Michael Lovell, Ph.D., has officially transferred out of the Office of the Chancellor on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s campus and into Zilber Hall as the new president of Marquette University.
BizTimes reporter Erica Breunlin recently conducted a one-on-one interview with Lovell to discuss his priorities for Marquette. Among them is a drive to develop a technology transfer organization with other area institutions so they can step up as technology leaders and stimulate regional economic growth. The following are excerpts from that interview.
BIZTIMES: From your early observations, is there anything that Marquette could do a better job of?
LOVELL: “I do think that…one of the things that Marquette has not done a great job (of) is really supporting research and particularly research that generates intellectual property. And so I think there could be a great case made and maybe we can develop for all the academic institutions here in Milwaukee kind of a regional (technology) transfer organization. If you look at any region in the country that is doing well economically, there are research universities that are driving that growth…I’m not sure that we have, not just Marquette but particularly all institutions…an infrastructure that will help support driving that growth. I think that as a region, that’s something that I want to certainly have a conversation (about), and I think you bring Children’s Hospital, the Medical College, Marquette, MSOE (Milwaukee School of Engineering), UWM together and say, ‘Listen, are we really doing the best job that we can in ensuring that we are supporting the growth of this region?’ I would like to have the conversation with others to see if that is something that makes sense because it’s really our responsibility as academic institutions to not only give back on the social side but also give back on really technology leadership as well.”
BIZTIMES: Do you see Marquette in particular as a technology leader?
LOVELL: “I think that we can be a greater leader than we have up to this point, and I just will say that I’m not sure that we have the infrastructure and the processes in place to take advantage of some of the great research and findings that our faculty and students are making in the labs.”
BIZTIMES: One of your legacies at UWM was your establishment of partnerships with the broader business community. Do you plan to bring that here to Marquette – expand on current partnerships and build new ones?
LOVELL: “Partnering is one way that you can make a greater impact, and we have organizations with missions that align (and so) the pie gets bigger because you can do greater things when you work with others. And so I really believe that partnering with the business community, for example, will give students and our faculty opportunities that they otherwise wouldn’t have. I think about many of the major initiatives going on in Milwaukee – I want to put Marquette at the forefront of some of the activities going on – things around water, energy, bioengineering, biotechnology and innovation and entrepreneurship. These are all things that I see as being assets and really growing in Milwaukee, and we want to be at the table and really be an important part of where Milwaukee is going into the future. On the flip side of that, there’s also partnering with the other academic institutions here. I think I’m going to be in a unique position to create partnerships between academic institutions that no one else has even thought of before because I’ll know the academic institutions so well.”
BIZTIMES: Can you reference any specific companies that you are really interested in building a bridge with?
LOVELL: “All the major companies in Milwaukee. At UWM…Johnson Controls was really our ideal partnership, but you could go down the line. You think about GE Healthcare, Rockwell Automation, We Energies, Kohler…all the major companies are certainly organizations that we want to closely partner with.”
BIZTIMES: What are your priorities this summer in your own development as president of this university?
LOVELL: “The biggest thing that I’m doing now is I’m learning – I’m meeting with all the senior leadership and learning what the opportunities are from their perspective and what the challenges are going forward. And one of the great things that I see coming onboard over the last few weeks and meeting the leaders of this campus is there are a lot of great ideas that people have, but they’re just waiting to implement. So there’s kind of a pent up energy as we’ve kind of gone through transitions of leadership people have been kind of waiting for somebody to come onboard so that they can start to execute. So I think that over the next year, I’m just going to be able to come in and help these people with all these great ideas, just go ahead and implement them, that there’s going to be some really remarkable things happening on the campus.”
BIZTIMES: How will you work to ensure that the university has more long-term stability and leadership?
LOVELL: “One of the most important things I’m going to do early on is I’m going to bring in a leadership team. So if you look at the campus now, we have three very high-level positions that are open, most specifically the provost, which is really the person who primarily runs the campus in the academic side of the house. And so bringing in a provost, a new dean in the business school…that’s extremely important for making sure that we’re engaged with the business community, and then finally the new athletic director, which…if you know Marquette well, you know how important athletics is to our market and the way we engage with our students and our alumni.”
BIZTIMES: When do you envision that you will have those three high-level positions filled?
LOVELL: “This summer we will launch the search for the athletic director because the (selection) doesn’t necessarily follow the academic cycle whereas the provost would be the next in line once everyone gets back to campus because there’ll be so many faculty members on that committee that would need the fall start. But then within maybe four or six weeks then (we would) launch the business dean search. So hopefully we would have the athletic director first, the provost in place and then the new provost would be…part of the selection of the business dean.”
BIZTIMES: Prior to your tenure, in February, the university eliminated 105 positions. The majority of eliminations were made from future employee turnover, retirements and attrition, but 25 employees’ jobs were cut as well. How is the university recovering from those eliminations, and do you envision bringing any of those positions back?
LOVELL: “I think one of the reasons that those positions were cut (was) keeping the cost of education down for the students. One of the things we struggle with as a campus, like many campuses, is how do we make sure that the college is affordable and accessible to particularly first-generation students, which Marquette was founded for first-generation students. So I think when we think about what happened with the cuts that the campus was rightsizing itself to make sure that we were able to offer the quality education at an affordable price. Now in terms of bringing some of those positions back, I don’t envision at least in the near-term future us bringing any positions back. Maybe there’s a couple that we would bring back, but I don’t think (we’d bring) a lot back. But over time…one of the things that we need to do…is diversify our revenue streams and bring in new revenues. For example, one way to do that is through research. Research brings overhead money back into campus that we can reinvest into other areas that can help the campus grow.”
BIZTIMES: Is growing Marquette’s revenue streams one of the primary ways that you will work to make education more affordable for Marquette students?
LOVELL: “So that’s one. The other one, maybe even more important, is through fundraising. One of the things that we can do is the better financial aid packages, the more scholarships we can offer our students, the better we can serve the populations that we want to, making sure that the burden of the cost of education doesn’t fall solely on our students and their families.”
