Leader of the Team

Karen R. Hitchcock

16th President of the University at Albany

When Karen Hitchcock was a student at Mineola High School on Long Island, she surprised everyone by winning election as secretary of the entire student body as only a sophomore. The key to her youthful victory, recalls her twin brother, Garrett, was her appeal to a diverse number of student organizations.

"She succeeded because she was an accepted member of so many different groups of students. These included the athletes, the drama group and the ‘brainy’ types," says Garrett, now living in Bangkok, Thailand as vice president of a large U.S. engineering consulting firm, and one of his sister’s biggest fans. "The only group of which she wasn’t a member was the vocational group — she was never very good with tools.."

That singular ability to organize coalitions and work with a variety of groups has become a defining characteristic of Karen Hitchcock’s leadership style during a stellar career as a research scientist, teacher and administrator on four different campuses. But if anything has shaped her leadership style, she says, it has been her research.

"As a biomedical research scientist, I learned very early in my academic career that a multi-disciplinary approach was the most powerful and productive strategy. My expertise as a cell biologist, when coupled with the talents of others in such fields as endocrinology and biochemistry, produced more rapid and far-reaching results. No one of us, working alone, could have accom-plished as much," says the 53-year-old Hitchcock, who will be installed as Albany’s 16th president on Nov. 8.

Later in her career, as the chair of the Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology at Tufts University in Boston, she oversaw the development of a key part of the curriculum for Tufts’ newly established School of Veterinary Medicine.

"No one thought the Veterinary School was really going to happen, but it did. So when it was announced, there was less than a year (before it opened). In that period, Karen must have recruited 10 or 15 people on short notice from all over the world . . . That was an example of her ability to coordinate people and get a job done. That was when I was first impressed with her as being not a typical scientist," said her husband, Murray R. Blair, who at the time was coordinating the formation of the Veterinary School as associate dean of the Tufts Medical School. The two were married in 1985 on Long Island.

At Albany, Hitchcock says she will once again seek to develop strong partnerships to leverage the University’s resources as it confronts more limited state and federal funding, a more diverse student body, dramatic changes in technology, and an increased demand from the public for accountability.

"No sector of society can go it alone anymore," she said. "We must be right at the center of what’s going on in society and helping to lead those efforts. That takes partnerships, coalitions."

In all of this, she said, she views one of her key roles as that of a facilitator, "providing an environment for talented people in which they can do their best — a place where we respect one another, where, even as we celebrate difference, we also are able to define what we have in common."

One of her top priorities, Hitchcock says, will be to lead the process of developing a distinctive sense of identity for Albany — as a campus known for its innovation and creativity, and where research and education address society’s needs. She said that while the University has carved out niches of excellence in such fields as reading, criminal justice, sociology, public policy and atmos-pheric sciences, it now must focus on its overall identity.

To provide the framework for accom-plishing those tasks, President Hitchcock will soon appoint a University-wide Strategic Planning Committee representing all of the University’s constituencies. The task of the Committee, she says, will be to assess Albany’s institutional strengths and achieve consensus around a "shared vision" to guide Albany into the next century.

As an undergraduate at St. Lawrence University, Hitchcock set her sights on becoming a physician. She was an honors student with a major in biology, played tennis and softball and sang in the school’s touring choir, the Laurentian Singers. Although she won acceptance to medical school, one of her professors recognized her talent for research and urged her instead to earn a Ph.D., leading to a career in research and teaching in the biomedical sciences, rather than an M.D.

"My adviser was absolutely right. I loved research. He saw it, and I’ve never regretted it," she said.

Hitchcock went on to earn a doctorate in anatomy from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. She completed her training as a biomedical research scientist with two years as a post-doctoral fellow in pulmonary cell biology at the University of Colorado, then began her career in higher education as a faculty member in the Department of Anatomy at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. She taught medical and dental students, winning a number of teaching awards, and conducted research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

President Hitchcock left Tufts in 1985 as the George A. Bates Professor of Histology and chair of the Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology to become associate dean for basic sciences, research and graduate studies at the School of Medicine at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, Texas. At Texas Tech, a developing, rural public university, she brought together groups of faculty not only from the medical school, but also from the Arts and Sciences faculty to focus institutional resources on the school’s special strengths across many disciplines. From Texas Tech, she was recruited by the University of Illinois at Chicago, a diverse, urban public university, where she served four years as vice chancellor for research and dean of the Graduate College. One of her major accomplishments was to lead the design and development of a cross-disciplinary, multi-college Software Tech-nologies Research Center. Corporate partners who needed to develop new systems and products provided funding and facilities for the project; the University’s faculty provided the research expertise, and the community benefited through new product development and job creation. While in Illinois, she was appointed to the Governor’s Science Advisory Committee, as well as Mayor Daley’s Economic Development Commission of the City of Chicago.

