Brehm looks to past, lays plans for future

Most days, rain or shine, Bloomington Chancellor Sharon Brehm walks the half-mile from her home to her office, moved by the almost "spiritual" effect she claims IU's beauty affords. \nShe strolls through Herman B Wells' Arboretum, pausing to reflect on the aesthetics of the place she now calls home. She steps along the footpaths in the Old Crescent area of campus, down Indiana Avenue and past the Sample Gates, into her quiet office in Bryan Hall.\nAlong the way, she doubtlessly calculates the gravity of the responsibilities the coming months and years will bring as she steps in to fill the shoes of retired Chancellor Kenneth Gros Louis.\nAnd every day when she steps into her Bryan Hall office, she's faced with an increasingly lengthy to-do list. She tackles stacks of papers and forms and University business. Yet the woman IU President Myles Brand terms a "doer" has a plan. She has a focus. And she can't wait to begin.\nBrehm will not be officially installed as Bloomington's Chancellor until a regal ceremony Wednesday. But in her last three months at IU, she has come to feel at home.\nBrehm celebrates her new home everyday. The woman who ran Ohio University and helped at the University of Kansas, weaves IU's beauty and rich history into most conversations.\n"I think IU is a wonderful campus. Everyone is just terrific," Brehm said. "I\'ve never been at any university were the combination is so powerful, and the combination is that we have a university that is very dedicated to quality and that is very open and friendly and warm. That to me is a marvelous combination."\nBrehm comes to IU well-equipped. An administrator "by accident," she was teaching at the University of Kansas in 1987 and writing on the side when she answered an advertisement seeking a director of the university honors program in the student newspaper. \nShe applied and got the job. \nShe's been hooked ever since.\n"I've never been bored as an administrator," she said. "I'm constantly dealing with a lot of people, who come from many different viewpoints, with many different wants." \nBrehm, who describes herself as "restless," soon began to look at other administrative possibilities. She most recently served as provost at Ohio University, where her achievements included bolstering scholarships by 266 percent and hiring dual spouse faculty. But Brehm, who will now watch over the lives of 35,000-plus students, said she never planned on becoming an administrator.\n"Students sometimes come to me and say, 'How do I prepare to become a dean?'" she said. "There's no magic formula for success -- you have to start with a love and passion for a discipline and become a professor. Then a few odd fish like myself actually become administrators."\nBrehm carries specific goals with her to Bloomington, hoping to leave where Gros Louis left off.\nFirst, she wants to continue to strengthen the quality of academics here, another staple of Gros Louis and Wells' legacies.\n"Academic excellence here is very strong, but academic excellence is the sort of thing you have to pursue," Brehm said. "You can never be complacent … I'm the sort that never believes you rest on your laurels."\nDiversity also lies at the center of the University experience, Brehm said. It's an area Gros Louis has identified as crucial for development, and Brehm plans to nurture the delicate multicultural climate on campus.\n"I certainly want to enhance diversity on campus," she said. "We have made some strides, but we are certainly not where we want to be as a campus."\nGathering a diversity of opinions is essential to Brehm when looking to affect change. \n"The first step in the process is to consult, consult, consult. Talk to people. Listen," she said. "Get a sense of all the different opinions that are on campus, and on a college campus there are many different opinions.\nFinally, she wants to help to strengthen the sense of community throughout the University and Bloomington.\n"When you have a large campus like this, one of the ways we function is you have different neighborhoods and groups," Brehm said. "That's the way we feel rooted and individualized."\nBrehm looks at her role as chancellor as that of a catalyst. She greatly depends and looks to the faculty and students of IU to help bring about and cause change.\n"What one does in a job like mine is to speak to the community, to raise issues. It's not that somehow magically I come up with the answers to things," Brehm said.\nStarting Wednesday, Brehm, a psychology major from Duke who loves fast planes, reading and travel, will officially get her chance.