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The beginning of June marked the end of the first year of the administration of President Robert Frank, the first three-time UNM alumnus to become the University’s president.
The Lobo sat down with Frank to ask about his return to his alma mater, his administration’s accomplishments and about his plans for UNM for the future.
Daily Lobo: “What can you say are your accomplishments of the past year?”
Robert Frank: “One of the things that we started to do is the UNM 2020. It’s setting a plan, and we’ve talked about what the University should be doing by the year 2020. Now, we’re working backwards to achieving those goals, and we now have a fair and tangible vision and plan of where we want to be. We’ve had conversations about south campus with Fairmount Properties to help develop that area. Eventually, in a few years, that will be a vital bustling community that will serve all of the south area of Albuquerque. We’re in conversation around Innovate ABQ, which I think will bring economic development to a vital portion of central New Mexico. But most importantly, that will create jobs for graduates … and we create an opportunity to grow the New Mexico economy.”
DL: “You were talking about establishing the first college of public health in New Mexico during the past year. What is the latest update on that?”
RF: “We started the initiative on the college of public health. It’s a dialogue that includes the Health Sciences Center, the main campus and the Legislature, and it has received a lot of positive interest. The faculty is now working to create the college. That will be step one that will happen here in the next months. Step two is working with the Legislature to create more mechanisms for public health. We have a lot of steps happening in the next twelve months.”
DL: “You started to develop the new Responsibility Center Management model of budgeting for UNM during the past year. How is it being implemented right now?”
RF: “The RCM’s budget group has worked for a year and the reports are close to being finalized. As we talked about RCM, we decided to move toward a model called Result Oriented Management.
It’s going to focus more on year over year budget outcomes, so every unit would have a budget target, and that target would focus more on performance. All of our executive vice presidents and the chancellor are working on a conversation about that, and (the model) would have revenue targets and cost targets. I expect to have a very healthy conversation about that as we go into the fall. That would probably be one of the most important conversations of the next year.”
DL: “For the proposed Innovation Square that you were planning, you went to Florida to observe how the University of Florida maintains a business hub there. How would you apply what you have observed there to UNM?”
RF: “We’re pushing for the Innovation ABQ model. We’ve got a site that we have identified, and we are in conversations right now to finalize that. The mayor has committed $1.5 million, and we are having conversations with Bernalillo County to have them partner with this. We started meeting with business leaders to see what their interests are. We had conversations with Mesa del Sol to have some incubation sites there. I think we have it moving along very quickly.”
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DL: “A controversial topic during your administration’s first year was the number of sexual assaults on campus and campus safety. How do you plan to continue dealing with this problem in the future?”
RF: “Last year, what we did was carefully review our safety precautions. We are installing more lights on campus, and that is a very important single step. We immediately increased the number of safety patrols on campus, and with the increase, the incidents dropped down to zero. We’ve asked (UNMPD) Chief (Kathy) Guimond for a sexual assault response team, and with this group, we’ll make sure we have the best practices in the nation. We’re trying to make sure that we’re vigilant and effective.”
DL: “One thing that brought about the past student fee increases is the Athletics fee increase. Do you think the University handled the Athletics fee increases correctly?”
RF: “I do think we handled it correctly. We went through the fee review process and a number of groups came forward with great petitions. At the end of the day, though, the regents have the last vote on this process. There was some frustration that regents got the final vote. I can understand how others might be frustrated on the decision, but we have to recognize that that’s the way the rules are set down. However, student leaders and I have agreed that over the years, some things have gotten into the wrong bins in the fee process, and it’s time for us to go back and say, ‘Let’s look at this and make sure we classified everything correctly.’”
DL: “Tuition also increased last semester. What can you say about that?”
RF: “We are going to watch how the budget model works carefully, and we’re going to make a decision on how we’re going to proceed on tuition. We are very concerned about the costs of college for students. At the end of the day, the problem that we face is that universities have more money come out of their budgets to go off to other things like Medicaid. As that has happened, the money that used to be paid to us has been pushed on to students. If the University has to continue to operate, we’ll have to ask students to pay a higher portion of the tuition. We don’t like that any better than students.”
DL: “There’s a recent issue about governance at Health Sciences Center and at UNM. What can you say about that, and how would you work to change that image of UNM?”
RF: “This is a complex conversation that would take some time to work through. I don’t think it’s as big of a crisis as it’s been acted out over the last few weeks. We need to just slow down and have a little more discussion. It’s a regent and senior leadership conversation on how we recognize governance in the University. The regents have made decisions for now, and we could live with the model they put forward. But at the end of the day, it’s not the model I proposed, and I’ll continue to tell them what I think.”
DL: “In the next years of your administration, what other projects do you plan to accomplish?”
RF: “Our next set of goals right now is to continue to work on the UNM 2020 plan. We are still trying to operationalize the goals, and at any point in time, have a report card that anyone could look at and see what the presidents, vice presidents and operational leaders do and how we’re performing by quarter. Once we get that operating, we’ll be able to see where we’ll go on student success, revitalizing our financial operations, putting more international students here, and our other goals. That would be what drives us in the next few years.”
