Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman holds regular, open office hours with undergraduates. When he walks around campus, DePaul University President Brian Casey greets most of the students he passes by first name. But at Georgetown, it is extremely rare to see President John DeGioia unless he is giving a guest speaker on campus a brief and formulaic introduction.
At the President’s biannual meeting with campus journalists, DeGioia was asked about his management style and concerns that he is uninvolved with the student life. His response was illustrative of his misguided approach to student engagement.
“The hardest challenge in the job is the expectations of multiple constituencies, particularly when the requirements for representing the University, both in a philanthropic context and a public way require a considerable amount of travel,” DeGioia explained. “If I had a choice, I’d be spending limitless amounts of time engaged in the day to day life of the community, but that wouldn’t be addressing the significant issues [the University faces].”
While DeGioia does face many, varied demands, ranging from fundraising to safety and security to maintaining the school’s strong academic reputation, he presents a false dichotomy between staying involved with the campus community and focusing his duties as President. Students have few, if any, opportunities to directly interact with him. This isolates DeGioia from students—his primary constituency—and our needs.
With an annual compensation that topped $900,000 in fiscal year 2009, DeGioia should be held to an extremely high standard in all facets of his job. As a starting point, DeGioia should work to demonstrate greater accessibility on campus by spending time publicly on campus each day he is in D.C. Holding office hours just once every month or two for a few hours would also go a long way toward exposing the President to the direct concerns of students.
It may not be reasonable to expect DeGioia to learn our names, but an opportunity to speak to the man in charge about the University we all love would be a welcome change.
