( Editor’s Note: UMass Lowell Chancellor Martin T. Meehan is featured on the cover of Merrimack Valley Magazine’s March/April 2011 issue. To see how far things have come in just a few years, we present here our 2007 conversation with The Chancellor on his first day on the job… )
It’s fall now, and a busy O’Leary Library at UMass Lowell is an unremarkable thing. But it was something else entirely to see it buzzing on a hot summer afternoon, a pocket of life in a campus ghost town. Indeed, when Marty Meehan was told they wanted to fill his first official day as his alma mater’s new chancellor with a series of welcoming events, his reaction was to wonder who on Earth would show up during summer’s biggest vacation week.
Yet there they were on the library mezzanine—a noisily humming blend of faculty and staff that swells past sixty, eighty, and then 100 people as Meehan is five, ten, and then twenty minutes late. It’s a remarkably similar scene to the one seven hours earlier, when upwards of 120 people showed up for welcoming remarks. That gathering ended with Meehan happily cornered by a line of people in a sort of Godfather’s daughter’s wedding day effect—the boss can refuse no person’s two minutes on this day of open-armed warmth and unbridled optimism, and they all know it
Photo by Kevin Harkins
It’s hard to tell how much of the buzz is natural curiosity and how much is the amped-up byproduct of Meehan having abandoned Congress to take the gig. What is clear is that nobody present really cares that less than three years ago, Meehan was doing everything in his considerable fundraising power to expand his future in politics. Nobody’s thinking about the $5.1 million he raised in hopes of pursuing a Se
nate seat that John Kerry can’t get himself promoted out of but can’t bring himself to leave. They just care that he’s here now; that he comes off confident and committed; that many more millions will follow him.
But there are a lot of people around the Merrimack Valley who might be questioning why any of this should matter to them. They could be forgiven for wondering why they shouldn’t be a little annoyed, frankly, that the guy who had fourteen years on the job as the state’s 5th District Congressman, who earned a national profile with issues like openly gay soldiers and campaign finance while still delivering tens of millions to Valley communities, has quit his job and stuck them with whatever rookie scuffles into Washington to beg people with actual influence to please, please give a damn about what needs fixing back in Lowell or Lawrence or Haverhill.
So when he sat down with this magazine after the exchange of semi-scripted welcomes and ha-has was over at O’Leary, he made the case for why one of the most intriguing job jumps in local history is good news for everybody.
“I believe being chancellor of UMass Lowell is more important to the Valley than being the congressman from the region,” he begins. “We have an innovation economy and in order to succeed in an innovation economy you have to have a highly literate work force in technology. UMass Lowell determines what this region’s workforce looks like, and whether or not we can have sustained economic growth in the Merrimack Valley ties directly to this university, because 65 to 70 percent of the graduates of this university stay in the region. Now we’ve lost many of these younger graduates because there aren’t jobs, but I believe the future of the Merrimack Valley is tied to UMass, specifically UMass Lowell.”
It’s a fairly straightforward case he’s making: the state is uniquely positioned to make biotech its future, and UMass Lowell is uniquely positioned to make the Valley that future’s epicenter. First, the future needs a roof over its head.
“We’re going to build one of only four National Science Foundation bio and nanomanufacturing centers in the country,” he says, referring to the building that is the star of a massive campus-wide renovation plan.
Photo by Kevin Harkins
“It will be a facility that I think in many ways will determine the role nanotechnology plays in our region. I think that’s critically important and more important, frankly, than who the member of Congress is. I think the future of the Merrimack Valley will be wedded directly to this building.”
He cites smaller initiatives, too, such as the small business incubator in the works, and the space dedicated to working with the university’s education programs in the new Lawrence High School. And when asked if he truly believes he can take UMass Lowell to new status as a region-wide commodity, he stomps all over the implied skepticism with a suddenly firm, aggressive tone.
“No, I am gonna take it. I’m gonna make it a regional institution. I’m going to expand the presence of this university in southern New Hampshire, in Nashoba and Merrimack Valley, all the way up the river to Newburyport.”
