A Passion for Higher Learning

Thu., Mar 08

 

A Q&A with Southern's New President, Mary Papazian

Q: You were a very successful student, graduating summa cum laude and being elected to Phi Beta Kappa. What fueled your success? 

"I grew up in a family that was very much committed to education. My mother, who was a teacher, was really the star of the family. She graduated from high school at 16 and was the first student elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior at UCLA. My father was born in Greece of Armenian parents and came to this country as a college student. He was an avid reader, so we were always surrounded by books. It was just something that was part of our household. 

"I have three brothers and we're all within a four-year span from top to bottom, so maybe there was a little bit of competition. For whatever reason, I seemed to do well in school. Some children are made for school and others succeed in other ways. I seem to be one of those who was made for school. All of my brothers also earned advanced degrees."

Q: You attended the first Armenian American high school.

"I am of Armenian parentage on both my mother's and my father's side. My mother's family came to the United States in the late 19th century, very early for Armenians. My father immigrated in the 1950s and met my mother at college.    

"I actually was raised in my early years in more of an American environment. The '60s weren't a time of celebrating your ethnicity. We were coming out of the '50s and it was a time of everyone fitting in.     "Initially, my brothers and I went to the public schools. But when I was 12, we moved from one part of Los Angeles to another. Right before the move, my mother had started to teach English and American history at Ferrahian High School. When we moved, we became students there. We happened to live next door to the principal and we didn't have ties to the local schools.   

"It's a wonderful small school, with a college-prep environment. The students have done very, very well. I recently went to my reunion and it was a lot of fun to see how well our graduates have done."

Q: The Armenian-American media covered your appointment with a sense of pride.

"It's a small community with a common history that was born most recently out of the tragedy of the 1915 Armenian genocide, but actually has a many-thousand-year history marked by many successes. Because the American Armenian community is so small - and because it emerged from that tragedy early in the 20th century - people really do have common interests and a strong connection. There is a lot of celebrating of and pride in each other's successes."

Q: You're reportedly a basketball fan. 

"I grew up in Los Angeles in the heyday of the Lakers, during the Lakers-Celtics competition. It was also the heyday of UCLA basketball under John Wooden. (The legendary coach led UCLA to 10 NCAA championships, including seven consecutive championships from 1966-73.) How could you be exposed to all that and not love basketball! I played for my high school, but wasn't tall enough to play for a big school like UCLA where I attended college. But I played in leagues and such for years after that, and my two girls both love the game. My 13-year-old still plays on a few teams."

Q: You mentioned that your mother taught English. Did this factor into your decision to become an English literature major?

"There's probably a direct connection. She was an English major and taught English literature for many years. From the time that I was about 5, I knew I was going to go to UCLA to study English literature. It was nothing that was forced on me; I just really enjoyed reading and the vistas that it opened. Majoring in English was a great opportunity to study something that I loved.    

"At the time, my father, the practical one, would say, 'What are you going to do with that degree?' - which is what parents sometimes say to children who want to study the arts or the humanities. But the truth is you find a way to be successful if you have passion for something, and I always had passion for  literature."

Q: You served as a professor for many years. What led you to become an administrator?

"I had the opportunity to participate in the university self-study for accreditation for Oakland University, Michigan. That experience exposed me to the entire university, academic and non-academic. Ultimately the success of the self-study is what led me to be invited to be associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

"But it's important to note that I never call myself simply an administrator. I consider myself an academic administrator, because I've always continued to nurture my identity as a faculty member. I try to stay active in my field as much as possible given the time constraints. In fact, I will be going to an academic conference in June in the Netherlands, where I am chairing and responding to a session. At the end of the day, it's what really motivates me . . . teaching, reading and writing about what I love and sharing that passion with students and colleagues.

"In my experience, the best academic leaders are those who come out of rich academic traditions. The university, like all large organizations, certainly has business functions and we must attend to them. But that is not our raison d'être. We are here as an academic institution - and so we should embody those academic values."

