Wyatt attends final AAU meeting as Chancellor

by Jeff Vincent

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It's not unusual for the Association of American Universities to bid farewell to a university CEO at one of its annual meetings in Washington, D.C. University presidents and chancellors retire or move on to other institutions with some regularity.

But it's not very often that the farewell is for someone who has led one of AAU's member universities for 18 years -- one of its most senior and respected university representatives.

At last week's meeting, which was the association's centennial celebration, the AAU said goodbye to Chancellor Joe B. Wyatt, who will retire this July. He has represented Vanderbilt University in the AAU since 1982, serving on a number of its ad hoc committees on key policy issues related to academic research and graduate and professional education. And he served as AAU chairman in 1992-1993.

The current AAU chairman, Myles Brand of Indiana University, warmly acknowledged Wyatt's impending departure and his contributions to the association at an AAU dinner April 17. Later, AAU president Nils Hasselmo, himself a former president of the University of Minnesota, summed up Wyatt's efforts this way: "Joe Wyatt has been extremely active in the AAU throughout his tenure at Vanderbilt University. The leadership and wise counsel he has provided to the association will be sorely missed."

The AAU comprises 61 leading research universities. Public and private universities are represented in roughly equal numbers. Vanderbilt became a member in 1950, the current mid-point of the association's 100-year history.

"When 14 university presidents convened that first AAU meeting in Chicago in 1900, American universities received little respect from the major universities in Europe," Brand said last week.

"The U.S. routinely lost its brightest faculty and students to European universities," he said. "The founding AAU members had a clearly defined agenda: They wanted to solve the Victorian-era version of the brain-drain problem. They wanted to regularize the process by which students become candidates for advanced degrees. They wanted to raise the opinion, at home and abroad, of doctoral students and degrees conferred by American universities. They wanted, too, to enhance academic standards."

Over the past century, American universities "have indeed come a long way," Brand said. "The AAU's function continues to be to articulate the message that fundamental research fuels American economic prosperity and improves the quality of life for all."

For the better part of two decades, Wyatt has worked with his AAU colleagues to advance that message to policymakers in Washington and various audiences around the country.

In addition to his leadership role in AAU, Wyatt has had extensive involvement in numerous organizations that help set the national agenda for education and research. Since October 1998, he has chaired the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable at the National Academy of Sciences, strengthening communication among those three sectors. Under Wyatt's leadership, the organization has gained greater participation by industry CEOs and addressed such tough issues as the costs of university research and openness versus secrecy in sponsored research.

He also is the current chairman of the Universities Research Association and chairs a blue ribbon panel on quality standards for the nonprofit organization, New American Schools. He also serves on the Business Higher Education Forum, the Council on Competitiveness and the Advisory Committee of the Public Agenda Foundation.

Wyatt said involvement in such groups "increases the University's national visibility and strengthens our voice on important policy issues. Even more importantly, though, the Vanderbilt community has much to contribute in such forums and, therefore, has a real responsibility to be an active player in the dialogue."