A day in the life

Greg Burghardt

University President Michael Rao sits down in the Merrill Hall dining commons,
but heads don’t turn. Students politely respond to his greeting, flash a
smile to his 3-year-old son, Miguel, then resume talking about what they
did the night before.

“They had no idea (who I am,)” Rao says as he walks out of the commons with an ice cream cone for himself and one for his son.

Rao said he cannot be everywhere, know about everything and speak to everybody.

Still, he makes time for visiting different dining commons most Thursdays and quick stops at meetings when he has the chance.

“People have to understand I can’t spend 100 hours at every event,” he
said. “As a globally-geared person, it’s got to be obvious to anybody who
sees what I am doing that a president of a university the size of ours and
as isolated can’t micromanage. It’s not going to happen.”

He said dealing with faulty toilets, which was a question during his state
of the university address, is something he can’t possibly deal with. Neither
is making decisions about the firing of a professor.

He said those decisions fall on the shoulders of people more involved in day-to-day operations.  

Getting ready

Rao’s days are long, sometimes entailing a professional trip to Lansing
for a President’s Board meeting or the fatherly duty of helping his son change
into warm clothes for a walk to the dining commons.

His day usually begins at 5:30 a.m. when he reads his mail and prepares
for the day. About three days per week he runs through campus, starting at
6:45 a.m.

Click here for a photo gallery of one day in the life of Central’s president.

Tuesday, as he neared his home on the tail-end of his run, he realizes
he is going too fast, so he takes the long way home, adding several minutes
to his run.

“I like to run at least 30 minutes,” he said.

Rao said his attention to this detail doesn’t mean he is that organized.
His evidence: At the end of the day his briefcase is an indiscernible mess
of folders and notes.  

Still, he said his position and experience require him to be structured.

“The younger I was, the less I understood the reasons for structure,”
he said. “You can have too much structure if it hinders creativity.”

After the run, Rao took an hour to shower, get dressed and get his son
ready for the day. Miguel Rao took the week off from school because he broke
his arm a couple days earlier while he was “bouncing around.”

Going to Work

Rao makes three calls during the five minute drive from his house to the
parking lot behind the Bovee University Center about his upcoming appearance
at a DATASC meeting.

In the hallway he talks to himself, reciting what he is about to say.

He strides in to the room, and almost immediately becomes the center of
attention. He greets the audience and speaks for five minutes about the importance
of addressing students with disabilities.

Afterward, he heads straight to his car for the 60-plus minute drive to Lansing for several meetings.

Speaking in different forums “is one of the challenges,” Rao said. “There
are so many things that are so different during the day. I can’t think of
a week when I don’t make some presentations.”

These presentations range from President’s Council meetings to just saying hi to university employees.

“Sometimes folks at CMU need a pep talk,” he said.

Not long after he gets on Interstate 127, his phone begins ringing again.
This time he talks to Tyrone Jordan from Metro Detroit Outreach, a program
Rao said is essential to CMU.

“One-third of our students come from metro Detroit,” Rao said. “Four thousand students are from Macomb and Oakland counties.”

Rao talks for the remainder of the trip.

Networking in Lansing

Rao’s first meeting in the state’s capital is at Vice President for Government
Relations and Public Affairs Kathy Wilbur’s office in the Standard Federal
Bank building with Robin R. McMillan, the executive director of Michigan
Education Trust.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm chose Rao on Sept. 17 to serve on the Trust Board of Directors.

The meeting goes until 11 a.m., when Rao must focus on state Senator Alan Cropsey, R-Dewitt.

Rao meets Cropsey at a building across the street and the two share pleasantries for about 20 minutes.

The next stop is the Capitol building, for his scheduled meeting with Senator Mike Goschka, R-Brant Twp.

Both Goschka and Cropsey helped CMU by pushing a funding floor for state
appropriations. Rao said he came to “prep” them for the upcoming budget decisions.

