Fearlessness, Community, and Unfinished Work: Rosenbaum on His Caltech Presidency
(Photo: Caltech News)
As Thomas F. Rosenbaum prepares to conclude twelve years as Caltech’s president, the Institute stands between continuity and transition. Under Rosenbaum’s tenure, Caltech expanded its physical campus, deepened its investment in quantum science and sustainability, increased the proportion of Pell-eligible students, and navigated a turbulent national climate for higher education and federally funded research. In July, Ray Jayawardhana will become Caltech’s next president.
Rosenbaum spoke with the Tech about unfinished work, student well-being, federal science policy, JPL, the role of universities in American democracy, and what should remain stubbornly Caltech.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
As you prepare to conclude twelve years as Caltech’s president, what feels most unfinished?
There are a number of efforts we started but haven’t completed. The Linde Center for Science, Society, and Policy is one that is close to my heart. I’ve felt that Caltech has something special to say here, because we do deep science and deep technology, and we can provide information and perspective to people who have to make policy about those kinds of issues. It’s a new avenue, and it’s starting well, but I would have loved to see it a little further along.
The Center for Quantum Precision Measurement is another. It brings together individuals from across campus who use quantum entanglement for many different purposes: chemists, physicists, astronomers, people working on LIGO, quantum computation, sensors like nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. I would have loved not only to see people come together in that building, which will be occupied this fall, but also to move on to the next stage: a quantum engineering analog. The combination of the two would position us for continued leadership in quantum theory and experiment for decades to come.
The Resnick Sustainability Institute is doing well, and I’m very excited that the undergraduate labs have opened there. What I like about that is that you embed the pedagogical aspect of learning how to do laboratory science in a building where frontline research is happening. Even when students are doing labs where the answers are known, they are surrounded by people using similar techniques to answer questions where the answers are not known. That is a natural connection we can make at Caltech: guesswork segueing into the creation of knowledge.
One of the things I am proudest of is that we have gone from roughly 11 or 12 percent Pell-eligible students to 20 or 21 percent. But we have to solidify that, and we have to get the story out: if you are a creative scientist who is passionate about discovery, Caltech is a great place for you to come. If you don’t have the money to afford us, that should not stand in your way.
Continuing to make the case for why Caltech is essential for JPL is also unfinished work. The interconnection of campus and JPL scientists is essential for JPL’s future success. Our co-investment in robotics, quantum, and space science, along with NASA’s investment, makes JPL the premier place for robotic space exploration in the universe.
Those are some of the areas where we are either not there yet or are still along the pathway. But I’ve also learned that you are never going to finish everything you want to do. You come to terms with that. I hope some of the initiatives that have been started but not yet reached fruition will be embraced by my successor, but of course that is his decision.
When you arrived in 2014, what did you think Caltech most needed to become? Looking back now, where did the Institute change in ways you did not anticipate?
I didn’t come in with a grand vision of changing Caltech. What I really wanted to do was understand the culture keenly and enhanced that culture. I came from the University of Chicago, which has a similar culture, but the intensity and ambition of Caltech are unparalleled.
My job, if you will, over these last twelve years has been to preserve that culture and make us the most attractive place for creative, original scholars from every background and perspective. I wanted us to have the resources to help them succeed. I wanted Caltech to be a place more accepting of a broader range of people than it is usually known for—all with the scientific chops, but with very different backgrounds. That is the kind of change I wanted to see: an enhancement of who we are.
In terms of buildings, I was involved in helping build more than I intended to. I didn’t come in to build buildings. But I view them as tools: tools for people to accomplish the research they need to do. That modernization was an important element of keeping Caltech competitive.
But most of all, it’s about people. Everything I’ve tried to do is make this the kind of place where, if you are fearless about attacking problems — whether you are a student, postdoc, faculty member, or staff member — you want to come to Caltech.
What should a new president protect most fiercely about Caltech?
