Finding McCormick's middleground

       A strange rift emerges in the quest to understand UW President Richard McCormick. Former colleagues pile him with praise, general campus feeling with dislike. No one at The Daily has taken a popularity pole, but idle campus conversations feature cynicism. The charge frequently arises that McCormick merely shows concern but no real kick on key issues like diversity, and one rumor even claims he changes the reading material on display in his home to suit the political interests of the invitees.

Tyson Marsh, a former Black Student Commission director, calls the relationship between President McCormick and students a love-hate relationship.

"We love the fact that most of the time he takes time to listen to us. We hate the fact that sometimes he neglects to fully embrace our suggestions and input."

Gorkem Kuterdem, Graduate and Professional Student Senate, goes further. With diplomacy he acknowledges that in any interaction with the University's president, "[McCormick] has conflicting interests, and so do I." Then, without a touch of personal bitterness he says simply:

"Would I like to see a different president? I would say yes. And that's not a personal thing. He's not responsive to our concerns," Kuterdem says.

And yet, this leader -- whom Kuterdem would oust if given the chance -- possesses nothing but administrative strengths according to former colleague Dr. Karen Stubaus.

"I can't think of any professional weakness," she says. "He's totally devoted."

Stubaus did not always, however, think so highly of McCormick.

"I actually tried to get another job when he first became dean (of Rutgers University)," she says into the phone, long-distance from the New Jersey school. Her voice sounds blonde, bold, and intelligent, and she laughs loud recalling how, "Dick scared the hell out of us because he was always running up and down four flights of stairs, popping in and out."

The Dean's office at Rutgers occupies an old but "picturesque" fraternity house, the Dean's understaff in the attic. Apparently McCormick's predecessor made the journey to the top floor very rarely, maintaining a minimal involvement with his assistant deans and their responsibilities. McCormick, in comparison, "was like a cyclone."

Initially, Stubaus feared McCormick was scaling back her responsibilities. She says, chuckling mischievously: "The thing that annoyed me most - and you can put this in your article - was that if he gave you an assignment and you didn't finish it fast enough, he would take it off your desk and do it himself."

Working for "this nut," as Stubaus likes to call him, turned out to be one of her favorite jobs.

"It was enormous fun."

McCormick lives for making things happen. Not in a life-of-the-party way, not adventure for adventure's sake, but substantial, measurable change in real institutions. As Stubaus puts it, "not innovation for the sake of innovation," but, "innovation for the sake of making things better."

"We were doing these exciting things," Stubaus explains. "The faculty of Arts and Sciences was a team, his team. You felt like you were part of an enterprise that was making a difference."

Few would argue with Stubaus' description of McCormick as "the definition of 'hit the ground running.'" Not even McCormick's wife, Dr. Suzanne Lebsock.

Dressed casually in white sneakers and black stretch pants, she settles down at her desk in the history department. With amusement Lebsock tells how after she and McCormick first married he would turn their old TV to a Yankees game and announce, "I think I'll watch some of the game."

"OK!" Lebsock would companionably agree, "Let's watch some of the game."

(She doesn't care much for baseball).

"And so at the third inning," she laughs, "I would find myself ... watching the game. Dick had meanwhile gone back to doing whatever he was doing before."

Rounding off the vignette Lebsock falters with a smile, "So, that might give you some idea."

The Campus Cyclone

Just over a decade later and a long ways from New Jersey, McCormick still operates with whirlwind intensity. When asked how many people work in his office, one administrative assistant said joingly, "Not enough." The actual number: 10.

Together with the president and the University's other top administrators, they work in a flurry of names, paper, and questions -- who needs to contact whom? Do we consult the regents? What are the implications for Tacoma?

Quarters pass in minutes, each optimized. By 1 p.m. on any given day, the president has already been to Olympia and back, made dozens of phone calls, or had five meetings. On this particular afternoon, pausing after a University Initiatives Fund (UIF) review meeting to catch up on e-mail, McCormick announces, "My next scheduled event is a phone call in five minutes," before turning back to his computer.

According to Stubaus, McCormick "doesn't waste time well." His typing shows it. He types fast. His staccato typing fills the office. The sound of skateboarders scraping across Red Square drifts through the room. They are, as McCormick says, "ubiquitous." "I don't even hear them anymore. They're part of the furniture."

Occasionally he calls from his desk through the open door to Janice Marks, his upbeat schedule manager:

"Janice."

"Yes?"

"I'm e-mailing . . ."

