>>BOB ZALTSBERG: From the Milton Met studio in the I.U. Radio TV building, this is Noon Edition on WFIU. This week, we're talking to Indiana University President Michael McRobbie about his goals for the university and what's to come. You can follow us on Twitter at noon edition. You can call and questions at 8 1 2 8 5 5 0 8 1 1 or toll free at 1 877 2 8 5 9 3 4 8. You can also send us questions for the show at news at Indiana Public Media dot org. Michael McRobbie has been president since 2007 and you've been on the show many times, but it's been a long time. It's been three or four years since you've been here. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: I'm delighted to be back here. Happy to come any time, Bob. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: We're happy to have you here. So IUs about to celebrate its Bicentennial, so 2020 - it's just less than three weeks away. So can you talk about the significance of a bicentennial year for a research university like IU? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Well, I think about the bicentennial is an opportunity to celebrate the university's evolution from what it was when it started, which was a one room seminary, because we originally were when we were formed with 10 students, all men, of course, in those days, and one faculty member - from that to a massive, world class research university with one hundred thousand plus students, 40000 plus faculty, staff and part-time staff as well, and a budget approaching $4 billion. And in a university that is the state's namesake flagship university and then has a major effect on the number of graduates who join the workforce in Indiana and a university that has a major impact on innovation in the state through the research that is funded at IU and that we carry out at IU - last year, nearly $700 million of externally funded research, which was, of course, a new record for us. But it also gives us an opportunity to reflect on the nature of that history - the good parts, the great aspects of our past, but also the areas that maybe are more problematic and a little harder to wrestle with. So we've tried to make this year, the year of the bicentennial, a year of both celebration and reflection on the university. But it also gives us a place where we can use as really a finish line for a whole range of different initiatives. So you mentioned before our bicentennial strategic plan. Well, in June of next year, we will present the final report on that bicentennial strategic plan to the trustees on what's been accomplished. And I believe pretty much the whole plan will have been will have been accomplished. And then also the conclusion of our hugely successful bicentennial campaign, the for all campaign, which originally had a goal of $2.5 billion. And then I raised it to three and we've exceeded that. And we will at the end of June next year, we will announce what the final figure is. We expect it to be well in excess of that figure. So all those kind of things will be a whole stack of building dedications and ground breakings over the next six months. We've already had quite a few and all of those are in the context of the bicentennial. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: This gives you the opportunity, it seems to me, to really connect the university with the greater state of Indiana and The Hoosiers. One of the things that you launched that's connected the bicentennial are the grand challenges. And I believe there are three of them in the works now. And I wanted to just to get an update on the grand challenges and why that was important to you. You basically said we're going to cure cancer, at least one one form of cancer. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Yeah, right. Well, we felt that the university being a huge institution with the great bulk of the academic programs in the health sciences in the state and then a partnership in IU health with the Methodist Health Group, that there were challenges in the state that rather than take them on piecemeal, we could take them on more comprehensively by aggregating our resources. We invest a considerable amount in research every year. But it is spread out over a whole variety of different projects. And we felt this was a way of concentrating what we were doing, concentrating recruitment plans in a number of our departments and other programs. And that was what led to the Grand Challenges Program. The first of the grand challenges is in the area of precision medicine. The whole goal of that is to use an individual's genetic information to tailor cures or treatments specifically for that person. So you're not giving somebody treatments that are known not to work with people who have that particular type of genetic makeup or the other way, conversely, that is known to work for somebody who has some genetic abnormality. And there's been a lot of breakthroughs made there. And that's that's been very successful. The second project is preparing for environmental change. It takes as a given that there is environmental change happening. And that rather than ignore this, it is aimed at developing public policies that will enable the state in particular to be able to prepare for the impact of those changes and to put in place policies to address the impact of those changes. And then finally, responding to the addiction crisis great challenge is really focused on what has emerged in the last five years or so is just an appalling scourge, in particular in the mid-west, of addiction and carnage caused by the free availability of deadly drugs. I believe the worst ever in the history of the country. And using the combined resources of IU, IU health and working very closely with the state to try to have an impact on those terrible problems, which we seem to be feeling particularly acutely in the Midwest. So they were three areas where we felt that we could concentrate and focus our resources and our research and our personnel to try to have a measurable impact in those three areas. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: And I might mention before I turn it over to Sara, we've had Janet McCabe on a couple of times to talk about the second one, preparing for environmental change. 

