President for a Day
President Kermit L. Hall has now given students an opportunity to be “President for a Day” and follow him through his agenda.
“What we are trying to do is give a select number of students a chance to see what the top part of the administration does and what our goals are. The second goal is to get student feedback after they have observed at this level,” President Hall said.
The third purpose, he said, is to show the complexities involved with running a university.
“I have some ground rules,” President Hall said. “One is that I never temper discussions because the President for the Day is there. You get the real deal. We don’t want students to use this opportunity to their advantage and talk about what goes on … and, don’t fall asleep.”
I was the first “President for a Day.” At 8:30 a.m., I met with H. Craig Petersen, chief of staff and special assistant to the President for planning and community relations to review the president’s schedule.
President Hall said normally he would meet with the President for a Day to discuss the day’s events. In my case, he couldn’t because he had a different meeting.
The first meeting I sat in on was the executive committee meeting. This is an opportunity for the heads of the administration to come together and plan for the university.
“We are not where our ambitions are,” President Hall said.
And throughout the meeting, he focused on ways to help the university. They discussed items ranging from how to present technical issues to the Board of Trustees to faculty retirement plan revisions.
President Hall also gave each member an assignment to fulfill for the following executive committee meeting.
“President Hall is very good at taking charge and moving the agenda,” said Barbara A. White, vice president for information technology and chief information officer. “He expects us to work hard and do our homework. That’s how you move an institution along and he is a master at it.”
President Hall said, “One of the biggest challenges is letting people know what we’re doing – communicating is the single biggest challenge.”
Fred R. Hunsaker, vice president for administrative services, said, “President Hall is very open and willing to call it the way he sees it. I think there are some things we clearly need to improve on.”
After the executive meeting, I met with Lee H. Burke, assistant to the president for government relation and secretary for the Board of Trustees. He said his job was to be staff for the Board of Trustees as well as the liaison between Utah State University and government officials.
“In my area, public relations, the president is doing very good,” Burke said. “He started out wisely and people are impressed with him.”
Burke said President Hall has done many things to help USU’s image such as milking a cow in every county, inviting many guests to the President’s Box for athletic events and creating the Inaugural Scholarship Fund.
“He’s made a lot of brilliant moves, compact planning, for example, looks exciting but we will have to wait and see. It’s all new and stretches us,” he said. “He’s pushing us to get outside of ruts and make Utah State a better place.”
After that, I went to lunch with White. President Hall recently enlarged her position to vice president.
“You can see after this morning’s meeting that President Hall clearly believes in teams, but when a decision has to be made, he’ll make it,” she said.
After lunch, I met one-on-one with President Hall and then it was on to a meeting with Rich Kendell, the governor’s education deputy. Their goal was to candidly discuss the university and its needs.
“One thing we are trying to do is to get back to basics and get competitive,” President Hall said.
He outlined what the university needed from the state government to achieve its goals and boost Utah’s economy. There was particular emphasis on engineering, computer science and genomic science.
President Hall spoke of new ways to divide funds and said, “An increment more will make more than an incremental change.”
He also addressed the technology issues at USU.
All day the president met with many people with one goal in mind – making USU better. He didn’t even stop for lunch.