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ONE-ON-ONE - November 2004
by Ed G. Lane
'UK Is Ready to Step Up and Show Even More Leadership'
UK President Dr. Lee Todd talks about how things have changed at the state's flagship university and what lies ahead
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Dr. Lee T. Todd Jr.
Lee Todd began his term as UK’s 11th president in 2001. Todd earned his Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from UK and his Master’s and Doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While at MIT, he received six U.S. patents in the area of high-resolution display technology. He is a former UK engineering professor and a successful businessman who launched two worldwide technology companies, DataBeam Corp. and Projectron, both based in Kentucky. Before taking the helm of UK, Todd was senior vice president of Lotus Development Co., a subsidiary of IBM. He is also a co-founder of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation, a not-for-profit organization focused on university research science and technology education programs and entrepreneurial activity. |
Ed Lane: Your first day on the payroll at UK was July 1, 2001. What has been the highlight of your first 40 months on the job?
Lee Todd: I’m extremely pleased with student quality. UK has increased the size of the freshman class – from 3,000 to 4,000 students – but the quality has picked up each year. That was part of our initial strategy – to be more aggressive in our recruiting. UK started offering scholarships and installment payments. Probably one of the most refreshing things along this line is the increased scholarships from the Governor’s Scholars program.
UK now allows alumni who live out-of-state to enroll their children on in-state tuition. People often stop me and say, “I just want to thank you for the legacy program.”
EL: Today’s interview is in your new offices in the administration building that burned down about a month before you became president. Do you have a comment on the new facility?
LT: I’m very pleased the administration building is back to its original mission. It again has students and classrooms, and the university’s welcome center is on the plaza level. It’s great to see prospective students and their parents as I walk into the building each morning.
EL: The building was insured. But will renovation costs exceed the coverage?
LT: The renovation is going to cost about $17 million. UK received about $8 million from the fire settlement. With contributions, we’re probably still about $4 to 5 million short. Once we start bringing people through the building and showing the naming opportunities, we’ll receive additional contributions.
EL: How is the total enrollment for the university tracking?
LT: Enrollment has increased from 23,850 in 2000 to 26,700 this year, but the main focus is on the entering class. UK had almost 11,000 applications this year for 4,000 freshman students. And the quality, as I said, is the best we’ve ever had and speaks well for our faculty and recruiting staff.
EL: What are other aspects of increased enrollment?
LT: As enrollment increases you do start having larger classes. That way incremental costs don’t increase because you don’t have to add faculty. When I became president, we set a goal of increasing enrollment. I certainly didn’t set a goal of having the budget cut $74 million. We set up a strategy to grow the institution with quality, and we were marching along very well. When your budgets start getting cut, you’ve got some choices. You can either change your strategy totally – which I don’t think is good because it was working – or you can slow it down somewhat but keep targeting the same end-point or you can innovate.
EL: What are a few examples of innovation?
LT: UK has added a winter term, which allows students to take classes between Christmas and New Year’s. We have introduced a four-year graduation contract (tuition guarantee) for students, which allows us to look at our departments to see what is it that we’re doing inefficiently.
I’ve just provided the Senate Council with $75,000 to study how other universities across the country are responding to increased enrollment. This isn’t just a UK problem, it’s a national problem. College enrollments are going up because people now know they need a post-secondary education to be competitive.
UK now has a calculus class with 300 students. Students in the class saved about $100,000 on textbooks, because it’s a computer course. UK saved about $100,000 on teaching assistants because we don’t have multiple small classes. So far it looks like those students are doing as well or better academically than those in other sections.
EL: A recent newspaper article inferred there were too many people in classes and UK was cutting corners. But, your comment is this is an innovative way to teach a high quality class with a lower cost?
LT: That’s right. Peter Yule, Ph.D., (a research fellow from Birkbeck College in London, England) spoke to a trustee’s conference sponsored by the governor. The title of his speech was “Doing more with much, much less,” and the innovative things that people are doing across the country. Virginia has been able to successfully address the academic and class size concerns.
EL: Will UK need to build new large classrooms, or are they now available?
LT: The Whitehall Classroom Building can seat probably 300-400 students and it accommodates communications classes and some of the freshman/sophomore classes. The university could certainly use more large classroom space; that is one of the burdens that we’re now under.
