When you cannot anticipate, when you cannot continue to learn once you get into a system, then you are not going to have much of an input into the system.

I plan to become as totally familiar as I can with not only the present organization, the system, et cetera, but also the whole history of the development of the university. That is really important that will give me a spiritual history of the university. From there you can gain the feeling and attitude of a university toward many things - toward research, the quality of education.

It will be a very deliberate way to get at the running of the system itself. From that I will create matrixes of organizational aspects. I will talk to the people, both in groups and individually and get perceptions of the university and then learn the technical processes that the university has in course. Then you set down timelines, goal and so forth.

I think the major challenges that you have at UCR are the challenges of higher education across the United States. That is, we as a profession in higher education have to come to believe that we are a very strong profession.

Although we may be in financial straits in certain decades, we have in the past- the higher education faculty, administration, university systems- have been perfecting a society that has brought a great amount of economic stability to the country. It has also bettered the human condition worldwide.

I think when we get into financial straits it is easy to hit the vulnerable institutions. Higher education is a vulnerable institution. I feel that one of the great challenges we have to take the offensive and put forth ourselves as a very important element of society.

The universities are training the managers of the future. The challenge is being able understand that we are not superficial. We will be here as a profession in the year 2100. We are to sense the great, positive contribution of higher education to society in this country and to societies across the world."