Editor
Dr. Gogue began his first week at Auburn by meeting with student leaders. He claims to be hitting the ground listening.
“The toughest job of a president is all the groups (and) all the individuals that care deeply about this institution, passionately in some cases, they tend to define success differently,” Gogue said. “That’s why to me, you have to listen and understand.”
Gogue comes to Auburn from the University of Houston, but he’s spent time at Utah State, Clemson and New Mexico State.
Past Auburn presidents have put in place an open-door policy, which didn’t work well for the schedule of a president.
Gogue will not have an open door policy, but will meet with students by appointment.
“I don’t really go out and say I have an open-door policy,” Gogue said. “To be honest, that doesn’t work.”
Gogue does say if an appointment is made, it will happen.
“It’s not where you can come by anytime you want, but if you call my office and ask for an appointment, I guarantee I’ll see you.”
Gogue said can’t talk to every student, but he wants to give more visibility to student leaders.
“I want students to vote and select the very best students they can because the president can’t talk to all 20-plus thousand students on a recurring basis,” he said.
He will also be on foot around campus each week meeting students and walking around different areas.
“I’ve asked for four hours every week to be out on campus with no plan, totally where you happen to go and what you happen to run into,” Gogue said. “I do know that presidents have to be accessible to students and certainly student leaders.”
Gogue said he’s not going to focus on one college more than another. He said as a president, he must understand every college is a tremendous asset to the institution. He said it doesn’t matter if the college is a small one or a larger one, but every college is important so his interest lies across the board.
Gogue also spoke about the importance of the Board of Trustees. He said being appointed to a board of that caliber is a huge honor to the members.
“You need to know they are dedicated people,” he said. “They care deeply about the institution. They are passionate about it, and about an area you may not be passionate about.”
Gogue has met with the Board on more than one occasion. He said the Board wants the president to run the University, and he feels confident that will happen.
He said it’s important to take advantage of the areas of expertise of the members.
He used an example of the Board of Trustees at Houston. There were architects on the Board. They did not build the buildings, but they had the tools to assess other architects.
He said there are going to be different people with different areas of expertise. It’s important to take advantage of those qualities.
Gogue also said he understands everyone’s concerns, but it’s not always feasible for the University to do.
“We can list a thousand things that would make this University better, but there’s not any reasonable likelihood that we could find the money to do those in a five year time period,” he said.
He wants to carefully select things that will make the institution better for decades to come. He said those are the ones a president wants to find and to guide.
He also stressed the differences among groups. There are many groups to make up Auburn, including constituents, students, parents of students, faculty, staff, board, alumni and special interest groups.
Gogue also pointed out that if you ask each group what is important to them, each group will have a different answer.
“What the national numbers show is that students would hire more faculty to have more sections offered that better fit their schedule,” he said. “Parents overwhelmingly choose campus safety.”
He added that every group on campus would have a different answer.
“You’ve got a lot of different groups that define the success of a presidency very differently,” he said. “How do you look at all the issues and address the needs of an institution?”
He said he learned after his first presidential title how to deal with it all.
“When you’re first name as president, after about a month, you actually grow up and say, the Board hired me to come here and make the best decisions I can make, and you have to be smart enough to know you have people that have different ideas about what’s good and bad,” he said. “You make decisions that you think are the best decisions for the University. You try to take it, listen and understand it.”
He admits this is a tough job, but said it doesn’t necessarily require the smartest people.
He said there are many things that are much harder such as being a teacher or a researcher.
He said one thing to deal with is not seeing the immediate reaction.
“A lot of being a president is you don’t know if the stuff you’re doing has an impact for a long time,” he said.
Gogue said he still enjoys lecturing and teaching and knows immediately if he has the audience or not.
In addition to his academic resume, he’s also worked for the National Park Service. He served over the Washington D.C. area parks as Chief Scientist as well as over eight southeastern states out of Atlanta.
Gogue moved to Auburn with his wife Susie, along with a collection of red ties.
He laughed saying when Auburn came to photograph him for the alumni magazine, he couldn’t wear orange because of Houston’s arch rival, Texas, so he went neutral. He did receive feedback on the matter, and he’s recently depleted most of that collection.
“I gave a bunch of them away,” he said. “It was embarrassing.”
