The purpose of the interview was to provide Dr. Jackson the chance to respond to questions from the RPI community at this critical juncture in RPI’s history.

Members of The Polytechnic that were present for the meeting were Editor in Chief Joseph Davis, News Editor Terrence Brown, Associate News Editor Soumeya Benghamen, and News Coordinator Nievalyn Cummings. Members of the president’s cabinet that were present included Secretary and Chief Counsel of the Institute Chuck Carletta, Vice President of Finance Virginia Gregg, and Vice President of Student Life Eddie Knowles.

Interview transcribed by Nievalyn Cummings. Photos taken by Vidhu S. Pandey.

Poly: Where do you see yourself in the future with RPI?

Jackson: Well, you know, I’m here. I’m the President. We have The Rensselaer Plan. A lot of high energy vision is in The Plan. We developed The Plan as a university [in] my first year and it’s my intention to achieve The Rensselaer Plan. What happens beyond that I cannot speak of, but I have no specific plan to exit. What’s behind the question, Terrence?

Poly: Well, I know there were rumors last year during the [U.S.] presidential campaign about perhaps maybe you going to some kind of cabinet post.

Jackson: Well you know I was a government official for four years. In fact when I came here I had been asked to remain in my position, but I chose to come here, and at any given time my name is out there. People call me all the time about jobs, but I’ve turned them down.

Poly: How long do you see it taking to implement [The Rensselaer Plan]? What’s the time period for The Plan?

Jackson: Well, I’ll answer that in two ways. The Plan looks out over a bend in the road for Rensselaer that’s envisioned to occur over anywhere from an eight to ten year period. But there is a specific plan and specific goals that go on through a performance planning process and each of those plans have a three-year outlook, although they are actually budgeted on a year-to-year basis.

And of course there is a look back in the next budget cycle for what’s been achieved to what couldn’t get done to refine those performance plans. So then roughly on a three to four year timeline we’ll actually look in an integrated way at what’s been achieved relative to develop it into the overall record and then look to see how to refresh and refine the overall Rensselaer Plan.

And in fact we use it. Well, I certainly use it as a guidepost because it’s very useful to look at The Rensselaer Plan and to ask what are the commitments that were made in The Plan and to say what have we accomplished against those commitments and this is something that I ask each of the cabinet members and the deans to do, and ask have we either achieved something relative to these commitments specifically or have we at least substantially begun.

Then what I do is monitor over the large what’s happening with the group of Rensselaer. And I’ll give you an example. It says to recruit and support world-class faculty and identify priorities. By the end of the next academic year, we will have hired at least 66 new faculty to Rensselaer and out of that 66, 20 of them are new positions.

But as we go, the overall Plan, over The Rensselaer Plan planning proviso is to increase the size of the faculty net by 100. But that actually means we’re going to have to hire a lot more faculty because of the natural turnover—the retirements, some people pass away. So it’s going to be a major change. And so that’s the one thing, and you could just go down The Plan I think it’s an interesting exercise.

Poly: Are all those people applying for graduate school now fully aware of the tuition policy change?

Jackson: Absolutely, and what people don’t appreciate here—and we need to have that as a very straight-forward discussion today—is that what we’ve done in terms of graduate tuition and support just happens to be what other private universities do in terms of their graduate policy.

But here, there’s been a lot of noise and not a lot of light about really what all of this is because it’s as simple as this. What we are saying is if you’re a full-time graduate student you pay the same tuition as a full-time undergraduate student. That’s what the policy says. All of the business about tripling tuition and all that—we’re saying if you’re a full-time graduate student you pay the same tuition as a full-time undergraduate student.

Now, you can go look—look all around the area at other private universities and you can ask them what it is, and I will tell you that’s what it is.

Number two, we’re saying if we support you—and we don’t claim we support everybody, just like not every undergraduate gets scholarship—but we say if we support you we’re going to tell you how long it’s going to be and we’re going to give you a minimum stipend.

And you have people who have been here who’ve been living off sub-minimum stipends and so we’re grossing that up. But does that show up in The Poly? No. ...

The problem with the discussions that have been going on is that everybody wants to pick out a piece that they want to talk about as opposed to looking at the integrated piece. Did it ever occur to you that by saying that a student gets a minimum stipend as a TA, that they have to be a full-time student. That if they are a Ph.D. student that they will be supported for two years, but we will then cost-year 50/50 with a faculty that takes on a TA as the student makes the transition and then that student goes on and works for that faculty advisor. That maybe students ought to have those two years to study to learn the advanced material to be prepared to go in and do research full-time, because a Ph.D. is a research based degree. That in order to have the greatest preparation you got to have time to study, to get the baseline material, to learn advanced subjects beyond what you learn as undergrads, and to prepare for what are called comprehensive or qualifying exams or general exams. And that’s all this policy is structured to do.

And so in some cases that means that people will end up with double the stipend or even triple the stipend that they had. So I didn’t see headlines, “Stipend tripled.” I see, “Graduate tuition tripled,” right? But I’m saying you have to look at the whole thing and understand that it is a integrated picture.

