Dean of Georgetown College Chester Gillis sat down with a reporter to discuss his new job and vision for the future of the Georgetown’s largest undergraduate school. Interview transcribed and edited by Eric Pilch.
How is the adjustment to your new job as Dean of the College?
Well in terms of adjusting, fortunately I had a year as Interim Dean to get the lay of the land. It was just a very good introduction to the position … So in some ways this year, I’m doing some things for the second time, like last year, but also now I can implement a vision for the next five years.
I’ve spoken to a few students who are very excited about the proposed creation of a business minor in the college. Do you have any plans in the future for more of these cross-disciplinary majors?
Specific ones, there are none at present. We’ll have to see how this one goes. We’re working hard on it to make it happen.
Do you have any idea of the time frame for implementing the business minor?
I don’t want to be held to saying next year. I would love to see it next year … I’d love to take my time do it right and do it quickly, but it requires a lot of coordination with the business school and the college and the provost’s office, so it’s not something you can simply fashion overnight.
What types of long-term changes would you like to see in the future for students in the College?
My long-term vision is kind of a balance between attending to students in a personal way as we have initially done in the College and at all the schools at Georgetown, and at the same time increasing the research profile of the University and the scholarly work coming out both for students as well as the faculty, and that’s a balance that has to be done very carefully…. But we have to do that without leaving behind our signature elements of an undergraduate education, which are largely tied to Jesuit principles.
Is your vision for the College challenged by a lack of resources or manpower?
In part it’s resources. There’s always the balance between ambition and vision, which I think is very healthy, and having the resources to support that … Another aspect I’m working on is the sciences, particularly the execution of the science building. It is my number one priority … We have very good scientists, we have good science students who are engaged in undergraduate research … but our facilities are – “sub-par.” We just have to have better facilities for our faculty and out students, for the first rate research they’re producing, and so my hope is by next year they’ll be shoveling that ground out there and we’ll have a new science center which will improve the morale of the faculty and also our ability to draw students who are looking at other competitive universities with much better facilities.
How do you think the University reconciles its Catholic identity with its vision as a premier academic institution—not that those ideals are necessarily in contrast with one another?
And they shouldn’t be. But I see us as a robust Catholic institution engaged with the world… [Watchdog groups] have a list of the top 20 Catholic Universities. It’s a list on which we are not counted … But if you look at those Universities, are they top-tier intellectual institutions? Often they are simply not. Did they sacrifice something of their intellectual character to fit these criteria? Perhaps they have, and we’re not going to do that.
