Bill Destler has never hesitated to question authority.
As a politically charged folk singer in the 1970s, he refused to apologize for the anti-war agenda on his album “September Sky,” and in his past six years as university provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, Destler’s penchant for defying conventional wisdom has led the university to national prominence.
The more than a dozen banjos hanging on his office walls serve as a reminder of his free-spirited, folk-singing days; that same rebellion still lingers within the now-60-year-old Destler.
He has made a career out of challenging the status quo. Peers and professors around the university describe him as a visionary for establishing mainstay programs at the university such as Gemstone and Hinman CEOs. But Destler attributes much of his ingenuity to a natural ability to ask the right questions.
“It usually has to do with my built-in, or innate desire to question current thought and practice,” he said. “Some of the fundamental assumptions that you hear people make really haven’t been thought through all that well. So I try to question authority.”
That same pioneering spirit attracted officials at Rochester Institute of Technology, who announced Monday that Destler would take over as the university’s president in July.
Although he knew little more than the institution’s name when they first contacted him in December, after three visits to the school, Destler said its unique spin on the typical technical institute was too hard to overlook.
“Unlike most institutes of technology in the country … there’s a real possibility there to merge the creative and design arts with science and technology and do something quite interesting with innovation across the institution,” Destler said.
Under his guide as dean of engineering, the school jumped 20 spots to No. 17 on the U.S. News and World Report rankings in just five years. Dean Nariman Farvardin said Destler’s creative solutions to old problems that had plagued the department led it to its ascent as a top-rated program.
Destler said the accomplishment wasn’t as creative as some might think, requiring little more than looking to the nations’ best institutions as a benchmark for identifying and improving the school’s weaknesses, while still accentuating its strengths.
But Destler admits that the bulk of his innovations aren’t solely the product of his own thinking, but rather the collaborative effort of faculty who he rallies to “adopt as their own the problems that need to be addressed.”
“You can’t think you have all the answers,” he said. “You have to be willing to listen. I don’t think anybody accomplishes anything in life except by working with other people.”
This openness has encouraged his peers to help him find these “answers,” whether they were the seeds of the Gemstone program, the Hinman CEOs program, or the $20 million deal he brokered with Comcast over the naming rights for the Terp’s basketball arena.
“He doesn’t have a lot of gatekeepers,” Gemstone Program Director Jim Wallace said. “You send him an e-mail, you get a response in a hurry.”
Throughout Destler’s time as dean of engineering, professors in the department knew they could count on him not only for funding and recommendations, but moreover for his time and advice, said Wallace, who met Destler as an engineering professor.
When Wallace proposed a certificate program for science, technology and society, he said Destler was the administrator who took the time to see it through. Later, as Gemstone program director, when Wallace suggested changes to the program, he said Destler provided him a broader perspective on how to incorporate teamwork into technology research – a field some see as very individualistic.
While many administrators become consumed in high-level bureaucracy, Wallace said even as provost, Destler has been able to stay in touch with university issues because of his warm personality.
“It’s easy in job like that to be tone deaf – the higher you go up in the administration, the greater number of layers between you and what’s actually going on in classrooms,” Wallace said. “He was just always a person I found easy to interact with.”
And while he wrote and performed the majority of the parts in folk-singing days, Destler said the one of the tricks to success in administration is collaboration.
“I like to start conversations among people, say, ‘Hey, why is that our graduation rate isn’t as high as Michigan or Berkeley?'” he said. “‘What are they doing different from us?'”
These conversations produced an 18 percent increase in graduation rates since he became provost despite $100 million in state budget cuts.
But many of Destler’s “conversations” still haven’t been finished. The plus-minus grading initiative he halted last spring still remains in limbo in the University Senate. After overseeing the planning for the accreditation of the public health school, Destler said he regrets that he won’t be able to see it debut in two years.
Destler’s personal relations with his students, faculty and staff also made it particularly hard for him when faced with 2003’s budget cuts. Forced to choose between maintaining the university’s academic programs and his personal relationships, Destler showed his loyalty to the university when he let go of hundreds of faculty and staff members – some of whom worked in his own office.
And when it came to the tough calls, Destler never passed his problems on to others, as he was never afraid to stand up for his own decisions. He personally defended the personnel cuts he made in an impromptu speech when a crowd of angry union members attacked the cuts with false information.
“He made the tough calls even though he knew he was going to catch hell for it,” Waters said. “He taught me that we’re in leadership positions and that we’re paid to make the tough calls.”
Later, he donated $18,000 to start a fund for the recently laid-off employees.
But he said the hardest part of his job isn’t dismissing faculty, but school for the day. As provost, he is also responsible for calling off school because of inclement weather.
“I hate that job – you can see why the president doesn’t want to do it and gives it to me,” Destler said with a laugh. “The right decision for 30,000 people in our community is the wrong decision for 10,000, and that’s a lot of angry people.”
As the second-highest ranking administrator, Destler’s name is often thrown around as a possible successor to university President Dan Mote.
But when the topic of a possible return arises, those who know him best pause or stutter, excited at the possibility if the presidency at this university should open, but hesitant to say when he hasn’t even left yet.
Destler himself laughs the prospect off, saying he might swing by the campus for a few basketball games – the avid sports fan won’t have a Division I team to root for at RIT.
And the presidency?
“No comment,” Destler said with a smirk.
Click here to listen to “Septembersong,” recorded by Destler
Contact reporters Steven Overly and Ben Slivnick at overlydbk@gmail.com.
