Recently appointed Mississippi State President Robert “Doc” Foglesong has been acquainting himself with the campus, faculty and students since he officially took office on Sunday.
“I have not had a negative vibe in my body since I’ve been here,” Foglesong said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with students and a reasonable amount of time with the faculty. I’ve even had some time to stumble upon some of our athletic teams while I was out running.”
In the five days since taking office, the retired Air Force general has traversed the campus, talking to many different students and faculty and gaining a feel for the university. Among the places the president visited were the vet school, Honors orientation and English and forestry faculty.
“I’m going to spend a lot of time out getting my fingerprints around Mississippi State University,” Foglesong said.
One of the places the president has left his fingerprints is the Wendy’s on Miss. Highway 12. On Sunday, sophomore accounting major Brett Phillips encountered the new president during a dinner outing there.
“Me, one of my friends and his fianc‹¨e were out eating,” Phillips said. “Dr. Foglesong came in at the same time as us. He was wearing a regular shirt and blue jeans, nothing about MSU on or anything. I didn’t know it was him.”
It did not take long for Foglesong to strike up a conversation with Phillips and his friends, eventually revealing that he was the president of Phillips’ school. Before long they were eating at the same table.
At one point in the conversation, the topic of Phillips’ upcoming speech in interpersonal communication arose. Foglesong told Phillips he would be happy to speak to the students in the class Monday. Executive assistant to the president Ruth Prescott said Foglesong kept his word.
“He talked to the [class] about how he had used interpersonal communication in situations that were much more intense than the classroom environment,” Prescott said.
The president spoke to the class about his experiences with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and peace negotiations with former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in Bosnia, Prescott said.
“It’s a cool thing at Mississippi State to have a president with that kind of background,” she said. “He obviously has a passion for young people.”
Foglesong has been to over 130 countries in the last decade and has been permanently stationed in 19 over the span of his career, he said. He has been to every continent except Antarctica. These experiences have given him many different opportunities to gain leadership qualities. He compared being a university president to being a four-star Air Force general.
“I’m delighted that I’m not being shot at,” he said. “However, the leadership is basically the same. It’s about motivating people. It’s about bringing people into the team and making them feel that they’re a valuable part of it. At the end of the day, [it’s about] sitting at the head of the table making decisions after taking [everyone’s] input. I don’t think that’s anything different than what I’ve been doing for the last 33 years.”
The president has many plans to lead the university to greatness, he said, but it is too early to get into the exact details of what may or may not change at MSU.
“We’re doing extraordinary work in a lot of areas,” he said. “I’m looking for areas that we may have gaps in expertise in. [There are] areas we may need to make more robust and develop a national reputation. There are a lot of areas that strike me as interesting to look at.”
Some of these areas include academic excellence, research activities, and extension services, he said. The president hopes for an international reputation in these areas and others.
“It’s clear to me that the kind of services and education [MSU offers] are very attractive in many [countries] that I’ve visited,” Foglesong said. “Things like food, engineering, research and forestry are in great demand around the world.”
Foglesong also said he hopes to strengthen the international programs at MSU.
“I like international programs because they bring great diversity into the campus,” he said. “It allows [students] to get a much broader view if they have a couple of students in their classes from different countries.”
The president, a baseball fan, will be throwing the opening pitch for the Bulldogs in a game against Arkansas this weekend. The president has previously thrown opening pitches for the Cleveland Indians, and said he hopes to mirror his performances there.
“I used to pitch some, but you never want to look bad,” he said. “I’m going to practice a little bit.”