Lexington, KY - Dr. Eli Capilouto is the twelfth president of the University of Kentucky.
He was previously provost at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he earned his doctorate in dental medicine and master's degree in epidemiology.
In 1991, Capilouto received a doctorate in health policy and management from Harvard School of Public Health. He joined Business Lexington's Tom Martin for an interview as the fall semester, his very first as UK's president, was getting underway. The interview can be heard in its entirety as a podcast on www.bizlex.com.
TM (Tom Martin): New role, new institution, new city, new home. An awful lot of change going on in your life right now. How are you adjusting to that?
EC (Eli Capilouto): Well, it's been terrific, and it's been made quite easy because of the warmth and hospitality we've felt since we arrived in Lexington. And also every day I am astounded by the talent we've assembled at our campus.
TM: You've had some time now to become more acclimated to the university, to the campus, to the people that populate it. What are your initial impressions?
EC: First we have an unyielding commitment to undergraduate education. I knew this when I read about Kentucky, but it's great to witness it firsthand every day, and that is we put students first. They're going to be our most powerful resource in the future,and how we develop them is critical.
I read recently that the best way to predict the future is invent it. I think that goes for our students today too. Thomas Friedman wrote that they're going to have to invent or reinvent or create the jobs that they're going to hold in the future, and that could be jobs we don't even know about today. And we've done lots of things at UK to move forward and develop programs that best prepare students for that kind of future.
TM: An initiative lead by the mayors of Lexington and Louisville and their respective economic development teams would have the two cities collaborating on economic development. The initiative's centerpiece is advanced manufacturing. We hear from the manufacturing sector that there is a significant "skills gap" in that area. That would seem to imply that the pressure is on to train a skilled workforce. Given what you were just saying about being inventive and thinking about the future, what is your view of that?
EC: I think a talent pool is one of the key ingredients for success in advanced manufacturing. And developing that talent pool is going to take cooperation throughout different levels of higher education, and I think we have great cooperation already in the state of Kentucky in the form of the relationships between our four-year institutions and our two-year institutions.
I've met with the presidents of many of the four-year schools. I met with Dr. (Michael) McCall (president and CEO of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System). And my past experience working on some advanced manufacturing projects leads me to believe that those relationships are going to be key, because I think we can provide some of the fundamental education. But when an advanced manufacturing entity wants to come into your area, you've got to be prepared to provide some more specific education that aligns with their mission and goal, and my experience is that you can do that working in close partnership with two-year institutions along with our four-year institutions. So I'm confident this state is poised to respond to that kind of call.
TM: The university recently has been on the receiving end of some significant federal grants for research, and these are in areas that have produced or hold prospects for commercialization. For our reader, a business owner in Lexington, is this important? And if so, why should they care about this?
EC: I'm so glad you raised that question, because I said earlier that talent was one of the key ingredients to success in advanced manufacturing. I think another component is fundamental levels of research that have been conducted by a person in your city, and we have that in the form of $330 million annually at the University of Kentucky. Yes, it produces jobs, but as you've just pointed out, there are two recent grants that we've received that touch many, many lives. One is the extension or renewal of a grant to study Alzheimer's. We have 80,000 Kentuckians that are afflicted with Alzheimer's and many more family members that I know have to live difficult lives during a very long goodbye of a family member.
We received against steep competition a translational research center award, $20 million, that will help us take our discoveries quickly from the laboratory and the clinical trial out to the community. And our Center for Applied Energy Research received a $14 million grant to help us as a country discover better ways to environmentally consume coal, which is important to this region and to our country and to the world.
So those are examples of the things we do. It builds a research and development base that is key for advanced manufacturing. Other important ingredients for advanced manufacturing: you've got to have that education, you've got to have a talent pool, you've got to have an experienced R&D shop. But you also need barrier-free access to capital, you need programs that encourage risk taking, you need to have an infrastructure that you can quickly pull together and that's going to take a lot of cooperation between public and private entities.
TM: When you say barrier-free access to dollars, what do you mean?