Goschka said he turned to Miguel Rao for guidance when it came to helping this year.

“One person sold me. I asked him what he thought about the floor funding,”
Goschka said of his conversation with Miguel Rao. “He stomped his foot and
said there has to be a floor.”

Rao talks with Goschka until 12:15 p.m., already late for his noon meeting at the University Club.

He patiently drives to the University Club, where he meets with Michigan
Education Association Executive Director Charles S. Anderson and Public Education
Advocacy Consultant Robert G. Harris.

They talk over a Caeser salad and ice water, as Rao prepares for the main session of the President’s Council meeting.

At 37, Rao looks more like a man out of college compared to his older
colleagues, but he seems to command the respect of those twice his age.

With the meeting scheduled to last until 5 p.m., Rao states he will be
leaving at 4:30 p.m. sharp so he can get home to baby-sit. The meeting ends
at 4:30 p.m. sharp.

Back to CMU, home

On the way back to Mount Pleasant, Rao talks about his state of the university
address and some of the criticism he received about the general nature of
the speech.

“You can’t always be as specific as you want to be,” Rao said.

He says there were some ideas he had but did not talk about.

“One of the ideas I didn’t fly but maybe should have is what do we do
to convey an academically challenging environment to a student,” Rao said.
“Take a Master’s and bachelors degree program and bridge them. You ask the
faculty involved are there some well-prepared students who could substitute
300-400 level classes for 500-600 level. If a talented student accomplishes
basically all the learning objectives of the Master’s degree, is it possible
to award that student — after 4 1/2 to 5  years — with a master’s degree.”

Pride, he said, is another issue. Not because there is a lack of it, but rather misplaced.

This is evident, Rao said, in the discussion about a one-time athletics
fee for students. He said all areas of the university must be above average,
including athletics.

“Pride seems to be an issue,” Rao said. “People are totally against anything
that doesn’t seem average. The bottom line is, people want some parts to
be average to beef up other areas. I encourage them to all be above average.”

However, he said he is not ready to endorse the increase.

“The board and I are interested in a few more specifics,” he said. “There
is a lot of things that CMU doesn’t give its athletic program that a lot
of other places do. If we want to be Division I, we have to provide the right
amount of scholarships.”

Rao also addressed his relationship with CM Life.

“My broader statement is I’m quite proud of the paper,” Rao said.

But he said he has had issues with the newspaper in which he said he wasn’t
given a fair-shake; to the point where he was receiving sympathy notes.

“Sometimes you think, ‘Why is this person trying to dig beneath my skin?’” Rao said.

He said he has been pleased so far this year with the professionalism and integrity of the paper.

Rao arrives home in time to watch his wife, Monica, leave to attend a class.

On campus, his vision

The president and Miguel Rao get ready to head to the Merrill Residential Restaurant for dinner.

Rao takes his tie off, but his face and hair still look fresh.

At dinner, Rao takes a back seat to his son who receives looks of adoration
and several “awwws” from women sitting at surrounding tables.

They sit next to a group of freshmen baseball players and greet several people, with very few showing any sign of recognition.

Miguel Rao shows no signs of being hindered by his broken arm, as his
constant energy provokes Rao to quip “makes you want to have kids, huh?”

He said there are no more children “planned.”

The night winds down with a visit to a City Vision meeting at the Mount Pleasant City Hall.

Rao doesn’t speak, but sits intently, listening to the procession. With
a restless Miguel carrying a pack of Gushers fruit snacks and the day 14-hours-old,
he leaves 20 minutes after making his appearance.

Arriving home a little before 8 p.m., Rao still has to put Miguel to bed
and pore over a bag full of mail, notes and schedules for the next day until
about 11 p.m.

He said he is happy where he is at and if he ever got to the point where everything is perfect at CMU, he would have to leave.

“My focus is on taking CMU to a place where it belongs,” Rao said. “This
idea of continuously improving the learning process is one of the drivers
that keeps me there.”