[B]URLINGTON — Suresh Garimella, the lone finalist in the University of Vermont’s presidential search, took on some tough questions about his time at Purdue while touting his fundraising acumen during his campus visit Thursday.
Garimella, the executive vice president for research and partnerships at Purdue, met with groups across campus Thursday and held an open forum to a full room in UVM’s Davis Center.
Some faculty came away confident in his ability to lead UVM’s next chapter while others left with lingering questions about his embrace of corporate partnerships and acceptance of funds for research related to fracking.
The university’s current president, Tom Sullivan, announced in August that he would be stepping aside as president and joining the faculty after the current academic year. Sullivan has been the university’s president since 2012.
Purdue has seen four straight years of record research funding under Garimella’s watch, and an increase in the number of students who have studied abroad.
Along with overseeing the university’s research, he works on strategic partnerships and global engagement and established partnerships with some of the country’ companies, including Microsoft, Rolls Royce, Fiat Chrysler and Ford.
Garimella said he was drawn to UVM and its mission as a land-grant university. He said that if he were appointed, he would work on a strategic plan, identify ways to enhance the university’s resources from multiple funding sources and try to collaborate with groups across campus.
He said at Purdue, tuition costs have been frozen for seven years, and he believes it is possible to limit the increasing costs of higher education while still providing a quality education to students.
“I don’t think the sky is falling,” he said. “You do more with the resources you’ve got, you increase your efficiency. And there are a lot of people who want to support UVM, and you raise as much support for things friends and donors are passionate about.”
Garimella said he has been a champion of diversity and inclusion at Purdue, and has focused on taking steps to ensuring Purdue is a welcoming place to students and faculty of color.
For example, Purdue set up a high school in Indianapolis which primarily serves minority students with the goal of positioning them for success in college and to prepare Purdue-ready students, Garimella said.
Garimella said he felt very optimistic about UVM’s potential.
“UVM is a great school. I’m not coming to fix something that’s broken,” Garimella said. “It’s nice to come to a place like this that has done well, and has a great trajectory.”
Questions & Answers
Garimella answered some pointed questions about his past experience during the open forum.
One student asked about his position on fracking. Purdue accepted a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation under Garimella to study “bridge fuels,” which are fuels extracted by hydraulic fracking. The university drew additional criticism for not including the word “fracking” in its press release announcing the grant.
Garimella and Fabio Ribiero, the chemical engineering professor who oversaw the research, said at the time that the research was “downstream” from the fracking process and avoiding the word “fracking” was not a conscious choice.
During the open forum, Garimella said that he was very respectful and supportive of UVM’s environmental efforts.
“I would not characterize it as that I am a fan of fracking,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I am a fan of fracking or not, there is a lot of natural gas being generated.”
Purdue also came under fire in 2017 [for mismanaging] an $8.8 million research study on the effects of a low sodium diet on blood pressure and cholesterol in adolescents.
An internal investigation into the study found that there were at least 30 incidents of threats, violence or sexual abuse among participants of the ill-fated study, called Camp DASH, in which participants were housed on Purdue’s campus during the summer.
The professor overseeing the study, Connie Weaver, took responsibility for its mismanagement. She had known about some of the participant’s serious misbehavior but had not reported it to university officials in an appropriately timely manner.
Garimella said that Camp DASH was a “tragedy,” and that he and other members of the university’s leadership immediately shut it down after they became aware of the issues. He said university leadership then mandated the internal investigation and eventually publicly released the results of the investigation.
“We also studied what went wrong and put in place several fixes so it won’t happen again,” he said. “I think while it was a terrible incident, I feel like the leadership of Purdue acted as decisively and quickly as we could.”
Garimella was also asked about how he would square his experience and desire to set up corporate partnerships with the Burlington community’s focus on social and corporate responsibility.
“Our partnerships in the corporate sector all emerged from faculty interest,” he said. “There’s no authority we are ceeding to the corporations to somehow control our work — we are very, very careful about putting those controls in place.”
If appointed, Garimella would take over the university during a time in which the College of Arts and Sciences is seeing cuts which have angered faculty and students.
Garimella has a STEM background, but said he is confident that he can work with the faculty and CAS leadership to come up with ideas to address the financial realities the College of Arts and Sciences faces.
Reaction
Cathy Paris, a senior lecturer in the Department of Plant Biology and the chair of the faculty senate, said from her discussions with fellow faculty and students, she believes support for Garimella after his visit is widespread.
“My sense is what Dr. Garimella has to offer is what UVM needs right now,” she said. “I have confidence that even though the search process didn’t play out as expected, the candidate that emerged from that process is a good fit for the president of the University of Vermont.”
Paris said that she was impressed by Garimella’s record of strong fundraising skills and ability to take responsibility for projects while sharing credit if they are successful. She said she was confident Garimella would champion diversity initiatives and work to lift up the College of Arts and sciences.
Paris said that in a meeting with the faculty senate executive council, it was clear that Garimella was focused on student success as a professor.
“He identified as a principal point of pride not the number of papers he published or academic awards he won, but the success of the students, especially the graduate students he mentored,” she said.
But Sarah Alexander, the president of the faculty union United Academics, said she felt that many of Garimella’s answers during the open forum were not definite, and she felt he avoided taking stances on fracking. She said she was also concerned by his answer on corporate partnerships.
“What strikes me, as someone who has been at the university for nearly a decade now, is fracking and Rolls Royce don’t really represent to me the kinds of values and priorities that I’ve come to associate with the faculty, staff and students,” she said.
Faculty have also expressed concern about their lack of input in the presidential search. The presidential search committee had initially said it would be bringing more than one finalist to campus, but decided to only bring Garimella.
The university’s Board of Trustees is meeting Friday morning at 7:30 a.m. to discuss the presidential search and could vote to authorize Garimella’s hiring.