To do that, though, he’ll have to stay a while. And while he committed to taking the job from the second the search firm contacted him, it’s natural to wonder if he’ll be in the chancellor’s chair long enough to see his lofty vision come to life. Having $5.1 million makes you a permanent candidate-in-waiting.
“I’m 50-years-old. I’ve learned from experience you shouldn’t predict what might happen six, eight, ten years down the road,” he says. “But I talked to Joe Kennedy (who left Congress and now runs the non-profit Citizens Energy Corp.) about this and Joe said, ‘You’re never gonna go back. Once you leave you’re never gonna go back.’ That may be.
“I suppose I’ll miss some things in Washington—I spent a long time trying to get rid of a policy in the military called ‘Don’t ask don’t tell,’ which basically says that if you’re gay you can’t say you’re gay when serving in the U.S. military. You can in the Israeli army, you can in the British military, and the day that ban on gays serving in the military is lifted is a day I’ll kind of wish I was there, because I have fourteen years invested in that battle. So there may be times when I miss it. But on the other hand, I think the work here is important, I love the city and the university, and the challenges are great.”
And maybe there it is. After fourteen-plus years of smashing your head against the wall to gain an inch, you might feel like you could move mountains in three years on a job with a softer wall.
But it was hard to miss the small reminders that it won’t be pure coasting. There’s the reason he was late to O’Leary, for instance. Having throughout the day expressed his hopes of building the university culture around the just-rescued hockey program, he had to spend the afternoon dealing with the coach’s drunk-driving arrest. Welcome to UMass, Chancellor. Among your first official acts is suspending the hockey coach.
Then there was the half-joke by a faculty member during the O’Leary love fest. Detailing his department’s funding troubles, he dropped a line that could come from a lot of people—on campus and maybe off —and one that’s hard to imagine anyone being naïve enough to utter to their congressman.
From Congress to Campus: An Interview with Marty Meehan
( Editor’s Note: UMass Lowell Chancellor Martin T. Meehan is featured on the cover of Merrimack Valley Magazine’s March/April 2011 issue. To see how far things have come in just a few years, we present here our 2007 conversation with The Chancellor on his first day on the job… )
It’s fall now, and a busy O’Leary Library at UMass Lowell is an unremarkable thing. But it was something else entirely to see it buzzing on a hot summer afternoon, a pocket of life in a campus ghost town. Indeed, when Marty Meehan was told they wanted to fill his first official day as his alma mater’s new chancellor with a series of welcoming events, his reaction was to wonder who on Earth would show up during summer’s biggest vacation week.
Yet there they were on the library mezzanine—a noisily humming blend of faculty and staff that swells past sixty, eighty, and then 100 people as Meehan is five, ten, and then twenty minutes late. It’s a remarkably similar scene to the one seven hours earlier, when upwards of 120 people showed up for welcoming remarks. That gathering ended with Meehan happily cornered by a line of people in a sort of Godfather’s daughter’s wedding day effect—the boss can refuse no person’s two minutes on this day of open-armed warmth and unbridled optimism, and they all know it
Photo by Kevin Harkins
It’s hard to tell how much of the buzz is natural curiosity and how much is the amped-up byproduct of Meehan having abandoned Congress to take the gig. What is clear is that nobody present really cares that less than three years ago, Meehan was doing everything in his considerable fundraising power to expand his future in politics. Nobody’s thinking about the $5.1 million he raised in hopes of pursuing a Se
nate seat that John Kerry can’t get himself promoted out of but can’t bring himself to leave. They just care that he’s here now; that he comes off confident and committed; that many more millions will follow him.
But there are a lot of people around the Merrimack Valley who might be questioning why any of this should matter to them. They could be forgiven for wondering why they shouldn’t be a little annoyed, frankly, that the guy who had fourteen years on the job as the state’s 5th District Congressman, who earned a national profile with issues like openly gay soldiers and campaign finance while still delivering tens of millions to Valley communities, has quit his job and stuck them with whatever rookie scuffles into Washington to beg people with actual influence to please, please give a damn about what needs fixing back in Lowell or Lawrence or Haverhill.