But we’re saying that the departments have to give you the full stipend. We’re saying that, yes, it’s a year for master’s students. But that means that if you’ve already been here for three, four years, you’ll still get your year. It says two years for a doctoral student, and yeah if you’ve already been here for three, four, five years you’ll get your two years. But then we’re saying that with new students we’re starting this new system.

Poly: At the informational meetings, Dean of Graduate Education Tom Apple mentioned that this move was a gamble for the Institute. He suggested that a big change was needed to become a major research university. Do you agree that it’s a gamble and big change and if so what inspired this move?

Jackson: Well, let me put it this way. Any major change has risk. But this is no more of a gamble than anything else. It’s just the one that I believe will put Rensselaer on firmer footing. Students will be clearer on what their status is. The faculty will be clearer on what the expectations are of them. It allows the students who are supported as TAs in their early years to really focus on their studies and therefore to have the greatest preparation, and so I don’t understand when you say it’s a risk or a gamble what it means.

I mean, you could argue putting up a new dorm is a gamble. We do it because we think it’s going to improve the lives of students. You could argue that putting up a new fitness center is a gamble, but we do it because it’s going to improve the lives of students. You could say that building a biotechnology center is a gamble, but we do it because we think it’s going to anchor Rensselaer as a center of research. And so any choice you make—if you get up and ride down the street—is a gamble, but you come because you’re coming to work and you intend to accomplish something and so no risk, no reward. But it is not some terrible risk. And so the answer is no. It is not.

Poly: There is definitely a very strong opinion on campus that the community at large doesn’t have that much of a voice, and it’s apparent from what you’re saying that you believe they do. Do you see what might be a source of this differentiation in the two view points? Do you have any ideas for ways to at least give people a sense that they’re being heard?

Jackson: Well I think part of the difficulty is that there is a difference between having your say and having your way, and I think people equate having your way with having your say.

And people will always have a say and every constituency in and outside of the university related to it, is part of that. But we also go through the representative structures, having to do with the faculty senate and its representatives being on the committee that came up with the baseline recommendation with respect to the graduate tuition policy. The fact that there’s a graduate council and you have the president of the graduate council involved in the discussion, the fact the provost and the graduate dean go out to talk with the graduate council, the student senate, the faculty senate, the [and] faculty senate executive committee.

So you tell me, you all have a Grand Marshal, and you have a President of the Union, you have a graduate council—your representative government —and so if they are part of the discussion and the rest of the people don’t hear, then that poses the question. Is it a communication issue?

And the other piece that you heard me say is that every time there is a Grand Marshal and a PU elected I invite them and have invited them since the day I came to set up monthly meetings. None have ever taken me up on that.

Now with the schedule that I have, can you just come in on an arbitrary day of the week and say, “Well I want to talk to the president?” I might not be here. I might be out on the fundraising trip, I might be giving a speech, or I might have somebody else who has an appointment. It’s a courteous thing just to make one.

And [Eddie Knowles] is creating this leadership group with the intent that they meet on a regular basis with him and the undergraduate dean … and I’m available to meet with the Grand Marshal and the PU on a monthly basis. But, they have to work with my calendar to try to stick to those meetings at a time that’s convenient to them and a time that’s convenient for me.

I’ve held town meetings ever since I’ve been at Rensselaer—every time there’s been a major change or something’s come to contemplate. I don’t see students come that often. I’ve gone on to WRPI—the radio station—but I have as many people calling in from outside—from around the area—as students, even though it was announced ahead of time. I walk the campus, actually on a regular schedule; I visit a fraternity, a sorority, an upper class residence hall, a freshman residence hall.

I’ve done that as much as I can with my schedule. And so I go in and I talk to students. I have dinner with them sometimes. I’ll always spend at least an hour, [to] an hour and a half and ask them to tell me about living here, being here.

So, perhaps you’ll have some suggestions for me, in terms of communication, because if I’m walking the campus as much as I can, if I’m going deliberately visiting living groups, if I have town meetings, if I invite the Grand Marshal and the PU to have monthly meeting with me. You tell me, I’m always open to suggestions, and I really am, if you sense that there are better ways that we can communicate.

Poly: Well, what [we’ve] gotten from our student government leaders is that they by-and-large feel that they were excluded in this discussion in the development of the policy and a few of them feel that they were sandbagged—that they were caught with the policy after it was already developed.

Jackson: Well, you don’t make a policy by a committee of a thousand. Somebody is going to create a straw proposal, then people have the opportunity to react—to give constructive input to that proposal—and then that proposal can be revised upon. And that in fact is what happened. It was put out as a straw proposal, and people had a chance to react.

But let me just say, setting the tuition is the authority of the Board of Trustees; it is not something that everybody votes on. It is the president’s responsibility ... to make a proposal. But this was not a surprise. ... The provost started talking about this over a year ago. This has been in discussion for two years, and there was a study done to do a benchmark us with other universities.

Poly: What [we’re] hearing is that there has been a petition signed by 551 graduate students. There are demands, there are people talking of unionization. It is obviously out there that these people are concerned about their education—they’re concerned about this transition. They’ve read the policy and obviously they do have some concerns and I think the issue is maybe you feel that some of their concerns aren’t justified.

