Lassner setting goals for final 15 months as UH president

University of Hawaii President David Lassner says that when he recently announced that he’ll retire in late 2024 and wrote that meanwhile “anyone who expects me to act like a ‘lame duck’ will be sorely disappointed,” he did not mean that as any metaphorical shot fired across the bow of certain state lawmakers who have publicly said they want him to resign.

He meant that he is working up an ambitious to-do list for his final 15 months as head of the state’s 10-campus public university system, Lassner said Wednesday in a wide-ranging Honolulu Star-Advertiser interview.

Among the items on Lassner’s final list: helping to guide UH toward fulfilling its “kuleana to Native Hawaiians and Hawaii,” and getting “irreversible” progress going on key construction pro­jects such as developing a “campus town” for UH Manoa and a film studio at the UH West Oahu.

However, also high on Lassner’s agenda is indeed easing UH’s continual clashing with some members of the Legislature, including three state senators who earlier this year said they felt it was time for him to step down. Lassner said he hopes to see sorted out the thorny question of what autonomy for UH really means, and who ought to be calling which shots for UH — not for his sake, but for that of his successor and the university.

And he’s still adding items to his final to-do list. “For everyone around me … I said, ‘You know, if you think I’m annoyingly impatient now, as I watch 15 months ticking by, I’m going to be like, OK, let’s get this done,’” Lassner said with a chuckle. “I’m not gonna slow down.”

Lassner on Wednesday granted some media requests for interviews for the first time since he announced on Sept. 19 that he plans to retire on an undetermined date after he turns 70 in September 2024. He has served as the 15th president of UH since July 2014, after serving as interim president from July 2013.

In the nearly hourlong interview with the Star-Advertiser, Lassner spoke candidly about numerous topics, including UH’s struggle for autonomy, challenges and goals ahead, what kind of new president UH needs next, and how he plans to continue to work even after he enters unpaid “retirement.”

Going out on his own terms

The power struggle between a handful of state senators and UH’s top officials, despite Hawaii voters’ approving a constitutional change in 2000 to give UH greater autonomy, in recent years has been constant — and hobbling to the university, some observers say. Contentious hearings and public disagreements over UH athletics, the Hawaii Promise scholarship initiative for kamaaina students, and UH budget cuts of millions of dollars have been among the results.

When state Sens. Donna Mercado Kim, Donovan Dela Cruz and Michelle Kidani said publicly in February that they felt it was time for Lassner to step down because of a pattern they perceived of too-slow progress by UH to meet the needs of students and the state, all four members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation and other leaders leaped to Lassner’s defense, saying he has brought a needed period of stability and steady growth to the massive university system.

Lassner on Wednesday insisted he’s chosen retirement on his own terms. People often ask if he’s been pressured to step out, but “that’s absolutely not true,” he said. He reiterated that he told then-UH Board of Regents Chair Randolph Moore at least two years ago of his intention to leave the position of president at age 70, but neither felt it would be useful to make that information public at the time.

Asked if he plans to be much more outspoken or aggressive during the 2024 Legislature because it’s his final pass, Lassner said no. “I don’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt the university,” he said.

“But you know, I’ll say one of the things on my mind is … we use the word ‘autonomy,’ and the university is not autonomous,” he continued. “That’s not a useful word. In many ways, we’re part of a complicated political ecosystem.”

He said he’d like the issue revisited. The state constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2000 that established greater autonomy for UH “is not very well respected” today, Lassner said. He recalled a 1990s state task force’s finding that “the economy can’t be strong without a strong university, and we can’t have a strong university if the Legislature is making every decision.”

“I think just resetting that set of relationships (is needed): What is the role of the Legislature? What is the role of the Board of Regents? What is the role of a university administration headed by a CEO? … How do we try to do a better job of staying in our lane?”

Building a ‘campus town’

Also high on Lassner’s final agenda is developing a roughly 14-acre parcel that will be freed on the ewa side of the Manoa campus after the UH College of Education moves across University Avenue and is more closely integrated with the buildings and academics of the larger Manoa campus.

“That is a perfect location to put what I will call ‘campus town,’” Lassner said. “If you’ve visited other (mainland) campuses, it is a very common thing — you walk across the street from the campus and there’s shops and bars and cafes … some housing, some parking, but really a center for life after 4:30 (p.m.). We can create it with private dollars. And we can start that planning now.”

Lassner said he also would like to see mixed-use development launched at UH West Oahu, to include some housing and commercial development. “And we have a dream of getting a private film studio built with private dollars adjacent to our beautiful new creative media building, both to create internship opportunities, but also more jobs in the state. What the film industry people tell us is, if there were production facilities here, we could have more productions.”

A “billion-dollar fundraising campaign” over multiple years, to continue UH’s upward momentum in philanthropic giving, is in development, he said. “Right now we’re raising about $100 million a year. I think that was around 60 (million dollars) when I came into this job, and we think we can use the campaign to really elevate that. Maybe we can get it up to like $150 million steady-state per year by the end of it.”

Of the four imperatives in UH’s relatively new 2023-2029 strategic plan, he said, “I think the most interesting one, and the least understood, is actually the kuleana to Hawaiians and Hawaii, and even within the university there’s not a great understanding.”

The goal, as written in the strategic plan, reads: “Model what it means to be an indigenous-serving and indigenous-centered institution: Native Hawaiians thrive, traditional Hawaiian values and knowledge are embraced, and UH scholarship and service advance all Native Hawaiians and Hawai‘i.”

The Hawai‘i Papa o Ke Ao Leadership Council of representatives from each of the 10 UH campuses is preparing guidance on how that imperative can be achieved and is expected to present their findings in November to the Board of Regents, Lassner said.

Successor with a passion for Hawaii

On the search for his successor, Lassner acknowledges conflicting streams of thought among stakeholders. “One of the narratives about UH is that we flip-flop, from somebody who knows how to run the place and is stable, to somebody from outside who’s going to shake things up,” he said.

Lassner has lived in Hawaii over four and a half decades, and has worked his way up through the ranks at UH since 1977, when he was first hired as a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student programmer to work on UH computer systems.

He declined to opine whether the next president should be like him or very different. “But I’d say the person has to have a passion for Hawaii,” he said. “This is a hard place to come into and, you know, try to figure it out and lead this complicated institution in a Hawaii way. And there is an expectation that it will be led in a Hawaii way. …

“We’re not like most university systems,” Lassner continued. “The relationship with the Legislature is different. We’re the only athletic program for 2,500 miles. … We’re very unusual in having all public higher education in one system, including community colleges. So you have to have a lot of respect for all the parts of our mission. And not just love community colleges, and not just love research universities. There’s a lot of distinctiveness about this place.”

Lassner, whose salary is $409,704, said he sought no contract term because he wanted “no drama” when his role as president ends.

He said he has asked only that after retirement, he be able to retain an unpaid position with a title as “president emeritus,” and a campus office in the Information Technology Center — a building project he called “my baby” that he never got to move into. There are three information technology initiatives at UH that he already plans to work on after retirement. But the emeritus role, he said, means he can work just on whatever he desires.

“I do want to travel,” Lassner said. “I know I want to hike — I haven’t really been hiking since I took this job, in any serious way. And just being able to get up and go, and not have board meetings twice a month. … But I don’t think I’ll do nothing.”