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What were the things you hoped to accomplish at UNH, but did not?
That's a question that I'm asked rather often. Too often I said rather glibly, "Well, I have not yet been able to ride on the Zamboni." I can't say that anymore, because now I've ridden on the Zamboni.

Since we've been able to move on several fronts that are important, I haven't worried so much about the things we haven't been able to do. But there are some, and they're big. The university's physical plant is aging and deteriorating. We were very grateful in the last budget session of the legislature when the state made a significant investment in the restoration of our facilities-money to renovate Kingsbury, our science and engineering building, and Murkland Hall, home to many liberal arts programs. However, academic facilities and athletic facilities are a big issue for the campus. Many of our buildings have not been renovated in 40 or 50 years, and we cannot continue this kind of deferred maintenance indefinitely.

You describe mathematics as "beautiful." Could you elaborate?
Well, mathematics is probably the greatest of human constructions. It's wonderful to study mathematics and even more wonderful to do original work in the field. ... Some mathematicians work on real-world problems. I never did; I just did mathematics for its own sake.

What could be done at UNH to make the experience better for students? I think the university will be a little bit better when it's more diverse, because students learn from others whose backgrounds and beliefs are different. That's something we've been working hard on, but we haven't made the progress that we should-so that's another thing we're leaving for the next generation. It worries me that we're loading such a high percentage of the total cost of education onto our students and their families. One consequence of our high tuition is that students need to be employed while they study, and they're graduating with rather high debts-something like 81 percent of our graduates are in debt when they leave UNH, and the average debt is more than $20,000. That reality tends to influence their choice of what to do after graduation, and it tends to dampen our enrollments in social work and nursing and teaching in ways that concern me. If we had more scholarship aid and if we didn't have tuition at such a high level, we would improve the situation for our students. I wish we had more on-campus housing; I wish we could house 60 percent of our students. ... I wish we had more of what we call smart classrooms-more technology available for teaching and learning.

It's clear that the diversity issue is very important to you. In 1998, the black student union held a sit-in at your office, asking for increased efforts to recruit minorities. The goal then was to increase the black student population by about 230 students by 2004 and to hire six black tenure-track faculty members by 2003. How close is UNH to achieving those goals? We're making more progress at the student level than at the faculty level. Part of our problem is that the competition is so keen for faculty of color. While we have been able to hire some, we've also lost some to other institutions. Recognizing that it will take longer than we had hoped to significantly increase diversity among our permanent faculty, we have created a visiting scholars of color program. We also have a student and faculty exchange program with Howard University. We're beginning to develop some less formal strategies as we continue to work to increase the number of minority faculty and staff members. At the undergraduate level, about 3.7 percent of our students are students of color-that means in a class of 30 you could expect to have one student of color. We said we need to get to at least 7.5 percent, so you could expect to have two students of color in a class of 30. As you can see, that will be a long-range issue for the university. The minority population of New Hampshire in the last census was about 4 percent, so we're not yet at that level. We'll do better next autumn than we did last autumn, which was better than we did the year before. Each year we have admitted more students of color, and they've performed very well. We don't have different admissions standards for any group of students.

Why is this issue so important to you?
To me, it's a quality-of-education issue. Many, many of our students will go from this environment to live and work in more diverse communities than they have experienced before. College is a time of intense learning. Students learn from each other, and we know that if the public institutions don't position themselves to educate across all sectors of society, the nation won't have the workforce it needs. It won't have the educated citizenry that it needs. I think it's a very serious issue for the nation.

When you came here, faculty retention was a bit of a touchy issue.
Well, the contract situation has been particularly bad. But even with that, UNH has a very high faculty-retention rate.

During contract negotiations, there were some who would have described your relationship with the faculty as "strained." What have you and others done to repair those rifts between the administration and the faculty?
That is a problem for us and one that will require continued attention. In this time between contract negotiations, we've been in the academic-planning process. Faculty members have been very engaged and have carried the weight of that process. And there have been several task forces working, including one on the nature of community at UNH. They have facilitated conversations between faculty members and trustees and given us a much better sense of what our potential is as a community. It is very important that the governing board and the administration and the faculty, who share the governance of this institution, have a common understanding of what we're trying to accomplish. And I think we're closer to that. One of the things coming out of the academic-planning process is our clear statement of institutional identity. We think that we have both the living and learning environment of a New England liberal arts college and, at the same time, the excitement and the civic commitment that come from being a research university in the land-grant tradition. That says we're kind of a hybrid, and we like that. We think that makes us not only unique but particularly good at the business of education, because the teaching and the research and the public service missions blend together to create a very rich environment.

The amount of research dollars coming to UNH has nearly doubled [$43.1 million to $81.9 million] since you've been here. Do you get any of the credit for that?
Not much. Research is the work of the faculty. The deans, center directors and the vice president for research give coordination and direction. (Leitzel reaches for a giant blue binder.) This is research information for our congressional delegation for the next fiscal year. Each year, our research office develops an inventory of key research programs that we believe should be competitive for federal funding. We want to be sure that the funds are in the agencies where we can compete for them. So notebooks like this are prepared for our congressional representatives and their staffs.