Q: What led you to pursue the position of president?

"The seeds were planted a long time ago, when I was a graduate student at UCLA, and my dissertation adviser was writing recommendation letters for me. He said some very nice things, mentioning my ability to teach and stressing the quality of my scholarship. And among all those kind, wonderful comments, in the last paragraph, he wrote: 'and in 25 years she'll be a university president.' 

"So I think people did see that interest or skill set early on. But that same adviser also told me, 'Don't even think about it until you've already established yourself in an academic career.' Which is what I did. I waited until I had 10-12 years of experience as a professor under my belt and had published and been granted tenure - and then I began to look at the next logical steps.

"It is a natural, logical and clear-cut progression from associate dean to dean to provost to president. In a way I am sort of catching up to where I always wanted to be. I thought when I graduated from college that I might seek elected office. Instead, I ended up going to graduate school. Public affairs and civic engagement have always been strong interests. The university presidency really brings all of that together."


Q: What was it about Southern that attracted you?

"To be honest with you, I hadn't thought about Southern until I was nominated by a colleague. So I wanted to learn more about the institution. I found that I felt a strong resonance with Southern's powerful mission of engagement, social justice and creating access, but with a strong commitment to excellence at the same time. It was very much aligned with the kinds of institutions that I have been at from the beginning of my career and so I saw that there might be a nice fit here."

Q: What are some of your 
immediate goals? 

"There are long-term goals and short-term needs. One of my long-term goals is to ensure that Southern continues to be a very significant player in the higher education landscape in the state of Connecticut and the region. Southern has a particular mission as a public institution to connect actively with its community and to create pathways to success for students who might not otherwise have them. I am very much committed to the access mission, but I am also committed to the excellence mission of the university. 

"The 21st century is a knowledge-based economy, so we need to be developing a knowledge-based workforce. Southern has in its curriculum a very strong liberal arts core. That liberal arts focus prepares our graduates to continue to reshape themselves as the economy reshapes itself . . . and helps them to become more independent in their thinking and, ultimately, to become leaders in their chosen fields. 

"Southern also has a strong commitment to science education, the arts and to everything in between. I am committed to ensuring that Southern maintains and strengthens its balance between the liberal arts core and professional education to best prepare students to become leaders in the workforce of the 21st century.

"In the short term, we have to look at the nature of our graduate programs to make sure they are best serving the needs of the business community and our students. We also have to look at how the new state system of higher education evolves as it brings together the state's public institutions of higher learning - the two-year colleges, the four-year universities, and Charter Oak - and determine how we can become a leader in shaping its future. Those are some of the immediate challenges that we face, and I am confident that Southern is up to the task."

Q: Clearly there are budgetary challenges.

"I grew up and went to school in California. I worked in Michigan, New Jersey and New York - these are states that have had their share of budgetary challenges. Limited budgets are the nature of public higher education today. Our challenge is to work within these constraints, while building resources and support from those who believe in what we're doing. Then we can continue to move forward with a positive agenda.

"The key is to make sure that the decisions we make are linked to our goals. I coined a phrase last year when I was at Lehman College, which was also facing serious budget issues. The college was opening a new Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies, and a guest speaker from one of the Western states, said, 'I am so impressed that you are actually opening something in this time of budget challenges.' My response was, 'We can't give up the future for the present. We will always find ways to meet the challenge.'"
   
Q: Where does the corporate community 
fit into the equation? 

"It's a win-win situation. We are only as strong as our partnership with the larger community, which includes the business community. They, in turn, are only as strong as Southern is because it's our students who will be recruited as employees and, ultimately, business leaders and community leaders.

"The business community will help us understand how we can best prepare our students going forward. They can help us anticipate the future because they have to anticipate their own needs. We can then align our curriculum in a positive way, while always maintaining our liberal arts core, which is timeless. The relationship between Southern and the business community can become very powerful. We will be looking for a win-win situation where we invest in them and they invest in us."

