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Summarized by Rosemary Pollock
Gordon Gee 'Everywhere' at Vanderbilt
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE -- Utah native, E. Gordon Gee, is the new man on
campus of Vanderbilt University. Gee is a devout Mormon who has
spent nearly his whole life in academics. "My dad used to joke, 'I
sent you off to college, and you never left.'" At 56, Gee is the
seventh chancellor at Vanderbilt.
Gee has set an unprecedented goal by calling a nearby neighborhood
association to invite them to an upcoming meeting. "From the day I came
here, I said we need to reach out." "I want much closer social and cultural
interaction," Gee said. Vanderbilt has more than $500 million construction
projects underway, including a medical center and a new music building, and
Gee wants to make sure the university won't overpower the residents.
Gee has targeted a handful of issues that he is making a priority at
Vanderbilt. "I am preaching the gospel of doing a few things well," he
said. "I want these five or six things we've identified to be things that
we do better than anyone else on Earth." His new vision includes a renewed
commitment to the undergraduate experience at Vanderbilt and to reinvent
graduate education with the restructuring of the university's economic
models.
"He seems to be everywhere," said Gene TeSelle, a Vanderbilt area
resident and retired university professor.
Source:
Vanderbilt boss forces university to open up
Atlanta GA Journal-Constitution 1Oct00 P2
By Jane DuBose: For the Journal-Constitution
New chancellor wants school to interact more with Nashville, and he makes a point of meeting faculty and students.
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