Intermountain Jewish News

Do not come to philosophize.

Nor to talk politics.

Or shoot the breeze.

Do not even come to talk about education, as in what happens in the classroom.

“I’m not here to tell the English teachers how to teach English,” says Bruce Benson, who has a knack of being quick, direct, precise, and also friendly, relaxed and welcoming.

Budgets. Fundraising. Enrollments. Washington. Growth.

This is what a university president should focus on.

At least, this is what this university president focuses on.

Get that word: focus.

Bruce Benson is very focused.

He’s defines his duties and delegates all the rest. He’s not a control freak.

He’s a growth freak.

An innovation freak.

And a travel freak — as in, go to the four university campuses around the state, and to many more, too, to figure out ways to team up with other institutions to get a CU education to their students.

That’s just the beginning.

Go to the potential students themselves.

Sell the university to them.

And sell it to donors.

Sell it to politicians in the state legislature and in the Congress.

Sell it to present and potential Nobel Prize winning faculty.

Sell it to community college students who never even thought of attending the highest public university in the state.

No, don’t shoot the breeze with Bruce Benson.

Be prepared for a wild and exciting tour of his mind, ideas and actions for CU.

I ask what I think is a logical and simple question: “What is your vision for CU?”

If I were a boxer losing in the ring, I would have to characterize his answer as a series of lefts and rights coming at me unseen, each one landing.

Says Bruce Benson: The goals of the university change all the time.

One goal, certainly, is to address the problems. Perfect the athletic program. “Get a spotless operation.”

Seize the opportunities.

As in, let CU help build a great medical campus at Fitzsimons (CU’s “Anschutz Campus”).

“We need a lot of great pieces.”

Pieces? As in pieces of a puzzle, something small like that?

Hardly. Pieces, as in a huge new VA facility (“we’ll build a tower with the VA — we get 150 beds and they get 100 beds — it’s in the works”).

He ticks off more “pieces.”

“We want to be the destination, not Anderson, not Mayo’s, but Anschutz. Fitzsimons.

“It will have greatness,” he summarizes of his vision for Fitzsimons.

Our conversation is five minutes old. Snippets. More pieces: “15,000 employees . . . the goal: 30,000 employees.”

“We need a new interchange off of I-225.”

(What’s this, a traffic engineer? Actually, yes, if that’s one of the critical items to bring greatness to Fitzsimons. So Benson clicks it off, a new interchange off I-225.)

Another snippet: his wife.

Talk about a power couple.

“My wife has serious horse power. Ran the Reagan Fellows for Bush One. On the SCFD board. On the UNC board.”

(That’s a partial list.)

Then, a snippet about himself: “Chaired the $1 billion capital drive for CU a few years back.”

Imagine the details in raising $1 billion! For Bruce Benson, it’s merely another item.

Because it’s going to take a lot of items to grow a first-rate university.

Another item: the Ward Churchill thing.

Benson wasn’t in the president’s seat when the now fired professor’s plagiarism monopolized the press for a couple of years. Benson’s got it all boiled down: “Because of Churchill, we’ve tightened up tenure”; i.e., there won’t be another tenure scandal. Now, move on.

Incidentally, is tenure good? bad? For Benson, the philosophical possibilities are uninteresting. It’s really quite simple: “Without tenure, you can’t run a university. No one would teach.”

Precisely because of this, “before you award tenure, you better be sure you’ve got the right person. When you award tenure, you’ve just signed a two to three million dollar contract.”

A big item.

A slew of big items, in fact.

That why Benson tightened up the tenure process.

Next.

I called the day after our interview. I had a question.

Benson was not in.

He was in Montrose, Colorado.

“Creating relationships,” as he puts it.

That day in Montrose.

Other days, in Trinidad, Lamar, Pueblo, La Junta, Ft. Collins, Durango.

And lots of other places.

Benson’s moving.

Trying to get “the community college students ready for UCCS.”

“UCCS” is the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

Not a forgotten sister.

It’s one of CU’s four major campuses.

It’s where Benson is “working with the Olympics. We don’t want them to move [from Colorado Springs]. Can we build a joint arena?”

Another item, another piece.

I confess. The geography of Colorado Springs is not my top expertise.