President Rebecca Cunningham, M.D., who’s in her sixth official month of office as the 18th president of the University of Minnesota, sat down with Minnesota Alumni in mid-October. She spoke about her early impressions of the job, shared a bit about her background, and discussed the new strategic planning process, which will lay out important five-year goals for her administration and the U of M itself.

The University, along with many other colleges and universities, will face headwinds in future years, and Cunningham and her team will need to deal with them. For the University, obvious challenges include grappling with a trend of shrinking financial support from the legislature; the question of what form potential ownership and management of the main teaching hospital might take; and an extremely competitive demographic landscape that may translate into a smaller potential pool of prospective students in the future.

This interview has been condensed and edited for space.

What do you think so far?

I’m having a great time. It’s an amazing University. I’ve learned a lot being out and talking to everyone across the state, from Farm Fest to the State Fair.

I’ve been in the in the Big 10 and academia for nearly 30 years. But getting to be here and really meet the people, I can see how extraordinary this place is.

For instance, we have five very distinct campuses. And that’s not true in every system, or in many systems. What’s different about our campuses is their locations and distinct missions.

The Twin Cities is this broad, comprehensive R1 [doctorate-granting, research] University with Big Ten athletics and D1 athletics [the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division 1].

Rochester is our specialized health gem for the growing needs of the health care workforce in the country. Morris is a top-ranked public liberal arts school, and Crookston offers both an agricultural and rural experience, and depth in animal sciences. And then Duluth has this amazing place-based opportunity on the edge of Lake Superior and has a lot of related research going on. It’s also a more mid-sized feel for students who want that experience.

At the end of the day, you get one University of Minnesota degree, and that’s an amazing opportunity for Minnesota. Our students can find the right M for them.

Can you share a little about your background?

I’m an emergency physician by training, and my research area was in public health and in injury prevention. I was a practicing physician for 25 years and I have a full range of educational experiences across a university, including teaching medical and public health students in the classroom.

I think the doctor part is a little confusing for some people. ‘How did you go from, you know, being in the clinic and seeing patients, helping with ankle sprains, to president?’ But there were all these steps in between in higher ed.

My research grew from my first work in the emergency department to how I could try to keep people out of the emergency department. As that grew, I took on roles leading research centers, which became administrative research leadership in my department. And then I got involved in administrative roles across campus. I moved from that to leading health sciences research across the whole campus system at the University of Michigan as an associate vice president for research in the health sciences. And I grew from that into a vice president for research across the administration.

I bring a lens of working with the communities that are around us—public health gives us that—and how we think about populations. That translates into how we think about a University population, in some ways, and how we think about the health and well-being of a group of people and advance them as a whole.

You’ve spoken about your plans to really emphasize health in all its guises here at the University. What does that look like?

I’ve been so impressed with the way that people here think about health, and the way we could collectively think about the health of the state.

When I think about health, it’s very broadly—from the health sciences and nursing and medicine and clinical care, to agricultural, soil, and environmental health, to the planet’s health and our economic health. The University plays into all of those. We’re one of only four schools in the country that have all the health sciences schools together. But we’re also a land grant University and have amazing agricultural programming.

When I got here, I realized a lot of the work that’s done in other parts of campus feeds into health. A lot of our engineering is med-tech-related, for instance. And then the humanities and arts are very important to our mental, emotional, and cultural health. That sort of meta-approach is a way we can really play to the strengths we have here. Every university does not have all of this, by any stretch. [Ed. Note: Read more about President Cunningham’s plans to emphasize health in her column here.]

And then, obviously, we’re thinking about how and what the future of our medical school and our health delivery system is. We are going to make sure we get it right—and sometimes that takes a little bit of time, but we have the right people working and thinking about it. I’m positive that we’ll come to a strong answer.

What does the future hold?

We’re launching a strategic planning process this fall, and we want our alumni and our community to be part of that, dreaming with us of where we want to go over the next five years. That process will involve town halls and input across our community, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and other stakeholders to help us really nail down exactly where we want to go.

I can give you some broad brushstrokes: We’re a powerhouse research University with a national reputation, and we certainly will lean into that. And access and affordability are really important to me. When you consider how much financial aid and scholarships we provide our students, we are the most affordable four-year university in Minnesota. People are surprised about that because the sticker price is confusing for students and families, but we make up that difference for an awful lot of our students. We really provide a very affordable education, and we do that at a world-class University, and that certainly is an ongoing priority of mine as we go forward,

And as we continue to lean into being a research powerhouse, we’re also currently rolling out about 25 new small businesses every year [based on University research], and most of them stay in Minnesota. We’re an economic engine for Minnesota.

What role can alumni play in the University’s future?

I think our alumni can be and are our greatest champions. I talk to alumni and people tell me where they’ve graduated from, the school, the year, and then they tell me about these amazing lives they’ve had since then, and how the University impacted their lives, and their work and career. Often, the University is also where they met their spouse.

Alumni can be our biggest champions by telling the story of the impact of the University of Minnesota to friends or family or local policymakers.

I love when people come up to me and tell me their stories, things they love, things they would like to me work on improving. Happy to hear all of those. The Board of Regents also has a portal for virtual listening and comments. We do read all of those, and the board does take them into account. And where my administration is involved, we take them into account, as well. We are paying attention to those, and it’s a great way to make your voice heard.

And alumni can help tell our story in a way that other people can’t. I think this is really an inflection point for the University, not just as a new administration, but with new strategic planning. Alumni have tremendous pride and passion for the maroon and gold—with their stories and their advocacy, their support, their enthusiasm, all the way through how they help students who are here now.

We touch all 87 counties in Minnesota, and we impact the economic health of the state tremendously: In the last analysis, I think the annual economic impact of the U of M is about $9 billion a year to the state by having the University here. It’s a great time for alumni to engage, and when the University is stronger in future years, it only makes a U of M degree more powerful.

Any final thoughts?

I think, and I say this with the utmost due respect to Minnesota culture broadly, we have an amazing University here, and our humility outpaces us!

There’s this sense, I think, that the University is here, and it’s a good asset. But one of the things I bring coming from outside is I can tell you it’s a great asset. And not every state has that.

We’re a top tier, leading research University, and that’s great for Minnesota, for our staff and students, and for our alumni. I see the data and what we’re doing compared to our peers, and I would encourage us to be vocally proud about that. 

What we’re doing for the state and our communities is a great use of our taxpayer money and of tuition.

And I’m so excited to be your 18th president!

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