 Gamble on MSU
Geoffrey Gamble, Montana State University's eleventh president, has been on the job nearly two months. Here's what he told the MSU Alumni Association when asked what he now believes to be the biggest challenge facing him at Montana State University. Pres. Gamble: "Let me take a cut at the answer in a slightly different way. When I interviewed, I talked about the three major roles of a university president: an advocate, a leader and as a manager. An advocate for an institution is someone out telling the university's story. In that role, I'm pretty excited. Montana State University is an extremely easy place to get excited about and talk about. There are so many good things that go on here. The quality of the students, the faculty and the staff. We know that we're producing a very high quality education here. There's cutting-edge research underway. It's a great place to be and I get pretty excited about it. I don't see any real problems in working as an advocate for this institution. As a leader, I think one of the more difficult initial assignments is to help Montana State University form a vision of itself: four campuses with a mission that spans the whole state. Clearly we're the state's university when we think of the presence we have -- four campuses (Great Falls, Havre, Billings, Bozeman) and also the Agriculture Experiment Stations in the localities throughout the state. And then Montana State University Extension presence in virtually every county in the state including the reservations and the tribal colleges. I know this is a sensitive area for alumni, so the framing of a vision of Montana State University that embraces that whole array of things that impact across the state, is an important first step. As a manager, I need to be putting it into place accountability and assessment measures. I see both of those as important, but different. Assessment measures are internal indicators that allow us to gauge our progress toward important goals. We need to understand how we're doing. We need to measure ourselves. Accountability measures will allow us to look outward and demonstrate to the public, to the legislature, to the business community, to others, that we're effective in reaching our goals. We need to bring both of those, both accountability and assessment measures, into place. It's just a matter of doing our work as managers of a university. Also as managers, we need to come to grips with the financial situation. We're not in an emergency situation. The university has done reasonably well. But there are some financial stresses that we need to understand. There are some simple principles that we will put into place. And one of the things I think will be most difficult is to be able to tie the budget of the institution with the planning of the institution in some meaningful way. That will allow us to prioritize, to make decisions, and to open this process up to a wider audience in the institution. This is how I choose to work. I think this might be difficult work because I'm not sure whether the university and the culture have thought of themselves in quite this way. I see this as one of the functions of my leadership as I come in to create a budget process that works in a different way, in a little more open way." (Editor's note: The full text of Gamble's conversation with Carol Schmidt, editor of the MSU Collegian, will be published in the publication's February edition.)
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