Student Life | Bri Nitsberg

Washington University Chancellor Andrew Martin sat down for an interview with Student Life on Friday, Sept. 13. Martin spoke about the state of faculty governance on campus, provided updates to WashU’s recent property purchases, and shared his go-to order at a bar. The Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. 

Student Life: What is your biggest goal for this school year?

Andrew Martin: The biggest goal for this year is really for us to come together as a community. We’re not going to agree on lots of different things, but our biggest priority is how we come together, get through this election cycle, and be able to talk about the complicated issues that we have in front of us.

SL: Could you talk about some of the ways that you’re working to build community?

AM: One of the events that happened last week that I think was really positive was the Longest Table event that the Gephardt Institute put together, which is all about dialogue and conversation. We also continue to scale up the Dialogue Across Difference (DxD) program.

SL: How would you describe your role as chancellor to the student body? 

AM: Super complicated. I spend a lot of time in small doses across lots of different aspects of the University. I travel almost every week and spend about 30% of my time on raising funds to help support scholarships and professorships. I think it’s important for students to know that I never have any day that’s like any other. I’m oftentimes pulled in a million different directions, and I can only be in one place at a time. There’s just lots of different constituencies and lots of groups who rightly would like attention. It’s my job personally, but it’s also the job of my team to ensure that we’re out engaging as much as we can. 

SL: So you were just saying how day-to-day your schedule looks very different, but could you give us a taste of what a typical day would look like for you? 

AM: I can make one up. A typical day would start for me at about 7 a.m. and I’m going to do a little bit of reading, catch up on email, and communicate with my team. That’ll usually be for an hour or hour and a half. So for this typical day, I’d be up in the office in meetings from 9 to 11:30 or 12, typically with members of my team. I’ll go off campus for a lunch meeting with a donor. Later that day, I will go to a board meeting, such as Greater St. Louis, Inc., where I’m going to be working with other business leaders to talk about what it is that we’re doing. Then I’ll swing over [to] the medical school for a meeting with the faculty leadership of the medical school. Then I’ll hypothetically come over to the Danforth Campus for an endowed chair installation, where we’ll have a formal ceremony to give an endowed chair to a faculty member. Then after that ceremony, I would host a dinner over at Harbison House for that faculty member and some other guests. By about 9 p.m., the day is over.

SL: Do you have an update on the Fontbonne Campus and the Concordia Seminary? 

AM: We’ve closed the Fontbonne deal, and in fact, the parameters of that deal were reported in the St. Louis Business Journal on Sept. 12. At this point, we do not have any firm plans for how we’re going to use the Fontbonne campus. We are also continuing to work with the city of Clayton and our community members on putting in place an “overlay district” that would allow us to close a transaction where we would lease the western half of the Concordia campus for a very long time. Assuming that transaction is able to close in the coming months, we’re going to be able to think about the future of this entire piece of real estate. Now that we have Fontbonne, there’s things we might have thought of putting up on campus that we can rethink and perhaps do differently.

SL: Is there a date when you hope to have a clear vision for the Fontbonne campus and the Concordia Seminary?

AM: We’re going to begin thinking in the coming months. I suspect that by the end of this academic year we’re going to have some ideas of what will be the immediate uses of the Fontbonne campus.

SL: Do you have an update for students regarding the new building on Mudd Field? What is that building eventually going to be? 

AM: That’ll be a building for Arts & Sciences. The current thing that’s going on now is putting all of the utilities in place, so that we can actually build the building. But we are going to make a big announcement about that building in early October. 

SL: Are new athletic facilities going to be a part of this expansion?

AM: Yes. We’ve been very clear and transparent with the neighbors [of Concordia Seminary] that the Concordia parcel is going to be used for athletic fields. Some of that is on South Campus today, but this will be an even bigger footprint. We’re also getting Fontbonne’s athletic facilities, and they have a really, really nice gym that is one of the newest buildings on their campus. 

SL: This was the first admissions cycle without affirmative action policies. How does that impact admissions? What initiatives is the school taking to ensure a diverse incoming class?

AM: The immediate impact for us was twofold — obviously, we had to change our admissions practices. We no longer were sharing information about the race and ethnicity of applicants with our admissions officers. Last year we did a lot of investing to continue to recruit the very best students from wherever they came from. Another thing that we’ve done this year, for the third year, is that we focused a lot of resources on rural students. With some really great support from two different philanthropists, we’ve been able to build a team that’s been traveling the state of Missouri, Southern Illinois, visiting high schools and planting the seed that actually this is a place which is affordable for you, given everything we’re able to do with financial aid, and is a place we would like you to come. 

SL: In an interview with Student Life a few weeks ago, Scott Wilson, WashU’s Chief Investment Officer (CIO), said that WashU did not have direct or indirect investments in Boeing. Why was there not an announcement about the University’s financial investments in Boeing sooner? 

