The incoming President of the University of Wyoming says he will be spending the next few months taking a close look at how he can help U-W advance. Doctor Robert Sternberg says one of his first objectives will be to travel the state and receive public feedback about the University.
Sternberg says his fresh perspective can bring new ideas to U-W, but he also plans to lean on people familiar with the University as he develops his ideas. He says this was a successful approach at Oklahoma State University where he is the Provost.
“I acquired advisors and people who worked with me as a team who had much greater experience in the state and who had greater tacit knowledge. And so by combining myself from the outside with advisors and team members from the inside, hopefully we got the best of both worlds.”
When Sternberg takes over at UW this summer he will likely have to consider cutting the University budget. That’s because legislators have asked agencies to prepare another round of budget cuts. Sternberg is familiar with the exercise and he says it will allow the University to better understand what it is good at and what it might do differently.
“Time just to think about the return on investment and whether they should be merged with something or even discontinued. And sometimes it can be an opportunity actually to strengthen the areas in which are most interested by making them more efficient.”
Sternberg says raising University salaries will also be important.