He was officially named Northwestern’s next president during winter break, but Morton Schapiro said he still has much to learn about the school.
“I know squat about Northwestern, but I think I’ll learn over a couple of years; otherwise, we’re all in trouble,” the current Williams College president said, laughing.
On Thursday, Schapiro sat down with student media representatives to discuss his experience at Williams College, his vision for his presidency at Northwestern and the promise made to his youngest daughter, Rachel.
“Rachel was a little skeptical about moving until we said that she can get a puppy,” he said. “We’re doing the Obama thing.”
Schapiro expressed his excitement at the prospect of moving to Evanston in late June and beginning his new career at Northwestern.
“I think it’s a great location, but it’s mainly about Northwestern itself,” he said. “It’s a fantastic school. It’s one of those rare research universities that really focuses on undergrads as well as the other things they do, and I could never be at a place that didn’t do that.”
Schapiro said that he really enjoyed visiting Northwestern’s Evanston and Chicago campuses this past week, noting that he particularly liked interacting with students.
“All of it was fun, but the most fun by far was eating in the dorm, doing the fireside,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I learned so much just spending a couple of hours with the undergrads about how much they love it here, how much they aspire to even more than they get, and how we might go about trying to meet their wildest dreams. That was great, and my whole presidency, I’m going to be doing that.”
Schapiro added that he intended to teach while in office, something he enjoys doing at Williams.
“I’ve been president [of Williams] for 18 semesters, so I’ve taught 17 of these 18 semesters. I took one semester off and I was miserable,” he said. “I love [teaching], and I think the students seem to like it, but you know, in a selfish way, I like it. It’s the thing I look forward to every morning.”
One of the things Schapiro was known for at Williams was his closeness to his students.
“People always say ‘Oh, Morty knows everybody’s name.’ That’s absolutely a myth. Out of a graduating class of 520, I don’t know them all, but I know a lot of them,” Schapiro said. “We really get to know students because they’re over at our house for dinner all the time, and we’re sitting around having a drink, eating or just schmoozing, my wife and I just jumping from table to table.”
He acknowledged that the higher number of undergraduates at Northwestern could make it a bit more difficult for him to interact with a large portion of them.
“It’s going to be a little hard to get adjusted to,” he said. “We’re trying to figure out with the president’s house, how to do the kind of entertaining that we do in Williamstown, where we literally have thousands of students over for dinner. We have students at our house constantly.”
Although Schapiro appeared to be looking forward to leaving for Northwestern, he said he still had trouble thinking of Northwestern as ‘us.’
“It’s going to be hard for me psychologically to extricate myself from Williams. It’s a great, great school,” he said. “I’ve been a professor for 30 years. Twenty of those years have been at Williams College, so it’s near and dear to my heart.”
As an expert on the economics of higher education, Schapiro underlined his support for Northwestern’s current financial aid policy, citing the importance of need-blind admission in times of financial turmoil.
“The scary thing is that there aren’t that many of the 1,500 private colleges and universities in the country who admit all their domestic students on a need-blind basis and meet full need,” he said. “It takes tremendous resources and the will to do it. And Northwestern is proudly one of the members of the couple of dozen institutions who do meet full need and admit on a need-blind basis, and we’re not going to change that.”
Schapiro added that he was looking forward to working on a fundraising campaign during his presidency.
“We’re going to get the community together, we’re going to figure out a plan for the next decade…and then go out and do the campaign and raise it. Henry [Bienen] is incredibly effective and a tireless fundraiser. I can’t promise to be Henry Bienen in any regard, but I love raising money, I really do,” he said.
When asked what would be his biggest challenge at Northwestern, Schapiro showed optimism.
“When people asked me that nine years ago at Williams, I said complacency,” he said. “I don’t know yet what my biggest challenge is going to be at Northwestern…[But] this place isn’t complacent. It’s great, and it’s going to be even better.”