EL: Are larger classes conducted by the dean or the best professors?
LT: Our very best teachers and performers are chosen for these classes. UK has four or five professors who teach 400-500 students and receive spectacular reviews. One of the challenges, especially in the sciences, is that schools don’t have enough graduate students to teach. One of the complaints that you traditionally get is that people can’t understand their calculus teacher because many of the graduate students are foreign nationals who are very bright, but they haven’t mastered the language. So, by going to the larger classes you can put one of your top professors in there that can touch those 300 and you can use the graduate students to do the tutoring and the one-on-one support. It’s an innovative way to do it.
EL: UK’s annual budget is about $1.5 billion. Where are most of the dollars allocated?
LT: Most of the money (56.3 percent in 2004-2005 budget) is spent on people; UK has 10,000 staff members and about 2,000 faculty. That’s an annual recurring expense; it’s the cost of education and the cost of research. Of that $1.5 billion, UK receives almost $300 million (less than 20 percent) from state government.
In a $1.5 billion organization, there had to be some money that could be saved. We started a real hunt for savings and reduced costs about $34 million since I’ve been here. Unfortunately, our budget has been cut $74 million, which is the real challenge.
EL: A recent news article suggested UK’s best researchers and academics were leaving for other schools because pay levels and raises at UK have been minimal. Could you address that?
LT: UK gets articles on the faculty we lose, but not on the ones we hire. One thing now happening is that private universities, who are not feeling the budget cuts, are picking off some of the better talent at publics. UK’s faculty, I think, have come here because of their higher purpose, desire to teach, do research, and add to knowledge. They’re not driven by salary – until it becomes an issue. When UK has one percent pay raises, then our faculty might take a recruiter’s phone call.
UK had its new faculty reception last night. We’ve brought in people like Michael Karpf from UCLA to head our medical center, David Moliterno from Cleveland Clinic to head our Gill Heart Institution, Jay Perman from Maryland to be dean of the College of Medicine. I met a young faculty member last night from Yale, another from Johns-Hopkins, so UK is recruiting actively and bringing in a lot of talent. There is a flux when you have tight budgets. Some faculty leave for good reasons – because they look for other opportunities. I would rather take the salary issue out of the formula so that they don’t get aggrieved and start looking, but UK is not there yet. We’ve got work to do.
EL: What was the purpose of the Hilary Boone Faculty Center renovation and the benefit to the university?
LT: The Boone Center is an important part of our strategy to change the culture of the university and create more of a community feel. Patsy (Todd) and I opened up and hosted an inordinate number of events with a lot of people in Maxwell Place. We put benches and hotdog stands on campus. We brought Starbuck’s to the campus. The Boone Center was the continuation of that strategy. It was to find a place on our campus where the faculty and staff could collaborate and enjoy themselves.
The other primary factor was that UK doesn’t have a place on our campus to really hold nice events; we have a student center ballroom, but other than that UK is limited. The renovation would allow the Boone Center to seat 200 to 250 people in an academic environment.
EL: What was the renovation plan for the center?
LT: There are actually two phases. We would demolish the interior and build it back on a square so that we could have functional meeting rooms that open up in the evenings for larger events. The second phase would include a nice pub area, a library and an outdoor café. We may not get to phase two for a while. The idea behind that library is that it would display all the books our faculty have written and reflect the intellectual prowess of this institution. I’d like to have ceremonies where faculty present their textbooks.
EL: The Boone Center remodel approval was made in Frankfort before it was presented to the UK Board of Trustees.
LT: If somebody had done some research on this and chosen to publish it, they would have found three capital projects on the board agenda that day. All three had gone through the same process and had already been approved in Frankfort because the UK Board does not meet during the summer. There was no different rush for the Boone Center than there was for the Law School renovation. I’ve asked Frank Butler [acting executive vice president finance and administration] to put a new process in place so that doesn’t happen again for any project. The Boone Center renovation was handled just like any other project.
EL: How are the university’s efforts progressing in getting more research and technology grants?
LT: It is a challenge because our competitors in the top 20 have a much larger physical plants to utilize for research. They’ve been at the research game a lot longer than UK. UK has had its third year in a row with over $200 million in research grants; we closed the books at $238 million this last year. UK is running 12 to 15 percent ahead of our first quarter (7/1 – 9/30) this year compared to last year. We’re also recruiting faculty who are bringing grants with them.