The fearlessness of the scholarship. We want to hire people who surprise you with their insights. We want to provide an environment where people are challenged to become the best they can be. We want to allow people to switch fields if they feel their skills can be applied to a new problem that they haven’t worked on before, but that may be more important or impactful.
We want to be a place committed both to fundamental discovery and to translating those discoveries into technologies that make people’s lives better. I hope Caltech will remain a place where people can move back and forth along that continuum.
A lot of our peers wind up on one end or the other of that spectrum. The small size and intimacy of Caltech allow us to have exchanges in which people can move along that continuum and not feel pigeonholed. That intellectual freedom is an unusual part of Caltech. I am confident Ray will not only protect that fiercely, but work hard to make it an even more powerful aspect of Caltech’s culture.
Are there areas where you think Caltech needs fresh eyes rather than continuity?
I think so. I was originally going to step down after about a decade, but the trustees asked me to stay a little longer. I do think it is important for people to come in with new ideas. Every president of Caltech has been hired from the outside, and every provost from the inside. Part of the reason for that is that you want somebody to step back and say, “This is great the way Caltech is doing it,” or, “Caltech has done this for years, but why? Are there better ways?”
In a dynamically changing world, there are lots of questions about the shape of education, the size of an institution, particularly if federal funding is going to be decreased, the relationship between universities and industry, and the social compact. Universities educate the next generation of participating citizens and create knowledge that helps society, but we have not been terribly successful recently in making that case—the value of universities to American democracy.
So looking at this in a different way and asking which parts of Caltech work, and which parts do not work as effectively as they could, is perfectly appropriate.
We have a strong principle here of faculty governance. Whatever decisions are made to change direction, you need input from the community. If it’s an academic aspect, that is clearly the purview of the faculty, but the students are extremely important as well and need to have a say. One of the things I’ve appreciated about Caltech is that we are small enough to have that exchange.
What risks come with a leadership transition at an institution whose culture is so decentralized and faculty-driven?
I’m a big believer in distributed authority, which is the notion that you try to push decisions down to the level where people have the most expertise. That is the decentralized aspect of Caltech, and I think it works very effectively, particularly in a community where you have strong-minded individuals with a lot of talent.
But you also need some cohesion, which is the central aspect. We tend to set standards centrally at Caltech and then allow the different units to meet those standards or requirements in ways that are consonant with their individual cultures.
There is always risk when you change leadership: can people adapt to that kind of system, get input from the requisite parties, and at the same time recognize that at some point you have to make a decision? I mean this in a general sense, not about Ray specifically. It is the challenge for anyone who comes into a new situation. Caltech has a very particular culture, and respecting that culture is very important.
What should students reasonably expect to change under a new president, and what should they expect not to change?
I don’t think the Core is going to change in its fundamental structure. We are committed to the notion that students should be exposed to different ways of thinking about major problems, employing quantitative skills across a broad spectrum of disciplines. The Core may change in its details, but not in the philosophy of what we are trying to teach.
I don’t think our research emphasis is likely to change. I don’t believe that our commitment to maintaining a cross-disciplinary, interactive core campus will change.
Some questions about running other big organizations may change. We have the recent example of a collaboration with Amazon Web Services for quantum computing. Is that the kind of model we want to reproduce? We run the largest telescopes in the Northern Hemisphere. We run an early earthquake warning system up and down the West Coast. The American Institute of Mathematics came here. We are trying to set up an innovation center on Green Street.
Those elements are not core campus activities, but they are related activities that give Caltech the ability to have more impact on the world. The way you structure the organization between its core activities and related activities could change, depending on how much the next administration wants to think about that. Caltech’s positioning with respect to the external world—interactions with government, interactions with industry—could take a somewhat different shape.
But I don’t think the Caltech we know and love is going to change in fundamental ways. I hope not.
One recurring student concern is that Caltech’s intensity can become isolating rather than inspiring. How do you assess the Institute’s progress on undergraduate well-being?