Jackson: Well I do think that some of their concerns are rooted in misunderstanding and even as people talk about unions, unions typically talk about two things: Fundamentally, what you’re going to get paid—and the irony to me is that in fact I’m upping what TAs get paid—and secondly, how much they work—and fundamentally I put a limit on how much they can work.

So I’ve said they have to go to school full-time, but a union doesn’t negotiate a full-time status or not full-time and where the tuition gets set. So I think it really is a communication issue, because the things that people—the students—are concerned about are ironically the things that we have improved.

Now if the real issue has to do with people worrying about tension setting in or the fact that we wanted to hire more full time people as students. That is a fundamental change, but it is one that is tied to what it means to be a research university, to be a graduate student at a research university.

We don’t have part-time undergraduate students. Except in very rare circumstances, or very special cases, the expectation is the undergraduates are going to be full-time. But I dare say that if it were a decision and the students were not full-time and we decided that they had to be full-time, there would be a reaction.

So this is a difficult transition, and so we need to talk more to the students. But in point of fact, Tom Apple and [Bud Peterson] had a meeting with the graduate students of every school. So in fact some of what you’re talking about already has occurred.

And we’ve got a copy of the letter that students sent to raise their issues, and we’ve responded to those. Well, whether or not student life will accept all of those I cannot say, but it is a point of fact I think if most of the students look at their situation between this year and next year, they’re gonna be glad with the policy—if they really sit back and take the time to look at it.

Poly: Have you done any research assessment about how many students have changed their plans because of the policy?

Jackson: Well, I think the students who are the TAs and RAs, their circumstances are ... going to get better. We expect those students to be back.

If you mean whether there is some number of students who thought of graduate school here and therefore through some misunderstanding they choose not to come, no we haven’t particularly looked at that. I think that there could be some ... If they’re really looking for a bona fide full-time graduate program, no matter what, what they’re going to run into is what we’ve created.

And as I said, the applications for graduate school are up dramatically, and these folks were given full warning that things were going to be changed. They were not promised anything along the lines of what the old system was. So what we’re seeing in the jump of graduate applications is numbers directly the opposite of what predictions have been. We’ll see what the final numbers turn out to be, but I think what may make the enrollment lower is what the departments choose to do …

Poly: For you as the president, what is more important: The quality of life for students or making money for the school?

Jackson: The two go hand in hand. It takes money to run this university. Let me just talk and we can use some examples. The Union has been renovated, [and] Barton Hall has been built—I assume you’ve seen. We have the Mueller Center. We’ve renovated the Armory. We’ve got to redo the women’s locker room. We’re putting a new roof on the pool. You won’t recognize Academy Hall by the time it’s done. We’re starting on the biotechnology building, but let’s put that aside. That’s quality of life too, but the students don’t think so. We’re completely renovating Bray and Cary. Colonie we’re starting down the path of major renovation—you’ve seen it.

These projects add up to $35 million, and we’ve spent on the order of $17, $18 [million] in the just the last two years in improvements and renovations. You know how much was spent until I got here on average per year? $896,000. Now that’s money.

We’ve just had a discussion about reaction to a tuition policy because people worry about it and rightfully so because the tuition is where there going to be problems. Rensselaer has one of the lowest endowments per capita per student of any school of science. ... Now you tell me, how am I going to spend $17 million per year—build new buildings, renovate residence halls, we’re renovating the auditorium in West Hall, all the classrooms, the wiring of the building, renovation here, renovate here—you tell me?

So there is no either-or, is what I’m really trying to tell you. It’s and-and. In order for me to improve the quality of life for students, fundraising is a big part of the job, and it is an especially a big part of the job for me. I mean, that is one of the biggest challenges I face—the fiscal outlook for this university—and so in order to maintain and try to continue to raise the quality of life for students, that takes real money, and real money takes real fundraising.

If you talk to most university presidents around the country, and a substantial part of their time is spent fundraising. Most presidents would rather—and I’m one of them— would rather stay on campus. I would much rather stay on campus and interact with you all, invite you to dinner parties.

The idea I had was having what I call “senior dinners,” to invite groups of seniors to come and eat with me.

Poly: What has your greatest accomplishment been so far at RPI?

Jackson: (Referring to website) I think I’m going to let the record speak for itself. $360 million is not bad, but I’m going to let the record speak for itself.

Poly: How would you describe your leadership style?

Jackson: I’ll tell you how I am. I believe in articulating a vision. I’m a planner, and then I manage to the plan. I expect people to work as a team. I expect them to integrate what they do. I expect them to benchmark what they do to high performing organizations on the outside. I expect them to work very hard. I hold them accountable to what they say they’re going to do. I’m decisive, and I’m willing to live with the decisions. I have a lot of energy, and I expect people who work with me to work as hard as I do.

Poly: How would you describe the financial state of the Institute?

Jackson: I think it’s good. But, you know, we don’t have a big enough endowment, and we’re looking to strengthen that, as well as look at other living streams. But, the university, financially, is well managed and because it’s well managed we’re able to take on these major projects—hire all the faculty, make the renovations we’re doing. That’s it, but it takes careful planning and careful hands, and that’s what we’re talking about.