On her first morning as the University of Toledo’s 17th president, Sharon Gaber met with senior administrators and the success coaches who guide students.
The meetings — both symbolic and substantive — started at 9 a.m. today on the main campus.
“Well, how are we?” Ms. Gaber, 51, asked 14 senior administrators as she started her first cabinet meeting in a University Hall conference room.
After a few pleasantries, the new president got down to explaining her mission. She wants to improve the overall reputation and prominence of the university, grow enrollment and research funding, retain more students, reduce administrative overhead, and raise philanthropic support.
She urged the room full of administrators, which included the provost and heads of finance, human resources, legal, and other areas, to keep those priorities in mind.
“Be bold,” she told her top staff. Work out solutions in creative, new ways. Update her by text or phone, though she promised not to micromanage.
Later, Ms. Gaber walked across campus to the student union, where she met with success coaches who help students navigate UT from orientation to graduation.
The coaches help students set goals, learn to study, connect with campus organizations, and figure out financial aid and budgeting.
Ms. Gaber highlighted their work as crucial to the university’s aim to improve student retention, a key factor in boosting UT in college rankings.
“You are so critical to what we are doing on campus,” she said. “You’re it.”
She encouraged staffers to voice ideas about how to improve the university, setting a tone she echoed by her first public posting on Twitter.
Using the handle @UTpresident, Ms. Gaber sent her first tweet at 7:15 a.m. It included an exclamation point to highlight her first-day excitement and a link to a nearly three-minute video in which she delivers a personal hello to followers and outlines her vision for UT. The YouTube video had been viewed more than 300 times within a few hours.
Hello @UToledo! I'm so excited to get started. https://t.co/LoLql8lC4S
— Dr. Sharon Gaber (@UTPresident) July 1, 2015
Ms. Gaber takes over from interim president Nagi Naganathan. He returned today to his post as dean of the College of Engineering.
The presidential vacancy was created by the departure last year of Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, who became president upon the 2006 merger of UT with the former Medical College of Ohio.
Ms. Gaber also will serve on the boards of the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Regional Growth Partnership.
The new president bested a field of 29 applicants for the UT post. She was selected in March by a unanimous vote of the board of trustees after a search process that brought three finalists to Toledo.
She is the first woman to lead the university, founded 143 years ago in 1872.
The former University of Arkansas provost has an academic background as an urban planner, and received her doctorate in city and regional planning from Cornell University.
Her career includes stints at Auburn University and at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
She signed a five-year UT contract that pays $450,000 a year, plus a chance for bonus of up to 20 percent.
Ms. Gaber’s first-day schedule includes sessions with the faculty senate, student government, board of trustees Chairman Sharon Speyer, a lunch at the health science campus, and an evening open house with Ottawa Hills neighbors in the presidential house recently purchased by the UT Foundation.
University officials are planning a Sept. 25 inauguration ceremony for the new president.
Today begins a “new day” and “new chapter” in UT’s history, Ms. Gaber told her cabinet at the conclusion of their first meeting.
“Let’s go get ‘em,” she said.
Contact Vanessa McCray at: vmccray@theblade.com, 419-724-6065, or on Twitter @vanmccray.
First Published July 1, 2015, 5:21 p.m.
