A Conversation with President Fenves

Brian Green: Hello! I am delighted to be joined today by Greg Fenves, President of Emory University. With a 36-year career in higher education, President Fenves has served top-tier research universities as both a distinguished researcher and educator as well as an experienced executive leader. Throughout this time, he has demonstrated a strong commitment to advancing faculty development, interdisciplinary scholarship and research, diversity and inclusion, and access and affordability, working to create greater educational opportunity for talented students of all backgrounds.  

He came to Emory last summer drawn by the University’s mission to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge to the service of humanity. He was impressed by Emory’s strengths as an academic community charged with providing a life-changing undergraduate liberal arts education, and acclaimed graduate and professional programs, all at a world-class research university.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the backdrop for his first year at Emory, yet through all of the challenges, he has led initiatives that have helped to bring together the Community and carry forward the important work of the university--in learning, teaching, research and creative expression--while charting a course for Emory’s future. President Fenves, thank you for being here with me today!  

President Fenves: Thank you, Brian; it's great to talk with you.  

Brian Green: As you know, the Office of the Ombudsperson is a confidential, independent, informal, and impartial place where Emory students, faculty, and staff can come for help navigating interpersonal or institutional concerns and conflicts. You've experienced some extraordinary challenges in your first year at Emory with great success, and that's why we wanted to talk with you today. I would like to start by asking you: what is your personal approach to conflict? How do you think about it, and how do you go about addressing it?  

President Fenves: Brian, thank you for asking the question. I have had a number of years of experience leading various units of universities, from department chair on up to university president, and have seen how conflict can too often occur. The first thing I do when I sense there's a conflict is to pause for a moment. I’ve learned there's always at least two sides to a story and even multiple perspectives. I keep that in mind as I try to understand: what are the core issues? What are the key factors that are underlying the “symptom,” or the conflict that's present at hand? Then, once I have that frame of mind, I ask: what are the systematic issues that this is an example of? Is there a pattern?    

My experience is that many conflicts have a systematic basis. Solving a particular problem doesn't necessarily mean you're solving the underlying cause of that problem. I try to dig further to understand the multiple sides of the story, determine what is leading to it, and see if there's a systematic issue that needs to be addressed.  

Brian Green Do you ever find yourself needing support when you face a challenging situation? What do you do to obtain that support?  

President Fenves: I can think back to some of the early times when I was in different roles—you hear something, and you get that sinking feeling in your stomach, the blood rushes to your head. It still does that sometimes, but not as often because you learn how to adapt and prepare, to understand, and ultimately make decisions. Part of that is just practice.  

 But part of that also is to just put [the problem] aside and do something else—work on another issue, work on something that's interesting. At least in my mind it helps percolate the problem, the conflict, the upcoming decision, the debate. It gives me a little perspective, gives me some time to breathe and to think about something else.  

I'll also go home at the end of the day—sometimes too late—and [talk to] my wife, [who’s] my most important support system. She gives good advice!  

[In addition,] I have found in my life that wellness is really important, and the best way I deal with wellness is exercise. It's something I do regularly early in the morning. Sometimes I wake up and I’ve got this problem on my mind, and after a little bit of intense exercise, I still have the problem on my mind but it doesn't feel as pressing. My mind is a little bit more able to deal with it.   

Brian Green: Well, taking the top leadership role at a university is already a very daunting task, but you became President [of Emory] at a time when our whole world really was facing extraordinary—some might say, “unprecedented”—challenges due to the pandemic.  

What were some of your feelings or thoughts knowing that you'd be leading the University through those challenges?  

President Fenves: We've all gone through a tumultuous time. It was announced last April that I was coming to Emory University as the next President to begin on August 1, 2020. The nation had essentially shut down by the beginning of April 2020, including Emory and every other university. I was at the time president of the University of Texas at Austin, a university that had been meeting in person, and in two weeks was taking 9000 courses online. So I was pretty familiar with those questions of, “how is the university going to prepare to continue its mission of educating students and conducting research in the middle of a pandemic—all while keeping everybody healthy?” We didn't know the answers at that time, but I knew what the questions were.  

It was a fascinating experience to learn about Emory in this situation. What I saw at Emory was a strong commitment and great leadership—everybody was pitching in. We had the advantage of a world-class healthcare facility and School of Public Health that could provide invaluable expertise about how to prepare an organization and how to keep individuals healthy, including experience on questions like, what testing technology should we be looking at? How do we scale up testing? How do we think about the ways that we can protect people through masks and social distancing? What’s the data, what's the science behind it? Emory had a wealth of expertise with which to plan how we were going to come back in the fall and conclude this current academic year.  

Brian Green Did you also see opportunities within these challenges?  