>>SARA WITTMEYER: And we just hosted that show on climate change, too. One of the questions that we got from several people and the folks on the panel didn't know the answer, but perhaps you do - there's been a lot of pressure on universities across the country, and I know IU has been under some pressure, to divest its investments from fossil fuel companies. I'm wondering if that is something that is even being considered at Indiana University. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Well, the investments are actually made by the foundation, and the foundation has an independent board and has an investment committee made up of independent members of the board who have a primary fiduciary duty to maximize the returns of the various gifts that have been made to the university over a long period of time - hundreds of thousands of individual gift agreements to be made with people over probably a century now. And so they endeavor to invest that money for the best possible return. Now trying to address the issue of what areas one shouldn't invest in because of those kinds of considerations gets rapidly, extremely complicated. Because if, for example, you're buying shares in funds that are basically modelling the Dow or something like that, we have - you may have as many as 500 companies in a particular fund. Those companies themselves have investments. And so it goes on. So determining what you were to cut out and what you didn't is very difficult. And I think that's the issue that the investment committee of the foundation has had. And it has also taken the position that its primary duty is to maximize the returns on those investments, because remember, those are the returns that come back to fund scholarships, fellowships and so on back in the university. 

>>SARA WITTMEYER: I do want to give you a chance to just to talk about the things that IU is doing to be a good environmental steward. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Oh, there was a report that Vice President Tom Morrison gave to the board, I think three or four board meetings ago, the board of trustees of the university, and the impact of all of the various measures, both the fact that all new IU facilities have to be at least LEED Silver certified. And many of them, in fact, turn out to be LEED qualified to be LEED Gold certified, impact of that, the impact of a comprehensive plan to move to LEDs across the university for lighting - the actual impact of the renovations themselves, turning old, drafty, inadequately heated or cooled buildings into basically buildings with modern standards in that regard has actually resulted in a net drop in energy usage, relatively speaking. And as we continue, that process is continuing at the moment and will certainly continue, I think, until we get it to where we want it over the next couple of years, at least. The impact is going to continue to be had in the university. So that's something I've been very pleased about. And we will continue to look for opportunities to reduce the energy usage of the of the university as a whole and consequently to reduce the carbon footprint of the university as a whole. Whether we can ever get that down to zero, I think would be extremely difficult. But we can certainly reduce it further and we will continue to do so. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: We're talking with IU President Michael McRobbie today. If you have questions, you can send them to us at news at Indiana Public Media dot org or you can call the show and give us your questions. 8 1 2 8 5 5 0 8 1 1 in Bloomington or toll free at 1 8 7 7 2 8 5 9 3 4 8. You can also send us - I already told you, you can send us questions at News at Indiana Public Media dot org. So, President McRobbie, there are a lot of things that when you set out to be president of the university that you laid out that you wanted to do. I remember, you know, I was there in the early days. There were seven major things that you talked about in 2007. I'm sure you've added to list since then. A couple that I wanted to ask about today is you talked about the transformation in research and scholarship back in the early days. That's a very, very broad topic. But there've been a lot - there's been a lot of transformation in just the structure of the university with new schools and new programs. Can you just talk about how well you think that's gone since you've had the job? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: I think the academic transformation of the university is probably, when you look at it historically, the greatest the university's ever seen, actually, certainly since the period of about a century ago when many of the major schools of the university were being formed under President Brian. So we've seen 10 new schools reconfigured and merged and what have you in various ways, but 10 new schools formed at the university in the last just six years or so. And I think those of have utterly transformed and will completely transform the university in future. I make no secret of the fact that I think it was extremely unfortunate that the Bloomington campus never had a program in engineering and we were finally able to get approval from the Commission for Higher Education for that program in engineering. Now, the impact of that is not going to be felt in any major way overnight, but we're now just finished - we're now in the middle of our third class. There next year at commencement, we will have our first graduating class in engineering, which will be wonderful. But the impact of engineering in the context of our excellent programs in the basic sciences is going to be huge in the future of the university. I mean, you just have to look at what I think of as being our major competitors in the Big Ten. And they both have - the two I regard as a major competitors, Wisconsin and Michigan, both have large engineering programs now and is very much focused on intelligence, systems engineering, which incorporates things such as artificial intelligence and neuro engineering and so on as well. But these are the emerging areas of importance in the future and those are going to be the opportunities. So then when you add to that, the transformation of what used to be called hyper, of course, into into public health, now an accredited school of public health and now graduating certified professionals in public health, the new Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture and Design. Again, architecture was a program we didn't have before. We now have that. So we have engineering and architecture, architecture, of course, based in Columbus, which has been very important as well. The media school, and you're very familiar with that, Bob, which has aggregated all our strengths in an area that clearly had already started a function that way in the outside world. And I think we continue to be balkanized in that regard. And I think the success of that school is indicative of that - the reconfiguration of our school of education - all of this has had a major effect. That's just this campus alone. Then you combine that with the impact of online education. Now, over a third of all IU students do at least one IU course. We have over 2000 courses online, well over 100 degrees online and so on. And you combine that with - just approved by the board last week, actually - our new strategic plan for collections, which for the first time ever gives us a coherent way of looking at the preservation and curation of the university's information resources, which include the digital information resources, which now are so critical to all our faculty, from anthropology to zoology. All of them work in that kind of a world. That has, in the space of a decade, I think really transformed the whole academic research education enterprise at Indiana University. 

>>SARA WITTMEYER: I know we got a question about this. A couple of folks have asked about just the strategy for dealing with declining enrollment. What is the university doing to prepare for that? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: So this is a sort of complicated area. You've got a number of converging factors happening here. The first is the demographic changes, the fact that there is going to be demographic - we know that because you just have to look at the high school - look at the birth rates and the number of students who are now in school going through into into high school to know there's a decline coming, but actually after that decline is going to be an increase again. So you've got that on the one hand. But on the other hand, you've got what I call a flight to value and quality. And by that, I mean, if you look at the cost of going to a private university, I think it's got to a point where all except the Harvards and Yales of this world are starting to price themselves out of the market and people are saying, why should we be spending 50, 60 thousand dollars in tuition, the loan to send our student to this small, private liberal arts institution? Or just send them to IU for tuition that is considerably less than that where the total cost of attendance is maybe a third of the cost of attendance at a private? I've actually had this discussion with President Daniels at Purdue and he and I are completely in agreement on this. And I think that is that's the factor behind why we're, in fact, seeing an increase in the numbers at the Bloomington campus - our second record freshman class, we expect next year to be a record again. And so I think what you're going to see with a combination of these two factors is certainly an increase and a stability on the big flagship campuses - Bloomington, West Lafayette, for example, in Indiana. But where the pressures are going to be are going to be on our regional campuses. And we just had a presentation to the board last week on this. So in addressing this problem, we're focused very much on the problem of the region - the problems of the regional campuses to address what they have already seen to be declines, how to try to arrest these declines, but how to reconfigure them so that the present situation of the regional campuses is really going to be the way of the future and not just a temporary blip while they wait for the good times to come back. I think this is more likely to be the steady state position on the regional campuses than it is to be a low point in the history. 

