When Marlene Tromp took over as Boise State University’s president in 2019, she hoped to use her background as a first-generation student from a working-class family to drive plans for increasing student success. However, she quickly found herself under political pressure from state legislators tied up in higher education’s culture wars.
Six years later, Tromp finds herself once again headed into a new presidency at a time of intense political battles: She was selected to take over the reins at the University of Vermont on Thursday. But her prior experience gave Vermont’s board confidence she can lead them through troubled waters. “She has demonstrated excellence as a leader and a scholar who can foster deep and meaningful connections across the university and beyond,” Cynthia Barnhart, Board of Trustees chair and co-chair of the presidential search advisory committee, said in a statement.
Tromp talked with The Chronicle about making the move from Idaho to Vermont, what boards are looking for in presidents, and how leaders can navigate political pressure. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you end up as the new president of the University of Vermont?
I feel like my entire career has led me to this place. I went through the ranks of the professoriate at Denison University, which is a small liberal-arts college that is dedicated to student experience and the liberal arts.
I went from there to Arizona State University, where I had the privilege of working under Michael Crow. As a dean, I learned how to be an administrator in a place where, instead of asking, What is everybody else doing? you ask, What’s going to work best for students? What will work best for the research enterprise, what’s going to work best for our state? Asking those questions is a different way of thinking about how to lead, and that’s how I learned to lead.
I went from there to the University of California at Santa Cruz. I got to see how a deep and profound focus on excellence really drove the university forward.
And then at Boise State, I got to be a part of this underfunded, scrappy underdog that was constantly innovating. At the executive level, I faced a lot of challenges, a lot of suspicion of higher ed, a lot of financial and funding challenges. And so right now, as the country is seeing those shifts, it’s a real opportunity to take the experiences I had and to bring the kinds of creative and innovative ways that we thought to navigate through those challenges.
As you mentioned, you’re coming in at a time where that research function is under attack. What’s your role in facing these attacks?
One of the things we have seen historically is that when there are funding cuts, they aren’t always restored. Those cuts could be quite persistent. This is one of those situations that calls upon us to be very creative and innovative. If you think about how universities really sought to think differently during the pandemic, there were areas of strength they developed that they didn’t have before. And I think in this moment when there’s incredible pressures on the funding of research, we can ask questions. How do we think differently ourselves? Are there other sources of support that we need to draw on and connect with? Are there ways that we need to create partnerships, not just within the university? One of the units at ASU that raised the most funding internally was a unit called Biodesign that brought together scientists, engineers, and philosophers. In what way can you elevate the research enterprise when you bring together that liberal-arts mission with that incredible research mission? We should strive to become stronger and more resilient in the wake of the very real hardships that we’ll have to face if there are funding cuts. There’s an opportunity to be genuinely innovative, to evolve in ways that could be better for the future.
You’re coming from a situation where state lawmakers put Boise State under the microscope. What did you learn from that?
What I learned is that when people disagree, if you have the courage to walk toward that conflict, that disagreement, and engage with people, the incredible work of higher education can be so transformative to the conversation. So there were so many people who were prepared to see me as the enemy when I arrived, who came to see me as someone who was making transformational change. That is a potent lesson for this moment. There should be a clarion call to us in this moment to be the place where we can have those really complex and difficult conversations and strive to — all of us — grow more.
We’re seeing some college presidents speaking out against research cuts and some of the stuff that’s going on. We’re seeing others that are less vocal. What’s your approach?
We have to see academic freedom and freedom of speech as a bedrock of higher education and as a fundamental part of what we do. When something directly impacts an individual institution , the university has a responsibility to speak. But when they’re broad impacts, there’s going to be complex perspectives on campus, and you want to create a landscape in which all those people can voice their perspectives.
Somebody asked me over the last couple of days, Do you expect faculty to rescope their research projects to comply with language that they’re seeing out there? And I said that it really is each individual researcher’s choice, because that’s academic freedom. Somebody says, “It is not appropriate for me to rescope this project — I am committed to what I have proposed here,” and they want to drive that forward. I am fully in support of that. And if someone says, “Hey, this research that I’m doing on this particular cancer that affects children is so critical, and if I rescope, I can continue forward with this project, and I’ll be able to do this critical work,” I really want to respect the academic freedom of our researchers to make those decisions. We have to be really deliberative in this moment, because we don’t yet know where all these things are going to land.
The university has a responsibility to help everyone — not just a federal government that’s making cuts, but everyone — understand what the impact of those cuts are on the research we do, how that will affect them, how it affects health care and science and social science and the students who are doing research. We have to articulate that, because I don’t believe the public fully understands the complex, important, impactful work that researchers are doing.
What were your conversations like with the board during this process? What are some of the priorities that you heard?
They found very impactful the outcomes I had made increasing research awards by 71 percent. They found it very impactful that I had grown in-state enrollment by 39 percent in a state that had the lowest college-attendance rate in the country. They found it impactful that I had grown giving to the university by over 50 percent, which I think was really driven by the excitement people felt about the clear direction the university was headed and the impact that it was making. I have heard — and I don’t know that this is true — that boards are often seeking someone who has previous presidential experience, because they feel the challenges are so powerful that they want someone who has had to navigate challenges before.
