Saturday, May 6, 2006 | 8:02 a.m.
Born: July 30, 1937, in Memphis, Tenn. He grew up along the Mississippi River in Rock Island, Ill. His father was born in McGill. Family: Milton Glick and his wife, Peggy, have been married 40 years. She works at Arizona State University, training future high school math teachers. They have two sons - David, a senior manager with Amazon.com, and Sander, a postal consultant.
Current position: Executive vice president and provost, Arizona State University
Job duties: As the second-ranking administrator at Arizona State University, Glick oversees academics and operations on all four of ASU's campuses. ASU, with a budget of $600 million, serves 47,000 students.
During his 15-year tenure at ASU:
Previous experience:
Education: Postdoctoral fellow in structural chemistry, Cornell University
PhD in Chemistry from University of Wisconsin, Madison
Favorite books on leadership: University of Southern California President Steve Sample's "The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership;" Jim Collins' "Good to Great;" Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma."
Favorite saying: "Power is one of the few things that the more you give away, the more you have, if you define power as the ability to make good things happen. That's kind of my view of the world, that you increase your ability to get things done by engaging others in doing it."
If the standing ovation that regents gave Milton Glick during his initial interview wasn't enough indication of how they coveted him as the next UNR president, the $400,000 contract they offered him Friday certainly was.
Regents believe Glick, a structural engineer-turned-executive vice president and provost at Arizona State University, will propel UNR as a research institution and get the academic health sciences center in Las Vegas off the ground.
At every school he has worked, Glick has improved academic offerings, student performance and research output, his colleagues say.
Glick was credited by those who know him for helping ASU, where he spent 15 years as the second-ranking administrator, mature from a regional teacher's college to a respected research university.
"He has been at an institution (that was at a level) where UNR is today, and taken it where we need to be," said University of Nevada School of Medicine Dean John McDonald, who worked with Glick at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Colleagues at ASU praised Glick as an enthusiastic leader who sought faculty and community input.
"He's an implementer, but he can also dream and strategize," said Susan Mattson, president of the Tempe campus faculty senate.
Glick entered college more than 50 years ago and never left. Soft-spoken and witty, Glick interlaces his conversation with insightful quotes, both borrowed and original. His colleagues say he was the "driving force" behind ASU's success, but Glick downplays his accomplishments.
"Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan," Glick said.
Glick describes himself as a "populist elitist." He thinks public universities like UNR must have "open doors to all students who are able to succeed" but also recruit the best students possible. At ASU he specifically pursued National Merit Scholars, considered the nation's best and brightest.
"It's hard to do both, but it is the only credible way for a public university to behave," Glick said.
Glick, 68, characterized himself as a "technophile and a technoskeptic." He said technology has yet to be fully utilized in higher education, in part because many professors are still learning to use it.
Glick "will never retire," said Richard Morgan, who worked with Glick at ASU before becoming dean of UNLV's Boyd School of Law. Work is "fun" for Glick, and he said what ultimately sold him on UNR was the chance to make a lasting contribution.
Among the immediate questions facing Nevada's land grant university are how to best serve the community, expand its research base and improve its health science offerings.
"How it answers those questions will affect the health and future of the university but also the health and future of the entire state," Glick said.
Glick was scheduled to retire this summer from the provost position at ASU to become a university professor, a job that would allow him to teach, mentor younger faculty and serve as a special assistant to the president.
But he worried whether that position would be fulfilling for him. When he was asked to apply for the UNR presidency, he was attracted by the opportunity to "try another gig."
In his new role, Glick will spend more time with the community than he's been used to, especially to promote fundraising. Glick has repeatedly said that the bottom line will be not how much time he spends on the job, but how much money he raises. One of UNR's biggest donors, search committee member Bob Davidson, said Glick is exactly the kind of president he wants to give money to.
Glick starts Aug. 1.
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