>>SARA WITTMEYER: Well, I just want ask one follow up. When the state pushes manufacturing so much and vocational education, does that really affect IUs enrollment then? Do you see any - you're saying you have record enrollment. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Absolutely because what in part the state has been advocating very vigorously for - and I've been with Governor Holcomb in a number of meetings in this regard, is state of the art manufacturing, which of course, means AI and robotics and things like that. So you need people in technology. I mean, the graduates of the School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering - the graduates of the Luddy school rapidly get jobs. There is a significant tech boom going on in Indiana, in particular in Indianapolis at the moment. And I talk to the CEOs of many of those companies up there. They are finding it hard to get enough tech talent from the numbers that we're already graduating. Like they could take all the graduates that we could produce. So people in those areas, obviously, people in the health sciences - there's no shortage of of take-up for those jobs. Obviously, in IU Health, I'm well aware of the need we have there for not just doctors, but other medical care professionals, nurses and others. And in the Kelley School, I think the figure is that every Kelly graduate has got a job within six months or I think it's less than six months actually, and so on. So it goes - the transformation of hyper was important here too. You've got a school that now has a coherent focus on public health and graduating students, many of the students who are now in the health sciences focused on issues in the health sciences in a state, sadly, with some of the lower numbers when it comes to the various indicators of public health. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: Yeah. I just want to follow up briefly on the regionals, because we had another question that came in about the regionals. And so I wanted you to talk a little bit more about what strategies could be employed? This question just said, you know, what does IU need to do or what role do you see the regional campuses playing as time goes on? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Yeah, well, the regional campuses are immensely important. Depending on how you count this, there's five to seven of them. And they collectively provide a footprint where the majority of the population centers of the state within 50 miles of the regional campus of Indiana University. And there's been a combination of things. I mean, obviously greater attention to the methods of recruitment are important. But I think one of the important areas is retention. Once you get the students in, once they enroll, it's in their interest to complete their degrees. And so when the three chancellors of the three campuses are most affected, presented last Thursday to the board of trustees, much of the presentations were about strategies for improving the retention rates from freshman to sophomore and beyond. There's a significant number of people who have not completed degrees in Indiana. So identifying people in that in that category and doing what we can do, assist them in completing their degrees, and that's where online education comes into play, because someone who may have started a degree and never finished it - I mean, they've invested in that degree. They may have picked up a lot of debt, but they haven't got the job yet that would have helped them pay their debt off more quickly, of course. So they may now have a job and may not be able to go back full time, but they can at least do online courses. And that's why online education, I think, is so important for the whole area of degree completion in this regard, and for really for helping people who start the degree and are about to drop out because they have pressures to get a job and so on, to transition them into an online structure, which will enable them to finish their degrees that way. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: All right. We're going to take a short break. We're about halfway through our program. Today we have IU president Michael McRobbie here with us. We're talking about challenges facing Indiana University, successes that IU has seen and the 2020 bicentennial. We'll be right back. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: Welcome back to Noon Edition. I'm Bob Zaltsberg from WFIU and WTU, along with Sara Wittmeyer, my co-host, here today. We are talking with Michael McRobbie, the Indiana University president, about a number of issues. You can follow us on Twitter at Noon Edition. You can send questions to the show news at Indiana Public Media dot org and you can call us and our producer will take your questions at 8 1 2 8 5 5 0 8 1 1, or toll free at 1 877 2 8 5 9 3 4 8. So, you know, my question to start the second half is, you know, it seems like we're in a world where sometimes, you know, truth and science don't seem to matter as much as politics and emotion. You know, there've been some specific issues on campus. We've dealt with a professor that was using some - Eric Rassmussen, who was using some publications to sort of promote certain points of view that I think most truth and science don't necessarily agree with. You know, where does the university sort of fit into this new world in dealing with these issues when sometimes the things that you really want to focus on - truth, science - aren't believed or aren't taken as fact? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Well, let me say quite unequivocally that Indiana University stands for truth. Universities I think in general have always been, certainly in this country, overall, I think they've been the great repositories of truth. And I think historically, they have been the great repositories of human knowledge. And in human knowledge lies the foundations and essence of truth. This has been a topic of I think maybe my last three commencement addresses, actually. I've spoken about about this to try to make this point. And of course, the problem is that, if you abandon truth, it's not long before you degenerate into barbarism. I mean, I think it's as simple as that. You degenerate into relativity, relativism and everybody's views is as good as someone else's. There's no standards for adjudicating between what's right and wrong. And you move towards a very dark, bleak future by doing that. So I think in these times when there is so much pressure on truth in science and truth in other areas, that it is absolutely vital for the universities and Indiana University to continue to stand for truth and that truth is the fundamental arbiter in the sciences and the other disciplines at Indiana University. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: If I can just persist a little bit, it seems that it kind of puts you in an interesting situation sometimes because, you know, politics and you know what kind of finances are gonna come your way, what kind of support are gonna come from the politicians? Sometimes there's a lot of division in those groups. And so how do you - how do you as a university president and your colleagues who are university presidents sort of negotiate this need to get along with all the politicians, all the public officials, but at the same time, make sure that you're focused on science and focused on truth? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Yeah. I must say that I - and then - well, certainly in the period I've been president and I think before that - I've always found the state to be actually very supportive of the university's efforts in research, the cases that we have made to them for funds. Obviously, the funds to support the operations of the university, but funds in particular for capital facilities, many of which have gone to the sciences have always been well received. And it's rare that I've ever found these sort of contentious issues actually have come up in our dealings with the state legislature. I mean, I had a situation where I think now for five consecutive budgets, we've had small and modest, but nevertheless increases in our operating revenue. And each biennium we've had in the range of $100 million of new capital projects is a vastly better situation than some of our colleagues in other states. And so I'm very grateful to the state for that and I've said so publicly and privately on numerous occasions to them. It's certainly the case that there are - there have been complex and difficult discussions on some areas of science, but that's principally been with funding agencies in Washington. But there, I found, for example, the head of the Office of Science and Technology for the president, Kelvin Drug Amarr, who I actually knew before he before he went to that office - Kelvin was here a couple of months ago and spoke very well about his views. And Kelvin certainly is a great supporter of the importance of truth in science and what have you. And I think that's been the case with all the agency heads. Where the issues are sometimes arisen is where Congress has wanted to intervene as to what areas of research should and shouldn't be done. And by and large, those areas have been, I think, negotiated, though not without some difficulty in some cases. But I think on the whole, the nation's scientific enterprise is still in good shape, but is not without its challenges. And those challenges could grow in the future. 

>>SARA WITTMEYER: I want to ask about - I think the trustees approved it last month - this optional testing change. Can you talk a little bit about what that is and how that would be - how that policy would be in place on the different campuses? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Well, it basically allows the campuses to decide whether they want to use standardized testing for the admission criteria on those on those campuses, which is our present policy. And although - at the same time, we reserve the right to assess any student holistically. So in a sense, we've already been in a situation where testing has been optional because we are able to use the higher standard of holistic evaluation for students. But this does provide the campuses with the ability to move away from that if they wish. And this, of course, is something that is happening nationally. It's the subject of I think a pretty extensive debate at the moment, and in California, too, which you're probably familiar with. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: One of the things that you said very early on - again, one of the seven points that you made early on was you thought in IUs future there need to be much more rigorous admissions standards. And I think that that's been part - I think the student body probably reflects that. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Yeah, we've seen on the Bloomington campus, we've seen a significant increase in the quality of the student body, while at the same time the student body has grown. And that's true in the regional campuses as well, something we've been very proud of. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: Another thing that you mentioned then and continue to mention a lot is just the international footprint of Indiana University. And I know that you've opened some gateway offices and the student body, it seems to be more international now and there are more people going overseas. So how how well has that initiative gone for you and why is that important? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Well, and here I'm quoting Governor Holcomb when I actually interviewed him at the Hamilton Luga School for Global and International Studies a couple of years ago. And I asked him a question about globalization, and his words were, I think, almost exactly, quote unquote, there's no turning back when it comes to globalization. So even though we may find that it's going to be modified in various ways and maybe pressures will be brought upon just how extensive its impacts are and so on and so on, a lot of complicated questions there, but nevertheless, there's is hardly an area of the economy that isn't affected to a greater or lesser degree by global forces. And I think this is going to continue into the future. So I think it behooves our students at the university to provide an education that exposes our students to the world. And I must've spoken to hundreds of students over the years about their experiences studying abroad, if not more than hundreds. And to a person, they will all say that it was transformational for them to study abroad. So the thing that I think we're most pleased with in terms of improving and expanding the international engagement of the university is study abroad. So we continue to rank number six out of 1200 odd universities ranked in the country for study abroad. Now about a third of all - this is on this campus - a third of all Bloomington students have studied abroad when they graduate. The number keeps increasing. People are confident we should be able to continue to increase that number. And so on top of a first class, world class education that students are getting on this campus, those who study abroad are also getting that transformational experience. And of course, we complement that by an international student body, which brings the world to IU. And there we continue to rank highly in terms of the number of international students we have, although we've seen that number decline a little as it has elsewhere in the country, principally because of the decline in Chinese students. And then on top of that, though, we've expanded our engagement with major research universities overseas and established five offices Beijing, Berlin, New Delhi, Mexico City and Bangkok. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: Do you want to give us a call with a question? 8 1 2 8 5 5 0 8 1 1 or toll free at 1 8 7 7 2 8 5 9 3 4 8. You can also send us questions for the show at News at Indiana Public Media dot org. And you can follow us on Twitter at noon edition. 