So when he sat down with this magazine after the exchange of semi-scripted welcomes and ha-has was over at O’Leary, he made the case for why one of the most intriguing job jumps in local history is good news for everybody.
“I believe being chancellor of UMass Lowell is more important to the Valley than being the congressman from the region,” he begins. “We have an innovation economy and in order to succeed in an innovation economy you have to have a highly literate work force in technology. UMass Lowell determines what this region’s workforce looks like, and whether or not we can have sustained economic growth in the Merrimack Valley ties directly to this university, because 65 to 70 percent of the graduates of this university stay in the region. Now we’ve lost many of these younger graduates because there aren’t jobs, but I believe the future of the Merrimack Valley is tied to UMass, specifically UMass Lowell.”
It’s a fairly straightforward case he’s making: the state is uniquely positioned to make biotech its future, and UMass Lowell is uniquely positioned to make the Valley that future’s epicenter. First, the future needs a roof over its head.
“We’re going to build one of only four National Science Foundation bio and nanomanufacturing centers in the country,” he says, referring to the building that is the star of a massive campus-wide renovation plan.
Photo by Kevin Harkins
“It will be a facility that I think in many ways will determine the role nanotechnology plays in our region. I think that’s critically important and more important, frankly, than who the member of Congress is. I think the future of the Merrimack Valley will be wedded directly to this building.”
He cites smaller initiatives, too, such as the small business incubator in the works, and the space dedicated to working with the university’s education programs in the new Lawrence High School. And when asked if he truly believes he can take UMass Lowell to new status as a region-wide commodity, he stomps all over the implied skepticism with a suddenly firm, aggressive tone.
“No, I am gonna take it. I’m gonna make it a regional institution. I’m going to expand the presence of this university in southern New Hampshire, in Nashoba and Merrimack Valley, all the way up the river to Newburyport.”
To do that, though, he’ll have to stay a while. And while he committed to taking the job from the second the search firm contacted him, it’s natural to wonder if he’ll be in the chancellor’s chair long enough to see his lofty vision come to life. Having $5.1 million makes you a permanent candidate-in-waiting.
“I’m 50-years-old. I’ve learned from experience you shouldn’t predict what might happen six, eight, ten years down the road,” he says. “But I talked to Joe Kennedy (who left Congress and now runs the non-profit Citizens Energy Corp.) about this and Joe said, ‘You’re never gonna go back. Once you leave you’re never gonna go back.’ That may be.
“I suppose I’ll miss some things in Washington—I spent a long time trying to get rid of a policy in the military called ‘Don’t ask don’t tell,’ which basically says that if you’re gay you can’t say you’re gay when serving in the U.S. military. You can in the Israeli army, you can in the British military, and the day that ban on gays serving in the military is lifted is a day I’ll kind of wish I was there, because I have fourteen years invested in that battle. So there may be times when I miss it. But on the other hand, I think the work here is important, I love the city and the university, and the challenges are great.”
And maybe there it is. After fourteen-plus years of smashing your head against the wall to gain an inch, you might feel like you could move mountains in three years on a job with a softer wall.
But it was hard to miss the small reminders that it won’t be pure coasting. There’s the reason he was late to O’Leary, for instance. Having throughout the day expressed his hopes of building the university culture around the just-rescued hockey program, he had to spend the afternoon dealing with the coach’s drunk-driving arrest. Welcome to UMass, Chancellor. Among your first official acts is suspending the hockey coach.
Then there was the half-joke by a faculty member during the O’Leary love fest. Detailing his department’s funding troubles, he dropped a line that could come from a lot of people—on campus and maybe off —and one that’s hard to imagine anyone being naïve enough to utter to their congressman.
“We are all expecting miracles from you.”