We are not only a land-grant institution, but a sea-grant and space-grant institution as well. That means we have a rather remarkable configuration of programs that should be eligible for federal funding. We also have a great deal of high-quality research in the areas of families, children and communities-all of those programs should be eligible for federal funding. We have promised our representatives that we will not ask the federal government for funds if we're not sure we can deliver at the highest level. And we do-we deliver at the very highest level of quality.

There have been some problems with the Greek organizations since you've been here.
We've had problems with some fraternities. The sororities seem to be stable. I've just seen their academic performance from last semester, and the sorority women are performing about like the average woman on campus. Some of the fraternities have been disciplined since I've been here. The current leadership in most of the fraternities is working with the administration to make improvements.

What place do those organizations have at the university? Well, we try to figure that out. We have some houses that are successful and are serving the needs of particular groups of students. We have others that are on probation, and we don't know what the future is for those. There was a time when fraternities and sororities played a stronger role than they now do. I think about 9 percent of our students are Greek. ... We value small-residence opportunities, and we are trying to provide more of those opportunities in the residence halls. One thing that shows a lot of promise is our effort to create communities around common interests. We have engineering floors, and we have the Common Ground residence hall for students who seek to live with people who have different backgrounds. So in the residence halls now-I would almost call them "theme dorms"-we have many different living and learning opportunities.

So do you hope that will help to phase out fraternities and sororities? No, our goal is not to terminate fraternities-not at all. But we do need to reinvent them, rethink them, because the model that was popular 30 to 40 years ago is just not quite right for this generation.

You've become quite a hockey fan since you came to UNH. Yes, that's in the job description.

What's the most edge-of-your-seat UNH hockey moment you've ever witnessed?
We were in great trouble against Merrimack on March 9. Almost halfway through the second period, the score was three for Merrimack, zero for UNH. In a minute and 40 seconds, we scored three goals, and of course the place was just wild. And then they came back and scored another, so it was four to three. It was fairly late in the third period when we made it four-four, and the game went into overtime, and we got the score. That was about as loud as the Whitt gets, and as close as we want to come to losing.

It seems like it's become more of a passion and less of an obligation.
I feel the same way when I see our dance troupe perform. I think: "That is just phenomenal-that these young people have developed that level of skill and grace." I try to go to the Paul Creative Arts Center as often as I go to the Whittemore Center, because where the students are performing, we need to acknowledge the quality of their performance.

I think it was Walter Peterson who made the decision to scrap the baseball program, but you were in the chair when... ... It's fairer to say that I made the last decision. He had the study group working. They had given him a preliminary recommendation, and he said it should wait for the new president. We eliminated four sports; that dropped us from 28 to 24. The average in our conference is 20. The University of Michigan has 16 intercollegiate sports. If you're going to do some things well, you don't do everything. But there's a tension for us between wanting to give opportunities to all students and then also wanting to excel in some areas, and it is the nature of this university to want to do well. Comprehensiveness and quality are often in tension. If we had unlimited resources, that wouldn't be true, but we don't. I have, I think, consistently chosen in favor of quality because I think that's our niche in public higher education.

You got a lot of heat for that decision.
There are many people who still smart from that.

Your husband passed away in 1998. That must have been a horribly hard time.
Yes. We were here a year and a half. ... We knew about Jim's illness in November, and he died in February. So in a rather short time, we had to come to grips with a terminal illness. And yes, that's been the hardest part. He was a special person, a really very wonderful person, and I have missed him, you know, and still do. That's just something that I've needed to learn to accept. But the community's been very supportive. The community chose to share the grief of Jim's death. They were sad and did what they could do to be supportive and gave me space when I needed it.

So what's next for you? Well, I don't know. There are those who predict I will be a complete failure in retirement. My hope is that there will be things that need to be done that people will see that I could do. I chair the Mathematical Sciences Education Board at the National Academy of Sciences, and I want to give substantially more time to my own field. I'll be very happy to reconnect with mathematics. I don't know what the future might hold. There are some organizations that are talking to me, but I've told them September or October will be about the time when I'll be ready to look ahead. I don't want to start doing that now. We have a very full agenda here that we need to complete before the first of July, so I don't want to get fragmented. I won't separate from UNH very far. I hope I'll still have a presence here. But my family is in the Midwest, and they deserve more of me than they have been getting, by quite a bit. I want to get anchored back with my family. ... I have two sons, two daughters-in-law and two granddaughters. Hannah just turned 10 and Lillian is nine months.

When you look at those little girls what do you hope for them?
Oh, the same things that a grandmother always hopes for a granddaughter-that the pieces of her life fit together to be meaningful. ... I don't wish for them to be mathematicians or university presidents, though those are wonderful career paths. But I wish that they will have opportunities, that they will have choices, that no doors will be closed.

If you needed to pick one thing that you could point out and say: I would like that to be my legacy. ...
I think I will need some time to reflect on that. My hope is that the university is better positioned for its future than it was when I came. I don't hope for a lot more than that. When you're from the Midwest, you intend to leave the woodpile higher than you found it. I believe that I have.~

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