She lets McCormick know when it's time for the phone call so that he can turn to the enormous black phone with little gray buttons in preparation. He looks first through some relevant papers from a relevant file on his perfectly organized desk.

"Let me remind myself what I want to talk to him about," McCormick says, not wanting to squander any usable moment.

His perfectly organized desk reveals one of the contradictions of the McCormick cyclone: He leaves order in his wake. And one look at the president's personal office space leaves no doubt: McCormick is a list-maker.

A bookshelf, tightly packed, lines one wall. More books, the glossy kind with pictures, sit out on the coffee table stacked symmetrically in piles of three so an observer has to lean down and read the titles off the spines. A far corner holds portraits, not snapshots, of McCormick's children with their dog. There is no dust. Through the window, the students look very small and make no noise.

His interaction with the UIF review committee demonstrates how orderliness that verges on symmetry somewhat surprisingly augments McCormick's speed. Almost athletic in its activeness, his mind never loiters. At the meeting, he places his cell phone face down in the absolute center of his yellow legal pad and directs incisive questions to specific people.

"What can you tell me about the incremental difference the UIF investment made, the incremental difference born by the UIF investment?" he asks.

McCormick listens to the committee's response, leaning forward with his left arm on the glossy conference table in Mary Gates Hall, like some sort of intellectual tiger. His head slightly down, eyes pointing up toward his brain, he scans the incoming information - making eye contact, of course - but always in this scanning mode, vigilant for the key word, central idea, bottom line.

When he finds it, he jumps in with another catalyzing question or statement, speaking quickly, with a small smile and dimples.

"Did you meet with students?" or, "In the last five minutes I've gotten a less positive view of the program than you started with."

By listening fast and critically, he gives productive shape to dialogue that could otherwise scatter in all directions.

Later, sitting in a stylized casualness on one of the blue chairs in his office, McCormick says with a touch of pride, "One of the little things I think I do well is summarize, after a long, complicated discussion, 'Here's what I think I heard. We seem to be in agreement on these three things: one, two, three.'"

This skill bears an intimate connection to McCormick's lists, about which he can expound at great length. From the public list of goals and expectations adopted each year for McCormick by the regents to lists of things to talk about with specific people, McCormick lives by paper. These lists form a sophisticated hierarchy of priorities, framing McCormick's every encounter. McCormick realizes, "I could hold every meeting on my calendar, go through every e-mail message, every letter, every phone call and accomplish practically nothing."

Crossing to his desk and back, he places a neatly typed list on the coffee table.

"That is a list of things to work on this week," he explains. Not a slave to his paper, McCormick emphasizes, "I can't claim that every one of these things is now finished, but I can tell you that I worked on every one of these things this week."

Ultimately, his lists reflect an ongoing process of self-evaluation, evaluation that makes his cyclone energy so effective:

"So I don't forget what I'm supposed to do, I continually ask myself, 'Am I working on the most important things for the University of Washington? Am I using my time wisely for the long-term benefit of the University?'"

Reluctance or leadership

The activity McCormick calls "listening, summarizing, and preparing forward motion," - the source of his above pride - derives from a larger notion of compromise and consensus, values cultivated under his administration. Matter-of-factly he says, "There's nothing very important that can be accomplished single-handedly."

Stubaus believes that at least in New Brunswick -- home to Rutgers -- "Problems weren't perceived as a conflict situation when he was dean, they were problems to solve."

And Vicky Gless, who worked under McCormick at the University of North Carolina, recalls, "He had the hard conversations, never shied back from the hard conversations. Building consensus ... he was very trusted."

Although Stubaus and Gless may represent a perspective biased by friendship and elapsed time, they certainly don't speak only for themselves. Otherwise McCormick wouldn't be well into his sixth year as UW president.

As with most leaders embroiled in the issues of a large institution, not everyone views McCormick's methods with shining eyes or even believes he lives up to his expressed ideals.

Kuterdem ventures, "I'm not so sure that he's really good at compromising."

From Kuterdem's perspective, regarding TA unionization, McCormick shied away from the hard conversation. Graduate students "had to go to strike to get him to the table."

Expressing the frustration many felt over the issue, Kuterdem says, "When you put up a brick wall that's unscalable, that is not compromise."

Jasmin Weaver, ASUW president, and Marsh think McCormick does compromise -- maybe too well.

Weaver believes McCormick's middle ground means halfway.

"One of his biggest weaknesses is that often on contentious issues, he will try to find middle ground at the beginning of the dialogue, and becomes unwilling to budge," said Weaver.