We have invested hugely in trying to provide the resources for students to succeed, and to succeed in healthy ways. Part of that is providing opportunities outside the classroom. When I talk to students, I try to get across the notion that developing passions in life is part of what you come to college for. Making friendships that last a lifetime is part of it, too.
Obviously, you want to become a spectacular scientist or engineer, or follow whatever pathway you want in life. But you may also want to get involved in public service, sports, music, or the humanities and social sciences — to expand your view of the world, to learn about empathy, to spend time with your friends and not just in the classroom.
We’ve tried to provide not only encouragement for that, but resources that make it easier. Having said that, we have not cut back on the intensity of the academic experience. So there is a tension.
We’ve tried to provide more support in terms of mental health, having RAs in the residences, having faculty in residence in at least some of the houses. We count on the students themselves for a lot of leadership in this, and they are wonderful in that respect. But we have to be careful not to burden them too much. The ones offering help to their peers need to feel they have the support they need.
One of the things we changed that I was very committed to was building Bechtel. We didn’t have enough beds on campus for people to stay on campus for all four years. Now we do. That doesn’t mean all students stay for all four years, but they have the option, and I think that is very important in terms of feeling located and having that comfort.
We have a challenge in terms of providing enough housing for graduate students, however, and we are trying to work on that. That is another piece of unfinished business: trying to develop more support for graduate students in terms of affordable housing close to campus.
Decades ago, roughly two-thirds of our students graduated. Now roughly 95 percent of our students graduate. That is an indication that the support structures have improved. We have the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach, which helps students maneuver their way through classes and helps faculty become better educators. We work a lot with young faculty in particular as they develop the skills not only to teach, but to run research groups involving both undergraduate and graduate students.
But there is still a lot of work to be done, no question.
What have students taught you about Caltech that faculty or trustees could not?
Let me answer it this way. The first night students arrive on campus, they come over to the President’s House for dinner in the garden. To be honest, it is not Kathy’s and my favorite event, because the students are just new on campus and a bit like deer in headlights.
We then instituted senior celebrations, where seniors come over, fifty or sixty at a time, to celebrate the fact that they are leaving in the sense of graduating, but will always be part of the Caltech community as alumni.
The contrast between those two events is extraordinary. What I’ve learned from students is their remarkable ability to develop as scholars and as human beings in a relatively short time.
The confidence students have — you are all going off to change the world in good ways. I think your generation has a lot of idealism. I recognize in it some of what I grew up with, since I grew up at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s. I think it’s a wonderful thing, and I take a lot of hope from that.
For a lot of us, the reason we like being in academia is that every year we meet these extraordinarily talented young people who are going to go out there and change the world, and they are not thwarted by the belief that it is not possible.
As you get older, you sometimes tend to be more cynical about the ability to do that. Being in touch with students is a pleasure and a privilege.
Caltech’s research enterprise depends heavily on federal support. How should the Institute defend basic science at a time when federal research funding has become more politically vulnerable?
We have tried to make an apolitical statement about the value of research to American society, whether it is improving people’s health, creating jobs for the economy, or contributing to national defense. Science and engineering are critical for all of those.
Often, the public does not connect the dots in terms of how investment in science has made their lives better. Part of what Caltech can do is get that truthful story out. We launched the Caltech Science Exchange, which tries to bring the public unbiased reports of advances in different scientific fields, and importantly, to explain what we know, what we don’t know, and why.
The other thing is that we have gone to court on a number of occasions to defend the research enterprise when we believed there had been unlawful actions taken by the federal government. My view is: if Caltech won’t stand up for research, who will?
Beyond that, we continue to try to do the best research we can and make society as good as we can. I am optimistic that, long term, even if there may be damage in the short term, those contributions will be appreciated and lead to reasonable funding.
In the last budget cycle, Congress rejected the president’s budget and was very supportive of continued investment in research. There is also a tension these days between industry and university research. There is a view in some quarters that industry can do everything. I don’t think most industries believe that. One thing we can try to explain is that this is a complicated discovery and innovation ecosystem. You need the de-risking and longer-term research of universities, and you need the scaling and shorter-term implementation of industry.