>>SARA WITTMEYER: We got a question from Pam Davidson, wondering whether IUPD will cooperate with the criminal justice reform study that the county is doing in the lead diversion program. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: I confess I'm not familiar with the details of that. And we can always try and get an answer to Pam on that question. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: So what excites you about 2020 for Indiana University? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Oh, many things. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Well, it's - we're going to see on 20 January - January 20, we're going to see a collection of activities that are about as broad as one could expect. Now, that day is also MLK Day. So I'll comment on that in a minute. So we start the day in the morning with the commissioning of our new supercomputer, which is appropriately called Big Red 200. And it's a supercomputer that's fashioned - 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: Can you talk about that a little bit? A supercomputer? For those of us that don't have supercomputers? 

>>SARA WITTMEYER: What it does, why we need this? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Well, I mean, a super computer basically is it is a machine that has both the processing capability and the memory capabilities to be able to carry out computations that are orders of magnitude greater than what you can do with even the most powerful server or desktop computer. And so you can do with such systems, let's say in hours, what would take your desktop system months to do. And that's - so accelerating the pace of scientific discovery and even allowing you to do things that you sometimes simply can't do on a desktop computer or what you could do with a with a supercomputer. Now, since I've been working this area for a long, long time in my career, but what's changed in recent years is that the supercomputers are - now have hardware that a part of them and are configured in ways that are optimized for the kinds of computations you need to carry out in areas of artificial intelligence, deep learning and those kinds of areas. So the system we're getting, big red 200, will both do the kinds of computations that physicists, astronomers, chemists need to be able to do that they can't do on their desktop machines, but also carry out the kinds of computations that our faculty working in artificial intelligence, neurosciences and those kinds of areas want to carry out as well. So it's really, strictly speaking, an AI supercomputer. So that's - so we've had actually from early on when I first came here, when I was the vice president for information technology, when we acquired our first supercomputer, this is depending how you calculate it, this is the fourth or fifth supercomputer that we've acquired because what is a supercomputer today in five years time is no longer a supercomputer. So you have to regularly replace them. And so this is replacing our previous big red two system of a few years ago. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: OK. So you're going to be dedicating that. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: And then at lunch, we will be unveiling the new portraits in president's hall that have been commissioned of light and truth. We felt that we should have something artistic to - some piece of art to celebrate the bicentennial, so that has been funded by the Wellhouse Society and one of our faculty members has painted those, and they'll be unveiled then. Then that'll be the - noon on that day will be the first official ringing of the bells of the carol on the bells of the Karellen. We're still finalizing what we're going to play. It'll be formally dedicated later in the year, but it'll be the first official ringing of the bills on the Karellen. And then we will also be unveiling what's called Mega G. I don't know if - you've probably seen this. So this is this is a digital reconstruction - actually, it's a physical reconstruction based on digital models, of a - the skeleton of a giant ground sloth that used to inhabit Indiana that died out about roughly 8000 years ago. There was a perfect skeleton of it that, to our enormous shame as a university, was disposed of in a cleanup. And this is big. This is 10 foot by 8 foot high and so on. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: Who needs that though? 

