Dr. Michael D. McKinney, 55, was named chancellor of The Texas A&M University System on Nov. 22. He was most recently senior executive vice president and chief operating officer at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, having served in leadership positions at the UT System since 2002.
He is a former chief of staff to Governor Rick Perry, and served as commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission during former Governor George W. Bush’s first term and as a member of the Texas House of Representatives for eight years. He practiced medicine as a family practitioner for 16 years in Centerville, Texas.
Here, he answers a few questions about his new role and what it means for the A&M System.
You’ve described the chancellor’s position as your “dream job.” Why is that the case?
This has always been my dream job. It deals with things that I’ve loved for a long, long time: higher education—and education in general—and Texas A&M. It’s my ideal job to be chancellor of the A&M System, not of any other system.
I love working with smart people. I’ve told everybody for a long time that’s what I do for a living. I lead, direct, manage, whatever the verb may be, people who are smarter than I am. There’s a lot to be said for that!
You have said that one of your priorities will be to help organize a planning process through which we can prepare to meet our state’s future challenges. What are some of these challenges?
First is the changing economy. When we educate kids to go out and get a job in the real world, we need to be training them to do jobs that the state and the country need. We’ve got to anticipate what those needs will be.
For example, in the area of information systems, since the dot-com bust, there have been fewer students interested in that profession. We’re not graduating enough information systems people or systems engineers. We, higher education as a whole, should have anticipated this shortage.
We also have to prepare to educate more young people who are coming out of high school. One of the areas that all of the local school districts have emphasized is to prepare more students to go to college. Once they do their job, we’ve got to do our job.
We’re also seeing a different student population now. It’s a more racially, ethnically and socially diverse population than we had 20 years ago, and we need to make sure that we’re meeting the needs of today’s students.
You have said that you intend to make the complexion and face of the student body and faculty mirror the demographics of Texas. What are the best ways to accomplish this?
We must actively recruit diverse students and faculty. I don’t think we should simply post a job and consider whoever applies. Similarly, we can’t simply post our admission criteria online and see who applies. We have to actively recruit students and faculty who are underrepresented minorities.
The best way to recruit diverse faculty is to recruit diverse students, and the best way to recruit diverse students is to have a diverse faculty. Kids want to go to a school where they’re with faculty and administrators who look like them, act like them, come from similar backgrounds and will encourage them.
I think that’s our responsibility, and from my perspective, the faculty are the key. In the past we could make the excuse about the pipeline not producing enough qualified faculty. Well, the pipeline’s being fixed. We have the responsibility to recruit a diverse faculty. When we do that, we greatly increase our chance to create a diverse student population.
What are your top two or three priorities for the coming year?
The Texas Legislature begins its next session in January. The main priority for us will be to obtain adequate funding for higher education. I believe, and not just because it’s part of my job, that the entire future of our state rests on education, including higher education.
We’ve got to emphasize that, and ensure that we are at the forefront of technology development and marketing. The universities in the A&M System sit in a unique spot, with outstanding faculty, technologies and discoveries that have the potential to improve people’s lives.
We’ve got to take advantage of our position. We have a Governor who is interested in nanotechnology, and a Lieutenant Governor and Speaker of the House who are interested in it as well. In the A&M System we’ve got the scientists, statisticians and physicians who have been working with nanotechnology, so we have not only the potential, but also an obligation, to take a leadership role in developing these and other technologies that have the potential to improve our lives.
What do you think are the A&M System’s particular advantages and disadvantages compared to similar institutions across the country? How can we make the best use of our strengths and overcome any weaknesses?
We must find new ways to share, collaborate and cooperate among our universities and agencies.
One of the strengths of the System is, in fact, our diversity. On the whole, as a System, we are diverse. However, the individual members of the System are sometimes not as diverse. That is both a strength and a weakness. We must find new ways to share, collaborate and cooperate among our universities and agencies.
Another strength of the A&M System is the Permanent University Fund. When our ancestors wrote the Texas Constitution and set up the Permanent University Fund, they set Texas A&M and the University of Texas on a path for greatness. That public endowment is unique in the United States and is a strength that we rely on a great deal. I think the land-grant college mission that Texas A&M University has, which gives us the potential to improve people’s lives, is extremely important.
I also think that our extension agencies are underpraised assets. Texas Cooperative Extension has direct contact with people out in the “real world,” which gives it the potential to be a delivery mechanism for new ideas and new discoveries, not only in agriculture, but in areas such as health care. Education already is delivered through the agencies, and this can be done to an even greater degree. I would say that Texas Cooperative Extension is an agency that a lot of people don’t even know is a member of the A&M System, or they don’t realize all of the things that it does.
You have significant professional experience as a physician and administrator in both the public and private sectors, and as a member of the Texas Legislature. How will this experience benefit you in your new role?
Some people might say that I can’t keep a job! I look at all the different things I’ve done through the years as the summation of vectors. If you had asked me 30 years ago to name my ideal job—any job in the world: president, governor, and all that—I would have chosen to be the chancellor of the A&M System.
Did I direct my path to get here? No, it was serendipitous. I studied and learned a lot of things through the years. I come from a family of educators. My mother and dad and just about everybody I’m related to was a teacher, so I learned the importance of getting an education early on. I learned to study and to be effective with my studying. With all the reams of paper I’m reading right now, if I didn’t know how to be effective in my approach, I’d never get through all of the material.
