the Board of Visitors of the Katz Graduate School of Business. He also has served on the Board of Visitors of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. In May 1985, Connolly was elected to the Pitt Board of Trustees. He served two terms as a special trustee before being elected a term trustee in June 1991. Connolly has been a member of several of the board's committees, including public affairs (now called the institutional advancement committee), audit, and budget. He is a member of the boards of directors of Presbyterian University Hospital and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center System.

Last week, Connolly was interviewed by University Times Assistant Editor Bruce Steele.

University Times: When you became chairperson of the Board of Trustees last summer, you said you planned to preside over an activist board that might be asked to work more hours, participate in longer meetings, contribute more money to the University and play a larger role in the day-to-day business of the institution. Can you give us a progress report on those efforts? Connolly: First, I'm not sure that I said "play a larger role in the day-to-day business of the institution" because it's not the board's job to manage the operations of the University on a day-to-day basis. God help the University if we tried. But I do see the board playing a far more active role in helping to define and describe what we want the future of the University to be.

What has happened in that regard? Well, as you know, we commissioned Dr. James Fisher to bring in a group of knowledgeable college and university leaders to help us get a focus on where the University of Pittsburgh is today. That is going to be the basis for us beginning to focus on where we want the University to go. The Fisher group's study is underway, and I hope to see the first draft of their report sometime in November. That will be presented to the Board of Trustees for its input, comment and for general discussion at what I envision to be one of three meetings, each of which will be at least a day long. The first of those meetings is scheduled for Nov. 18. These meetings, I hope, will ultimately produce the trustees' view of where we want this University to go, and it will help us begin to develop a strong sense of what we need to get there — a sense of the kind of leadership we need, the issues with which we're going to have to deal, a better sense of the kind of capital we're going to need.

These are issues that will be ultimately decided by the Board of Trustees — obviously with input from a lot of constituencies — but it is not something that the board is going to decide at a two-hour meeting some Thursday next February when somebody comes in with a 50-page book and says, "Here's our plan," and somebody else says, "I move the plan," and it's all over. As I said to the trustees at the Oct. 19 meeting, "Don't forget the meeting on the 18th of November. I expect you to be there." These three day-long meetings will be closed to the public? That's right. They will be executive session meetings.

When will faculty, staff and students see results from those meetings? That's a difficult question to answer because, obviously, we're going to be seeking input from a lot of members of the University community before any final decisions are made. People will have ample opportunity for input. But they'll see results only when there are results, when we the trustees have reached some conclusions of our own. They will see the Fisher report after the board has seen it. There's not going to be anything secret here.

Further, on the issue of having an activist board, I have been meeting with the chairs of various committees to ask them, over the course of the next 12 to 18 months, to focus the work of their committees on areas that will help move the University ahead. For example, I have asked the audit committee to begin to focus on the management information system development work that needs to move ahead with real dispatch at the University. We don't have good management information. That is not a criticism of anyone, it is a fact. And if we are going to make decisions, particularly decisions that could lead to rationalization of the existence of some programs, we can't do it unless we have good information.

At this stage, I've talked to six of the committee chairs and I will continue until I have met with them all. As a follow-up to each of those meetings, I am putting down on paper what I took to be committee goals that we agreed on, and I'm asking the committee chairs to comment on those draft goals. Once they comment, I'm going to take the goals to Mark Nordenberg and to [Provost] Jim Maher and get their input, because I don't want us as trustees doing something that they think would be wrong from their perspective. Then we're going to get these goals in place. I expect that to happen within the next couple of months.

Is this goal-setting process going to replace the "Toward the 21st Century" plan, which was presented to the board in October 1994? What I would like to see us do is build on the "21st Century" plan, which I saw as one small step for planning. That plan was critical, but it's also the kind of thing that results the first time you undertake any planning effort. To a considerable extent, it was a condensation of a lot of hopes and wishes from schools and departments, and it was done without any real costing. As you'll recall, the board approved the mission statement and goals of that plan, but not the recommended strategic steps to achieve those goals. My argument at the time was that if we voted for the whole plan, we would be telling everyone who participated, everyone who had some wish or goal reflected in that document, that we as trustees were approving it. And we did not have enough budgetary information to do that.

