“I like to have very clearly focused plans and clear milestones and to couple resource utilization to those milestones. But they’re not going to be set by me. They’re going to be set by our faculty, by our students, by the Rice community. Then I just manage the process.” —George McLendon
Rice Magazine: What happens now?
Rice Magazine: When do you expect to start seeing results?
McLendon: We’re ready to begin a communication with the faculty that says, “This is what I’ve learned from you.” The next step is to find out: Are these really the right things? Can we really make a difference? Can we understand the level of resources, both from internal allocations and external fundraising, that would be necessary for us to be among the national leaders? We’re not ready to implement anything. We’re just ready to have the next level of conversation, so we’re doing that with three task forces that, roughly, have one person representing each of our schools. That minimizes the parochialism.
McLendon: I don’t want to get that far ahead of the process. This is going to be very open and transparent. There’s going to be feedback and input from lots of constituencies, from many faculty, from students, from alumni, from supporters in the Houston community. Our job is to find out if we can be great at this. The first step is to have this collective conversation, guided by a small-focus task force. They’ll produce a white paper that will say, “Here’s what we think is possible.” And that will be the source of additional conversation. By December, we’ll have a sense of what’s possible, and from there, we’ll be in conversation with the trustees and others about what commitments we will be willing to make internally and externally to seize the promise of that possibility. Then things can start to happen very fast. If there is one thing I’d like to communicate, it’s that this isn’t my initiative. This is an extraordinary, collective zeitgeist of the faculty. My responsibility is to respond to that zeitgeist and find out, in ways that are appropriate to Rice’s history and traditions and ambitions, if we can build things that we’ll all be extraordinarily proud of.
Rice Magazine: Does having a collaborative culture to begin with help? McLendon: Rice ultimately has the potential to be far more impactful because you can set up a spirit of collaboration. We’ll figure out how to do that in a way that takes advantage of Rice’s unique strengths. There are very few places where a leading corporation in the energy sector could have all of those people sitting at the table, not fighting to be in charge but saying we’re all committed to doing this together.
Rice Magazine: There’s a natural focal point for bioscience and health with the BioScience Research Collaborative and a natural focal point for international strategy at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, but how do you bring all the energy initiatives under one umbrella? McLendon: I’m familiar with some of the historic challenges. Since we’re asking all the schools to find ways to collaborate, the processes have to be co-chaired by someone from the provost’s office and someone whose primary affiliation is within the faculty.
Rice Magazine: Are you up to the task? McLendon: For better or worse, I have rapidly gotten this funny reputation based on my background. People say, “Ah, he’s a startup guy.” And I am. I like to have very clearly focused plans and clear milestones and to couple resource utilization to those milestones. But they’re not going to be set by me. They’re going to be set by our faculty, by our students, by the Rice community. Then I just manage the process.
Rice Magazine
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No. 8
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2010
37