10 Questions With… Roy Haggerty, provost and executive vice president and former dean of the College of Science, who has just returned to OSU after working at Louisiana State University
Why did you want to return to Oregon State?
OSU and Oregon are home for me, in many ways. My wife, Amanda, and my children and grandchildren are here, I spent most of my career here, and OSU is a world-class university that I love. Most important professionally: I am inspired by President Murthy’s ambitious strategic plan, Prosperity Widely Shared. Achieving the goals in PWS will be an inflection point for OSU and Oregon.
What lessons did you learn at LSU that will inform your path going forward as provost at OSU?
LSU taught me how transformational a land-grant university can be for the people and the economy of a state — Louisiana can’t be prosperous and healthy without LSU — and I would like to see OSU be equally or more transformative for Oregon.
What makes you passionate about higher education?
Higher education, and particularly research universities, are some of the best institutions that humanity has ever created for increasing human prosperity and well-being, and they merit our investment of time and treasure. Why? Because every problem we face exists from the lack knowledge on how to solve it: We may not possess the technical, scientific, legal, political or societal knowledge, or knowledge found in the arts and humanities. Universities exist to generate and propagate that knowledge.
Given national attention on issues like federal funding, diversity and tenure, what do you view as higher education’s biggest challenges?
Staying true to our core mission: the generation of and equitable dissemination of knowledge. Many universities have allowed themselves, or components of themselves, to become political tools. Our role in civilization is to generate new knowledge and to disseminate that knowledge as broadly as we can. The closer we stay to that, the better off we will be.
What advice would you give the younger version of yourself who was just starting college?
I went very deep into geology and mathematics as an undergraduate. That was wonderful and fulfilling. I would recommend that my younger self have a little more breadth — a few more classes in philosophy, history, physics and engineering would have been wonderful.
What steps does Oregon State need to take to advance itself as a research university, especially given cuts to research funding?
I’m not fully convinced those cuts will be as deep as some predict, but we do need to be prepared for them nonetheless. We need to take advantage of funding where it does exist, and we need to preserve and maintain our core research strengths for the inevitable return of federal funding for research.
As a former OSU faculty member, how do you as provost approach the relationship between leadership and faculty, especially at a time when higher education is under so many different pressures?
Faculty are the core resource of any university, including OSU. I am a faculty member first and a leader second.
What was your favorite course in college?
Applied linear algebra. I had taken linear algebra and found it rather dull (sorry, math colleagues). When I took applied linear algebra (combining coding, differential equations and linear algebra) and discovered all that I could do with it, I fell in love with it. I loved learning to write code implementing algorithms that allowed me to solve very complex and powerful equations for real-world problems.
How would you convince today’s parents that a college education is worth the money?
You will never regret an investment in knowledge, particularly your own. Spending four years growing your knowledge at the highest rate and greatest intensity possible is the best investment in your future you could possibly make.
What is your favorite non-academic pursuit or passion?
The Spanish language and the history and culture of Central America. A few months ago, I finished “Cien Años de Soledad” (“One Hundred Years of Solitude”) by Gabriel García Márquez in the original Spanish. It was very fulfilling.
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