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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

New president agenda outlines 'vision for student living and learning environment for 21st century'

INDIANAPOLIS – Michael McRobbie had a continuing theme as he spoke Thursday after being selected to be IU’s 18th president – a theme of a “living and learning environment for the 21st century.”\nMcRobbie said one of the first items on his agenda is to set up a task force with both student governments of the Bloomington and IU-Purdue University at Indianapolis campuses by the fall semester. The task forces, which would be student-chaired and -run, he said, would “come up with a vision for student living and learning environments for the 21st century” with recommendations by those task forces to the office of the president.\n“I think that will be one of the more significant things that we will do,” McRobbie said. \nHe was vehement in improving the quality of life for students living in the dorms, saying it was going to be one of his major priorities. He said he knows the dorms are not the best they could be – his daughter, an IU student, lived in the dorms for two years.\n“That, I think, has been an area where we have not maybe invested as much as we need to,” McRobbie said.\nHe said the decision of a better “student living and learning environment” would be for the student-run task force to make.\n“But it may be when we put these task forces in place that what the students come back and say is ‘Well, we really don’t care about that. We care about many more \nresources going into things like the Information Commons in the Wells library” for which he helped fund, he said.\nMcRobbie said he was aware that changes have taken place in higher education since he was in school. He said he noticed, from personal observation around IU, that students like to work “more cooperatively in groups than they did in my day,” and he questioned the implications of \ngroup work.\nInternational studies was another main focus McRobbie brought up. He said students’ having an education with an “international dimension” was going to be more important with time.\n“We live in a global economy,” McRobbie said. “So the kind of education we provide at IU has to prepare students to be competitive in the international community.”\nMcRobbie said he would try to be more visible on campus by attending events “that are critical to student life” on both the Bloomington and IUPUI \ncampuses. \n“Where appropriate, I intend to participate in those,” he said. “My previous positions (interim provost and vice president for academic affairs) have not had a major student proponent. But this one does, and I intend to carry out those duties \nappropriately.”\nDoubling the minority population by the next seven years was a goal McRobbie set his sights on. He listed it as one of eight major priorities for the University.\nHe defended his record on diversity while at IU, saying he was responsible for raising an additional $10 million for such financial aid initiatives as the Twenty-First Century Scholars Program. McRobbie said he and Charlie Nelms, vice president for institutional development and student affairs, will be announcing “some new initiatives \npretty soon.”\nDuring a news conference, Steve Ferguson, president of the trustees, said the search committee looked nationwide “at the country’s best universities and we looked at some extraordinary accomplished people.\n“But we found no one with Michael McRobbie’s unique combination of experience, knowledge and intellect and being a Hoosier already.”

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