HIGH PROFILE: UA Chancellor Joe Steinmetz not afraid to make big decisions

“The cost of education is slowly — maybe quickly — getting out of the reach of average families. Not to mention those that are struggling. … I don’t want this to become a college that only the elite can attend.”
“The cost of education is slowly — maybe quickly — getting out of the reach of average families. Not to mention those that are struggling. … I don’t want this to become a college that only the elite can attend.”

FAYETTEVILLE -- Joe Steinmetz was 23 months into his job as University of Arkansas chancellor when many state residents heard his name for the first time. That was in November, when Steinmetz fired Athletic Director Jeff Long as a prelude to the dismissal of football Coach Bret Bielema.

In Arkansas, news from The Hill doesn't get much bigger than that, even when the football program is down. Maybe especially then.

By early December, replacements were in place: former University of Houston Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek and former Southern Methodist University Coach Chad Morris. Although many people influenced the process, Steinmetz readily takes responsibility for the final decisions. And like the research scientist he was for most of his career, he knows how he'll measure this real-life experiment.

"What's the win-loss record?" Steinmetz says. "That's the obvious one. Are the student athletes playing hard? Are fans showing up for the games and is there interest in the program. But we're also interested in the academic side for the student athletes. Are they good citizens of the university and of the city and state?"

"These are easy things to measure, actually."

But not easy to achieve. A former boss says it's not surprising that Steinmetz appears comfortable with his moves.

"He's very smart, he understands academic life, he's not afraid to make decisions, and he's very calm in the face of the storm," says E. Gordon Gee, former president of Ohio State University.

ROCK STAR?

That it took a sports story to get Steinmetz noticed wasn't due to a lack of activity on his part. Steinmetz is more cerebral than flashy, but the well-traveled academic dove into the job of leading the state's flagship university with energy.

Steinmetz started off by meeting with all 75 UA academic departments and many business leaders throughout Northwest Arkansas. Steinmetz, his wife, Sandy, and some fellow administrators then embarked on a five-day, 12-city tour of the state. Before his first year was up, Steinmetz released a list of "eight guiding priorities" for UA, including advances in student retention and graduation rates, advanced research and diversity.

Steinmetz had never been to Arkansas prior to his interview for the job. However, Fayetteville feels familiar to a man who has spent most of his career in college towns such as Bloomington, Ind., and Lawrence, Kan. He starts his days with a 5:45 a.m. workout at the university's recreation center and enjoys ending it with Sandy at one of the local microbreweries -- when they're not engaged in the socializing and networking required for the post.

"It's a time-consuming job, but we knew that coming in," says Sandy, a retired special education teacher. "If we didn't like it, we shouldn't be in this job."

Both Steinmetzes grew up in Marine City, Mich., just outside Detroit. They've known each other since the first grade, started dating at 16 and have been married 42 years. One of their sons followed his dad into the field of neuroscience, working for the National Institutes of Health in Washington; the other works with college students with learning disabilities in Bloomington.

Steinmetz says his father, a World War II veteran who opened an insurance agency that he worked in until he was 91, was his first role model. He instilled "the thought of making sure you finish what you start. My dad was somebody who took on a lot of community service work along with his own work. He always gave his best effort. Also, he was a deliberative, calm individual. I think that kind of model helped me in my administrative work."

Steinmetz studied the piano and organ growing up, giving serious thought to a career in music. Deciding he wasn't quite gifted enough for a career as a performer, he enrolled at Ferris State University to become a pharmacist. He discovered that "what really interested me was the discovery that went on in the sciences." He transferred to Central Michigan University, earning bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology, then a doctorate from Ohio University.

Steinmetz continued playing music for some time, helping pay for college as part of a '70s classic rock cover band.

"I always say I'm a rock star," Steinmetz says. "My wife debates that. She says I was adequate."

BRAINY RESEARCH

Steinmetz landed a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at Stanford University and stayed two more years as a research associate. Although appreciating the chance to devote all his time to research at one of the nation's top universities, he says, "There was something about teaching as well and going to a state university that valued both that was appealing to me."

Steinmetz found the opportunity in Bloomington, where he worked from 1987 to 2006, teaching and researching the brain. Indiana University is home to the oldest continuing psychology lab in the United States and counts pioneers such as B.F. Skinner among its researchers.

For two decades, Steinmetz's research focused on how neurons in the brain change during learning. Steinmetz used what he calls a very simple conditioning experiment on animal and human subjects, presenting a tone shortly before blowing a puff of air into their eyes and tracking the effect on neurons as the subjects learned to anticipate the puff. The research led to a better grasp of how neurons change during more complex learning tasks. Steinmetz's research also turned out to have value in research into autism and fetal alcohol syndrome.

In 1996, Steinmetz received one of two Troland Research Awards given each year by the National Academy of Sciences to a researcher under the age of 40 in experimental psychology. A lengthy list of awards, research grants and papers, appointments to boards and professional societies followed. He added administrative duties to his work as department chair and then an executive associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, training two dozen grad students and postdoctoral fellows along the way.

CONSENSUS BUILDER

In 2006, Steinmetz moved his laboratory to the University of Kansas, where he took over as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Three years later, he was lured to The Ohio State University -- one of the five largest schools in the country -- to become dean of arts and science, vice provost and professor of neuroscience.

Steinmetz's first job was to consolidate five independent colleges of arts and sciences -- the arts, biological sciences, humanities, mathematical and physical sciences, and social and behavior sciences -- into one that became the biggest of its kind in the country. Steinmetz says the move was driven by the trend toward inter-disciplinary collaboration in the academic world.

