ALBERT J. Simone, in eight-plus years as president of the University of Hawaii, got plenty of public browbeating. He would weave, duck and keep ploughing ahead on the path he thought the university should follow. Visiting Simone sees
results of his effortsPresident Kenneth Mortimer, the successor to the role of bull's eye for campus and community protestors, invited Simone back this month to address a commencement and record an oral history of his administration. Simone now heads the 15,000-student Rochester Institute of Technology in New York state.
After nearly five years away Simone saw complete and in use campus buildings he helped push toward fruition -- the new Student Activities Center, the Special Events Arena, the Pacific Ocean Science and Technology (POST) building, the new architecture building and the Hawaiian Studies Center.
Each one of these, he recalled, drew flak from those who saw better priorities for university spending -- classrooms and library services, for example. These would surely come along eventually, he said, so he thought it more important to seize opportunity openings with the governor and Legislature to fund the buildings he named.
The structures, he said, show the importance of form and space in making a campus a community and a city rather than just buildings. The new structures, he contends, give UH-Manoa both a pulsating center and identity in its areas of strength. The activities building concentrates in one place student services once diffused in seven or eight buildings.
He sees the Special Events Arena, where he made his address, as having become the needed proud place to bring together students, faculty and community for sports, academic and community events. He said it also is fulfilling predictions it would become the most-used building on campus. POST and the Hawaiian Studies Center identify special academic strengths. Architecture both identifies an important program and completes an attractive campus quadrangle. Such surroundings boost performance, Simone believes.
Simone's successor, Mortimer, can leave no such architectural legacy. His will be the legacy of having guided UH through its toughest budget times since World War II. The state financial bind has reduced university proponents to boasting that some cuts were less severe than feared.
It has been Mortimer's lot to identify the university's key areas of strength and try to see that they survive as strong foundations for the future when the storm clears. When Mortimer was hired no one knew what a storm was coming but he was picked as a good organizer to follow in the wake of a super-enthusiastic predecessor. Lucky choice.
Mortimer remains a cheerleader for the fact that we are offering our residents both quality education and some of the best financial bargains in the U.S. UH remains at the very top of U.S. institutions in Asia-Pacific study options, and excellence in ocean sciences and other geophysical sciences. Dean Barry Raleigh, whom Simone wooed here from Columbia University, told Simone UH now exceeds Columbia in ocean science grants.
SIMONE said in his address that UH still fits easily into the top 2 percent of the 3,400 colleges and universities of America. He rated its curricula and research projects, faculty, staff, students and associated facilities among the best he has seen.
I have watched UH for more than 50 of its 90 years. Its very diverse presidents have wanted to strengthen both UH and the Hawaii community. Each succeeded in his own way.
Simone was a joy to watch because of his enthusiasm and admitted tendency to always have 10 balls in the air at once. The late 1990s have a far different challenge -- less exciting but crucially important to Hawaii's future. That is to keep UH basically strong as it is forced to reduce spending dramatically yet remains in political and bureaucratic shackles. We owe more thanks than we usually give college presidents to both Simone and Mortimer.