Published: March 07, 2007 11:23 pm      

New IU president visits Kokomo

He announced plans for regional campuses

In the 10 years Michael McRobbie has worked for Indiana University, he has visited the Kokomo campus several times.

Wednesday, he was there for the first time as IU’s president-elect.

McRobbie, 56, was appointed as university’s 18th president March 1. He’s visiting the regional campuses to get to know them better and to assess their strengths and needs.

“I’ve seen them, but not from the point of view of an incoming president.”

His visit Wednesday included a campus tour and reception for the campus and community.

McRobbie sees the mission of the regional campuses as “providing excellent and responsive education to students in the region.” The university also has “a moral duty” to promote economic development in its regions, he said.

He commended Kokomo campus faculty for involvement in economic development, particularly with the Inventrek Technology Park, the local business incubator.

“That, to me, is exactly the right model for our other campuses.”

McRobbie plans to strengthen all the regional campuses, and to keep them on mission, “emphasizing the importance of the role they play in their regions.”

He also would like to strengthen the arts at regional campuses and mentioned possibly rotating part of the Bloomington campus art collections through the galleries at regional campuses.

McRobbie commended Kokomo faculty for applying for grants through the New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Program he helped found as the vice president for research, noting that the campus twice used the funding to bring Shakespeare programs to Kokomo.

He said all the regional campuses are different in character, and he expects to see them ‘diverge from the cookie-cutter model of regional campuses” to meet the unique needs of their region.

“To me, it’s a good thing. What we want is for higher education to be responsive to the marketplace.”

In meeting with faculty and students at the Kokomo campus, McRobbie said one issue that came up is the need for a health and recreation center. He thinks the Kokomo campus is the only one without such a center. He anticipates local campus officials will start looking for funding for a recreation center.

IU Kokomo Chancellor Ruth Person said she’s known McRobbie since he came to IU.

“It’s really going to be great to work with someone I already know. I think he’s a very visionary and forward-thinking person.”

She added that he “probably holds more professorships in more schools than I can imagine.”

McRobbie is currently interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at the Bloomington campus. He came to IU in January 1998 as vice president for information technology and chief information officer.

Six years later he was given the additional responsibility of vice president for research.

McRobbie came to IU from the Institute of Advanced Study at the Australian National University, where he was a professor of information technology and chief executive officer of the Cooperative Research Center for Advanced Computational Systems.

In addition to his senior administrative responsibilities at IU, McRobbie holds professorships in computer science, informatics and philosophy, and adjunct professorships in cognitive science and information science on the Bloomington campus. He also is a professor of computer technology in the Purdue School of Engineering at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus.

He will replace Adam W. Herbert on July 1. Herbert announced last year he would not serve beyond the end of his contract, which expires at the end of June 2008. He said he would step down earlier if a replacement was found.

McRobbie said though he is a native of Australia, “over the last decade, my family and I have become Hoosiers, and Indiana has become home.”

Danielle Rush may be reached at (765) 454-8585 or via e-mail at danielle.rush@kokomotribune.com