Marsh views this as reluctance on McCormick's part to exert his authority:

"I don't think he uses enough of his power to do things. I think if he did use more of his power to do things he would receive more support."

Both agree that when it comes to student concerns, compromise is rarely the right response.

"I think a lot of times you can't compromise on something," Marsh continues. "It's all or nothing."

And Weaver concludes, "Although where he sets himself is a compromise, it's usually not where the University community wants him to be."

Interestingly, Stubaus shares that while working under McCormick, she might have given a critique similar to Marsh and Weaver's.

"I used to get mad at him," she recalls, a little self-reflectively, "because I thought there were some situations in which you should go to battle, and he was always looking for peace and compromise."

A more complete articulation of McCormick's compromise ideology, although not a direct response to student criticism, provides some glimmer of what shape such a response could take.

To some extent McCormick agrees with Marsh and Weaver. "Consensus can sometimes be the lowest common denominator, what is the minimal-est thing we can all stomach," says McCormick.

As if nodding to Weaver's complaint, he remarks, "(Such consensus) doesn't provide very much forward progress."

So while he works to "identify consensus," he says almost flippantly, "Consensus building is fine, but leadership is essential."

The question for students becomes: When they feel that achieving forward motion in their dealings with McCormick takes, in Kuterdem's words, "so much blood, tears and sweat," are they frustrated by his leadership or his compromise?

Whatever it takes

Stepping back from the laden words "compromise and consensus," it appears that people from each stop in McCormick's rocketing career, including the UW, agree that he lives by at least some related positive values.

Stubaus calls his style "a culture of open communication." Of his administration at Rutgers, she claims, "There was no animosity, no territoriality. Everything was open - budgets - everything."

McCormick's own willingness to do the dirty work set the tone. One time she found him at the office early in the morning collating a budget report that needed to get to the provost's office. He was crouched down on the floor to get the job done, business suit and all.

"He would do anything that needed to be done ... no division of labor: 'that's not my job.' The point was the academic departments."

UW students note accessibility as McCormick great strength, demonstrated by his innovative President's Student Forum.

McCormick created the group shortly after he took office in 1995, "for the purpose of making sure I had a regular means of hearing from students about things they want to talk about."

It has no power, but the forum tells McCormick things the president of a huge university might otherwise not know. For instance, that maneuvering through the International Programs and Exchange Office in Schmitz feels like a nightmare, or that time schedule glitches left at least one homeless for a whole week of winter quarter.

Accessibility also means McCormick answers his own e-mail and fits people into his schedule. Marsh, currently director of the Empower Outreach, says, "He's always been prompt to respond to my e-mails and always been able to take time out of his schedule to meet with me to discuss things of importance."

Weaver agrees.

"He always makes himself available. That's the main thing I appreciate about him."

Ministry to management

McCormick seems to belong to that small club of people who know, from the beginning, what they want to do with their lives. Trying to think, he says,"I'm sure there was a period of time when I had no set ambition."

He can't, however, remember it. As if teaching back into a dark closet, he recalls a time when he wanted to do something besides "teaching college." "Ah, OK, yes. I wanted to be a Presbyterian minister."

The phase didn't last long, and he no longer considers himself a religious person. In most books, though, this may not even count as a waver. The same job components that make university administration satisfying attracted McCormick to the ministry.

"I think I was probably more attracted to the opportunity for leadership and public expression of goals and values."

Once he set his sights on academia, even if someone had offered him a free year and a million dollars to do with as he pleased, he "would have probably put most of the million dollars in the bank and gone ahead to school.

"It never remotely occurred to me that I should take a year off, so to speak."

Although a historian by training, McCormick does not muck around in the past, at least not his personal past. As a result, extracting anecdotes, at least in an interview, feels like pulling teeth.

McCormick tells two stories, the first about squash, the next event on his calendar. He plays at the IMA as often as his schedule allows. But McCormick, remember, does nothing for its own sake. Before telling the story, he gives the three reasons "fitness and athletics" matter more to him now than ever.

In a precursory tone, he begins, "One is, especially squash, it's fun," and then revises: "I mean, it's enjoyable." Pleasure, however, "is probably the least important of the reasons," behind more pragmatic qualities like "the matter of fitness and health" and "the mental side of it."

At first McCormick claims the mental side of squash provides an escape.

"Doing something hard physically takes me away from my job, out of my job."

