Packing up and moving out

Over the past decade and a half, most Northwestern students caught a glimpse of University President Henry Bienen exactly two times in four years: Convocation and Commencement.

Though his presence may have been scarce in the eyes of the student body, Bienen's nearly fifteen years at NU have reaped some undeniably visible changes, including vast jumps in the average SAT scores of incoming freshmen, a trip to the Rose Bowl after a nearly 50-year spell and an endowment that peaked at approximately $7.4 billion in April 2008, the eighth-largest in the country in that year.

But after all he has accomplished, Bienen is quickly moving out of his office­ in the Rebecca Crown Center and moving on.

"People ask me if it's been an emotional time. Frankly, it hasn't really been," he said in an interview last week. "I've been too busy...I think it gets tiresome even for oneself to try to weigh disparate things. And you're trying to figure out what the next years are going to be like, and so I've been very preoccupied."

Until Commencement, Bienen said he was planning to become a United States ambassador to a country he chose not to disclose. However, Bienen said he had a "last-minute change of understanding and heart."

"At the end of the day, this was not what I was going to want to do," he said. "It was both the push of thinking the arrangements weren't quite right for me and the attractiveness of some other things, which became very attractive."

Among those things, Bienen has been asked to chair the board of a new professional football league and work with a major company in India, he said.

"I don't know how it's going to work out," he said. "Maybe I've even overcommitted myself. But I wanted to do things I thought were fun and interesting once I turned this job down."

However rapidly Bienen continues to develop his immediate plans, he hasn't forgotten his fair share of memories during his tenure at NU.

"There would be so many, it'd be really hard to pick out any one, five or 50 things," he said.

Many of the president's close colleagues characterize his style of leadership as energetic and aggressive.

"He has a great command of the activities across the university, is very ambitious for Northwestern and is incredibly energetic," said University Provost Daniel Linzer, who has worked with Bienen as provost and partner for two years.

"He doesn't micromanage," said Judi Remington, executive assistant to the president and manager of the president's office, who has worked for Bienen for more than 14 years. "He's not looking over your shoulder. He has always challenged us to do the best job that we can possibly do."

This is the legacy that Bienen has built, one that future University President Morton Schapiro will succeed when his term begins Sept. 1.

When contacted last week, Schapiro declined to comment, saying he would not do so before he assumes his new position.

Although Schapiro arrived in Evanston on Jul. 1, Bienen said he believes both men agree that he will oversee university business until the end of August.

"Both our views was that, even though he was now here, I was still the president of the place and still making the presidential decisions about Northwestern," Bienen said. "In the normal course of business, I'm still signing off on tenure files, dealing with financial aid issues, coaches, you name it. So I really try not to involve him, and I think he tries not to be involved."

For all that lies ahead for the future president, there will be no transition memo waiting on Schapiro's desk, at least not one that Bienen has penned himself, the president said.

"There's no document," he said. "There's no master plan for transition. He has not had a lot of meetings because of his being in and out, but he was president in one place and it's undoubtedly a busy time."

As the start of Schapiro's term draws near, members of the university community are also preparing for the changes that transition will bring.

"The number one thing the students want more is undergraduate student interaction," said Communication senior Mike McGee, president of the Associated Student Government. "As the head of the university, the face, we definitely want our president to know where the concerns of 8,000-plus students are."

Bienen said Schapiro will not face any significant problems when he enters office, though projects are constantly ongoing.

"The university is itself a work in progress," he said. "Is there some big crisis? No. But there's always something. And he'll decide what things he wants to pay the most attention to and when."

chaey@u.northwestern.edu