Q: Much of your scholarship focuses on the English poet John Donne. What inspired that interest?

"I mentioned earlier that after I spent the summer in Washington as an undergraduate, I thought I might seek an elected office. Many politicians emerge from a law school background, so I had been thinking about law as a possibility. More so, people had been recommending it to me. I had all the applications and was seriously considering it. Then I took a class I had put off . . . a requirement for all English majors at UCLA - a class in John Milton. I was blown away by it. 'Paradise Lost' was the most stunning piece I had ever read - not just because its language and poetry were beautiful, but because it was a work that brought together the best of the Renaissance traditions.

"I vividly remember throwing away all of the law school applications and saying, 'I'm going to graduate school in English and I'm going to study the Renaissance.'

"Now, at that time, I felt Milton was too intimidating to write about. If you've read 'Paradise Lost,' you know what I mean. So instead I wrote about Donne, a brilliant poet in his own right who was an older contemporary of Milton. He was also engaged in community affairs and in the significant issues of his day. That's why I love the field so much. It really does reflect and align with the kind of work we're here to do."
       
Q: Do you have a favorite line from Donne's work?

"There are so many, but I'll give you one. I have written a lot on Donne's 'Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.' There is a very famous line that comes from the work, which not everyone realizes is from Donne: 'Never seek to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.' What I find so moving about the line is that it talks about our common humanity and how we are all linked. It's about how what happens to one person affects all of us . . . and how we need to think about the good we do in the world. I find it to be a very moving line."

Q: Are there any initiatives that you oversaw at Lehman College that you anticipate going forward with at Southern?

"We really tried to reposition Lehman College in terms of how it was perceived in the community as a leading light in its area of education. We clearly want to do that here as well. Southern has a longer tradition and over the years it probably has done a better job of branding itself. I use the word branding cautiously, because I don't mean it solely in terms of a marketing perspective. Our goal is for Southern to be seen as an important resource and intellectual player in the region.

"That's what we are going to try to do. The particulars will be different here - because the needs and opportunities here will be different. But ultimately the goal is the same: to create an institution of excellence, committed to social justice and access, and to ensure that active intellectual life at all levels can take place."

Q: You're the parent of a college freshman. Has this provided any new insight?

"One thing that the experience has really called to mind - and this is an interesting issue for Southern - is the balance between the residential student experience and the commuter student experience. 

"I was a commuter student in college. It was the only way my parents could manage to send four of us to college in such a short period of time. Our older daughter, a freshman at Tufts University in Boston, lives on campus. She's very happy and has adjusted beautifully. But I've noticed that she talks as much or more about what goes on outside of the classroom as what goes on in the classroom. It's not that she's not interested in academics. She's a great student - she was valedictorian of her high school class - but she is really interested in and affected by all that goes on outside of class. Here at Southern, this is something we have to pay a lot of attention to on behalf of all of our students - both those who live on campus and those who commute. Their education extends beyond the classroom. It's a critical part of our students' growth and we have to think about their education holistically to best meet their needs."

Q: How would you describe your leadership style? 

"Most people are micromanagers even if they don't see it in themselves. I really try not to be. I like to work with very talented, smart people. I like to set the goals working in conjunction with them, and I like to empower people to do their work.

"I am always here to help others think strategically about a problem or initiative. But while my way may be a good way, it is certainly not the only way. We can all learn from each other."
     
Q: Do you have any final thoughts?

"I have been very fortunate over the years to have had tremendous support from my husband, who has always been there for me, and my kids, who e nsure that I remember what is most important in life. This is not a trivial thing. It's so important to have a life of balance. 

"I work hard but I don't define myself as a workaholic. While I think it is important to work hard and be committed to excellence, it's also critical to have perspective . . . to be able to step back and see things from a number of angles. If I'm coaching my daughter's basketball game, it doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about work or an issue or problem. But it is happening in the back of my mind. We should recognize that good ideas come from all kinds of places. It helps to be open to them."