Union College President David Harris will leave his position at the end of the academic year. Named president in February 2018, Harris announced his departure in a video message on Monday.
The private college credits Harris with creating a strategic plan for the college, adding academic programs, strengthening connections with the City of Schenectady, and overseeing record fundraising.
Harris, who previously served as provost and senior vice president at Tufts University, said his time at Union would be his last college presidency. The college says it will conduct a national search for its next leader.
WAMC's Lucas Willard spoke with Harris about his decision to leave Union College:
I think the first thing that people have to…it's helpful to appreciate, is the context, how long do presidents serve. It's easy, in the U.S., you get two four-year terms. The college presidents, people might think, “Well, you know, yeah, Dr. Jackson, RPI was like 22 years.” And you've seen some others over 10. But things have really changed in the last 1020, years. So for example, the president of Hamilton College was eight. He just left. You've got eight years at RPI. Franklin & Marshall just announced she's seven. So seven years is actually longer than the average college president. So that's just the context as far as me, and specifically what I'm focused on is union long term, and asking the question, when should I give notice so that I'm sure I've got a year where I'm running as hard as possible to make sure that it's a good pass off to the next person. And just thought of everything we've been doing and said, “You know, I think this is the right time.”
So, have you given any thought to your next move yet, or is that a little too far down the line to make those decisions right now?
So, I think for me, it's more what I'm not doing than what I am. So, I'm not looking for another presidency. If I were, this is the time I'd be doing it. And I'm pretty clear, and had been for quite a while, that this is my college presidency. Union, I love, Union, what we're doing here and beyond that, not sure. We have a lot of work to do this year, and that's really my focus. And in the background, I'll think about what next, but part of it is just sort of, you know, recharging afterwards, and then I’ll think about doing something else.
So, in your time at Union, it's safe to say that things were a bit challenging. The COVID-19 pandemic, most notably. What can you tell me about your time navigating Union through COVID, and what did you take from, maybe, your experience at Tufts into that challenge? What did you have to relearn entirely?
Yeah, so it's funny. At my inaugural address, I said that it's unwise to give a firm plan for your presidency, because you don't know what's coming. And boy, did I not know what was coming. So COVID, I feel lucky that I was already on the job for a year and a half or so before it hit. So, I already had built some connections, which was critically important to telling folks, a short notice, “Everybody go,” then, “Stay away!” and then people trusting me that we had the safety procedures in place to bring folks back in the fall, which was a huge decision. So. I just loved it here at Union. I felt like part of what we learned was that we can do things we don't think we can do. I sort of often compared it to the community of I ran the Boston Marathon twice, and I think I can run the Boston Marathon ever. But once you've done something like that, you're like, “You know what we can push and beyond, into what's comfortable, into the uncomfortable, and thrive,” and I think we've used that as we've created new majors at Union, as we've created this new hockey rink partnership and exceed our capital campaign goals, you know, gone through last year, after October 7, the challenges that plagued many schools afterwards. So that's some of what we learned.
So, the college credits you with building connections and helping the college build connections with the City of Schenectady. Can you tell me a little bit about why you felt it was important for the college to reach out and be collaborative with the municipality during your presidency?
Yeah. So, I told my chief of staff the day I was announced, I said, I need to have one meeting for sure, and that's with Mayor Gary McCarthy in his office. And I just sat down with Gary and I said, “Look, Union and Schenectady are connected at the hip, and we can't be great if the city's not great and the other way around.” So, if you've ever been to campus, we're right in the middle of Schenectady. So, it seems that partnership seems like a no brainer to me, and so it's gone very well. We have folks who are coming to campus and saying, “Wow, there's opportunities on Jay Street, opportunities at Mohawk Harbor, this is nice, and you can walk to places.” So, we've tried to be good partners of that. And again, the rink, which I mentioned a couple times, is a key part of that. It's gonna be great for union adjacent to campus. Also should be fantastic for the city.
