Sept. 4, 2001
Part I: A Conversation with President Stephen Joel
Trachtenberg
President Discusses Campus Plan, Construction
ByGeorge!:
Your imprint is fairly recognizable on campus as people see new buildings
and construction. But something that may not be evident is the academic
infrastructure. What are some highlights and keystones that you think
have occurred during your tenure here and what does the future hold
academically?
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg: The first thing
to point out is that when I came here, this was not an open wheat field.
My predecessors had put into place a pretty robust and impressive University.
I had the good fortune to follow Lloyd Elliott who left me a healthy
and essentially sound University. I’ve tried to build on the foundation
that I inherited and I’ve done it in my own way, which is to say
a little more publicly than was the past custom. But bricks and mortar
are really a metaphor for what goes on inside the building. I think
we have, in the last 10 years or so, moved up in terms of aggressiveness
of the faculty with their scholarly output, their standing in their
respective disciplines. Similarly, without wanting to get hypnotized
by SAT scores, we’ve got much more academic, stronger entering
classes than we used to recruit 50 years ago. We now admit our class
from a pool of 16,000 applicants. When I came it was about 6,000. So
clearly, even though we’re taking a slightly larger class, we’re
doing so from a greatly expanded universe. Since universities are basically
people, if you have better professors and better students, and they’re
doing their work in better facilities, it follows that you’re going
to be more positively regarded. The nice thing I think is that we’ve
done all of this and kept the humanity that has always been distinctive
at GW. The faculty still care about teaching. I hear from parents of
students all the time how much their sons and daughters enjoy being
here, enjoy the University, enjoy the city, enjoy the internship opportunities.
Also, I think, frankly, the place is prettier. I think it’s a more
attractive campus. We’ve paid more attention to amenities and I
think it’s helped. We landscape. We plant. We cleanup. We maintain.
We create open spaces and parks. We keep doing that and over time it
makes a difference.
ByG!: Where is GW in the campus
plan process?
SJT: We’re still in conversation with
the city. Look, we’ve been here 180 years. We’re going to
be here in perpetuity. That kind of perspective gives you patience.
We’re here forever. The city is here forever. And the conversation
about our relationship will go on forever. Some years we’ll be
dancing cheek-to-cheek. Some years we won’t be as huggy. Meanwhile,
the campus plan has taken on a life of its own. They take extensive
time and conversation to negotiate. Some of that is substantive. Some
of it is ritual. It’s important, I think, that the process be honored
although it’s obviously frustrating. But it’s become a part
of the life of the city and the plausibility of our relationship with
the ANC, the BZA, the DC Council, the mayor’s office, and all of
his troops. So, we just have to suck it up and keep optimistic and cheerful
and persist in negotiating in good faith. With the passage of time,
what we discover is that time has passed. The world moves on and we
get from the alpha to the omega.
ByG!: What’s the level of support
the University’s received from the District in comparison to our
commitment to the community?
SJT: In any relationship, whether it’s
a university and a city, or a couple, somebody loves somebody more than
the other party. Nobody can ever quite figure out who’s the more
robust of the two and maybe it’s important that the answer to that
question never gets resolved. The fact of the matter is, the District
of Columbia and The George Washington University are joined at the hip.
We are here forever. We will never leave. They’re right here forever.
You have to learn to live with each other and to be as compatible and
mutually constructive as we can possibly be. This will not always be
easy. Universities and their cities have relationships that are a series
of flashing lights, not a steady glow. Students are mischievous. Accidents
happen. There is a constant unrelenting dialogue. What you have to keep
in mind is that it’s in perpetuity. Nobody can afford to get mad,
stamp their feet, take their basketball and go home. What you always
have to realize is the city and the University are one. Whatever is
good for the city is good for us. Whatever is bad for the city is bad
for us. If the city treats us well, terrific. If the city treats us
bad, shame on them, but we have to just keep on keeping on.
ByG!: The plans for the new Elliott
School building call for a mixed use facility. Is this an approach we’ll
see extended to other projects in the future?
SJT: Well, the building is going to have
some retail on the ground floor. It’s going to have housing. It’s
going to have faculty offices, classrooms, conference space, and underground
parking. It’s one architectural development at a time, but our
purpose is to add value to anything we construct and to serve the campus
community and the neighborhood. If there’s a reason to put in a
coffee shop or a luncheonette or a small grocery, then we’ll do
it. Obviously, you have to worry about the devil being in the details
to figure out how you’re best using your square footage. All of
these initiatives call for creating priorities. If you put a produce
store in a facility, then you’re not putting in a classroom. It’s
a question of figuring out what your tradeoffs are. Our purpose, obviously,
is to serve and to do that, you have to ascertain what people need and
what they want and then try and be responsive.
ByG!: Along those same lines, the
new hospital is opening next summer. What ideas have been discussed
for the current hospital?
SJT: Well, we thought of putting in a pasture,
and I think we would, but it turns out it’s not cost effective.
So the range of ideas is very extensive. Everything from a facility
that would be highest and best use, which is to say something that would
generate the largest material return and then the application of the
income to institutional use. The extreme other side of that spectrum
is to put up a totally academic facility and deal with some of the pressing
needs we have for additional classroom space and laboratory space, research
space, faculty office space, and administrative office space. I would
like a movie theater. I think this part of town lost something when
the Biograph and the Key disappeared and we got another CVS. I’ve
got no quarrels with pharmacies, but the Biograph was really a special
place. Where will it fall out? Probably someplace between the two poles.
