Editor’s Note: Penn State President Eric J. Barron’s interview has been edited for clarity and length.
In the first part of a three-part interview, retiring Penn State President Eric J. Barron discusses how he got involved in teaching, what led him to become a university president, what sets Penn State’s interdisciplinary research apart from other institutions, and the genesis of Invent Penn State.
Like many university presidents, your career began with teaching. Can you talk about when you first knew you would go into teaching?
At a very early age, I wanted to be a geologist and I told my parents in the third grade I was going to be a geology professor. And in fact, I became a geology professor.
At what point did a love for teaching really develop?
As an early grad student, I had a faculty member who had to go on extended travel and asked me to take his class. It was the first class I was responsible for. When he came back, I didn’t want to give the class back. It was mine. It wasn’t his any longer — it was mine!
What is it about teaching that you find so rewarding?
It’s this notion that you teach something and everybody gets it and enjoys it. It made me feel like, “OK, I can be a good teacher.” I ended up at Penn State, preferentially teaching science classes to people who thought it was horrible that they had to take a science requirement. I loved the fact that I could get them to enjoy it and learn something in the process.
As your career advanced, you became a dean and then a university president. But throughout that, you continued teaching. Why?
I had to really think about this when I first became dean [of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences]. I asked a lot of other deans, “What did you give up?” A lot of them gave up research, and they all gave up teaching. I thought to myself, “I don’t want to give up the classroom.” I’ve always loved my interactions with students, and I think I learn as much from them as they do from me. I made it a priority to continue teaching, even as I became a dean and eventually a university president. So, I never gave it up.
On the subject of students, you pushed to add a student trustee to the University’s Board of Trustees. Why?
The students bring a different perspective, while we sit there thinking we know what’s best for everybody. We have wisdom. We have experience. But they’re different than we are. It’s part of the reason why I was motivated to push for a student trustee.
At one point, you had an opportunity to go back to teaching full time and you were faced with a decision.
In my third year of being a dean, I had an offer of an endowed chair at a very nice university that would have taken me back to just teaching and research. I decided I had to make up my mind on what career path I was going to take. Am I going to take the path where I have a certain amount of pleasure in helping other people be successful, or am I going to do what I love, which is a classroom and my own laboratory? I decided I liked being the leader of a group and a college. I turned to Molly and said, “You know, if I’m going to take this tact, I have to shoot for the top. There’s no point in taking a job because you think it’s the end point in your life.” She said, “OK, that makes sense.”
So your desire to become a university president is what led you to leave Penn State?
I wasn’t interested in leaving Penn State, but now I had a career objective to be president. The University was very stable with the provost and president at the time, so I knew I was not going to move up from dean at Penn State. I needed to go someplace else.
You became the president at Florida State and, with an ironic twist, you turned down the opportunity to return to Penn State. Why?
I never thought I would go back. Penn State called a couple of times and I said, “No, I can’t leave. I’m in the middle of turning Florida State around.”
So what changed your mind about coming back?
[Then Penn State President] Rodney Erickson called me and said, “Will you do me a favor?” I said, “Rod, for you, I’ll do you a favor.” He said, “Talk to my board chair.” I talked to the board chair. [Penn State Board of Trustees Chair Keith Masser] said, “We want you to be president. We want you to decide whether to interview or not. But if you are going to interview, be prepared to accept the job because we want you to come to Penn State.”
What ultimately made you decide to take the post as Penn State president?
I came back to interview and was listening to the capital campaign celebration. And this young man stands up — I accused them of planting this because they wanted the student to say it — but this student stands up and said, “At Penn State, every day I get up and I think about, what am I going to do more, and what am I going to do better?” I turned to Molly and I said, “That is exactly why we came back.”
As president, one of your major focuses has been to promote the University’s rich tradition of interdisciplinary research. What sets Penn State apart from other institutions?
If you’re motivated to solve big problems, you don’t have a choice. I actually interviewed at a couple of schools where it was really your solo achievements that made a difference. They saw a person who was an incredible genius who was going to make some great discovery. But if you look at the problems that society is facing, it’s really hard to see a problem that is a solo problem these days. It requires partnerships. If you think about those problems in any great detail, you will come to the conclusion that you need a team.
What makes Penn State special in interdisciplinary research?
Penn State consciously thought about how to remove the barriers. There are really interesting barriers to interdisciplinary work. One is how you count. This sounds silly, but if I have someone crossing into a different discipline and they’re writing a proposal with someone in a different discipline, which academic college gets credit? Which department gets credit? The same goes for individuals who hold joint appointments and how much work they do for each department. This university has a deliberate strategy so the bean counting and who’s on first doesn’t matter.
In building upon Penn State’s research, you created Invent Penn State, which has become one of your signature initiatives.
I’ve watched so many faculty members discover something truly exciting and they could have taken it to the marketplace and made a fortune. But they keep going on their research and they don’t stop. So I had this notion that a powerful research unit should have a powerful tech transfer program.
But Invent Penn State is more than just tech transfer, right?
There needed to be not just tech transfer, but a team of people that would help do this. I wanted a place where people could go and talk about their ideas and be able to get help with them from other entrepreneurs. And I knew there was a venture capital problem, getting people to invest. I wanted to do something that was end-to-end, and I hit upon this LaunchBox idea.
When you introduced the concept of the LaunchBoxes, what did you expect?
I thought we’d have six. Now we have 21 LaunchBoxes across the state, multiple competitions, the Summer Founders program. I can’t tell you it was my vision that exploded. It exploded because of the people who wanted to work on it. There’s lots of young people with fascinating ideas. You watch how eager the students were to do it. It just grew and grew and grew.
It must be incredibly satisfying to see Invent Penn State grow so quickly in a short period of time.
That has all to do with the people that took the idea and ran with it. I just said, “I want it to be end-to-end — don’t think just tech transfer.” I wanted students to leave here to say, “Penn State helped me build my company.” And this work to promote and support entrepreneurship in our communities as part of our land-grant mission made Invent Penn State even sweeter.