>>: (CROSSTALK) 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: So there were a few pieces left. There's a couple of other ones. There are photos. Our scientists just brilliantly have used that and have reconstructed mega jeff. And that's going to be - it's megaloni Jeffersoni is his Latin name because Jefferson was involved in this. It's going to be unveiled. Then later that afternoon, Viola Davis, the award winning actress, will be receiving an honorary doctorate and be giving an address. And then that night, we will unveil another piece of art, which is going to be the fourth cycle - a mural cycle in right quad of the history of the university. This will be the history of the university from nineteen ninety eight with the last one let off until basically this year, 2019. That's all in one day. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: That's all one day? So what day is that again? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: January 20th. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: All right. So, you know, having said all that, you know, you mentioned the art projects, and I guess I want - that was another thing that you talked about from the beginning, that the place of arts and humanities at a major research university. I think that we talk a lot about the economy, how the university is contributing to the economic well-being of the state, research, so discovery, helping people stay healthier. Talk about arts and humanities and the importance of that. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Oh, well, I think the arts are just an enormously important part of the history and traditions of the university, but also they're a vital part of a comprehensive liberal arts education, which, of course, is what we pride ourselves on providing to students here. And this is an area I'm very pleased with just what we've been able to achieve in this area. You mentioned my inauguration address, Bob. One of the things that I committed to in there was the university cinema, and we actually got that done. And it has exceeded our wildest expectations in terms of its success and has, I think, been a brilliant addition to the cultural life of the campus. And then, of course, the transformation of the IU Art Museum, already a fine art museum, into the Eskenazi Art Museum with a very generous gift that Sid and Lois's Eskenazi gave us, has turned what was already a magnificent museum into just stunning world-class museum. I hope you've been to see it, because it is quite extraordinary. And then just - I think it was just last week we closed the Lilly Library for its first-ever renovation. And that will renovate what is one of the great jewels of the campus into a vastly more appropriate facility for those books. I should add, and this is a first, so you're getting this news before anybody else - we just received a half a million dollar gift from the Lilly Endowment to paint a cycle of murals in the reading room of the Lilly Library to make it a destination place for scholars and others to come to work. So we'll be commissioning an artist soon to do that cycle of murals there. And then, of course, the transformation of the - well, the combination of the Glenn Black Lab with its incredible collection of Mississippian civilization material and the Mather's Museum of World Cultures into the new I.U. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. And that's been funded by the state in particular with the direct support of Governor Holcomb who's got a great interest in the history of the state. We'll be closing that later next year for its complete comprehensive renovation and conversion into that new museum. Now, I could go on, but the - and the Karellan, of course, was another one of the things we've achieved. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: So we only have about three minutes to go. And I just want to ask you, I know you are - you're under contract with the university through June of 2021 as president of the university. So what's left undone? What's your key focus going to be for the next year? 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Well, I got to mention, my contract allows negotiation and extinction at some pointed by mutual agreement. And I can exercise that next spring. And so I'll consider whether I want to do that. So who knows, you know, what might happen after that? But I think we will have achieved the complete renovation of - pretty much close to complete renovation of the whole physical plan of the university or campuses by that point. And that is a massive achievement for us. But the new regional academic health center will only just be getting underway. And then in Indianapolis, we have an even larger project up there, which is the academic health center, which is I mean, the one here is about half a billion. Indianapolis is about 2.5 billion, so it puts in perspective how huge that project is going to be. And that project is absolutely vital to the School of Medicine, too. So those are big projects looming on the horizon. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: I can't believe that I didn't mention the academic health center as we discussed this. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: I always remember how we surprised you with that. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: Yeah, I thought it was going to be somewhere else. It was a big surprise. 

>>SARA WITTMEYER: Before we wrap up, I do want to mention IU athletics. The football team has been very successful. Men's soccer. Women's basketball. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: Just how good are they? Women's basketball. You know, they're ranked 12 now. I mean, they might crack the top 10 in the next week or something. We'll see. I couldn't be more proud of the football team and Coach Allen. They did a fabulous job. It was only two games, I think, that they probably were outmatched and another two they probably could have won. They could've gone 10 and 2 with a little luck. So it was quite a season. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: And just to say, though, you know, the success on the field is one thing. But these are kids who graduate. And the university seems to be doing things the right way. I mean, there are a lot there, a lot of pressures in athletics to just win, win, win at all costs. 

>>MICHAEL MCROBBIE: And we should never forget that they are students first and athletes second. I always call them student athletes. 

>>BOB ZALTSBERG: Right, OK. We are out of time. I want to thank Indiana University President Michael McRobbie for sharing an hour with us today. We'll have you on sooner before you make your - you can make your decision on the air, what you're going to do next. All right. I want to thank President McRobbie and thank you to Sara Wittmeyer, Bente Bouthier, our producer, and Mike Paskash, our engineer. I'm Bob Zaltsberg. Thanks for listening. Thank you.