AM: The authority to disclose what we invest and don’t invest in is up to the Chief Investment Officer and his team. Scott did an interview with you all a week or two ago and decided to make the disclosure that we weren’t invested, and that was certainly within his authority to do so. I’m not sure if we were ever asked the question whether we were invested in Boeing before, and I’m not sure how we would have answered the question if we were asked. We do have a policy of not disclosing all of our investments. As I’ve said publicly in the past, just because we don’t divest doesn’t mean we’re invested. 

SL: So what you’re saying is that it was Scott’s decision, and the board’s decision, to share that information?

AM: It was Scott’s decision, as the CIO. 

SL: So you don’t have a role in disclosing what WashU is invested in?

AM: No, and actually, neither does the board. We set a very high-level investment policy. We give the authority to make investment decisions to Scott Wilson. That’s because we believe he is the finest endowment manager in the country, and we want to empower him and his team to maximize the economic return on the endowment. So the Washington University Investment Management Company board members have no role in individual investment decisions. Those decisions are Scott’s and Scott’s alone.

SL: What would you say was the mindset of yourself and your colleagues coming back into the school year after April’s protests?

AM: I think that we all came back with some mixed emotions. The startup of every academic year is always super exciting in welcoming students back, particularly our first-year students and their families. But at the same time, what happened at the end of last academic year wasn’t easy for any of us. I think that there was a bit of,“what’s going to happen next?” coming back. I think that there have been lots of productive conversations, some of those hard conversations, and that’s exactly the sort of thing that we should be doing as a community.

SL: One of your more public appearances is the op-ed that you recently published in The Hill. What made you decide to publish that?

AM: I wanted to publish it because I’ve been thinking a lot over the course of the summer about this upcoming semester. You know, lessons learned from last year, both on this campus and across the country. And I thought I had something to say. 

SL: On Tuesday, Student Union voted to pass a resolution that called for your resignation. What is your response to this?

AM: It’s up to Student Union what to put in its resolutions and how to vote on them. I appreciated the opportunity to meet with SU and look forward to continuing to engage on issues that are important to students.

SL: We wanted to ask you now about faculty governance. How do you view faculty governance after the most recent Faculty Senate Council (FSC) meeting?

AM: I view faculty governance going forward just like I view faculty governance going backward. At its very core, the faculty has historically owned three things: who does and doesn’t get to be a member of the faculty, what the curriculum looks like, and admissions. That’s the stuff the faculty owns, and it’s my job as the chancellor to ensure that that remains the case. There are lots of other important policy decisions that we make, and I believe in the model of shared governance that we have. Sometimes we also want to consult with Student Union as a representative of the student voices as well. Almost every significant policy change gets presented to the group called the Faculty Senate Council, which is the elected leadership of the faculty. 

SL: At the June FSC meeting, faculty representatives proposed the idea of having a faculty-led committee to look into the events of the April 27 protest, and the board wrote in an email that that is not the responsibility of the faculty, but of the board. What did you make of that decision?

AM: So the board decided that the events around April 27 were so important to the community that it was important to put together a committee to make sure that we have a shared understanding about what the facts are and to look prospectively at our policies, procedures, and practices. The board leadership made the decision to not authorize the administration to participate in a faculty-led review, but insisted that the board’s ad hoc committee would have plenty of opportunities for engagement, both among students, faculty, staff and other concerned individuals.

SL: Part of the reason that the board denied the faculty’s request to investigate the April 27 protest was because the board requires a committee that is “qualified” and capable of “reviewing evidence without bias.” What does that say about the faculty at WashU? How should we as students view our education with these faculty if they’re not “qualified” to review this evidence in the eyes of the board?

AM: The faculty here are an extraordinarily talented group of individuals that have a huge diversity of disciplinary experiences. You should be incredibly confident in the high quality education that you’re going to receive from this really talented group.

SL: What would give the board that authority and not the faculty?

AM: Well the board has the fiduciary responsibility to oversee all operations of the University. It’s the board’s responsibility to hire or fire me, and ultimately the board is where the buck stops.

SL: What is your go-to order at a bar?

AM: I’d probably order a gin martini or a glass of chardonnay.

SL: What book are you currently reading?

AM: At this time of the academic year, I’m actually not reading a book. I read the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Wired, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post — and that’s about as many balls in the air as I can keep up. My book reading is usually reserved for the summertime.

SL: Is there a favorite sports memory that you have, either live or on TV?

AM: Oh, for sure. 2011 World Series, Game 7. That was a really, really incredible experience.

SL: We ask every Athlete of the Week this question, and we are curious how you would answer. Would you rather have fish for hands or adopt a child every time you hear a note from “Bohemian Rhapsody”?

AM: Probably the latter.