On a wall in the parlor of the president's house at the University of New Hampshire is a photograph of an alpine lake surrounded by jagged peaks thrusting 12,000 feet into the Wyoming sky. This is Long Lake in the Wind River Range, where UNH's new president, Ann Weaver Hart, and her husband, Randy, camped one night during a 12-day hike into the outback in 1980.
The Wind River Range lies along the Continental Divide. It is a wild and beautiful place, where peaks of fractured granite drop sharply into canyons and trout streams meander through alpine meadows. In places, the ruts left by the wagons of pioneers on the Oregon Trail and an occasional cairn are the only reminders that others might have passed this way before.
The Harts have spent years exploring this remote land, first by themselves, then with their four daughters, most recently with their prospective sons-in-law in tow. On the occasion recorded by Randy's camera lens, the couple were navigating using a U.S. Geological Survey map to identify topographical features like ridges and major outcroppings and following game trails as they switchbacked up the ridge.
When the summer sun dropped below a cloudbank on the horizon, their goal, Europe Canyon, was nowhere in sight. They made camp on a steep slope at 11,000 feet, far above the timberline. The temperature plummeted; the wind tugged at the sides of the tent and whined around the guy ropes. Thunder crackled and lightning jumped from cloud to peak. Lying in the tent as the rain drenched the land and lightning flashes glared through the fabric of the tent, the Harts wondered where they had ended up.
The next day, the sun returned, shimmering on ice floes in the lake below, and the Harts climbed over a nearby ridge and found their way into Europe Canyon. It wasn't until years later that they pinpointed exactly where they had been.
"Although they can help us find our way, maps cannot walk us to our destination," Ann Hart writes in her book The Principalship: a Theory of Professional Learning and Practice. Every cross-country hiker quickly learns that unanticipated obstacles inevitably create detours from the course laid out on a map, and often it is decisions made on the spot that determine where the traveler winds up. "To the pilgrim passing through the mountains, experience is the richest and most memorable source of knowledge. A journey on foot has no parallel and remains forever vivid and personal for those who take it. Each pass, each river teaches something new. Each thunderstorm remains forever in the memory."
UNH's 18th president sees her new job as that kind of journey. She knows where she wants to lead the university, has a good plan for getting there and is quite prepared to adjust her course when circumstances require her to do so. That's the approach she took at Claremont Graduate University, where she was provost and vice president for academic affairs from 1998 until this summer, and at the University of Utah, where she was dean of the Graduate School and then special assistant to the president from 1993 to 1998.
Hart has given a lot of thought to leadership and the qualities and circumstances that make a new leader successful. She has written a slew of books and articles on leadership and succession in schools and has served as a consultant on educational leadership to school districts, institutes and universities around the country and the world.
"When a person holding an influential office in a formal organization (such as a manager or chief executive) is replaced, the effects reverberate throughout the organization," she wrote in Principal Succession: Establishing Leadership in Schools. "The magnitude of this experience and its impacts on relationships, expectations and outcomes may vary, but all feel its effects. Succession brings the issue of leadership close to the surface of organizational consciousness at all levels. Those who appoint new leaders, those who work with them and those whose lives may be affected by them watch for signs that the change will make a positive difference in their work lives and outcomes. The effects are felt by the new manager as well. Before and after succession, newly appointed administrators strive for success under the pressure of personal and professional transition."
So how will Hart and UNH weather the transition that's going on right now? Very well, predicts John Crosier, who chaired the search committee that recommended her for the UNH presidency. "We were looking for someone with a proven track record of being able to deal with difficult issues," he says. "If you talk to her colleagues, she has taken on very complex and contentious issues within an academic setting. Running a university is quite different from running a company. You have to have a great capacity for persuasion, and you have to be able to listen and synthesize various viewpoints that are often conflicting and then construct and implement the strategies to get the job done."
Hart's former colleagues are quick to agree that she is a remarkably effective leader. Steadman Upham, president of Claremont Graduate University, describes her as "one of the rising stars of academic leadership in the country." Other administrators there say she did more for the university in four years than most people could accomplish in twice that time.
Hart helped Claremont to focus on the structural and academic issues that are critical for a top doctoral research institution. She led efforts to develop a new academic plan, created a program to prepare graduate students to be university teachers, founded an office of institutional research, started an office of sponsored research and revamped career services, according to Natalie Blickenstaff, who worked with her for four years as assistant to the provost.
When Hart arrived at Claremont, Blickenstaff says, "she hit the ground running. She learned a lot about the history and culture here, but she didn't try to fit in with previous patterns and leadership styles. She has the ability to pull off change. When you talk about a particular issue, it doesn't go into a black hole; it gets taken care of. She's very good at follow through and at delegation."
