I read with great interest the staff editorial on Judith Rodin's tenure as president ("A long, successful tenure at the top," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 9/12/03). While I thought the editorial was quite positive and ended with the note, "There is no question that Penn is a much better place for having had Judith Rodin serve as president for the past decade," I wanted to add some perspective to the assessment offered in this column.
My perspective is aided by a number of things. I have had the opportunity to see four people fill the president's shoes during my 40-year association with Penn. I have also had the opportunity to get to know some of the most capable leaders of business, nonprofit and government organizations in the world. Of course, I have also had the chance to work closely with Judy Rodin for the past 10 years.
The phrase "Judy has left an important legacy" doesn't quite capture the full extent of her contributions to Penn. Simply stated, Judy Rodin is one of the finest executives I have ever met, bar none. The challenge of running a major university with its various constituencies, differing sets of rules, competitive pressures and financial challenges is a role few executives of major corporations could fulfill.
I have seen Judy mold our academic programs, our physical plant, our assessment of what we are and our vision of what we can be. She has moved tenured, embedded, but substandard faculty and staff out of the way to make room for the people and the leaders we need. She has motivated and charmed an avalanche of fundraising, and she has inspired an academic environment and a focus on academic standards that now place Penn among the most elite universities in the world.
It may be true, as the editorial suggests, that Judy has not had as much time as she would have enjoyed to be available to students. From our many conversations, I know the enormous passion she has not just for the student body, but for the individual students she has come to know. I know she treasures her time as a teacher and as a mentor; but at the end of the day, Judy does an 18-hour-a-day job and she has no choice but to delegate those things that can be delegated and do those things that simply no one else could ever do. If she, indeed, doesn't spend "enough" time with students (and I'm not sure what enough is), I have no doubt it is one of her own great frustrations.
Students at Penn today, regardless of whether they are newly minted freshmen or worldly seniors, simply lack a complete perspective on the Judy Rodin legacy. My guess is we will never have another president of her caliber, but that is OK. Leaders like Judy are too rare, and if Penn has one per century, we can consider ourselves lucky. Most universities, most organizations, never have any.
The task for the next president will be to take an exceptional university and make it even better -- a challenge but a very doable assignment. The task Judy Rodin faced was to take a university with an exceptional heritage, but also with a weak infrastructure, poor financials and a declining momentum, and turn that around -- and that was an assignment few would have faced and even fewer could have accomplished.
I would certainly hope that Judy Rodin's place in Penn history, as the finest president we have had since Benjamin Franklin, will be secure and fully recognized by all the students, faculty and alumni who have had the pleasure of seeing her in action. The closer you get to Judy, the more you appreciate how totally remarkable she is.
Judy, on behalf of fellow trustees, alumni and future alumni, we can never thank you enough.
David Pottruck is the chief executive officer of the Charles Schwab Corporation and a trustee of the University. He graduated from the College in 1970 and from Wharton in 1972.
