Uconn’s new president lining up priorities

Newly arrived UConn President Thomas C. Katsouleas is lining up his priorities, from doubling the university’s funds for research to expanding highdemand programs through targeted corporation donations.

A plasma scientist and inventor, Katsouleas, 61, served as provost at the University of Virginia for four years before coming to Connecticut. Before then, he was the dean of the engineering school at Duke University and a professor at the University of Southern California.

He started at UConn on Aug. 1.

The CT Mirror interviewed Katsouleas in his new office on the Storrs campus, where some of his personal treasures are in evidence.

A personalized skateboard — a gift from his former plasma accelerator group at USC — is propped in a corner near the door. An electron particle surfing a yellow wave graces one side of the board, while circles reflecting data areontheother.

“This is data from our most significant result,” Katsouleas said. “That was very thoughtful of them.”

Katsouleas, who was known as the “skateboarding dean” at USC, has already been spotted cruising around UConn on his board.

On the wall is a striking photograph of a rosy sunset over the Mediterranean taken from his father’s home on the coast of Greece. Katsouleas’s father was an immigrant to the U.S. from Greece and Katsouleas returns to the country every summer.

“That view at sunset probably hasn’t changed in several thousand years,” Katsouleas said of the photo. “But for a few houses, you can imagine that Achilles and Agamemnon had the same view.”

Question: So why would you, a successful scientist and inventor, want to become a university president?

Answer: Well, you know, I started as a faculty member — in fact, as a researcher. But as a researcher I was teaching and enjoyed that. From there, I was recruited to USC to to be a tenured faculty member. My aspirations really were to have a very successful research group, to teach my students and really advance the field of plasma science and so I was happily doing that. But when I arrived at USC, the dean tapped me and said, ‘We’re having a little trouble with our physics sequence. About half of our students are getting D’s F’s and W’s — withdraws. Can you help take a look at that?’

I got involved working with the physics faculty and we worked together and made some improvements that seemed to help students and I developed an appreciation for sort of working in administration and having a bigger impact than just on my own students. And, from there, it grew.

Q: There’salotofdiscussion about the relevance of higher education and whether it is necessary to get a fouryear degree. How will you keep higher education relevant for high school students and their families?

A: No question it’s changing, and also that the perception doesn’t necessarily match the reality. If you look at Pew Survey results, families across America, students and parents increasingly are questioning whether there’s value in higher education. And yet the data clearly shows a strong correlation between more education and higher employment rates and higher salaries so that’s all in the data but, increasingly, it’s not in the narrative.

And there are a couple of expectations that are emerging. One is that for the first time, parents and students think the most important reason for a college education is to get a job, which seems obvious. But historically that hasn’t been the number one answer. It’s been to get a good education and the intrinsic value of that. So that’s one shift. And, increasingly, they’re questioning whether or not colleges and universities are delivering on that.

Q: What can you do about that?

A: The challenge for us is to change both the perception and the reality. And we’re working on that here at UConn in a couple of ways. We are reshaping and refining our message. We have several ideas on how we convey the message that UConn is for them, if they’re first generation students, if they feel like they’ve been marginalized or left behind by this economy. We give a lot of financial aid and many students from first generation families, in particular, don’t bother to apply for it because they they think it’s beyond them. So we need to strengthen our message about how strong our commitment is to financial aid. That’s one.

And then the second thing we’re doing is on the reality side. For a decade, higher education has focused on completion rates and that was important. But the next frontier is about giving students the kind of educational experience that leads to later wellbeing and work engagement.