Steinmetz says his skills as a consensus builder came in handy. In a university, he says, "Nothing happens by fiat. You may think it's a good idea, but it's important that everybody understands and goes along with it. Universities are not corporations."

It was also at Ohio State that Steinmetz became a full-time administrator -- a decision Sandy says wasn't easy.

"He loved research and working with students. Once he started in administration, he tried to do both. But when he got to Ohio State, the job was way too much."

ONE STUDENT AT A TIME

Steinmetz is the sixth chancellor in UA's history and the only one without a previous connection to the school. Steinmetz says he was hired with several expectations. One is making sure the school can manage growth. Enrollment grew by about 10,000 students during the previous decade under Steinmetz's predecessor, G. David Gearhart. UA leaders believe it can handle about 10 percent more students, which would bring the total to 30,000. Some supporters are focused on UA cracking the 50 public universities as ranked by U.S. News and World Report in a widely watched annual assessment. In 2017, it sat at No. 63.

"I don't consider it something magical about being in the top 50," Steinmetz says. "I just want us to continue to improve."

His top priorities are raising the school's retention and graduation rates, which currently are 81 percent and 64 percent. Steinmetz wants the retention rate to hit 90 percent and the graduation rate 70-75 percent.

He created an Office of Student Success and started the Arkansas STEP program, which provides 300 freshmen with small one-time grants, financial counseling and mentoring to help keep them in school. Beyond that, he has encouraged all UA faculty and staff to take a "one-student-at-a-time" approach.

"Find out what issues students are having and provide help," he says. "Often, it's cultural and social skills. There's a tendency to group students together like they all have the same issues. That's not true."

Steinmetz says UA does a good job of recruiting students from Northwest Arkansas, Little Rock and Dallas, but has not been effective at pulling them from the Delta and southern Arkansas. At the Helena stop on Steinmetz's bus tour, he announced the $2.4 million Accelerated Student Achievement Program, funded by the Walton Family Foundation, which targets low-income students in 26 counties with help getting into and staying in UA.

"We have to make sure those students understand the opportunities that are here," Steinmetz, who was a first-generation college student himself, says. "I think right now many of those students do not think of us as an option."

Steinmetz took over as UA president at a time when concern over college tuition has been building nationwide. He's concerned, too. He concurred with Gov. Asa Hutchinson's request that tuition increases not exceed the Consumer Price Index of about 3 percent during his first two years at Arkansas, and also endorsed Hutchinson's recent call for no increase at all in 2018.

"The cost of education is slowly -- maybe quickly -- getting out of the reach of average families," Steinmetz says. "Not to mention those that are struggling."

As a result, he adds, "We'll have to find other ways to find revenue. I don't want this to become a college that only the elite can attend."

One of Steinmetz's first moves was directing UA's administrative units to cut their spending by 1 percent for each of the next three years, freeing up about $2 million a year.

Although UA ranks high as a public research institution by some measures, Steinmetz found it "lagging" somewhat in that regard, too. Last spring, he created a $1 million Chancellor's Discovery, Creativity, Innovation and Collaboration fund, designed to award 10 to 15 research grants a year. The money came from the athletic department's share of television revenues, with Long's support. While a slice of $1 million isn't a huge sum in the research world, Steinmetz says, the hope is that it will lead to larger grants from sources such as the National Institutes of Health. "This is a way to kickstart ideas that faculty have."

"We're strong in areas like food science," he says. "We have good potential in data analytics and several areas of engineering. Education policy is a huge area, and the areas of arts and humanities are very strong in scholarship and research. I think we have plenty of areas to build on."

In August, that emphasis got a huge boost when the Walton Family Foundation made a $120 million gift to establish a school of art at UA, the largest such gift ever given to an American university. Research will be an emphasis on art education and art of the Americas will be one focus on the school, which is to be created over the next five years. Steinmetz predicted the school will become "an international hub for the study of art."

HOG BALL

None of the eight guiding principles Steinmetz announced in his first year on the job involve sports. Nevertheless, he knows that some Arkansans will only think of him again next fall when the Razorbacks take the field under a new football coach. They'll look back on Steinmetz's decision, just as he does on his decision to come to Arkansas two years ago.

"Every day I come to work I'm just thankful I'm here. It's a great place to be. It's a place where I think I can make a difference."

photo

NWA Democrat-Gazette

“I always say I’m a rock star. My wife debates that. She says I was adequate.”

Self-Portrait

Joseph Edward Steinmetz

Date and place of birth: Jan. 6, 1955, Marine City, Mich.

What I tell incoming freshmen: Do not be afraid to reach out to someone if you need help. Everyone is here to make sure you succeed.

My favorite teacher: Dr. Michael Kent, Central Michigan University. He introduced me to the field of physiological psychology, now known as behavioral neuroscience.

I didn’t realize Arkansas: Was such a close-knit state where everyone seems to know everyone else. It’s an incredibly personable place.

The human brain fascinates me because: There is so much we don’t know about how it functions. For example, we all have memories of time, places and events but we know very little about how our brain acquires, stores and then retrieves those memories.

I relax by: Reading fiction and drinking craft beer, preferably at the same time.

My favorite musician: Aretha Franklin. I don’t know anyone else who can deliver a song with such passion and soul.

I want to visit: Greece — great history and scenery in the same place.

Guests at my fantasy dinner party: There is a long list of scientists I would love to talk to at a dinner party, especially early pioneers of neuroscience. But, in all honesty, I would most like a dinner party with my late mother and four grandparents — there is so much I would like to talk to them about given where I am at this point in time.

Menu at that party: My Grandma Gould’s broasted chicken, mashed potatoes, beans, and pineapple upside-down cake. And beer, of course.

One word to describe me: Analytic

High Profile on 01/21/2018

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