If you read through that document, there also are things that appear to be in conflict. For example, it says we are going to raise the quality of incoming students as measured by SAT scores, and in the next breath we say we're going to re-commit ourselves to an expanded involvement with young people who may not have had the advantage of a particularly good education — minorities, etc. Those may not be inconsistent goals, but I think we need to sit down and talk about them.

At the Oct. 19 board meeting, it was reported that trustees' financial contributions to Pitt declined by 20 percent last year. Why was that, and what will you do about it? I plan to keep that issue before them, remind them of their responsibilities as trustees. Why was it? I'm not sure. I suspect that it was part of the backwash from some disenchantment with the University that developed over the last couple of years. I hope that's behind us now.

Some professors suggest that tensions and misunderstandings are inevitable between a university Board of Trustees and faculty, because academicians and business people have fundamentally different ideas about the roles of management and what might be called rank-and-file personnel. For example, it's been suggested that former Chancellor O'Connor's golden parachute would not have raised any eyebrows if he had been a corporate executive. But many Pitt faculty and staff, students and alumni said it was unseemly to give a university administrator such a deal.

Is there an inevitable culture clash? No. Is there a need for each group to develop a better understanding of the other? Yes. Something you have to keep in mind is that there are 36 voting members on that board, 48 in total, and they're not all corporate people by a long shot. There are 12 state-appointed board members, and I don't think any of them are corporate people. Other board members are lawyers, doctors and people from other walks of life. So the first thing we need to establish is that this is not a corporate board.

Editor's note: Pitt's board includes 10 lawyers and judges, seven current and former politicians, two academicians (including Interim Chancellor Nordenberg), an arts administrator and a public health professional. The rest of the trustees are current or former business executives and consultants.

Those board members who have worked at corporations may have a more difficult time than anyone else on the board in adjusting to academia. For one thing, in the corporate world there is a focus on the bottom line. I think a lot of people in academia don't think there should be a focus on the bottom line. My own view is that there has to be some focus on the bottom line or we won't survive. I think people who come from the corporate community feel that the decision-making process in a university environment is inefficient because they are used to examining situations, getting appropriate input, making a decision and moving on. And in a university environment there seems to be a tendency to want to perpetually debate issues, to count the number of angels that can dance on a pinhead. Although that may be healthy, it is not necessarily always productive.

By the same token, I think everyone on the board needs to understand that this is an academic institution, and the heart and soul of the institution are the people who teach our students and who do research. These people need to have a substantial input into matters that affect their teaching, the curriculum, the quality of the institution from an academic standpoint. We need to be more understanding and tolerant in these areas.

I think where the problem may arise is that some people on the board have no understanding of the concept of shared governance, and some people in academia believe that shared governance should extend to every aspect of the University's operation. The truth lies, clearly, somewhere in between. As I said, I think when it comes to matters that I would call "academic affairs," clearly the academic part of the institution should play a key role in any decisions that are made. I would resist any attempt to ever change that. But by the same token — and I have used this example in talking to leaders of the University Senate — I was really disappointed when I inquired about the replacement for [former Associate Vice Chancellor for Business and Finance] Rhonda Gross, who left last year for a better position at Lehigh University. We knew a long time in advance that she was leaving. One day I was talking with [Senior Vice Chancellor] Ben Tuchi and I asked who Rhonda's replacement was. He said, "Well, we haven't found that person yet." I said, "Gee, it's been a long time." And he said, "Well, the search committee is going to be coming up with some names very soon." I said, "The search committee?" And Ben advised me that there was a nine-person search committee looking for Rhonda's replacement. To me, that was ludicrous. Ben should have filled that position based on his perception of the kind of person who was needed, the skills he believed were required, and gotten on with it. And here we were, laboring with a search committee.

