New U of M president lays out priorities for teaching hospital and enrollment numbers

The University of Minnesota’s new president Dr. Rebecca Cunningham is back from her first Board of Regents retreat after officially taking office on July 1.

She gave a glimpse into her top priorities as she takes the helm. Among them: the university’s teaching hospital, campus protests against the war in Gaza and enrollment declines.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Click on the audio player above to hear the interview.

What’s at the top of your agenda?

Some of the things I’m focusing on coming out of the board’s retreat and out of the board last week: I’m going to be spending and inviting the public and our community here at the university and our alumni community to focus on strategic planning and visioning with us over this next year — how we collectively imagine what the future is of our university here for the state of Minnesota.

We’ll talk probably more in a minute about health. I’m really interested also in the university’s fabulous ability to support the health of Minnesotans. And one of the other priorities that we’ll all have this next year is how we focus on the talented faculty and staff we have here, and being a premier workplace for those folks in the years to come.

I understand your background is in emergency room medicine. How important is it for the University of Minnesota to have control of its teaching hospital?

As I’ll be talking about over these next months, it’s critically important that the university is able to govern the priorities of our medical mission and our health care mission to best serve the state of Minnesota.

We do a tremendous amount of service to the state in terms of our workforce development. Minnesotans already live healthier because of our U of M grads and our employees — the 70 percent of the doctors, pharmacists, dentists, nurses and staff that keep our clinics and hospitals running across the state that we train.

So, governing that mission, being able to manage those priorities with our public mission in mind is critical.

Where should the university stand on calls for divestment?

The board is entertaining that question and many of you saw the discussion at the board meeting last week was around if the university should have a position of institutional neutrality or not around divestment. It’s too early for me to say where the board will land on that. But it’s obviously an important conversation going forward.

I will say, as former interim president Jeff Ettinger said, on whole, when it comes to complicated issues of our time, the university’s place is to be an arena for that kind of conversation — for good dialogue, for civic dialogue, for nonviolent dialogue — more than being a participant.

Like many other institutions, the U of M is dealing with enrollment decline. What’s your plan to deal with that and the incumbent loss of revenue there?

Well, this is a national problem. Every university, big and small, across the country is going to be thinking and working on their enrollment.

I think one of the top ways I’ll be addressing it is how we think about our system as a whole and how we work on the understanding of what the distinct opportunities are for students across those campuses.

There’s also opportunities for us to be making sure that we’re accessible and available for students in Minnesota no matter when in their lifespan they consider the U of M an option for them.

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