With ambitious initiatives on his agenda for 2008, Wharton Dean Thomas Robertson has a busy year ahead.
Last Friday at the Wharton Undergraduate Leadership Forum, Robertson laid out his core strategies for the upcoming years, which include a Wharton campus expansion plan, the fundraising campaign and faculty recruitment.
He added that nurturing and building awareness of the Wharton brand is another important initiative because current students and alumni depend on the school to further enhance its reputation.
After the speech, Robertson sat down with The Daily Pennsylvanian to share his plans for the new year, his thoughts on the capital campaign and why fundraising is a key objective for Wharton.
Daily Pennsylvanian: What are your goals for the year 2008?
Thomas Robertson: The first goal was to put together a senior management team. We have now done that.
Goal number two was that I had to get out and meet the members of the Wharton community and so I've spent a lot of time with students, student groups, alumni groups and with our boards and our faculty.
The third goal is [to be] actively involved in fundraising.
DP: What are some of your global initiatives?
TR: We are involved with a lot of other business schools [around the world] that we've actually helped create. We have faculty committees working on what our international strategy should be . And next week we have a meeting with Goldman Sachs where they are interested in funding research regarding women entrepreneurs in developing countries.
DP: What role do you think Wharton plays in President Gutmann's capital campaign?
TR: We do play a very important role. Firstly we have a share of that campaign. Wharton will raise $550 million out of the $3.5 billion. A good number of gifts will come to Wharton from Wharton alumni and a good number of gifts will come from Wharton alumni to other parts of the University.
We are involved in raising money for our own needs and raising money for the University as a whole. We have a number of joint programs which have to be funded . so we are deeply involved [with other schools] in terms of curriculum and these programs will all require additional funding.
DP: How important is this capital campaign to Wharton?
TR: We are underfunded per student versus other major business schools. We are so large that our endowment per student is quite low compared to Harvard, Stanford, Chicago - just as examples. We are high in scale and we are broad in scope. We do an awful lot of things for an awful lot of students. So the endowment is very important.
We are low on the amount of financial aid we'd like to have. We'd like more discretionary funds to make sure we hire and keep the best faculty. We'd like more funding for various kinds of research projects. So this campaign is really very important.
