Holub sets goal of moving campus into top public ranks in US

Robert C. Holub says his most important task as the new chancellor will be to move the Amherst campus to a higher level of achievement so that it competes successfully with the top public colleges and universities in the country. And by that he means the best public universities in the Midwest and on the Pacific Coast.

Holub says UMass Amherst is already the top research university in New England, but he believes that status isn’t enough and should serve only as a starting point. He promised to begin work by assembling an administrative team to develop and execute a strategic plan to meet his overall objectives. Holub will officially assume his position as chancellor at the beginning of August.

Following a unanimous vote of approval by the Board of Trustees on May 5 in Boston, Holub traveled to the Amherst campus where he met with the press and attended two receptions at the Campus Center. Holub was introduced by President Jack M. Wilson, who praised the new chancellor and the search process that produced him. Wilson also lauded the work of Thomas W. Cole Jr., who has served as interim chancellor for the past year.

Wilson called Holub a distinguished scholar and top administrator. “He understands what it takes to have a great university,” Wilson said, adding, “He also has a great sense of humor.”

Holub said he has a particular passion for public higher education. “Public higher education is the most powerful dimension of the American dream,” he says. “Truly it is the key to a citizenry that is healthy, wealthy and wise.”

When asked his views on the proper role of the Amherst campus as the flagship of the UMass system, Holub said the flagship is the leader, but also is a member of the team. “We have to move forward together and look for synergies within the system,” he said. “Still, the flagship leads.”

Holub noted that while he intends to put strong emphasis on research, he also understands the value of the University’s teaching mission. “Teaching and research aren’t inversely related,” he said. His goal will be to promote both missions as part of the overall goal of improving UMass Amherst.

On securing funding, Holub repeated something he said during his recent visit to the campus as a candidate. He promised to aggressively seeking funding, “but at the end of the day it’s important to use funding effectively.” Successful use of resources, he added, will lead to garnering additional funds.

Holub, who was the first member of his family to attend college, also pledged to work to make the Amherst campus affordable. “I don’t want to price UMass Amherst out of the market for the student we want to attract,” he said.

He is currently the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Tennessee’s flagship campus in Knoxville, a post he has held for the past two years. Before that, he was at the University of California Berkeley for 27 years, where he became a full professor and served in several administrative posts. He chaired Berkeley’s German department when it was ranked the best in its field by the National Research Council.

As a scholar and teacher, Holub specializes in 19th- and 20th-century German intellectual, cultural and literary history. He is the author of 12 books and more than 100 articles and essays dealing with issues ranging from periodization in the early 19th century and German realism, to aesthetic theory and postwar confrontations with the Holocaust. He has written extensively on the poet Heinrich Heine and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

Holub grew up in New Jersey and attended public schools in Belmar and Asbury Park. He went to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a degree in natural science. After working for a year at a pharmaceutical company in Philadelphia, Holub began studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he earned a master’s degrees in comparative literature and German. He completed his doctorate in German from Wisconsin in 1979.

Holub and his wife, Sabine, have three small daughters, Madelaine, Shoshanah and Natalie. He has a son Alexei from a previous marriage. Alexei earned a doctorate from Cal Tech in computation and neural systems last June.

May 6, 2008.

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