continued from page 48 on the campus. “I think I’ve got a lot of homework to do; however, when the fall semester begins we’re going to start a 15-monthlong strategic planning process,” he said. “We’ll include members of the community in this process to find out what are the big ideas over the next five, 10, 15 years that the university hopes to succeed on.” There also are some big hires on the horizon. A replacement is needed for Dr. Joe G.N. “Skip” Garcia, who earlier this year resigned his post as senior VP for UA Health Sciences, a position that oversees the medical schools. The UA Honors College also needs a new dean. “The Honors College is a big first test for me because I think it’s really important to the university,” Robbins said. “I think we need to get a new senior vice president for marketing and communications because I think we’ve got incredible stories to tell. This unified strategic plan will be a huge story about how we’ll get the pieces to be greater than the individual parts.” In the short time he’s been in Tucson, Robbins said he already has come to understand the complexity of the position of UA president in this community. There are stakeholders everywhere – students, faculty, staff, the business community, donors, alumni, the Board of Regents and elected officials from small towns to the federal government. “My belief is it’s one of the highest callings to lead a university because universities are where we touch every segment of society,” Robbins said. “All of those are stakeholders to whom I feel a great sense of responsibility.” Fletcher McCusker, chairman and CEO of Sinfonía HealthCare Corp, a company that is the poster child for commercializing UA-developed technology, has already pledged his time and energy to Robbins’ efforts to engage the business community. It might be through Tech Launch Arizona, the arm of the UA devoted to commercializing the school’s research where McCusker serves on the advisory board. “What I like is he’s an inventor. He came out of Stanford, an environment where pretty much everybody wants to have a company,” McCusker said. “He’s also a collaborator. What I saw in Houston was this huge collaboration with disparate interests.” McCusker, who has been on the front lines of most of the region’s recent economic development victories, expects Robbins to be personally and deeply involved in recruiting businesses that need assurance that the academic institutions here can support their company’s employment needs. “He’s a huge player,” McCusker said. “Because we’ve moved away from the call center environment to hightech, high-paid engineering companies, they all want a relationship with the university. They want curriculum aligned with their company’s job recruitment. They want intern programs that will migrate people to their jobs. For every inbound company we talk to, the UA is piece to that chemistry.” 50 BizTucson
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