Another area where trustees are said to differ from many faculty, staff and students is on social issues. An example might be the question of extending fringe benefits to homosexual partners of employees. Currently, Pitt extends a few benefits to same-sex partners of faculty and staff — mainly, tuition remission and library privileges — under certain conditions. The University Senate's anti-discrimination committee, among other groups, favors extending same-sex benefits. What's your position on that issue, and the larger question of social issue differences? Well, if that is a genuine social issue, and the anti-discrimination committee's view — if it is as you just described it — represents the view of the faculty and students of the University of Pittsburgh, then there is a different view on social issues between the trustees and University community. I would think that on most social issues, there is little if any difference in view.

With respect to that particular issue, to call that a failure to act to end discrimination, which to me indicates the trustees have done something that is legally wrong, is inappropriate. I have said to people in the University, and I will say now, that I believe we have a responsibility as trustees to make certain that this University has the resources necessary to carry out its mission. I do not believe that we have the right to give away these resources unless there is some consideration or benefit to the University on the other side.

Somebody might say, "Then why did you give O'Connor a golden parachute?" Well, O'Connor didn't get a golden parachute from me, number one. What O'Connor got was a four-month leave of absence. What he got beyond that had already been agreed to by the trustees' compensation committee in August 1994.

But the August 1994 agreement specified the money and benefits O'Connor would receive from Pitt if he was "involuntarily terminated" — that is, fired — by the board, whereas officially he resigned.

Let's say, then, that what O'Connor received beyond a leave of absence was well within the spirit of his previous agreement with the compensation committee. Given the circumstances of his departure, I believe that he had a legally enforceable right to a 12-month sabbatical. There was a question raised as to whether he was also entitled to the level of compensation [$177,200 annually as a biological sciences professor] that was ultimately agreed to. That question was debated at a public meeting of the Board of Trustees, and a majority of members voting concluded that the agreement made by the compensation committee should be supported.

Editor's note: At the July 22, 1995 board meeting, trustee Martha Munsch proposed that the board "review and reconsider" O'Connor's severance package, which she called overly generous. The board voted 10-7 against Munsch's resolution, thus upholding the package. Connolly was one of the seven trustees who voted to reconsider the severance package. The controversy died down in September, when it was announced that O'Connor will leave Pitt to take an administrative job at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., beginning in January.

Beyond all of that, O'Connor did get a four-month leave of absence. And he got it with my complete and enthusiastic blessing because I thought it was important that he leave this institution now and not a year from now. Someone could say, "Well, you still gave resources away." And I would say, yes we did, but we got something in return that was important to the University.

If you ask me to vote in favor of the extension of health benefits to same-sex partners — which is, I think, really the issue that is on the table now — you're asking me to make a gift of what could become substantial sums of money to people who have no legal right to it. Now, if the laws of Pennsylvania or the United States are changed to require that we do this, we'll do it in a heartbeat. But in the meantime, we're not going to give away University resources just to placate a well-intentioned group of people who think it might be nice if we did it.

My fondest hope is that those people who advocate this position will step back and focus on the fact that now is certainly not the time to pressure the trustees to extend health care benefits to same-sex partners. Work on the legislature. Get the laws changed. If the law on this changes, we'll extend the benefits the next day. Don't come and try to work us over to do something that we are not required to do, in the opinion of any lawyer with whom I've spoken.

You've made communication — improving communication within the University and between Pitt and the outside community — one of your chief goals. As you know, the Post-Gazette recently reported what some people would call a classic example of the way communication works at Pitt. In December 1993, former Chancellor O'Connor agreed to accept $13 million from the state for the convocation center project rather than the $30 million the state had authorized, provided Pitt received the money immediately. At the Oct. 19 board meeting, you said this was news to you and Interim Chancellor Nordenberg and that, I'm quoting you, "This is exactly the kind of problem that Mark and I are determined to eradicate from this University." Since the Oct. 19 meeting, I have been able to confirm that what the Post-Gazette reported essentially is correct. I find that very annoying and very embarrassing. But regardless of that, we have a couple of problems at this University regarding communication. We don't do an effective job of communicating with the outside world, and we don't do a particularly effective job of communicating internally.

