Iowa
State University Alumni Association| online edition | fall 2006
FALL 2006
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Good Chemistry
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>>An Exemplary Leader
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Gregory L. Geoffroy Facts
Five minutes with the president
Man with a Plan
Morrill & More
Measuing up
Big Impact
Five things you might not know about Greg Geoffroy
Five stars
Gregory L. Geoffroy’s enthusiasm was genuine on Oct. 6, 2001, as he spoke during a ceremony that officially installed him as Iowa State University’s 14th president. In his remarks to the crowd that gathered that morning in C.Y. Stephens Auditorium, Geoffroy outlined his priorities for Iowa State that would become the road map for everything he hoped to achieve:
“My first priority is academic excellence, because I so strongly believe that our success in everything else that we do flows from that.
“My next priority is to provide our students with the best education possible to equip them well for future success…[and] we must also ensure that we provide our students with an outstanding living and learning environment.
“A third priority is to have Iowa State be a more fully ‘engaged’ university, a university that is even more connected and involved with the people we serve: the people of Iowa.”
Now, it’s five years later. Have the president’s priorities remained steadfast? How will his first five years be judged? What have been Gregory Geoffroy’s greatest challenges and most meaningful achievements? How has Iowa State changed under his leadership?
It’s time to review.
Gregory L. Geoffroy Facts (Return to top)
Iowa State University President since July 1, 2001
Education
B.S. University of Louisville, 1968
Ph.D. in chemistry, California Institute
of Technology, 1974
Career
Pennsylvania State University:
• Assistant professor of chemistry 1974
• Associate professor of chemistry 1978
• Professor of chemistry 1982
• Head of the Chemistry Department 1988
• Dean of the Eberly College of Science 1989
University of Maryland:
• Senior vice president for academic affairs and provost 1997-2001
• Interim president 1998
Research field
Nationally acclaimed researcher in organometallic chemistry
Family
Married to Kathleen Carothers Geoffroy
Four grown children
Five Minutes with the President (Return to top)
VISIONS spoke with Gregory Geoffroy on the occasion of his fifth anniversary as president of Iowa State University.
When you came to Iowa State five years ago, you said ISU was a good university, and you have focused your efforts on ways to make it a great university. What makes a university truly great?
A great university is determined by the greatness of the faculty and the impact of what the faculty are doing. So the way that you make a good university better is by building a stronger faculty, especially in high-impact areas that build upon your existing strengths. For example, Iowa State University is now among the very best in the world in the area of virtual reality and human-computer interaction. Another is in the broad area of biorenewables. And it’s because we have great faculty members working in those areas.
How have you strengthened those high-impact areas?
One of the things that I did shortly after I arrived here was to put out a call to the faculty for proposals for a series of new academic initiatives that would build on our existing strengths and would be in areas of high impact, areas that held the promise for significant external funding and that ideally were correlated with the needs of Iowa. Eventually we ended up identifying six areas. We’ve hired additional faculty members in each of those areas, we’ve put a lot
of new resources in those areas, and they’ve just really taken off.
In the five years since you were hired as president of Iowa State, what have been your biggest
challenges?
The deteriorating budgets. This year, our state funding is at the same level it was in 1997-98 for our operating budgets. So the budget challenges have been really THE biggest challenge.
A secondary challenge, one that I think we’re doing well in meeting, is the demographics of the Midwest. There are just far fewer students graduating from high school in the Midwest than there used to be. It’s a huge problem for the state.
What have been your greatest accomplishments?
Well, those academic initiatives I mentioned, because they have just had a huge impact, not only on those areas but also on animal genomics, on a field that’s called combinatorial discovery, and on information infrastructure and technology infrastructure. Those have had a big impact.
But I’d also say saving Morrill Hall and being involved with several new building projects: the Student
Success Center and the Alumni Center, among others.
Another area that is very important is appointing great leaders. I’m very proud of the leadership team we’ve put together here.
What are the best and worst things about being president?
The best thing is, without a doubt, working with wonderful people. [We have] great students here at Iowa State that I just love interacting with. And terrific faculty and staff, and great alumni all over the
world. That’s the best part.
