How it Came to Pass—Oral History of a Half-Century in Emory Arts and Sciences: The View from the Office of the First Emory Provost
that showed what we thought we would really need. I remember meeting with the trustees’ executive committee and telling them what it would take to bring Emory to the next step, and it was just an astounding number. Well, Jim Laney made the commitment and accomplished it, by golly! Within a very few years, we began to compete for the best students and to rise in the national rankings. We were able to do this because University revenues were still growing, mainly through growth in undergraduate tuition income, as well as the great Woodruff gift.
So in some ways, the income from the College paid for the growth and strengthening of the Graduate School. Yes, but most of the benefit flowed back to the College, too. Strong graduate programs are essential to recruit and retain strong faculty, and that redounds to the benefit of the independent programs and to the reputation of the University. In the College discussions about building the graduate programs, I don’t recall any resistance, just skepticism that we could really do it. But we did it. The other big challenge in developing the Graduate School was administrative. Until I became provost, Emory had not distinguished “budget” from “finance.” The chief financial officer had more influence over academic priorities than I thought was appropriate, and he was not very enthusiastic about the Graduate School. Later we changed things to make it clear that the provost has primary responsibility for academic priorities, but it took an enormous amount of time and effort to overcome that resistance. The Graduate School still needed a lot more support, but other opportunities in professional and graduate education needed attention, most obviously the Business School and the aboutto-emerge School of Public Health. Why we didn’t have a public health school here many years before we did is a mystery to me, given the presence of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Emory’s doorstep. Bill Foege [Presidential Distinguished Professor Emeritus and former CDC director] was very helpful in pushing that through. Likewise, the business school, because of the strength of the Atlanta business community, was way overdue to move up to the next step. What was the budget-setting practice when you became provost, and how did it change? President Laney or [Executive Vice President] John Temple had already established a series of annual budget conferences, in which each dean would present his or her budget. I started working with the deans to evaluate and eventually approve their proposed budgets before they were brought to the University Budget Committee, and hopefully thereby have some influence on them. After that, I began scheduling and chairing an annual budget conference with each dean. It was about that time that I also set up the University Priorities Committee of faculty, because I wanted the faculty to feel more engaged in decision making. I made it a practice to present the budget to them every year and let them react to it before it was final. In this way, the budget setting became a more open process. This grew out of my experience at the University of Michigan, where I created a committee called the Budget Priorities Committee, which played a major role in helping me evaluate all of the schools and colleges for the purpose of cutting budgets in response to state funding cuts. In some ways I learned that it’s easier to cut and set priorities during a budget crisis than it is during perceived plenty, when nobody sees why you need to take from them and give to someone else. You once said that right after the Woodruff gift, in the early 1980s, you could have spread money just about anywhere at Emory and made a positive difference. At a certain point, though, you need to begin making more selective advances, because the pool of money won’t spread as deep and far. How did you begin to sort that out, so that in time 117