We’re working hard to make it easier for our existing faculty to write grants and proposals. We’ve hired 11 grant writers. That is a strategy that takes into consideration that the faculty love to write the imagination piece of a proposal but they don’t like to deal with the budgets. That’s been effective. We hired a lobbyist, James C. “Jim” Duff, who is a Kentuckian, to work with us in Washington to make sure we have a more active presence there. Bill Schweri, who’s worked in Washington for years for us, needed some additional help. UK’s Senior Vice President of Research Wendy Baldwin was a deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, which is the largest funding agency for university research. She knows the game. So I feel very good about what we’re doing.
EL: Are there any special UK programs for getting new research?
LT: I’ve talked a lot about the “Kentucky uglies” since I’ve been at UK. These are the maladies that have held Kentucky back for years. Our state is the leader in lung cancer, diabetes, obesity, poor oral health and so forth. Wendy Baldwin is tracking UK’s research contracts in each of those areas – we’ve selected about six of those “uglies”. It’s research with what I call a “higher purpose”; UK gets the research and we also help our fellow citizens at the same time.
EL: How is UK helping Kentucky manufacturers?
LT: A lot of industries came to Kentucky because of cheap land, competitive labor costs and tax incentives. When companies amortize that debt to zero they’ll be looking again for a more cost effective plant location. We’ve got to find new ways to add value to those industries to keep them in Kentucky. We’re working closely with Lexmark, Toyota, and Valvoline in particular. So, we’re trying to be true to the mission of improving the economy by working closely with local industries. Our industrial research last year was up over 25 percent over the previous year.
EL: How is your plan progressing for more student housing on campus?
LT: We had to wait until we received approval from the state even though UK will pay for dorms out of its own cash flow. About two years ago the legislators found $155 million that they made available to higher education and we jumped on that. We’re building four new dormitories. One will be focused on the performing arts and will have practice rooms. We’re putting three dorms on the south campus, where the main complex is presently located. These suites will be available next year and provide almost 700 new beds.
One of our goals is to attract more students to campus. This will really help our relationship with neighborhood associations. It also gives our students an academic experience. I’m very proud of the fact that this is the first time UK has built new dorms since 1967.
EL: Private investors are building housing on Broadway and in downtown. Will that help fill UK’s needs?
LT: It will. I met with the Downtown Development Association and learned there are 23 projects going on in the town and gown area. We’ve encouraged those because UK needs a diversity of housing.
EL: UK has several new research buildings – like the Gill Heart Institute.
LT: Gill is open now. UK has made a major commitment to the area of imaging. The Gill Institute has some of the latest equipment in the nation. UK is putting a focus on minimally invasive surgery and Gill will play a major role in UK’s movement to be a top cardiovascular center.
EL: The Wethington Building?
LT: It’s a huge facility. It houses research and some of the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging. UK is also building the Biological Biomedical Sciences Research Building. It’s a $73 million research facility. It will be full when completed. And that’s what this state has got to understand. If Kentucky is going to be a leader in the research world, we’ve got to build research facilities.
The “Bucks for Brains” program has been tremendous. It’s allowed UK to take our endowment from under $200 million, to over $500 million because the state matches money we raise for hiring research personnel. What UK needs now are the research facilities to attract the people who fill those positions.
EL: UK also has the pharmaceutical facility – CPST – planned for Coldstream.
LT: The ground breaking for this research building will be in November.
EL: Are there any other research facilities in progress?
LT: Yes. UK bought the Lexell building, which is now going to be called Coldstream Center. It has about 160,000 s.f., half are leased to Lexell. That gives UK 80,000 s.f. of research space. As we recruit companies to come and occupy space on Coldstream they can use Coldstream Center as temporary housing. We’ve hired John Parks (former head of University of Illinois Research Park), to manage our efforts at Coldstream. We are focusing on industries in pharmaceutical, automotive research, the aluminum industry, and natural products. UK is actually putting money into the CPST facility. It will be a magnet for other pharmaceutical companies to locate at Coldstream. UK also invested its money to buy the Lexell building. UK is making a statement that we are going to bring activity to Coldstream.
EL: How has the provost system worked for UK?