It is not either/or, and the parts are not interchangeable. That is an important point that is missed in some of the more facile discussions about where American technology and innovation are going.
What is Caltech’s responsibility to JPL during periods of NASA uncertainty, layoffs, or changing federal priorities?
JPL has been under a lot of stress. Its financial structure is different from the rest of Caltech’s in that it has one patron, or largely one patron, and that patron is NASA. JPL is trying to diversify to some extent now, but when that patron turns a cold shoulder, there is little protection.
What has been disappointing to me is that the government has not understood that once you lose great people, and the capability that goes with them, it is very hard to put it back together. JPL has extraordinary people. It is the nation’s reservoir of talent for deep-space exploration. Short-term measures can have long-lasting consequences.
Caltech’s role is to make that case as effectively as we can: for philanthropy, not directly to a government lab, but to Caltech for collaborative efforts to support some of the workforce; and to make a value statement about why JPL matters. Not just for Caltech, but for the world as a whole.
We have been trying to do that, but the boundary conditions are not favorable.
How should Caltech communicate the value of basic research to a public that often wants immediate application?
I think what we have done better — and Shayna Chabner gets a huge amount of credit for this — is tell stories.
We all live in the world of equations, and we can probably exchange some and get some benefit out of it. But most people connect much better to stories of discovery or challenge that involve other humans and their personal journeys. We have lots of those on campus, given the extraordinary people here and their very different life experiences.
We have tried much harder now to talk about science by relating scientific journeys to personal journeys. We have also done a better job with multimedia: videos, cartoons, whatever it might be. That is something we traditionally have not done very well.
We also have salons where we bring people together to talk about what is going on in science. A lot of this is targeted to policymakers, and we are engaged with industrial leaders as well. This is an area that could now be amplified, and I think we will see it amplified.
Parents also pay attention to universities in an extraordinarily deep way when their children are applying to college. The story we can tell about what it is like to come to Caltech, what the environment is about, and what our values are is another opportunity to get the Caltech story out to people who are paying deep attention, at least for a specified period of time.
Has the role of a university president changed since 2014? Is the job now more political than when you began?
It is hard to separate the effects of the pandemic, fire, social unrest, and government actions over the last five years from more general changes in the role of the university president. It has been a turbulent time.
I think the role has gotten more complicated. There have always been different constituencies to satisfy: students, faculty, trustees, alumni, government, general society. What is more difficult now is that a lot of those constituencies are at loggerheads. That makes it harder to maneuver.
The idea is not to be friends with everyone, but you do want to accommodate people’s needs. What I could do was stay true to our values, explain why we were doing things, and be more transparent about process.
One of the biggest challenges in being a university leader is making sure the process is above reproach. People need to have true input. Obviously, you cannot do what everybody wants, and it may not be right to do what everybody wants. But you have to take seriously what people say and then explain why you are or are not doing what they are asking.
On the other hand, you are in an environment where you get to talk to really smart, interesting people and learn from them. Holding on to that is necessary to enjoy the job.
What does Caltech owe Pasadena and Los Angeles beyond employment, prestige, and scientific output?
It is really important that we are embedded in community. We have the 100th anniversary of the Associates coming up—a group of men at that time, and now of course men and women, who came together in 1926 to support Caltech philanthropically. There is something interesting about a university that owes its early days to Associates, members of the broader Pasadena and Los Angeles community.
Being embedded in community shapes an institution. It is also a practical back and forth, not just in the exchange of money and employment, but in creating jobs, in having people want to come to Caltech because of the joy of living in Pasadena, and in contributing to the cultural life of the community. We also benefit from the extraordinary institutions around us.
That was George Ellery Hale’s original vision: that Mount Wilson would be the center of technology, the Huntington literature and art, and Caltech science. In different forms, we still see that kind of interaction. Together, the pieces make a whole.
