Emmert moves in

Since his July arrival on campus, Mark Emmert has added nothing to his third-floor Gerberding Hall office. He lives in temporary housing and his books are in boxes.

While Emmert's surroundings are temporary, the 30th president of the UW has wasted no time in setting up shop. He has been cleaning house in the scandal-plagued athletic department, already having a hand in three senior staff appointments, including new Athletic Director Todd Turner.

Emmert, wearing his trademark suspenders, said selecting the right people is the way he can make the biggest impact on the UW.

In his first football season at LSU in 1999, Emmert watched the Tigers win two games all season. He waited seven months before recruiting a new football coach, spending $1.2 million to bring in Nick Saban from Michigan State. Earlier this year, Saban led the Tigers to their first national football championship since 1958.

To Emmert, intercollegiate athletics are important because they offer a portal through which millions of people assess a school's performance.

"We're such a sports-crazed society. Really, it's not rational but it is what it is," he said. "People use the success of your football team in silly ways as a proxy for how well the university is doing. It's nuts what they do.

"If we're going to be nationally competitive in physics, in medicine, in our humanities center and, well, pick any academic field, we want to make sure we're nationally competitive in our sports programs, because they reflect on each other in odd sorts of ways. So that's why it's important to worry about it. Not because I like football -- I happen to like football a lot, but that's neither here nor there. If it wasn't a useful tool for building community solidarity, for telling a university story to the world, for serving as a reflection on all of us, there would be no point in playing the game."

Despite the fact that Husky football barely avoided having its first losing season since 1976 last year, Emmert said that he was still waiting to make changes to the coaching staff.

"We're gonna see how it goes. [Husky football coach Keith Gilbertson has] been somebody who has been around the Huskies a long time," said Emmert. "He's got great experience. I think the rest of the coaches have great confidence in him. He inherited a very tough situation and we all have to recognize that. Nobody's pulling harder for Coach Gilbertson than me."

Emmert's sympathy for Gilbertson may stem from his own experience with inheriting a flawed program. He acknowledges that he has witnessed the effects of front-page scandals on the perception of the University.

"As you travel in the state and beyond, because of the issues with athletics, because of the billing problems over in the Medical Center -- that's had such an impact on the way people view the UW, you'd think that there were all sorts of major problems. The reality, of course, is that the heart and soul of the University is in great shape," he said.

The various institutional challenges that Emmert inherited are typical for his position, he explained.

"You work over the course of a day with great big deep fun intellectual ideas," he said, "and the next issue coming through the door is roof of some building just fell in and what are we gonna do. And the next one is some opportunity in athletics. And the next is some reporter."

One of these challenges is access to higher education, which many consider to be threatened by increasing tuition and changing policies toward transfer students.

Emmert said he would love to find a way to make tuition much higher and have much more aid available based on financial need.

"The taxpayers of Washington are paying money to subsidize tuition for wealthy people," said Emmert. "The short order cook in the HUB makes a modest salary and he pays taxes so that if my daughter went to the University of Washington, she would pay low tuition. I don't need to pay low tuition. I make a great salary."

Emmert affirmed the University's commitment to transfer students, noting that he was a transfer student himself.

"There has been a lot of poor communication on the issue, part of which may be our fault. Our commitment to community-college transfers hasn't diminished one bit. We have historically been committed to taking 30 percent of students through transfers and we're still doing that. We did that this year. The problem is there is so much demand, 30 percent is not enough," he said.

Emmert is working on putting faces with names in the state Legislature and is preparing to push for more money in Olympia during next year's session.

The state's contribution comprises approximately 10 percent of the UW's $3 billion budget, according to Emmert.

Despite the limited amount of public money being contributed to the total UW budget, Emmert believes the UW's loyalty remains with the people of the state.

"We're an entity of the state," he said. "Our board is a public board. Our loyalty has to lie with the public. As a litmus test for University policy, I ask, 'Does this serve the people of the state of Washington, in a broader sense, the citizens of the nation and even broader than that?' because we play in a very international arena."

He spent last week fund raising in California -- trying to make an impression on potential donors and submitting philanthropic proposals to individuals and groups. Emmert views philanthropy as the funding area with biggest potential for growth at the UW.

"Serious donors are very sophisticated individuals and they want to know who is running the University and have confidence in that individual," he said.

Emmert hopes to have the donations resulting from his California campaign come in before Oct. 15. On that date, Emmert will kick off his fund-raising campaign with a "big huge gala," as he put it. He has a meeting scheduled with Bill Gates, who will participate in the event.

Emmert, who starts every morning around 5:30 or 6, said this constant activity keeps him fresh and engaged. Still, he said, being stretched thin limits his ability to delve into major issues.

"It can be frustrating because you don't get blocks of time to think about single issues long enough and deep enough to be intellectually satisfying," he said.

EMMERT ON:

Living in a public house: "It is an interesting challenge because it's not your house. Privacy is a relative concept. You can't just wander in the kitchen and grab a cup of coffee -- you can do it, but you'd better be appropriately dressed."

UW's rank in grants and contracts: "We are the number-one research university in terms of grants and contracts. Johns Hopkins University says they are, but they cheat" [laughs]. Emmert said that Johns Hopkins includes the Applied Physics Laboratory -- a federal laboratory -- in its funding numbers.

Fund raising: "We have to be careful not to keep going to the same people again and again and work on finding new people. We are trying to identify more people who are interested in the University and also people who don't care about the UW, but care about what the UW is doing."

Favorite book: "Hmm. I'm trying not to sound like a nerd. I love to read biographies. Right now I'm reading a great biography about George Washington. But I love to read Shakespeare."

Favorite movie: "I haven't seen any this summer. The recent movie I really like that most people didn't was Lost in Translation, because I think they captured a lot of Tokyo really nicely."

Favorite building on campus: "Any building in the Quad, because they have so many personal memories. But I also love the new buildings. Allen Hall, the new Gates Law School building. So a mix of the old and the new."

The Walker-Ames mansion: "The first floor needs some sprucing up -- I'll be polite -- but with private money, not University money, of course. We hope to a little refurbishing and reopen it for its 100th year."