A master chef. An architecture connoisseur. A Seinfeld enthusiast. A fun-loving, devoted, generous uncle.
While most people would strive to earn just one of these titles, for Eduardo Glandt, they are just a few facets of his life as dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
To those who know him best, Glandt isn't just the man who led Penn Engineering into the U.S. News and World Report's top 25 undergraduate engineering schools, orchestrated the planning for two new facilities and 17 faculty hires since he came on board in 1998.
According to his nieces, Mariela and Gisela Glandt, their uncle, who keeps a silver fold-up scooter in his Towne Building office, is simply "cool."
Surprising them with Broadway tickets, acting as impromptu curator at architecture museums and cooking up a perfect meat loaf, Glandt sweeps Mariela and Gisela off their feet every time he visits them in New York City.
"He's an amazing storyteller," Gisela says with affection and admiration in her voice. "He has the ability to keep a tempo, maintain a most important point, to keep his listeners engaged."
She adds that he never misses a beat when it comes to his family, sending postcards to his parents whenever he goes on a business trip and remembering even their most distant relatives' birthdays.
A Penn graduate, Mariela was the direct beneficiary of her uncle's devotion and brains when he helped her with all of her chemistry problems, "as if he had nothing else to do."
She says that her uncle is a "generous Renaissance man."
"He knows New York better than most New Yorkers," she says, adding that he has memorized every line in Seinfeld and finishes The New York Times' crossword puzzle every Sunday.
All this energy and expertise must have been clear to the dean's search committee five years ago when they chose Glandt as interim dean and then asked him to stay on permanently.
With experience as department chairman under his belt, Glandt thought the secret to his job would be that there was no secret.
"I walked into this office and this desk very casually," he says. "I didn't realize the scope of what a dean does."
In addition to being responsible for fundraising, making personnel and administrative decisions and serving as the school's spokesman and representative, Glandt meets with faculty and students regularly during what he calls his "dentist office" hours.
"I'm never not here," he says, adding that on this week's trip to San Francisco, he has meetings set up from breakfast until midnight each day. "This is a 24/7 job."
While he misses teaching and being fully engaged in his research, Glandt says that -- in addition to granting him the collection of artifacts from Penn's groundbreaking ENIAC computer, which he stores on his bookshelf -- being a dean has opened many doors for him.
"This is a great job because it puts you in touch with hundreds and hundreds of people you wouldn't have known otherwise," he says. "You have to represent the school for each of them. I enjoy that, I like to talk and talk."
A man who is always speaking in similes and can recite poems by heart, Glandt gives heartfelt and amusing talks to his staff, the Board of Overseers and the Engineering community regularly.
"I'm best speaking from the heart," he says, adding that he only writes out a formal planned speech for "major, major occasions."
For Beth Winkelstein, a bioengineering professor whom Glandt recruited last year, the dean's ability to articulate his opinions eloquently and humorously has been a source of inspiration.
"He has a vision as a leader that he is able to convey to us as faculty members in a very obvious and convincing" way, she says.
Chairman of the Computer and Information Science Department Fernando Pereira says that Glandt's trick is his subtlety.
"He has very strong opinions on academic matters... [but] he doesn't impose them on you," Pereira says. "Rather, he encourages movement in the right direction."
He treats the faculty as equals, asking the department chairs for advice on what to tell a group of aspiring professors about the road to tenureship and turning down the thermostat himself at an overheated administrative committee meeting.
Moreover, crediting Glandt's integrity, dedication, enthusiasm and energy, Deputy Dean for Research Vijay Kumar wrote in an e-mail that Glandt has made unprecedented contributions to the school during his tenure.
"We have had the first significant investments in terms of new facilities and in infrastructure -- two new buildings, two renovated floors -- and in terms of new faculty hires since I joined Penn in 1987," he wrote.
Shirley Aderman, Glandt's executive assistant for faculty affairs, agrees that recruitment is one of Glandt's strengths.
"His ability to attract magnificent faculty to the school is wonderful, and he believes strongly... that you can't have a strong school if the faculty's not magnificent," Aderman says.
Pereira says that Glandt works "magic" in recruiting faculty, explaining that the dean was the reason he chose Penn three years ago when he transitioned to academia.
In addition to being a "true gentleman," Glandt helped Pereira find the best local school for his daughter and put him into contact with faculty in the medical school and the biology department.
Even Engineering undergraduates notice Glandt's genuine devotion to the school.
"He really cares about what the students' needs are and what the students' concerns are," says Engineering senior Jason Bethala, president of the Engineering Dean's Advisory Board.
"He has a lot of trust in the students," says Engineering senior Alison Capponi, adding that he is always working on projects, such as the school's new cyber cafe, to build a sense of community.
Each semester, Glandt scoops ice cream at an undergraduate social, talking to students and joking with them.
Capponi, who is vice president of the Advisory Board, says that one of the things Glandt does best is give students personal attention.
"Every time I see him in the hall, he'll stop and say, 'Hi, Alison, how are you?'"
Though she wouldn't put anything past Glandt, she is impressed that the dean of one of the best engineering schools in the country has taken the care to call her by her first name.
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