University of Pittsburgh Chancellor-elect Joan Gabel said in a wide-ranging interview Monday that her top priorities after taking office figure to include identifying the school’s next provost, initiating a capital campaign and dealing with tuition and labor issues.
But Gabel said her first 100 days and beyond “will also include a lot of meet-and-greets and listening beyond those sorts of obvious pieces of the baton pass,” Gabel said by phone.
“I want to understand what Pitt needs,” said Gabel, 55, who now serves as president of the University of Minnesota system and its Twin Cities campus. “I want to learn Pitt.”
Gabel is assuming Pitt’s top post from departing Chancellor Patrick Gallagher in July.
She said Gallagher, concluding nine years in office, is consulting with her as the university prepares to name an interim replacement for Provost Ann Cudd, who last month accepted the presidency at Portland State University, effective this summer.
Gabel said her arrival as chancellor likely will leave her to oversee the bulk of the search for Cudd’s replacement. The provost serves as the right hand of the chancellor on academic matters. Gabel formerly served as provost at the University of South Carolina.
“The natural timing for a search like this would actually be … to launch late summer and have it occur through the course of the academic year, identifying the next provost probably around the same time that I was identified this year,” Gabel said. “It is a crucial position.”
Beyond the provost position, four of Pitt’s 16 schools and colleges — law, engineering, dental, and arts and sciences — have open deanships. Finalists were announced recently for the arts and sciences position.
Pitt’s 3,000 full- and part-time faculty represented by the United Steelworkers are still trying to secure their first collective bargaining agreement, a process that has stretched for more than a year and prompted protests in recent weeks over issues including a sought-after minimum $60,000 salary for full-time workers and job security.
Gabel said labor law dictates how union-management discussions can take place, but she said she looks forward to securing a “mutually beneficial” contract. She said she believes in shared governance and, if a portion of the faculty believes their unified voice should come from a union, then she intends to honor that.
“I’ve seen really tremendous things happen only because of unions in the course of history in this country,” Gabel said. “I’m hopeful that in the course of this very historic first collective bargaining agreement that we end up with a faculty that feels supported.”
Pennsylvania has some of the nation’s priciest public campus prices and traditionally ranks low among states in taxpayer aid to higher education. At Pitt, the base yearly in-state tuition for 2022-23 is $19,760 excluding room, board and other fees, following a 3.5%, or $668, increase last summer.
Often, the process to approve a state budget stretches beyond the end of each fiscal year on June 30, suggesting a board vote on next fall’s tuition for the school’s 34,000 students in Oakland and branches in Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown and Titusville might land during her earliest days in office.
“I haven’t looked at the budget yet, so I really am not qualified yet to know the details for what this year looks like,” Gabel said. “I can tell you that anything related to tuition is the last mile in terms of figuring out how to address increases in costs. But I can’t tell you what we will do this year yet.”
Gabel said she has begun reaching out to legislators.
Pitt trustees named Gabel as Pitt’s 19th and first woman chancellor April 3.
She is leaving Minnesota after four years heading a system with five campuses and 68,000 students. In Pittsburgh, she will receive a base salary of $950,000.
Officials including Pitt Trustees Chair Doug Browning said a survey done as part of the chancellor’s search indicated the salary level was needed to retain the sort of leader who could provide continuity and growth. Gabel’s contract, after factoring in retirement contributions, retention incentives and other benefits, is likely to total more than $1 million in annual earnings.
She arrives at an institution whose last universitywide capital drive was completed in 2013. The “Building Our Future Together” campaign raised $2.135 billion for various endeavors across the university. While Gabel said she was not ready to discuss details of a new campaign, she said it would be a priority.
“I would expect to get started on that very soon,” she said. “I consider that part of my out-of-the gate, marching orders.”
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Gabel was the last of three presidents to oversee Minnesota’s campaign that raised $4 billion.
“They’re long,” she said of such fund drives.
Asked how long she sees herself at Pitt, she noted that the chancellor serves at the pleasure of the board and that tenure involves productivity as a leader and alignment with an institution’s goals.
“I feel a lot of optimism about it feeling just as good to me many years from now, and so I’m very hopeful that this is — this is — this is it,” she said.
Bill Schackner is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Bill by email at bschackner@triblive.com or via Twitter .