Maybe some of it has to do with the way we have some responsibilities assigned. Responsibility for real estate matters, for example, is divided between the Provost's area, which looks at issues like whether the Masonic Temple might be suitable for our undergraduate business school, and the finance department, which has the actual responsibility for real estate transactions. We also have a property and facilities committee of the Board of Trustees; they are the ones who opine on some of these major capital investments. There's no system to make certain that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. We need to address that.

The way it's set up now, it puts too much of a burden on the Chancellor's office because a lot of these issues only come together at the chancellor's level, and he can't be bothered by that. I think he needs a staff person who is responsible for everything relating to facilities and real estate matters. And that person has to make certain that the property and facilities committee is kept advised of what might be coming down the pike. I've discussed this idea with Mark Nordenberg, but it's up to him to decide whether he wants to have such a staff person.

I might add that I was quite embarrassed at an executive committee meeting to learn that John Pelusi, one of our really active trustees who is knowledgeable in the real estate field, didn't know anything about the fact that the Masonic Temple was under consideration as a site for the undergraduate business school. And yet, he is a very important player on the property and facilities committee. He learned about it by reading the newspaper. That isn't right. It isn't right for Mark Nordenberg and me and [Commonwealth trustee] Evans Rose and other people on our board to pick up a newspaper and learn that we apparently cut a deal with the state that has taken us out of $17 million that we need for a convocation center. We knew it was going to be difficult to get the full $30 million from the state, but I didn't know we were going to have to dig ourselves out of this hole.

Now, was this deal with the state communicated somehow within the University? Somebody may say something like: "Oh, yes, it was communicated. If you'll recall, there was a memorandum written in 1993 that was circulated…" Technically, that might have been the case. But I will tell you that when I was active in business, if somebody ever tried to pull that on me, after leaving me hung out to dry on an issue like this, I didn't forget it.

How do you think Pitt is doing in the area of undergraduate education? I think we're doing okay. We have some areas of strength and some areas that need to be strengthened. The thing I keep asking myself is, why don't we talk much about undergraduate education here? Yet we provide a lot of undergraduate education to a lot of people. We talk a lot about our research and our graduate schools, but we don't really talk that much about our undergraduate programs. I'm asking the board to focus on that issue. What role do we want undergraduate education to play in this University? How about graduate and professional education? I think Pitt's a pretty distinguished university. Obviously, some parts are more distinguished than others. My view is, all of the parts of the University to which we are committed or which remain a part of the University should be distinguished. That has to be our goal. We need to look school by school and department by department and determine what's necessary to make that happen. One of the things we lose sight of is that we have a customer, and our customer is called a student. We really need to focus on that student. We need to give that student absolutely the best value for the dollar that they can get anywhere.

At this point, what value are Pitt students getting? I'd say they're probably getting good value. Tuition rates are reasonable, quality of education is good. I think we need to work to continue to improve the quality of the education, and I think everybody in the institution would agree with that. One can't help but take pride in a report like the one Mark gave at the board meeting yesterday, when he gave a whole litany of successes and recognitions and high rankings Pitt has received recently. I'd like to see the list even longer.

By the same token, I think we have a responsibility to continue to be as competitive as we can financially. We need to be more efficient so we can keep tuition increases at reasonable levels, while at the same time trying to make certain that we adequately compensate the people who provide the services that we sell to these students. In other words, we can't keep tuition down at the expense of the faculty.

How would you assess the University's public relations efforts? I have been fairly public in my criticism of public relations here. I don't think we've done an effective job in the past. I've said to a lot of people that we have failed to be pro-active in communicating the positives about the University. I think we have, from a public relations standpoint, generally been reactive.