Probably the worst part is just the incredible time demands. This really is without a doubt a 24/7 job. There is very, very little free time, and no private life.
When people look back, what lasting mark do you think they’ll say Greg Geoffroy left on Iowa State in his first five years?
I would hope they’d say, “Creating a much greater sense of community, strength-ening the university family, and a greater sense of everyone working together as a cohesive team.”
What are you most looking forward to in the next five years?
Ultimately, what I’m really looking forward to is continuing to work with great people – great students, great faculty – and promoting high-impact research, scholarship, and educational programs. I’d like to see a significantly improved budgetary situation for the university. I’m also looking forward to progress that I know we’re going to make on the enrollment front. I’m very, very excited about some new things we’re doing there. It’s going to be fun.
Man with a plan (Return to top)
Strategic plan
Iowa State’s new strategic plan, “Forward Thinking,” lays out priority areas for the university. To view the plan, go to www.iastate.edu/~strategicplan/
Budget model
To learn about the development of Iowa State’s new budget model, go to www.iastate.edu/~budgetmodel/
One Community
In response to disturbances during VEISHEA 2004, Geoffroy established the One Community committee. Read about the committee’s work at www.iastate.edu/~one
community/
Enhanced student recruitment
Geoffroy has appointed three key groups to assist in ISU’s student recruitment effort. (And we should mention that while the pool of Iowa high school graduates is shrinking dramatically, ISU currently enrolls more Iowa high school graduates, enrolls more new transfer students from Iowa community colleges, and has the largest full-time undergraduate enrollment of any university in Iowa.)
Morrill & More (Return to top)
There’s no question that there has been a building boom on campus during President Geoffroy’s first five years. While some of the projects were initiated prior to his term as president, Geoffroy has been instrumental in fundraising and planning many of the building projects.
The renovation of Morrill Hall especially can be considered a feather in Geoffroy’s cap.
“We were very impressed when Dr. Geoffroy, early in his presidency, saw that Morrill Hall was a project that had support among the alumni of Iowa State,” said Lyle Campbell, ’66. “He did his homework, had some engineering tests done on the building to determine that it was salvageable, and put his support behind it.” Campbell and his wife, Nancy, were lead donors and co-chaired the Morrill Hall fundraising initiative along with President Geoffroy and his wife, Kathy.
Here are just a few other key construction and renovation projects initiated or completed between 2001 and 2006:
• Hixson-Lied Student Success Center
• Dairy Teaching and Research Farm
• LeBaron Hall auditorium
• Memorial Union renovation
• Alumni Center
• Christina Reiman Butterfly Wing and Reiman Gardens Conservatory
• Steve & Debbie Bergstrom Indoor Training Facility
• Dr. W. Eugene & Linda Lloyd
Veterinary Teaching Hospital
• Union Drive Community Center
• Gary and Donna Hoover Hall
• Roy J. Carver Co-Laboratory
• Extension 4-H Youth Building
• Gerdin Business Building
• Veterinary Medicine Biosecurity Facility
Measuring up (Return to top)
In a number of tangible ways, Iowa State is a stronger university under President Geoffroy’s leadership:
Private fundraising
• Iowa State set a new record in FY05, with 55,279 donors making private gifts to the university
• New gifts and future commitments totaled $92 million in FY06, up from $83.2 million in FY05, $63.2 million in FY04, and $38.2 million in FY03
• In the past five years, 477 new scholarships were establishedand 31 new endowed chairs, professorships, and faculty fellowships were created.
Tech transfer
Among all universities in the nation, Iowa state ranks:
• 1st in licenses and options executed on its intellectual property
• 3rd in licenses and options that have been put into commercial use
• In the top 3 universities in patentable biotechnology
Last year, ISU had:
• 194 new licenses executed
• 5 new companies formed from technologies developed at Iowa State, bringing the total to 62 companies since 1990
Sponsored funding
Last year, Iowa State received a record $287 million in sponsored funding, up nearly 5 percent over the previous year.