“Yeah, and that's the new ice rink that's going to be down there at Mohawk Harbor, which is a part of the city that has been invested in very heavily, especially over the last decade or so, and is certainly going to be larger and an improvement over the existing facility, though, I do love the hockey games at the ice house on campus.
Yeah, me too. The challenge, just so people are clear, it's great, but it's not sustainable. There's a lot of mechanical problems that would cost us millions of dollars to fix, though, otherwise, we'd love to keep playing there.
If you had to look ahead at what challenges the college will have moving forward, is it similar to other colleges and universities around the country? Maybe both public and private Union as a private school. But what do you think is coming in the world of higher education that presidents will have to deal with across the country?
Yeah, I think you need to me my own radio show to answer that question. Big one.
Well, if you don’t have a gig lined up you can swing by.
(Laughs)
There you go. So, one of my pet peeves is when we don't appreciate the heterogeneity of higher education, we're so different. You know, Michigan, Texas Tech, Union. There's three schools, radically different schools, but we often talk about higher ed, debt and so forth. So, for a school like Union, a top 50 U.S. News, highly selective liberal arts college, what do we see? Well, one of the challenges is the demographic cliff. There are fewer students going to colleges in general, and that's especially true in the Northeast. At Union College, we've diversified geographically, which is huge, pulling more kids from Western Mississippi, south of the Mason Dixon Line, and internationally. So that's one thing you're going to see across the country, is this demographic cliff with fewer students going it's just going to mean you're going to see more schools close, more schools struggle. Secondly, the extremely high cost of higher education, right, higher than the median family income. What that means is that, again, you're going to see schools under tremendous budget pressure. It's why Union College has already been thinking about, “How do we bring in financial aid?” We brought in, in my administration, tens of millions of dollars in financial aid to offset that for students. A third thing you're gonna see is people asking, “Well, what’s the ROI? The return on investment? Like, why should go to college?” Again, it's great. Union College is well positioned, because you get the small liberal arts college with the connections to faculty, but you also have the diverse portfolio of offerings, everything from civil and environmental engineering to econ, psychology, philosophy across the board, English. You're seeing it here at Union at Union College. So that combination is a special sauce, and then you've got Division One athletics, men's, women's ice hockey, the excitement of that in a liberal arts setting, which, again, you don't usually see. So, there's a lot of challenges for higher ed. I feel like Union is really well positioned.
Well, do you think that students, maybe current high school students, or maybe people as young as middle school. They may look at what you said, the return on investment, and may say, “Hey, college isn't for me.” Are colleges facing an enthusiasm gap, if you will, with students who are in the graduation pipeline?
I think that's true. But again, that goes back to my point about heterogeneity in higher education. So, schools vary in their ROI and what you get out of it, both monetarily as well as preparing for the future and so…and also, they vary tremendously, and how much debt you're going to graduate with. Union College, you're going to graduate with less student debt that you probably will have for your first car that you buy, your car loan. That's not true of many schools. So, the key for us is to ask, how do we help students really understand what's special about union in a school like Union, and should help them understand why that's good investment in their future, again, monetarily as well as developmentally, intellectually.
So, President Harris, you're looking at your final academic year as a college president at Union. What do you really want to accomplish over the next several months? Saying, “Hey, this is something. We did this. We overcame this challenge.”
So, for me, I would say the two, my two favorite days of the year are move-in and commencement. There's the excitement, the anticipation of moving when you meet the family, to meet the students. And then there's this incredible honor and privilege I have, which is, I'm the first person to shake their hand and say, “Congratulations, you’re a college graduate.” And so, what I want to do this year is make sure we do everything possible to give these seniors the best possible experience in their final year. That's my short term. Longer term focus is, you know, helping Union, as I've done since I've been here, look at foundational, structural budget challenges. Look at what we offer, how we offer it, and make as much progress as we can to set up the next person to say it's a relay race, right? Pass the baton so the next person who carries it for some period of time can help this college continue to thrive over the next 230 years, the way it has over the past 230 years.