Practicing medicine in Centerville was a great job, just being “Dr. Mike.” It didn’t pay much, but I didn’t do it for the money. Money has never been my driver. By being a doctor, I developed the skills of observation and listening, trying to figure out the difference between what people meant and what they said. I learned not to assign motives; if someone told me that it hurt, then I knew it hurt.
Dealing with people every day who have serious, personal matters makes you learn to listen and think. It makes you learn to be compassionate and have emotions without letting emotions drive your decisions.
Being in the Legislature was the best experience I have ever had. I’m glad I did it, but I’m glad I’m not doing it now! In the Legislature, you learn the workings of state government and that the control of it all is how we spend money. To be fair, the Legislature doesn’t have much control over most of the budget; how most of it is spent is predetermined. I learned how to develop policy and set directions for the priorities of the state.
Having 181 legislators is good. It keeps one member from having a lot of influence. The Legislature doesn’t always do good things very quickly, but then it also doesn’t do bad things very quickly. Our forefathers who wrote the Constitution were smart! The Legislature works very well, and I was able to learn a lot about the inner workings. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t pigeonholed into only working on health care legislation. I passed a lot of health care bills, but I drove my stake in working on the budget because the budget drives the decisions.
From there, I went to a state agency, the Health and Human Services Commission, which was one of the jobs that I loved. I already knew Medicaid legislation and the intricacies of the workings of the welfare system and the rehab system, those special services that we have for people with special needs. It was a great, great, great experience. It was good for my heart, and good for my head, too. There, I developed a special appreciation for state employees. You hear people talk about bureaucrats, but I found it was just the opposite. People in state employment far and away are dedicated to their jobs and dedicated to the people they serve.
“People in state employment far and away are dedicated to their jobs and dedicated to the people they serve.”
One of the most rewarding experiences I ever had was dealing with the people who interact with the public every day. They are filled with purpose. Most of them could probably get a job that pays more money, but most of them are not motivated just by a paycheck. I also gained respect for how hard, and how pressure-filled, some of those jobs are. The child protective service workers are a case in point. I don’t believe you can do that job for a long time. Turnover is high. What that taught me that will be useful here is the need to relieve stress: how expensive it is when it leads to turnover, and how harmful it is to the individual. At the same time, I learned that a certain amount of stress is necessary to do an effective job.
How would you describe your style of leadership?
I would describe my style as “walk around.” I’m hands on, and I like to know how to do everybody’s job. I don’t want to do anybody’s job, but I want to know how to do it. In fact, I tell people that if you ever see me doing your job, it’s not a good sign!
I try to identify people who are leaders, who know what it is that we want done, and stay out of their way. I’ll always have an opinion, and I like to be around people who don’t necessarily agree with me. I don’t need people telling me I’m smart; I need someone to tell me when I’m dumb. I would describe my style as open and leadership-based as opposed to management-based. I don’t generally ask people to do things that I’m not willing to do myself.
I would describe my style as open and leadership-based as opposed to management-based. I don’t generally ask people to do things that I’m not willing to do myself.
I don’t conduct polls, and don’t try to find out what people want, necessarily. I wouldn’t say that I’m a consensus builder, but I’ll gather information and listen before making a decision. I want us to make right decisions and strong decisions. I don’t have any trouble making decisions, but I also don’t have any trouble changing my mind if necessary.
When I get ready to do something, I ask myself three questions. People may be a little surprised at the priority of these questions. The first thing I do before I decide to do something is to ask if it’s the right thing to do. There’s a difference between right and wrong, and we’re going to do the right thing. The other question when dealing with a particular option is to know whether it will work or not. Lots of people have good ideas. I have good ideas, but not all of them will work. Finally, I need to know if people want this option. But if it’s not right, I don’t worry about whether people want it or not. And if they want something that’s not right, we’re not going to do it.
In your short time on the job, have you found anything to be surprising or had an “Oh, wow!” moment?
[Laughing] My second day on the job was when Bob Gates was announced as the nominee for Secretary of Defense. I don’t know if “wow” is the right word—“uh, oh” might be a better description!
Related to that, we’ve already had a Board of Regents meeting, and in this short period of time I’ve had dinner with the university presidents and agency directors. I can’t say that anything has been a surprise, but I am impressed with how good and how serious the heads of our universities and agencies are. They fulfilled what I expected. They’re smart, and I don’t see as much of the turf battles, at least at that level, as I expected.
Is there anything else you’d like A&M System employees to know?
They need to know where we’re headed. It’s good to have concrete, short-term plans, with short-term being a year, longer-term being two years, and long-term being five years. It’s good to have some ideas about issues beyond five years, but with the Legislature meeting every two years, I don’t know that we can have a detailed five-year plan.
I want us to start planning together, and not just on building buildings or raising money. I want us to think about what it is we want to be, what it is we want to do, and what it is that the state and country need from us. Those have to be correlated.
I want the process not to be bureaucratic, and not to be blue sky, but to be focused on strategic planning: This is what the state needs. This is what we can contribute and this is how we can pay for it. I will expect all 26,000 employees, and, frankly, the 103,000 students, to participate at some level in that process. They’re entitled to their own opinions. Life would be very boring if they all thought the same way I do.