What's your opinion of Pitt's relationship with Harrisburg? We need to improve our relationship with the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth's appropriation to this University is the equivalent of a $2 billion annuity, yet sometimes we treat them like they're unwanted minority shareholders. We need to strengthen that relationship. As I've said to the trustees, my objective is to get an unfair advantage. That's what I want for the University of Pittsburgh. I don't want our fair share of state money, I want an unfair advantage compared with other state-funded universities. This is an important institution. We do make an enormous contribution in a lot of fields. We need people to understand us better, to love us a little bit more. I have asked some of our trustees to work on that, and indeed they are. That's why the news about the convocation center funding was so embarrassing. Just a couple of months ago, Evans Rose and Mark Nordenberg and I met with Gov. Ridge. There we were, pleading for the $30 million that we didn't know we'd already given away, and the governor didn't know we'd given away.

Gov. Ridge wasn't aware of this either? There was no reason he should have been, at that stage of the game. He wasn't a party to that agreement. It had apparently happened when Casey was in. But there were other people in Harrisburg who knew about it, and I assume they were the ones who brought it to Gov. Ridge's attention.

Besides Pitt's efforts to get money from the state, how is the University doing in terms of fund-raising? I don't think we've particularly distinguished ourselves. We continue to show at our board meetings the charts [showing increases in gifts to Pitt], but if you go back to five years ago, we've only this year gotten back to where we were then. We've come out of a period of decline, now we're now back to where we were five years ago, and part of that was underwritten by UPMC [the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center] with a contribution they made last year.

At the same time, fund-raising is obviously more difficult than it has been, with reductions in the amount of money available from government sources and foundations. As far as southwestern Pennsylvania is concerned, which historically has been the source of a lot of our funds, we have lost companies such as Gulf and Rockwell that used to be important contributors. There are lots of reasons why this [fund-raising stagnation] has happened, and we haven't helped ourselves either. We've done some things that have aggravated potential donors and made people not feel good about the University. We need to address those issues.

Does the resignation of Larry Weber as vice chancellor for Institutional Advancement present any opportunities for addressing fund-raising issues? Certainly his leaving gives us the opportunity to bring in somebody who is, hopefully, as good as you can get in this area.

Did you play any role in his departure? I would say, no, I did not play a role in his departure unless you describe a willingness to express a concern over this area as playing a role. I mean, I expressed a very clear concern over this whole area and I said we needed to do a better job.

How would you evaluate the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, its mission and leadership? Do you think any changes are called for? The medical center certainly has been one of the distinguished parts of this University over the years. I think programs like Thomas Starzl's transplant program, and leadership like Tom Detre has given that part of the institution over the years, have really worked to the benefit of the whole University from a reputation standpoint.

The whole health care business is changing dramatically, from the standpoint of more focus on cost, the changing approaches and systems for delivering care. So it is difficult to step back and make an assessment of an institution — or a business, if you will — that's not in a steady state. That's not just UPMC, it's anybody that's involved in any aspect of health care. So I say to myself, how are we doing in navigating these stormy waters caused by these changes? And I would say, we are doing very well. I know there are people who are involved with UPMC who are controversial.

I assume you're referring to UPMC's top leadership.

Well, that's what people focus on, the people at the top. People aren't worried about somebody who's four layers down. I think that our [UPMC] leadership is doing an effective job of navigating these waters. It is an extremely competitive world out there. This whole region is over-bedded by 50-75 percent. Those [hospital] beds are going to have to disappear. We can't allow them to disappear at Presbyterian University Hospital or it will begin to adversely impact on the critical mass that we need to sustain our whole health care program. So you need to be pretty tough to retain, again, what I like to call an unfair share of the market. I think we have people providing leadership at UPMC who can do that. Whether or not you want to go out and have a beer with them is another issue.

Sometimes UPMC is portrayed as the part of Pitt that helps to subsidize the rest of the University. Other times, people say the medical center is a drain on University resources. And most people agree that there is a definite split between the so-called upper campus, the medical and Health Sciences part of the University, and the lower campus comprising the Provost area schools. How do you view all of that? Well, it's pretty obvious that there's a split. I think it's unfortunate. I wish it didn't exist. Maybe, over time, the gulf can be narrowed and ultimately closed, particularly if we set that as a goal. Whether that will become a high priority objective of the University, I just don't know. But you never achieve a goal you don't set, so if we set about to do it I would think we could eventually close the gulf that does exist.

