A personal reflection

As most readers of the IDS know, last Friday at the meeting of the IU Trustees in Fort Wayne, I was appointed Interim President, effective Jan. 1, 2003, the date on which our President, Myles Brand, will take his new position at the head of the NCAA. It's a bit early to write about plans for the interim administration. For the time being, I'll be listening to students, faculty, staff, alumni and other constituencies of the University. As a result, I hope your readers won't mind a more personal reflection.\nMy wife Jean and I are profoundly honored by the assignment. We love Indiana University and have often said that we would be happy to serve in any way we were asked. We didn't anticipate this role, but now that the appointment has been made, we are eager to devote ourselves to maintaining the momentum that has been created in the Brand years, to working on the agenda set by Myles Brand at the beginning of the academic year, to make sure we take no backward steps in this interim, to make the best case for IU in the 2003 session of the Indiana General Assembly and to prepare our University for a new president who can take us to the next level of achievement and national distinction.\nJean and I, with two very small children, moved to Indiana just a little more than 30 years ago. We had lived for the four years of our prior married life in New York, New Haven and Chicago, so we were concerned that we would not like Indianapolis. I had never lived in Indiana, and Jean had lived here only for a few years as a youngster when her father was personnel director for RCA, before they transferred him to Argentina. We came with a one, two and three-year plan that would take us back to Chicago or New York if we were not comfortable in the Hoosier state. Before the end of the third year, we had decided that we wanted to stay, not only because we liked the community, especially as a place for our family, but because of our deepening affection for the University.\nIndiana University is a very special institution. It has a tradition of excellence that is known around the world; it has a collegial tradition that fosters good friendships, mutual support, teamwork and high productivity; and it is committed to access for the broadest range of learners, especially those who have been inhibited by virtue of race, gender or poverty. These characteristics may be blended in different ways in different parts of our University, but they are defining elements for us and the reason why we have been so pleased to commit ourselves to this new role.\nI learned early in my work at IU that the origins of these characteristics are on the Bloomington campus. I was privileged to serve as a visiting professor in Bloomington, at the law school, on four different occasions in the summers of 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1980. I taught courses on debtor/creditor relations and consumer protection. During these appointments I met many outstanding faculty, including Doug Boshkoff, one of the very best teachers I have met in 34 years in higher education. Doug invited me to co-author a student textbook on an arcane subject known as secured transactions. The book is now long out of print, but Doug remains a good friend whom I see for lunch nearly every year.\nAlthough I've spent many years in the University's administration, colleagues at other universities have kept me involved in national activities in my field of commercial transactions. I serve as a life member of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and a member of the Permanent Editorial Board for the Uniform Commercial Code, from which much of the law of secured transactions derives. During most of the years I've spent in the administration, I have voluntarily taught a course, although I gave up my course a few years ago because of the problem of overbooking that is endemic to administration. It is in part to return to this life as a teacher -- to see first hand, once again, students engaged in the excitement of learning -- that I will look forward after the interim administration.