... Summer 2002

By John Woodford

ary Sue Coleman, a biochemist who had served as president of the University of Iowa since 1995, was elected as the 13th president of the University of Michigan on May 29 by an 8-0 vote of the U-M Board of Regents.

Mary Sue and Kenneth Coleman at the entrance to the President's House

"My entire career has been spent at a number of fine public universities," Coleman said at a reception and news conference in the Michigan Union after her selection. "The presidency of the University of Michigan is the pinnacle of public higher education. I am looking forward to this opportunity to work with the faculty, staff and students of this great university."

Coleman told Michigan Today, "I look forward to meeting alumni from the university because in my experience, the alumni are one of the most important voices a president can hear. I look forward to meeting many alumni from Michigan. One of the things I've been most struck by is the deep love and loyalty and passion many people I've spoken with express for the University."

Coleman, 58, earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry from Grinnell College and her PhD in biochemistry from the University of North Carolina. She conducted postdoctoral work at North Carolina and at the University of Texas at Austin.

Born in Kentucky, her father's home state, Coleman grew up in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Her father, Leland Wilson, was a professor of chemistry at the University of Northern Iowa there, and when Coleman was in high school, she took a college-level chemistry class he taught. Her mother taught in the city's public schools. The second of three daughters, she has a sister who is a physician and one who is an attorney.

Coleman is married to Kenneth Coleman, a political scientist specializing in Latin America. The couple wed after their graduation from Grinnell as both were headed for graduate school at North Carolina-Chapel Hill. They have one son, Jonathan, a portfolio manager for the Janus Capital Corporation in Denver.

Under Coleman's leadership, Iowa increased research funding by two-thirds and more than doubled its total annual giving. She also oversaw major construction projects in liberal arts, medicine, engineering, biology, fine arts, honors center, career center, athletics and recreation, and parking.

In addition to the presidency of Iowa, Coleman has held posts as provost and vice president for academic affairs (1993-95) at the University of New Mexico, and vice chancellor for graduate studies and research (1992-93) and associate provost and dean of research (1990-92) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Coleman earlier served for 19 years as a member of the biochemistry faculty and as a Cancer Center administrator at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where her research focused on the immune system and malignancies. She also has served on boards and committees in numerous higher education areas ranging from the life sciences, athletics, health insurance, teacher education and substance-abuse prevention.

In nominating Coleman, Regent Laurence Deitch highlighted her academic and administrative accomplishments, calling her "a national leader in higher education." Coleman, he said, "was quite simply the best candidate in an extraordinary field and we are fortunate to have her."

Coleman's selection ended a six-month search by the Regents and a 16-member Universitywide Presidential Search Advisory Committee. She will assume office on Aug. 1, succeeding Prof. B. Joseph White, former dean of the Michigan Business School. White took over as interim president Jan. 1 after President Lee C. Bollinger's departure last year to lead Columbia University.

When she was asked whether she felt being Michigan's first female president put extra pressure on her, Coleman replied, "This is a hard job, a stressful job for men and women, and I think the pressures are the same."

Excerpts from Coleman's speeches

Michigan Today was close to deadline when President Mary Sue Coleman was selected to lead U-M. We will carry a feature interview with her in our fall issue. Meanwhile, readers can gain some insight into her values and thoughts from the following excerpts from her speeches at the University of Iowa.

On public education: Public education is foundational to democracy, precisely because it is public and accessible. Public institutions are the expression of our collective will, what we hold in common for the greater good. The "public trust" implied in higher education is reciprocal. The citizenry trusts that education will help create a better society. Public education is obligated to honor that trust through its teaching, research, and service missions. And the citizenry is, in turn, responsible for providing the resources necessary to accomplish those missions with which it has charged public education.

Balancing the private and the public: Certainly individual initiative drives American society's achievements. And we uphold our private lives and our private property as sacred. They are the foundation of our character as a free country and our rights and privileges as free citizens. Yet individual achievement and personal privacy are balanced, and enhanced, by a strong tradition of public life. And public life is lived through public institutions. They are the expression of our collective will, what we hold in common for the greater good. And public institutions in turn provide the foundation for private freedoms and success, and for democracy and equality.

As we think across the broad canvas of our lives, our public institutions-our libraries, our roads and highways, our governments, our arts organizations, our parks and recreational facilities-all are integral elements of the landscape of our dreams, actions, and character. And perhaps most importantly, these public institutions do not simply benefit our individual lifestyles, but they comprise the fabric of who we are as a people. As Robert Bellah has said, our public institutions are our "patterned ways of living together."

Diversity and fairness: Gone are the days when faculty positions were filled in back rooms with gentlemen's agreements among departmental chairs. Vacancies are advertised openly and candidates of all backgrounds are urged to apply. … Affirmative action, as practiced in contemporary research universities, is not the rigged system that our worst critics believe it is. It simply means that institutions take positive action to diversify the pools of applicants who compete for university positions, and to ensure that applicants of different backgrounds are included in interview processes. Then the best applicant is hired. In terms of student admissions [at Iowa], affirmative action means that universities make positive efforts to welcome students of diverse backgrounds and make resources available so that, for students of all socioeconomic statuses, a university education is within reach. Were we to do less, the quality of education offered to all students would be compromised.

Life sciences research: There are two types of research that we need-laboratory basic research and clinical research. We are very good in this country at conceiving and carrying out basic research. And that is a quality of our country that I believe we should continue to encourage. For it is this basic research that opens doors and new avenues for us to treat and diagnose some of the most terrible diseases that afflict humans. We will see the fruits of basic research knowledge in the clinics in 10 or 20 years. But we also need to be aware of additional types of clinical research that help us make the very best decisions for use of our health care resources. I hope to encourage such activity and joint ventures.