EC: Well, you need capital and you need entities that want to take risks, and we've got to figure out in the economy we're in now, where we're more risk-averse than in the past, how can we best access that kind of capital?
TM: It seems like a double-edged sword almost, because on the other side of that sword is perhaps the key to emerging from this downturn that we're in, if we can reinvent ourselves as an economy, and that relies on making resources available to higher education to make it happen.
EC: I couldn't agree with you more, but it's not just higher education that we're going to have to support. We're going to have to look at creative ways to encourage this kind of entrepreneurship, and the regulations that we have that relate to patents and creating companies quickly are a big piece of it. I again go back to the partnerships that are going to be critical in tackling all of those issues.
TM: Of great interest in Lexington is the relationship between the university and the community. What's been your experience with that?
EC: I'll share with you my first reactions when I visited the university in Lexington: a pleasant finding for me was to see how closely connected our university and city are. And since I've arrived, my wife and I have enjoyed many activities that are ongoing in Lexington - from the arts to the farmers market. It's great for me to know that when we recruit students and faculty and talented staff, we're able to offer them a terrific city with the amenities one expects in this day and age. I think our destinies are intertwined, and we must work together to grow a community that works for all Lexingtonians and those who live in the region. I've shared this quote before I heard Daniel Patrick Monahan, he was the former U.S. Senator from New York, but I think when he was ambassador to India in the Kennedy administration, someone asked him how you create a great city. He said build a great university and wait 200 years. Well, ours has been around nearly 150 years, and I would think that this relationship has helped our community grow, and I know a vibrant community has helped our university grow. So I see better and brighter days ahead for us.
TM: Another extremely strong tie between community and university revolves around athletics, and in particular Wildcat basketball. It gives our region a sense of this cohesive identity. Some say it does for Lexington what a professional team might do for a larger metropolitan area. Even people who didn't go to UK are diehard Cats fans. Yet, it's creating a point of tension among some faculty. They feel that the importance of their own work is overshadowed sometimes. How can support for college sports be translated into support for the true mission of the university, which is to educate? Or how might the core of UK - its faculty, its academic units - benefit from the support that so many demonstrate for the teams?
EC: First of all, I have to mention that we must feel most fortunate here at Kentucky, because we're one of those large handfuls of athletic programs that run in the black. That is a healthy sign, because on most college campuses where that is not the case, it translates into higher fees for students and higher costs for students to attend the university, and that's not the situation here. It's difficult for us to raise tuition and fees, but when we do, it's dedicated toward someone's education.
I think the other finding you'll notice is successful athletic teams are able to better promote educational programs at a university campus. Students, serious students, want to have a great education but enjoy the community-building part that successful college athletics can offer. So my responsibility is to keep all of these things in balance, working in synergy, and so that we leverage each other's strengths. Recently I had the great opportunity of helping explain our campus to a talented athlete who is considering coming to Kentucky, and I'll do that any day of the week. You find an outstanding student that wants to come to Kentucky, and I'd love to take five minutes to spend with them. But this one happened to be a great athlete, and at the end of the conversation, his mother said, "This is great and it sounds wonderful, but I want to know your academic rankings. My son is all-star on the court and in the classroom, and I want to make sure his experience is going to be one that he grows in both of those arenas." So that is a reminder to me that you've got to have strengths in all of these areas.
TM: While at UAB, you designed a quality enhancement plan for the core curriculum. That plan emphasizes writing, quantitative analysis, social ethical studies. Is this similar to the general education reform UK now has underway? Are incoming freshman prepared?
EC: I'm very impressed by the revisions undertaken. We're doing a great job. Our UK Core Initiative reminds me that we're never satisfied; even when we're doing a great job, we want to do an even better job. So I think we're going to build on many successes, and I salute the faculty for undertaking these changes.
We're doing many things that recognize that there is a future that is going to be different for the students that we welcome to our campus, and we want to make sure they have the best opportunities for a life of meaning and purpose with a strong career.
TM: The impact of technology on education is a whole subject unto itself, and hopefully we can revisit that at a future date. I hope we can make this periodical from time to time.
EC: I would love it.