Big Impact (Return to top)
ISU’s “big impact” initiatives, as outlined by President Geoffroy:
• Human computer interaction
• Food safety and food security
• Combinatorial chemistry
• The new bioeconomy
• Animal genomics
• Informational infrastructure
Five things you might not know about Greg Geoffroy (Return to top)
1. He met his wife, Kathy, on her first day of
college, at a fraternity mixer. She was pledging Kappa Delta sorority, and he was impressed with her because she was a math major.
2. He worked in a paint company to put himself through college.
3. He has two local “fishing buddies.”
4. He describes himself as “frugal” in his
personal life.
5. If he had time, he’d like to do a little gardening.
And one thing even we don’t know: His middle name is a secret. (We only know it starts with L!)
Five stars (Return to top)
We talked to faculty, students, staff, and alumni, and they say President Geoffroy's leadership at Iowa State earns him 5 stars.
“I think we all feel a kind of openness here, the freedom to speak our minds, even on some controversial issues. I think that’s the culture that has been nurtured here through the office of president….
“You wonder what a man like Geoffroy would have accomplished if he had operated in an era of legislative support. I think we’ve seen his abilities at work in keeping this institution at the forefront of research and learning in a time of fiscal restraint. But one has to wonder, where would we be now if we were adequately funded? Would we be in the top 20? Would we be in the top 10?
“Anyone who is fortunate enough to work with a pre-sident like Dr. Geoffroy is changed by the experience.
I mean, I admire Dr. Geoffroy genuinely. You know, there are two ways that a president brings external support to the institution. One is to go after it with a butterfly net. The other is to develop a kind of sweetness that brings people to you, and I think that’s what Dr. Geoffroy does.”
Michael Bugeja, director of the
Greenlee School for Journalism and Communication
“From the student standpoint, Dr. Geoffroy was very student friendly. He made the Knoll come alive.
“When I served as student body president, both of us were kind of catapulted into dealing with the disturbances of the VEISHEA riots, and I think that in that sort of situation a person’s true colors come out. Because there’s not something you can plan how you’re going to react. You basically have your tools in your tool belt and you’ve just got to be ready to use them.
“I always felt I was at an equal level at the table with him. I never felt like I was any less or ‘just a student.’”
Sophia Magill,
’05 political science
2004-05 Government of the Student Body president
“If it hadn’t been for Dr. Geoffroy’s support, we probably wouldn’t have gotten the job done on Morrill Hall. His leadership was THE key element. His leadership is what made this happen.”
Lyle Campbell, ’66 ag business
“His leadership style is exemplary. He’s an absolute born leader. He is the most inclusive leader I’ve ever seen, not only with students and with the faculty and staff, but also with anybody else who cares about Iowa State University. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“I tell you, we’re all so proud of him. The Regents support him 100 percent. He’s developing a new budget model for the university, which is going to change the way the university does business. He’s just doing a fantastic job.”
Gary Steinke,
executive director of the Board of Regents, State of Iowa
“He’s a man on a mission. He saw ISU as a good university when he got here, and he’s focused his efforts on ways to make it a great university. He’s tackled tough topics – like VEISHEA, Morrill Hall, and the free speech area – with a collaborative, inclusive process. He’s worked to strengthen the economic
and social fabric of Iowa. [And] he’s a faculty member at heart: a faculty member who became a president.”
John Anderson,
assistant to the president
“If I can speak for the faculty as past president [of Faculty Senate], I truly believe that Greg acknowledges and respects the principle of shared governance that the faculty has at the university with the administration. Greg has said to the Board
of Regents that the faculty are the heart and the soul of Iowa State. And I know that he believes that.”
Claudia Baldwin, associate
professor of veterinary medicine,
2005-06 Faculty Senate president
“Greg is a great leader to work for in terms of his management style. His focus on excellence provides a very clear vision. The one word that I think of when describing Greg’s style is not really about style but about who he is. That word is ‘integrity.’”
Ben Allen, president of the University of Northern Iowa
Former ISU provost and vice
president for academic affairs
About the Writer | Carole Gieseke is the editor of VISIONS magazine.