Hart had a mission at Claremont, Blickenstaff observes. "She was here to serve the university, and she lived by that credo. She spent her energy with the best interests of CGU in mind." She'll be that kind of president for UNH, too, Blickenstaff believes. "She's going to be a great president because she has real leadership talent. Ann has a broad vision; she sees how the different parts of the university fit together, and she'll be able to manage those parts to fulfill the institutional mission."
Betty Hagelbarger, former dean of students at Claremont, agrees. "Ann has the ability to look at a situation and respond to the total picture," she says. "There are hard decisions to be made, and she can make them. She believes in what she's doing. She knows what the institution is about, knows what education is about. She's focused on students and faculty being a part of the governance of the institution. She does her homework; she doesn't go into a situation not knowing what she's talking about.
"And there's a human side to Ann that is very real and very genuine and that makes her a marvelous package as an administrator and a human being," Hagelbarger adds. "She's very warm, very capable. I find her to be remarkable. ... I think when you have the kind of gifts that Ann has, they need to be used. Her talents are so many. She'll make a marvelous president."
Hart's accomplishments are all the more remarkable because she has not followed a traditional route to academic leadership. She married Randy, her high school sweetheart, when she was 19 and he was 20 and both were still in college at the University of Utah. "We met in the high school orchestra," she says. "I was first-chair cellist, and he was first clarinet. Corny, huh? We both grew up in traditional homes, so when we got married, most of our acquaintances expected I'd drop out of college." But she and Randy both loved learning, and they supported each other's academic aspirations. "We put each other through school. We worked hard, but it was fun, too. Randy's my best friend and has been for as long as I can remember."
Hart graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1970 and began teaching history, math and English at Cottonwood High School and Bonneville Junior High School in Salt Lake City the following fall. The first of the Harts' four daughters, Kimberly, was born that year, followed by Liza in 1973, Emily in 1976 and Allyson in 1979. Hart gave up teaching after three years to stay home with her growing family, while Randy, who had completed his law degree, was working as a prosecuting attorney.
While she was a full-time mom, Hart also became a student again, taking courses toward a master's degree in history at the University of Utah. She received her master's in 1981 and was back in a junior high school classroom that fall. Her career took an unanticipated turn in 1982, however, when she received a fellowship from the university and the Utah State Society of Superintendents that enabled her to return to the university and complete the requirements for a Ph.D. in educational administration, which she earned in 1983. That fall, she took on her first assignment in a leadership role when she was appointed principal of Farrer Junior High School in Provo, Utah.
Hart had been a principal for only one year when her alma mater invited her to return as an assistant professor in the educational administration department, focusing on educational leadership and policy. Over the course of the next 14 years, she advanced to the rank of full professor and took on increasing administrative responsibilities. She became associate dean of the College of Education, then dean of the Graduate School, then special assistant to the president. "I never really planned a career in administration during the years I was working toward tenure and promotion," she says. "I just gradually became more involved in issues that were broader than my department or my college. I was fascinated by what I could learn and by the complexity of the issues that universities face."
The opportunity for Hart to go to Claremont Graduate University came not long after her youngest daughter had left home for college. It seemed the right time, personally and professionally, for a change. As provost and vice president for academic affairs, she was responsible for all of the university's schools, programs, centers and institutes, as well as student affairs, faculty affairs, research administration, legal affairs, budget development and more. It was, in other words, the perfect opportunity to acquire the experience and demonstrate the abilities that a university president must possess.
Hart emphasizes that her professional advancement would have been impossible without the partnership that she and Randy enjoy. Their commitment to their family and to working for each other's success enabled both of them to pursue challenging careers while raising four daughters. "Randy is the perfect dad for daughters," Hart says. "He is totally without ego in the sense that he never tries to impose his own views or hopes on them. He just enjoys them for who they are. He's a tremendous friend to each of them, and he's a heck of a lot of fun to be around."
Now the daughters are grown up and pursuing careers of their own. Kimberly is a manager for a medical practice in Missoula, Montana; Liza is an architect in Salt Lake City; Emily just completed a master's degree in environmental science at the University of Western Washington; and Allyson is a medical student at the University of California in San Francisco. "Every parent enters into child-rearing with the full expectation that their child will be healthy, happy and productive," Hart says. "Not every parent gets to have that, so we know that it's a gift."