They generate a lot of money up there — practice plan money, $170 million annually in research grants, and the hospital generates a lot of money. We don't own the hospital, but we are very involved with it. Pitt has a 48 percent representation of Presby's board of directors. The hospital is still a separate institution, but it's so intertwined with the University that in many respects you can't separate them. Indirectly, funds generated by the hospital benefit the medical school substantially. So in a sense, UPMC is pretty independent financially, and I'm sure that's where the feeling comes from that they can do their own thing. People ask, "Why aren't they [UPMC] subject to the same rules we are?" Which just compounds the upper and lower campus split.

There's a counter-argument that suggests both UPMC and the rest of the University would benefit if the medical center became more of a separate institution.

There's that argument. I've also heard the argument that you shouldn't have a senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences.

Isn't that what Mark Nordenberg said at the Oct. 19 board meeting — that he is considering merging the jobs of the senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences and the dean of the medical school? He didn't say which of the two titles would remain.

That's just one of many proposals. Given that the two positions are open, it's the ideal time to look at the Health Sciences structure. Because no incumbent is going to have his ox gored at this point.

Speaking of Mark Nordenberg, the chancellor is, of course, the one administrator who is hired and can be fired by the Board of Trustees. Was it your idea to offer Nordenberg the interim chancellorship, or was that a group decision? As the situation evolved over the course of the spring and summer with respect to leadership at the University, it was pretty clear to me that we would need to find somebody to provide interim leadership. My mind went immediately to Mark. I didn't know him well at all, but I knew his reputation. I went and sought counsel from quite a few people and got the names of some other people who might be considered. But I would say that, by and large, everyone with whom I spoke said, "Mark's your guy," whether I asked what they thought of Mark Nordenberg or whether I asked the open question, "Who do you think might be a good interim chancellor"? There was no question that the only viable internal candidate was Mark. You can say, why not Jim Maher? Because Jim Maher is, I believe, doing an excellent job as provost, and I did not want to see him deterred in any way from what he was doing as provost. So Mark was the ideal choice. And based on what we've seen during his first 80 days [as interim chancellor], maybe we've finally gotten one thing right.

What kind of permanent chancellor do you think Pitt needs, and what kind of chancellor should the University not be looking for? I think the answer to that question is going to come, in no small part, from the deliberations of the search committee. And their work will be enhanced by input from Dr. Fisher and his [external review] team, whose work will help us as trustees begin to discuss what we need to do to fill the gap between where we are now as a University and where we want to be.

But I can give you my own opinion. It is my hope that we can find a chancellor who has already run a large and complex university — and that could include Mark Nordenberg by the time we make a decision on hiring a permanent chancellor. I am not looking to get a management trainee in the job. We cannot afford to make another mistake. Whoever comes into this job as the permanent chancellor of the University will be the third chancellor in five years, and that's a lot of turnover in any business. We absolutely need to get it right, and therefore I am looking for somebody with a real track record.

I personally would also be looking for somebody who has evidenced strong leadership skills, not somebody who is simply a seat-warmer and totally benign. As far as the candidate's experience and skill level is concerned, it wouldn't bother me if he was not regarded as one of the great academicians of our time or if he had not distinguished himself as a provost. Because we already have great academicians in this University, and I think we're fortunate enough to have a very good provost. I'm not sure we need a provost reporting to a provost. What we need is a leader who has demonstrated that he has a broad range of skills. One of those skills is obviously going to have to be fund-raising, but he's also going to have to be able to navigate the really difficult waters that we're facing in higher education and fund-raising today.

One factor that a new permanent chancellor may have to face is the prospect of a unionized faculty, if the United Faculty decides to petition for an election. You've been outspoken in your opposition to faculty unionization at Pitt.