There are a lot of universities that have very poor relationships with their surrounding communities — famously, Harvard and Cambridge. One of the great things here is that the relationship between Caltech and Pasadena and San Marino has been very good. I have gotten to know city leaders reasonably well, and we are in communication. I think we are aligned in trying to do good things for the general neighborhood.
You maintained a condensed matter physics research group while serving as president. How did remaining an active scientist shape the way you governed?
I view it as a value statement. One of the things I love about Caltech is that every academic administrator continues to do research, which is our mission: to create knowledge and educate the next generation of scientific leaders.
I do not teach lecture courses, but I do have graduate students and undergraduates working in our laboratory, so at least I get to be a mentor. That has been extraordinarily important for me. I really enjoy the juxtaposition — the multiplexing associated with my administrative job and then carving out space to think about science and how the world works in my research role.
Admittedly, I spend the vast majority of my time on the presidency. But the other part is both a personal respite and source of joy, and an important statement about what Caltech is about.
In terms of nuts and bolts, I am draconian about protecting Friday mornings to meet with my group. I have a very small research group, at most three or four students, and I have a senior scientist, Dan Silevitch, who helps run the laboratory day by day. In good conscience, I could not do what I do without Dan’s help, because it would not be fair to the students.
I meet with my students every week. I try to understand what they are doing and help guide them. Caltech is one of the few places where one could imagine doing this in a reasonable fashion. That was one of the major attractions of coming to Caltech for me.
What will you miss most about the role?
The entrée I have had to meet interesting people. I can call up almost anybody, and most of them will take my call.
What advice would you give students who feel both proud of Caltech and exhausted by it?
I hope students will look back on their time here as a time when they were challenged, became better versions of themselves, grew in extraordinary ways, developed passions for a lifetime, and gave it everything they could.
I’m not sure exhaustion is a bad thing. If you feel you have been beaten down and have not been inspired to accomplish other great things, that would be negative. But I hope students are exhausted because they have been pushed to their limits in a good way and embraced all kinds of opportunities. I understand that is not true for everyone, but that is my hope.
What would I tell them? Continue to pursue your passions. Ignore people who tell you something cannot be done. Go try to do it. If it does not work one way, you will figure out another way to get where you want to go.
When Ray Jayawardhana takes office, what do you hope the Caltech community gives him that it gave you — or perhaps did not give you soon enough?
People are amazingly welcoming. Kathy and I had spent most of our careers in Chicago. I was at the University of Chicago for 21 years, and Kathy was at Northwestern for 27 years. When you move this late in your career, you do not know what to expect. How do you create community?
To our great joy, we found that coming here, we could create community. I think I know most of our faculty colleagues. I have met a good many students and postdocs, though of course the turnover there is quicker. I really felt this could be home.
I do not think that happens at a lot of places. Part of it is size, but part of it is the attitude about the kind of community Caltech wants to be. I do not know if you notice in my writing, but I harp on a lot about the importance of community. I care about it a lot. I think it is one of Caltech’s greatest strengths.
Both Kathy and I have experienced the best parts of that, and I hope and fully expect that Ray and Catherine will feel the same.
If we did not feel that way, we would not have stayed. So we are voting with our feet.
If Caltech’s next decade succeeds, what will be different here — and what will have remained stubbornly, recognizably Caltech?
The essential culture will stay the same: the belief that you want an interactive, interdisciplinary community that is extraordinarily ambitious. I have every faith that will continue.
I also hope we will be the kind of place that people from around the world and around the country, people who care deeply about learning science, creating knowledge, and making the world a better place, will want to come to. That constantly takes attention, but I think Ray will be starting from a good place.
What do you most look forward to in the post-presidency years?
I want to learn some more physics. I am really looking forward to having more time with my students. And, of course, our kids are east: we have one son and family in Chicago, and one son and family in New York. We will be spending more time with them.
Thank you so much for your time, President Rosenbaum.
My pleasure.
“Editor’s Note: In the print edition, President Rosenbaum’s wife’s name Kathy was mistakenly spelled as “Cathy.” This has been rectified in the online edition.”