In the best of all possible worlds, assuming that we get a modicum of
good will from the various regulatory, supervisory, and oversight agencies
that function, it would be quite splendid to have something that had
some commercial space, some retail, some residential, some academic,
and some student housing. How much and what mix it might have will depend
on ultimately how many square feet we can develop and that’s probably
going to take imaginative architects working with a team of University
developers to try and come up with something that is compatible to our
agenda. Also, if I can possibly be responsive to the desires of the
neighbors, I’d love to do that.
ByG!: What are some of the capital
projects on the horizon?
SJT: We’re going to renovate and hopefully
expand the Robert and Clarice Smith Hall of Art. We’re going to
build that building out a little bit, add some space, and refresh the
space that is presently there. We have in mind the start of a new building
for the School of Business and Public Management adjacent to Funger
Hall, which, when completely rolled out, will renovate Funger Hall and
connect it to the new building and give us an opportunity to articulate
our school of business.
ByG!: Are we in the permitting process
for that yet?
SJT: No, we haven’t even gotten to
that yet. We’re still working on the design. But we’re moving
it right along. We’re trying to think through a swift and dramatic
affirmative response to the community desire that we house additional
students in University facilities. So, we have two plans in mind. One
is to build on the parking lot of the Smith Center. The other is to
build on the empty space adjacent to the Health and Wellness Center.
We hope to be able to step forward and engage the ANC with some of our
ideas by the early fall.
ByG!: Adding in the residence halls
might balance out the requests for permits for the Smith Hall and SBPM
projects...
SJT: I never can tell with these people.
I’ve discovered it’s better to not even try. I’ve been
president now 13 years and I don’t think they’ve said yes
to anything we’ve asked for in my entire tenure. Maybe once. So
I’m starting to sense a pattern developing. So the point is to
stay cheerful. It is true that if we actually say we’d like your
permission to build what you’ve asked us to build, that it does
have the potential for rejection. But I’m never disappointed by
the imagination of some of our critics who will want it taller or alternatively
shorter. Who will want it narrower or possibly broader. Who want the
door on the left side rather than the right side. So there will be,
undoubtedly, a lot of discussion, even about the design of heaven.
ByG!: The city is bracing for another round
of World Bank and IMF protests right here in GW’s backyard. Do
you view these protests as constructive or disruptive and how is the
University preparing?
SJT: Being adjacent to all of this excitement
is a challenge to us. I’m clearly concerned first and foremost
with the safety and welfare of my students and my faculty. I’m
additionally, but secondarily concerned with the protection of our property.
So we’ll do what we can to protect all of the above in that priority
order. But, I also see these protests as being less articulate than
they should be. I think of myself as a reasonably informed person —
I read three newspapers every day — but I can’t tell you exactly
what it is the protesters are protesting and what it would take to make
them be content. It may well be we have too many issues on the protest
agenda and they are blotting each other out. When people were against
the Vietnam War, it was a straightforward message. Protests, as a means
of communication or persuasion, do not apply equally well to every kind
of agenda. There appear to be at least a half a dozen, and perhaps more,
different issues being put forth. It makes it more complicated and it
makes it hard to sort it out. One of the things I’m going to ask
the faculty to take a look at doing is doing some teach-ins with students
addressing the IMF/World Bank protests and trying to see if we can’t
make some sort of educational lemonade out of this particular lemon.
We like to say that at GW, something happens here. Well, something is
happening here and I think it’s fair to ask our faculty and our
students to talk about what it is that’s happening and why. It’s
fair so that in 30 years our students, then middle-aged alumni, look
back on what happened when they were 19, and they will be able to talk
about something more than crowds of people rushing past and people with
masks and puppets. Presumably, there is some set of issues. What does
globalization mean? Do we, in fact, help the third world by relieving
it of its debt? Is that sufficient? I see an opportunity for us to do
what universities are supposed to do.
ByG!: How are the searches progressing
for a new dean of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences and a new
vice president for development?
SJT: We have a short list of candidates
for the vice president for development and I hope to, with any luck,
get that resolved in a couple of weeks. We’re very pleased with
the potential of the candidates, although we’re going to miss Mike
Worth. He’s a lovely man. I saw him traipsing across the campus
the other day in a pair of khakis and a T-shirt. I was going to a meeting
wearing a suit and a tie. He looked like a professor and I wanted to
kill him. He was vice president for development here for 18 years. Even
Mike Worth is entitled to some time off for good behavior. The dean
of arts and sciences job has not been posted. We have a search committee
that has been elected by the faculty and we have a job description and
text for an advertisement. We have a fine person serving as interim
dean. My goal is to get a new dean by September of 2002. It’s a
great job in a wonderful city. It won’t be any problem at all to
get somebody. Obviously, I’d like to get somebody very good and
I’d like to get someone who is committed to staying on the job
for an appropriate length of time. I had hoped Lester Lefton would have
stayed for four years and I think he did, too. One of the risks you
take when you appoint strong, visible people, is that they’re going
to be called away to other jobs. I think becoming provost at Tulane
was irresistible.
SJT: I would just like to add that I’m
very excited and I think we’re going to have a terrific year. Our
new Health and Wellness Center is going to be a smash. It’s terrific.
The Law School building is coming along smartly. The hospital is clearly
rising. We have drawings and other things planned. I hope we can keep
up this pace, God-willing, for another few years. Things are going very
well. I hope the economy of the nation stays strong. You have to go
through life hoping for the best and planning for the worst. Right now,
I’m worried about the World Bank/IMF protests.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