President Fenves: Well, I think we've learned a lot. Let me identify a few things all of us in higher education, especially at the great research universities like Emory, have seen.  

I think the last year of remote learning, though successful in many respects, has helped showcase the importance of our in-person campus experience.    

 Every person I have talked to—students, faculty, parents of students and many staff—can't wait to get back to campus. So I think one of the things we've learned is that we have taken the campus experience for granted. We can't afford to do that anymore—the time that students are on campus, the time that they're in our classrooms, is too valuable.  

The second thing we've learned is that technology does have an important role. It wouldn't surprise me if the concept of office hours changes because it's so convenient for students and faculty to connect [virtually]. Technology will [also] help give students access to broader materials for them to be able to work together. I think we're going to be using technology in very creative ways. I've talked to many faculty who are in the process of converting their normal courses—courses they taught really well for many, many years—to an online version. They threw out their notes, threw out their pedagogy, and they have reinvented and recreated classes in new and innovative ways. I think it's going to give us some more options, flexibility, and creativity to be innovative in teaching pedagogy than we've had before.  

And then, [there’s] the story of the development of the COVID vaccine. We're taking that for granted. We got a new disease, said “let's create a vaccine,” and now half of America has been vaccinated. We need more, but 150 million or more Americans have been vaccinated, and a billion [have been vaccinated] around the world. That's a miracle. That didn't happen, that could not have happened, without decades of dedicated scientific research taking place in laboratories here at Emory, around the country, and around the world. So we have to rededicate ourselves to the mission of basic science and discovery because we never know when a scientific discovery will be the key discovery to save millions of lives.  

Brian Green: Well, something else that the vaccines have enabled is a return to campus! I know a lot of people are looking forward to coming back in the fall. However, some people may still feel daunted by the readjustment back to being on campus. I wonder what are the challenges and opportunities you see for Emory in the time ahead, and how should our community members best mentally prepare to return?  

President Fenves: I think for most individuals, coming back to campus is going to cause some anxiety because it's yet another change. And each individual has to figure out the change. We’ve actually been talking a lot about this as we think about the “return to campuses” as we're calling it.  

For students, the way I think about it is that we have to “reorient” every single student. Some of our students will have been away for three semesters. We have to give them the opportunity to reintroduce themselves—“reorient themselves”—to their university. We're working with the deans and with Campus Life about how to do that—to reconnect the bonds that they've had virtually with their fellow students and the faculty and the staff and their departments in person.  

For faculty and staff, this is going to be a big change. Many of our faculty and staff have been distance working most of this time. I know there are very real questions. Do we have the right policies to protect our people? I believe we do. But also, [there are things like] getting back to the commute and the time and stresses of commuting; getting back to working in an environment with people, not just on Zoom; reintroducing interpersonal relationships. We've been working through our academic units, through administrative units and HR, on policies and support for faculty and staff.  

 And then, how do we think about the future of work? We're going to have to think long term about what's the right balance between being here in person and distance work, or a hybrid mode. I meet with leaders across Atlanta and across the country, and everybody's dealing with the same question.  

Universities are an organization where the “place” is important. This is where the in-person teaching takes place; this is where much of the research take place. We're not a tech company, where the work itself is virtual and the “workplace” may be incidental to the work. A campus is where the education and research occur. And so we're going to have to think about what that means in terms of Emory.  

Brian Green: My last question is: what suggestions would you offer for Emory Community members who feel overwhelmed or in need of support as they adjust to being back on campus?  

President Fenves: First off, if a member of our community feels overwhelmed or in need of support: get the support. That is crucially important—support from the Ombuds Office, from HR in your unit or central HR, Faculty/Staff Assistance Program—if you're feeling overwhelmed and need support, please ask for it.  

Number two is to know that there will be anxiety. Early on [in the pandemic], I made a point that I was going to come to Convocation Hall every day, and I remember feeling somewhat anxious to walk into the building for the first time [because] it was new to me. But I wanted to make sure I was present, and after pushing through that anxiety I got used to it because it was my new routine. So let's give ourselves the space to get used to a new routine.  

But something that I've noticed, particularly as we were finishing the Spring semester, is that as I meet people for the first time in person who I’ve only interacted with on Zoom there's kind of a thrill—a joy to seeing somebody for the first time in person that you've only known on Zoom, or seeing somebody that you may have known earlier but may not have seen for a year or more in person. So what I'm mostly seeing is just an excitement and a sense of relief that we are able to get back to a more normal life, one that is not mediated with rectangles on a computer screen.  

Brian Green: Well, I can't think of a better note to end on than that. I want to thank you again very much for being here with me today.  

President Fenves: Thank you, Brian.