Page 4 - BusinessWest May 1, 2023

Moving Beyond a ‘Safety School’
UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy Looks Back on His Accomplished Tenure
BY GEORGE O’BRIEN
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umble Subbaswamy recalls that, when he arrived at the UMass Amherst campus a dozen years ago, his first priority was to bring some needed stability to a school that had seen a number of leadership changes over the previous decade.
After that, he said, his main goals were to bring the school to a higher level in terms of national rank- ings, prestige, and reputation — locally, nationally, and internationally.
As he prepares to step aside in a few months and move on to next challenges and opportunities in his career, Subbaswamy, the longest-serving chancellor in the modern era at the school, talked with BusinessWest about how he believes those broad goals have been accomplished — and the manner in which they’ve been accomplished.
In a wide-ranging interview, he talked about every- thing from the school’s climb in the rankings, and what it means, to the challenges facing UMass and all col-
leges and universities today and tomorrow, to the pan- demic — what it was like to lead the school through that tumultuous time, and how that period changed higher education.
He said he has a rather unique way of measuring how he fared with all that and his legacy, if you will, on the campus — the number of students, and others, who want to stop and take a selfie with him.
It’s an official measuring stick, to be sure, but one that indicates just how far this campus has come dur- ing his tenure, and how his leadership helped generate and sustain the very palpable sense of momentum at the school.
BusinessWest: Turn the clock back 12 years, if you will, and talk about the goals you set and how you fared with achieving those goals.
Subbaswamy: “One of the first goals was simply to create some stability. There had been a lot of turn- over in a short period of time; there was instability, insecurity, and a lot of drama coming out of Whitmore [the school’s administration building]. So there was a strong desire to stabilize that situation so the campus
“One of the first goals was simply to create some stability.”
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MAY 1, 2023
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As the longest-serving chancellor in recent history at UMass Amherst, Kumble Subbaswamy has posed for more than a few photos during his tenure.