Throughout her career, she has served on a number of state and national boards and committees, including appointments to many study sections and review panels of the NIH. She recently completed a term as a member of the NIH’s National Advisory Research Resources Council. She was awarded the National Science Foundation’s prestigious Visiting Professorship for Women in Science and Engineering. She has served as president of her professional society, The American Association of Anatomists, recently completed her second term as a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners and served as chair of the Council on Academic Affairs of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges.

President Hitchcock came to Albany as vice president for academic affairs in 1991. Under her leadership, the University established a consolidated College of Arts and Sciences, the Presidential Scholars Program and the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. She has overseen the development of the campus’s information environment, including the University’s new electronic library, website and a soon-to-be-completed project which will give all on-campus students a high-speed link to the Internet. She also led a region-wide planning process that resulted in the establishment of the Capital Region Infor-mation Service of New York (CRISNY), a community computer network through which residents and businesses can access the Internet and find a wealth of information about their local governments, schools, libraries and other organizations. She was named interim president in August of 1995 when H. Patrick Swygert resigned to become president of Howard University. In the culmination of a nationwide search involving 120 candidates, the SUNY Board of Trustees appointed her president last April 24 upon the recommendation of the University Council. The votes by both of those boards were unanimous.

To be a strong partner to the com-munity, Karen Hitchcock believes, the University must bring excellence to the table.

"There is nothing more important to the long-term future of this institution, to the future of any institution of higher education, than a commitment to quality — quality in our students, quality in our academic programs and quality in our relationships with our many constituencies," she said in her spring address to the faculty. Three of the University’s most important constituencies, she believes, are the faculty, alumni and business community. She is already earning high marks from them.

Judith Baskin, who is past chair of the University Senate and served as a member of the University Council’s Presiden- tial Search Advisory Committee, said Hitchcock has demonstrated a deep respect for the faculty governance process. "She understands what it means to be a faculty member in all of its parts — teaching, service and research. She is someone who, in rather scary times, is approachable," said Baskin, who is also chair of the Department of Judaic Studies.

Carlos Santiago, chair of the Senate and a professor in the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Department of Economics, believes President Hitchcock has already shown she can work with virtually any group.

"I think she certainly demonstrated last year (as interim president) that she could create bridges between the University and its external community in a number of different initiatives," he said.

Harold Hanson, B.A.’63, an Albany lawyer who is president of the University’s Alumni Association, said two major concerns of alumni are maintaining quality and accessibility. "She’s a highly talented executive, and we think those goals can be achieved under her leadership," he said. Hitchcock said she wants the University to develop stronger ties with its alumni and to involve them more directly with its students and programs.

Wallace Altes, president of the Albany-Colonie Chamber of Commerce, which represents 2,400 members and 70,000 employees, said, "The comments I hear in the business community about Karen are that people genuinely like working with her, and she indeed is a consensus builder." Altes worked closely with President Hitchcock as she led the coalition that brought the New York Giants to the University for summer training camp.

Karen Hitchcock has always embraced her personal interests with the same energy she has brought to her professional life. As a post-doctoral student in Boulder, Colorado, she pitched a wicked game of softball on a community team. In Boston, she sang second soprano in the Dedham Choral Society. In Texas, she and her husband purchased a pair of quarterhorses as well as a beautiful Arabian gelding and spent their weekends riding. To unwind now, she gardens, reads fiction and joins Murray in light entertaining at their home in Rexford, which was built in 1818 on property bordering the old Erie Canal.

Throughout her life, Karen Hitchcock has always had the support of her family. Her twin, Garrett, who has lived since 1985 in Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Japan, Kuwait and Thailand, has applauded her accomplishments from overseas, but will attend her inauguration. Another brother, Roy, who is three years their senior, recently retired from the U.S. Forest Service near Green Bay, Wisconsin. Her father, who passed away in 1971, was "a tremendous role model and a source of constant love and support," she said.

No one is prouder of Karen Hitchcock than her mother, Ruth Hitchcock, who still lives in the family home in Williston Park, near Mineola. She can’t recall a time when her daughter wasn’t putting teams together.

"I can remember her playing ball in the streets with other children . . . ," said Ruth Hitchcock. "People liked to have her on their teams. She has always gotten along well with people, and she has always seemed to know who will do the best in a position. She picks teams well."

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