Making an Impression

You have only one chance at a first impression. When presidential search committee chair James Crownover introduced Rice president-elect David Leebron to the Rice community on December 19, the crowd filling McMurtry Auditorium rose in enthusiastic, if somewhat expectant, ovation.

“Thank you,” Professor Leebron said wryly when everyone was again seated. “I assume that’s how all faculty meetings here will begin.”
When the laughter died down, he turned to Crownover. “Jim, thank you for many things, and thank you for that very gracious introduction. My father would really have loved it, and my mother would have believed it.”

That brought another wave of laughter, but as Professor Leebron continued, his wit and charm more often gave way to serious thoughts on his upcoming presidency and the university he will lead. Below is the substance of his speech and the question-and-answer session that followed. A webcast of the event in its entirety can be viewed at http://www.rice.edu/webcast/speeches/20031219leebron.html.

I just want to say how thrilled Ping and I are to be here today—to be here at Rice, to be a part of this incredible institution, to be contemplating a move to a great city that we have become very, very enthusiastic about.

I do want to say a couple of thank yous. I want to thank Bill [Barnett] and Jim and the search committee, not for the wisdom of their judgment, which would seem untoward, but rather for the warmth with which they treated me from the very beginning. For us, that was the essential element of this process. And if I may, a special thanks to Melissa [Kean], who really has been the key liaison here and made me and Ping and our family feel so welcome.

I want to take a moment to thank Malcolm and Elizabeth Gillis. I just recently met Malcolm, but there are many parts of a decision to make such a life-changing move like this, and what really struck me about coming to Rice was the incredible opportunity here. And it’s an opportunity that exists only because of Malcolm and Elizabeth and what they have done on so many levels to transform this great university over the past decade. I am sure over the next decade, I am going to have many, many more opportunities to appreciate that.

I want also to take a moment to thank my wife, Ping, not just because if I didn’t, she would say something to me afterwards, but because it is literally true that I would not be here—that we would not be here—without, I would say, her support, but it was much more than her support. It was her enthusiasm and her confidence that this was the right thing for us to do. Thank you, Ping.

Let me say very briefly that one makes a decision like this—which for us is a huge change in where we’ll be living and the kind of life we will be having—for two reasons as an academic. One, really, is the faculty of the institution. First, I want to say a word about the faculty on the search committee—not individually, although I could. I’ve been assured that they are typical Rice faculty, Nobel Prizes and all, and I just could not have felt more welcomed and engaged. I knew, both from the example of the faculty on the search committee and as I explored the Rice website and learned about the accomplishments in every aspect of human endeavor of this great faculty, that this was an institution that I would like to be a part of.

And second, are the students.

I didn’t know much about Rice students before this process began, but Malcolm just told me as we walked in that, among all the great institutions that he has been affiliated with, he has never met such hard-working and dedicated students.

And as I read about those students, their accomplishments, their statistics, and the energy they bring to this institution, I knew again that Rice is a university that I would really be thrilled to be a part of.

A year ago, if you had said to me that I would be standing here so excited about moving to Houston and being part of Rice, I would not have known what to make of that. I knew its general reputation and that it is a distinguished institution, but really very little specifically. The world—all of our environments, whether it’s Houston or New York or Los Angeles or Chicago—tends to be very provincial. We tend to know a lot about what goes on within a hundred miles of those environments. So this was a real process of learning.

When the search firm first called me and asked if I would be interested, for a number of reasons I said, “I doubt it.” I’ve been approached over the years, mostly by colleges, about the possibility of becoming president, and it was not something I was interested in. But the search firm asked, would you be willing to read something. And being an academic, there’s only one answer to that question, and I said, “Sure.” And I read this white paper the search committee put together, and it was just magnificent, both in its content and its quality. And the most important thing I learned about Rice in this process that I did not know before the process began is what a great research university this is. And that made me so excited about being a part of it.

I think the greatest challenge in being the new president is learning enough fast enough. The whole university is a great challenge, but because of the work of Malcolm and his predecessors, this is a university in great shape.

So far as I can tell, there is nothing broken about this university. When you look at its accomplishments in just the last 10 years—the Baker Institute and nanotechnology and the music school—it’s all just remarkable. So I think my first challenge is to spend a lot of time with faculty and staff and students and figure out what are the great next steps this university wants to take that it’s able to take and then to make sure that this university has the resources that it needs to realize its very best ambitions.

The question that I’ve often received in addition to why Rice University, is why Houston? I will only say this. I was born in the fourth-largest city in the United States, and it’s just great to be coming home to the fourth-largest city in the United States.

The biggest surprise I’ve had in learning about Houston was, I guess, when the search committee told me that the weather in July and August is really delightful.

More seriously, though, I’ve been surprised at the level of culture and philanthropy in Houston. You can imagine that that was part of what we might be concerned about in moving out of New York—both the engagement of the citizens with culture and their willingness to support culture and educational institutions.

What we learned is that this is one of the great cultural cities in the country. And when I talked with people in New York about the opera here or the art museums, these New Yorkers spoke with enthusiasm about their visits to Houston and their opportunities to enjoy Houstonian culture. We weren’t concerned just about our ability to go out and enjoy that culture—it was much more for us what that said about Houstonians and what they enjoy and what their aspirations might be for their city and their educational institutions.

This is, for us, a big adventure. I’ve been in the same city now for 20-some years. I grew up entirely in the Northeast. I spent one year in Los Angeles. I think it was my wife’s sense of adventure that made this a much easier decision.

She came from China to the United States without any particular preparation, and moving from New York to Houston didn’t seem like so much of a great leap.

Jim talked about planets lining up. Throughout this process, I had concerns which way the planets were moving. Yesterday, we were on the way to the airport, and I don’t cut my plans to go to the airport too closely, usually, and I didn’t cut this too closely, but we were stuck in the most unbelievable traffic jam toward the Triborough Bridge that one could possibly imagine. And I got on the phone to Jim, and I said, you know, I don’t think we’re going to make this flight. I didn’t say to Jim, well, maybe this is an omen. But this is the only time in my life that a plane has been late when I also was late. That, I think, was the real omen. Once more, Ping and I just could not be happier to be here.