This doesn't capture it, though, for McCormick, and he keeps talking until he says, "The mental side of a sport is a great lesson for me ... I remember not too long ago." And suddenly he's relating an anecdote. He played a squash game with a badly sprained back. Despite pain and the fact that he couldn't cross the court the way he usually can, he "wasn't gonna stop playing squash."

Instead, he found ways to compensate for his disability.

"And I won," he declares. "I took great pride in adjusting my game mentally, making the mental adjustments to win despite my bad back."

And, of course, "Besides taking pride in winning, it was sort of a lesson in the importance of mental concentration."

The only moment from his childhood over which he pauses to paint a picture resonates, like the squash game, because he learned a lesson:

"I made an important connection between working hard and doing well."

When in the ninth grade McCormick's family lived for a year in Cambridge, England, while his father, a professor at Rutgers, served on the faculty at Jesus College.

"We all picked up and lived in a townhouse."

Which meant that McCormick studied in a British school and, in addition to 11 other subjects, "was plunged into a Latin class.

"And, as you can imagine," he says, "I didn't do very well, because they all had a lot more Latin than I did."

This did not settle well with McCormick.

"I didn't like not doing well, so I spent over Christmas break, I still remember, 40 hours alone in our cold dining room - because our home, like most English homes in the post-World War II period, did not have central heating - studying my Latin book."

Of the rest of his youth, he says simply, "I had a pretty normal, pretty uneventful childhood."

He lived in a "ranch-style house with a mom, dad and sister," had a paper route, and played with his "buddies." In high school and college he participated in a host of activities pretty typical for good students: mayor of the mock city council, editor of the school paper, president of his college fraternity.

These accomplishments land flatly on the tape recorder in perfect resume language, sentences like, "I invented and led the Christmas time canned food drive at our high school for successive years."

It sounds almost memorized.

Appointing a legacy

For good or for bad, McCormick does not strike students as a man they could chat with over coffee, or even as a man who chats. He comes across more as a man who may learn your name if it matters. Trying to put her finger on McCormick's effect, Weaver experiments with the word "rigidness" and, drawing out her words in a thoughtful way, asserts the students' need to "feel that the president is sincere and always himself."

Weaver wants accessibility without pretention, the sense that, "[the president] takes time out of his day but doesn't make it clear, 'I'm taking time out of my day and you should appreciate it.'

"Just sincerity," she finally blurts out, "You have it or you don't."

She may have been searching for something along the lines of naturalness.

"I was, as a young man, a sometimes abrasive, often arrogant person," McCormick said of himself, "And I learned about the importance of treating other people with kindness and with respect."

Reading between the lines, it appears that the graciousness with which McCormick conducts himself, although not inauthentic, may have been acquired with age and power.

He speaks about the "importance of working closely with other people," as both discovery and achievement, almost the way he talked about winning the squash game.

"So I've taken great pride to be a team player and a team builder" McCormick says.

In response to the question whether anything differentiates the professional from the personal McCormick, Lebsock muses gently, "I think that he's always devoted a large part of his waking time and brain space to work-related issues."

The yellow walls of her office in Smith stand brightly behind Lebsock and she runs her fingers periodically through her short, graying hair.

"That's not to say there's no other space there at all, but that's one of the ways he's gotten a lot done in a comparatively short period of time: he's focused."

Perhaps more than the words of a wife or the memories of co-workers, the people President McCormick appoints as vice presidents and deans during his years in office reflect something essential about McCormick. In a very real way, these men and women represent McCormick's contribution and legacy to the UW.

"I'll have more impact by far through their work, collectively," he leans forward to say, "than anything I'll ever do myself."

For the first time in an hour-long interview, McCormick gets excited. Asked what qualities he looks for in others, McCormick comes alive. With an animated face, he says,"I look for people with tremendous willingness and energy for making change."

The bureaucracy of a large university impedes change, ossifies the past into the present.

"So you need people," McCormick says emphatically, "who really wake up in the morning with a vision for what can be - not for what is but for what can be - and the talent to motivate people to get there."

Naming a few of the deans he's appointed - Mark Lindenberg of the School of Public Affairs, Denice Denton of the School of Engineering, David Hodge of Arts and Sciences - McCormick declares,"These are all change-agents. They wake up in the morning unsatisfied with things the way they are and determined, by the time they go to sleep at night, to make things better."

In his pride over his deans, McCormick inadvertently (or maybe advertently) describes himself. And Stubaus, in her exuberant way, sums McCormick up:

"If you had an institution that you wanted to stay exactly as it was, he would be a bad person to manage that. I don't think he could do it. I don't think he could physically do it."