LT: The move to the provost system was a major change for the university. All the deans now report to the Provost Mike Neitzel for academic purposes. The clinical operations for the colleges in the medical center report to Michael Karpf, who is the executive vice-president for medical affairs. The system puts all the deans in a room together, and UK now has a lot of transparency in the budget process. The deans present their budget requests in front of each other. We’ve found new areas of collaboration among the colleges because of this. I couldn’t be any happier with the move to the provost model.
EL: Another innovation is UK’s use of the agricultural extension program.
LT: I look at this program as a sales channel. UK has ag extension people in all 120 counties, so why not use them as brokers for what happens at the university. The extension agents have been extremely receptive to this program.
EL: UK recently issued a RFP for marketing services and Cornett Advertising was selected to manage the university’s advertising.
LT: I reduced UK’s investment in marketing for the first few years because I felt we needed to get the product ready to sell; UK needed some bragging points. I don’t believe in marketing if you don’t have substance and solid strategies to back it up. So now, UK’s got its largest and best quality freshman classes, the highest research numbers in our history, we’re hiring top faculty, researchers and administrators, so we’ve got something to really talk about. It is time to turn the marketing volume up. One of the things that will be beneficial is the new media contract with athletics, because UK gets about $2.5 million worth of air time and we’ll be able to fill that up with targeted messages.
EL: How has the budgeting process worked and what changes have you made in that area?
LT: It’s what I call transparency. I had seven town meetings in the medical center my second year just to try to find out what’s going on. One of the things I heard from the physicians is that they didn’t feel that they were participating as much in the vision for that part of the institution. The hospital was making money, they felt, but they didn’t know how much. I’m extremely pleased with the way Michael Karpf has opened the books for the hospital and for every department. This process has led to a feeling of cooperation within the deans. It’s a good process.
EL: You’ve had an increase in crime on campus, particularly against women. What’s your plan to try to reduce this problem?
LT: UK, in conjunction with our center for research on violence against women, announced eight initiatives. We have aggressively tried to face up to this problem and we are investing both money and management effort to make our campus safer.
EL: I know it’s been a tough season for Kentucky football.
LT: The NCAA doesn’t put you on probation to help you. UK is short of scholarships – the best way to work through that is that we have to recruit – and I’ve been very pleased with the athletes Rich Brooks has recruited. The SEC is a tough conference for teams to play short-handed while learning new systems so we’re paying a price for that right now. UK has had too much flux in our football program. We’ve just got to hang tough. I’m very pleased with Coach Brooks’ staff and the recruiting of Kentuckians. But, it’s a difficult time for everybody.
EL: Would you care to comment about UK basketball or women’s sports?
LT: Mitch Barnhart focuses on all sports. UK’s golf team is ranked fourth in the nation. They’re close to selling 4,000 season tickets for women’s basketball. He’s made some very good improvements in the marketing of UK’s other sports as well as in some of the coaching selections.
EL: UK’s women’s basketball team has a new coach, Mickie DeMoss. She seems to be doing a great job.
LT: She’s got some good recruits coming and a lot of energy. Some of the women’s games last year were very exciting. Other UK sports are also picking up. Something that Mitch and Tubby Smith said to me my first year was, “the swimmer has as much passion for her sport as the basketball player; the golf coach has as much passion for his sport as the football coach; and if we’re going to be in this business of having collegiate sports we need to invest in them. We’ve done that and we’re seeing results.
EL: What other areas are excelling at UK?
LT: UK has put a real premium on entrepreneurial activity. It’s my view that you almost have to create a culture of entrepreneurship and so we started the “E” Club, the entrepreneurship organization for students. We now have a Venture Club and the Angel Network, which is made up of high net-worth individuals. And we’re now putting together a seed fund here in Lexington. Some of UK’s faculty and local investors will start companies and that will help change Lexington’s economy.
EL: How is Commerce Lexington doing?
LT: The merger of Lexington United and the Chamber of Commerce into Commerce Lexington was a very good move. I’m very pleased with Luther Deaton’s and Bob Quick’s leadership. Louisville is ahead of our community in a number of areas. Lexington’s got unique qualities and we need to find a way to effectively present them. UK is ready to step up and show even more leadership than we have in the past.
Ed G. Lane is chief executive of Lane Consultants Inc. and publisher
of The Lane Report.
edlane@lanereport.com
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