It's a tradition in the Hart family to begin every major transition with a trek into the wild, spending a quiet week or two in the mountains, getting refocused and re-energized. "My whole family has a strong sense of the beauty of the natural world and a deep need to be out in it," Hart says. "Randy and I have spent a great deal of time and energy outdoors with our children because that is such an important part of who we are. Our annual 10-day family backpacking trip became a spiritual pilgrimage for all of us--an opportunity to spend time together and talk and see one another as people, and not just as parents and children."
When their daughters grew up, Ann and Randy Hart discovered that those backpacking expeditions were a perfect way to vet potential suitors. "The rule is, if you want to marry a Hart daughter, you have to go backpacking with us in the Rockies for at least eight days," Hart laughs. "You learn a lot about each other on a trip like that."
But last spring, when the Harts made the decision to come to UNH, they realized that wrapping things up at Claremont, moving across the country and getting settled at UNH would not allow time for the traditional backcountry trek. So they decided to use the journey east as their transitional pilgrimage, their "emotional and psychological reframing exercise," as Hart puts it.
They charted a roundabout course so they could visit their daughters on the way, driving 5,000 miles in 12 days on a cross-country odyssey that brought them to New Hampshire in mid-July. Surprisingly, the two fourth-generation Westerners immediately felt very much at home. The mountains here are lower than the Rockies, but still rugged. And New Hampshire has a tradition of independence and self-reliance that reminds Hart of her own family's pioneer background. "That sense of personal responsibility that is so strong in New Hampshire is also part of the West," she observes.
While they are now 2,000 miles from the canyon lands where they grew up, the Harts have brought something of the West with them to the president's house in Durham. Here the colors of the desert are everywhere apparent. The ochre of the walls in the hall sets off a 1930s Navajo rug hanging beside the stairs. An Acoma pot, decorated in black and russet, rests on a table that once belonged to Randy's grandfather, a district attorney in Idaho. A still-life painting by Santa Fe artist R.A. Day, depicting a woven basket, a Native American pot and a cluster of chile peppers, hangs on the dining room's garnet walls, while a print of the Great Salt Lake marshes is over the fireplace in the parlor.
Hart's home office is painted a deep midnight blue, with two walls of white floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Among the books lining the shelves are academic works on education and leadership, the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, volumes of natural history by Terry Tempest Williams, and the mysteries that both of the Harts love to read for relaxation--stories by Tony Hillerman, Walter Moseley and P.D. James.
The distinctive sense of style that has transformed the president's house is also evident in Hart's office in Thompson Hall. She knows what she likes, and she is not afraid of color. When she first saw the office, which had not been painted since 1989, the walls were a neutral off-white. Before she moved in, she had them redone in a deep cranberry red, with linen-white wainscoting and trim. The tall Palladian windows in the conference area, which used to fade into the background, now nearly pop off the walls, and the view of green leaves and blue sky seems startlingly bright.
The warmth and color of the redecorated office is a fair reflection of the new president's personality. UNH trustee Steve Taylor '62, who served on the presidential search committee, described her as "the type of person who lights up a room." A fairly tall woman who favors chic pant suits and bold jewelry--often Southwestern turquoise or other stones in silver settings--she is warm, relaxed and outgoing.
Sitting at a simple cherry table in her office, Hart speaks about her plans for UNH with animation and humor, using her hands for emphasis. Her first task, she says, is "to spend a great deal of effort getting to know people and what they care about most deeply. That's true of the university community and the broader local and state communities. In order for me to be able to lead the University of New Hampshire, I have to earn their trust. I'll look for long-term goals in partnership with those communities. ... I want them to know that I consider the presidency of UNH to be a sacred trust. I take that very seriously."
But Hart has already done enough research to know that the university has some immediate problems and needs that have to be addressed. She outlined these for members of the state legislature's Higher Education Study Committee during a meeting in Concord in July (see "The President's Priorities" ). "Before becoming president, I knew that UNH and the colleges that are part of the university system constitute the economic engine of the state and are the key to future economic development and research," she told the legislators. "I remain convinced that this is the case, and I know, working together, we will advance to new levels of prosperity."
In general, Hart says, UNH is on a positive course and has been for some years. "This university is one of the gems of American higher education. ... I have a sense that everyone is very proud of the achievements of the last few years. They're looking for someone who can strongly assess what's next in order to build on those achievements and not lose any ground."
Hart is clearly confident that she is that person. Her move to UNH has put her on a new map, with a new set of mountains to climb, both literally and figuratively. She sees the course she wants to follow, and she knows it goes up. No doubt there will be some obstacles further on and some unexpected turns--there always are--but that's what makes the pilgrimage an adventure. ~
Maggie Paine is the editor of the University of New Hampshire Magazine.