New Tacoma Chancellor and UW President meet with UW Tacoma staff and faculty

New UW President Michael Young doesn’t think of UW Tacoma as a baby UW Seattle that will grow into a big UW Seattle someday.

He believes the relationship between Tacoma, Seattle and Bothell UW campuses should be collaborative. That’s what he told staff and faculty at a get-acquainted gathering this afternoon in the Tacoma Room in GWP. For an hour, he and new Tacoma Chancellor Debra Friedman answered questions ranging from how the university could increase the diversity of faculty and students to whether the Tacoma campus’s interdisciplinary approach would survive hard budget times.

Friedman and Young couldn’t give specifics since they’ve only been on the job for about a week, but they talked about their general impressions and vision.

Young, for instance, said he’d like to see the three UW campuses look at what each offers and how to complement each other.

“Should we have some activities, some majors, some things going on here that we don’t have in Seattle or Bothell?” he said. “… If we think  that way, it kind of becomes a mind-expanding opportunity  to have three separate campuses. We ought to think of these as opportunities to do that. On the research side, I think the same thing is true. We can build certain kinds of centers of excellence here, certain kinds in Seattle.”

Friedman’s response? “Hallelujah,” she said.

Friedman said her experience working 11 years on the Seattle campus will allow her to see the special features that UW Tacoma could contribute to the UW system.

She also looks forward to a positive working relationship. When she interviewed for the chancellor post, she said, “I made it, I think, very clear I am not at all interested in a tense relationship with Seattle.”

The UW president and provost, whoever they may be, want the UW Tacoma to be successful, she said, because it enhances the university as a whole. “I look forward to those collaborations and to changing whatever approach might have been here before that suggested that we were an island unto ourselves or were somehow resentful of being in this status.”

But Friedman also wants to ensure that university-wide systems, be it admissions or technology,  are designed collaboratively with UW Tacoma rather than “visited upon us.”

“This is a special moment: new president, new opportunity for resetting that relationship in a way that makes sense for both President Young and me," she said.