I'm very concerned about it, for three reasons. One, in my heart I believe that the existence of, or the imminent threat of, a unionized faculty will have a significant impact on the quality of the chancellor candidates we're able to attract to this University. Anybody who has had any experience in management will recognize that there is no situation, at least not in commerce, where there is a union — particularly a fresh union looking to convince their supporters that their supporters have done the right thing — where you don't end up with somewhat of an adversarial relationship. And I don't think we need an adversarial relationship at the University of Pittsburgh today. That's the second reason I'm concerned about faculty unionization.

The third reason is that I don't know of any academic institution in the United States that has faced some of the challenges we face, whose plight has been improved as a result of the faculty unionizing. If you give me an example of how a university has achieved greatness or elevated itself as a result of faculty unionization, then maybe I'll change my mind.

Does the Board of Trustees — or, to your knowledge, the Pitt administration — plan to take legal action to block a faculty union election? Or do you plan to campaign in any other way against faculty unionization? When this whole issue is considered by the faculty in light of the leadership that exists at the University today, and with the full knowledge that you could still call for a union election a year or two down the road if things don't get better, it is my hope that those considerations will result in this [unionization] movement being tabled at least for the foreseeable future. And therefore, it is my hope that it is not necessary for the administration to do anything [to fight a faculty union].

It sounds like you're not actually ruling out either legal action or something like an informational campaign.

I'm not ruling it out. But that answer is not designed to do anything more than tell you that I'm not in a position to say what action should be taken if we thought this threat was imminent. If 80 percent of the faculty signed union cards and they were having rallies in front of the Cathedral burning Mark [Nordenberg] in effigy, that would be very different from what I hope will be the reflective mood that will prevail during this decision-making process. So in saying I'm not ruling something out, I will tell you at the same time that I know of no plans to take any legal action against faculty unionization at all. None. I would think that if that were in the cards, I would at least be informed.

You talked earlier about limitations on the trustees' role in running the University. Do you believe there should be limits on the faculty's role in University governance? If you're asking me whether there are areas where the faculty should have more input and more authority, I think that when it comes to academic matters the faculty should have very substantial input and a great deal of weight should be given to what they have to say. But I believe there are other areas where the impact on academics is quite indirect, and so decisions sometimes have to be made for the overall, long-range benefit of the University.

Would you say the decision to eliminate HealthAmerica and make Blue Cross the sole provider of employee health insurance at Pitt was such an issue? I think it was such an issue. I don't know every detail of the decision, but I thought it was appalling that the management of the University went to committees and asked for their opinion with respect to an issue that may well have already been decided.

The decision to go exclusively with Blue Cross is very important to the long-term, competitive position of UPMC. As things play out within this very competitive health care environment over the next three or four years, I think it's going to become obvious to everyone that the Blue Cross decision was an important piece in this total competitive plan. I would not have done a survey of faculty and staff opinion on an issue like that. I don't think you ever survey people unless you really are prepared to be influenced by the outcome of the survey, or unless you're absolutely certain that the survey is going to support your own position. What I would have done is meet with representatives of the people who would be affected by this decision and ask them to help us work out how we could minimize the adverse impact on the people who had belonged to HealthAmerica.

What are the major opportunities and threats that Pitt faces in the next few years? I think the major opportunity we have is just to get going again. It's one of the reasons I have been somewhat anxious to get a capital campaign underway — albeit not an enormous one, maybe a $75 million campaign to fund a convocation center and academically oriented projects such as the Hillman Library addition and the multi-purpose academic center. We need to get our name back out, we need to start talking about ourselves in a positive way. We just need to revitalize ourselves, and I think that's where the opportunity really lies.

The biggest challenges we're going to have are: How do you, in a time of declining resources, knowing that you cannot be all things to all people, see to it that the University remains a true, quality institution of higher learning? So that it delivers education to the communities that it really needs to serve, so that it remains at the forefront of providing learning and research that will help make this a better world tomorrow, and so that it can play an important role in helping to revitalize southwestern Pennsylvania from an economic standpoint? That's a real challenge. As I sit with you here this morning, I'm not sure how we're going to answer that challenge. But I think we need to keep a sharp focus on the fact that these are things we need to do.