President Cabrera

What was your college experience like?

“I went to college in Spain. I am originally from Spain and I went to polytechnic university, which is the equivalent to a large engineering school in the United States. I did my studies in computer electrical engineering. The universities in Spain and in Europe in general are structured much differently than in the US. They are more constrained, in that in the US you can take classes in many different disciplines, even if you are majoring in something you can still explore what else you may be interested in. For instance you can major in engineering and have your minor be in photography. In Spain that is very difficult, you have to choose your field and your entire time in college you are just focusing on that. I was always very interested in other things and would sneak into philosophy classes, but it was always very under the radar. So when I came to the US as a graduate student and I got to know the way American education system works I was in heaven.”

Where did you go to graduate school?

“Georgia Tech”

From engineering as your undergraduate degree, how did you become President of a university?

“A sequence of accidents. When you look forward you may have ideas of what you want to do, but honestly you have no idea. I never thought that I would be living in the United States. I never thought I would be university President. You just make decisions with the opportunities you have in front of you and I have always like to do things where I feel that I could learn something new. I always liked to stretch myself to learn, try to do something new that I could be passionate about. Just by doing all of that, with accidents and opportunities, here I am.”

What drew you specifically to Mason? Was it the diversity? The location?

“The sequence of events is: I did collge in Spain, graduate school in the US, met my wife in the US (she is American), then moved to Spain where we lived for about ten years, we had our kids here, and then I was offered a job at Thunderbird in Arizona. We lived in Arizona for about eight years and I was at the time thinking that eight years was enough and I was ready for a new challenge. The East Coast was closer to my wife’s family, closer to Spain, so we were thinking that if the right opportunity came up on the East Coast we should be open and ready for it. Mason knocked on our door, I started learning more about the university and I fell in love with it. This is amazing. I want this job. I love the diversity of the students, the people, the location is terrific, and all the people that I have found. This is such a welcoming community and I fell in love with it.”

Mason’s slogan is, “Innovation is tradition.” What future innovations are you looking to make here during your time as president?

“Well I just spent seven months talking to students and faculty, putting together a new vision statement.  This whole notion of innovation has been very strong in all the conversations. Higher education is going through big changes; we have new entities, new technologies, even universities that did not even exist. We need to take our spirit of innovation and make it play for us. I think that when things change in your environment and you lay back and say, “This will just pass.” You can be in trouble. At Mason we can instead be thinking about how we can use all these new tools to help us. So what I think we will see is a lot of experimentation on how technology can improve the learning on campus, but also how technology can help us to reach new students that we are not reaching right now. We will probably see new programs, such as hybrid programs that combine online and traditional classrooms. We already have a number of programs like that, but we will probably see a much bigger number. As well at just new forms of teaching or new programs.”

Mason’s identity has been evolving a lot in its identity as well, but there is still a reputation that it is simply a “commuter college.” How do you think this has been changing? How do you plan to get more students involved on campus?

“Well, we need to take these things people see as negatives and turn them into positives. We are a large metropolitan university that serves a very large diversity of students. Many of these students are residential and are having a very intense, transformational four-year experience. But we also have students like the working Dad who is getting his law degree or the working Mom who is finishing a masters in public policy or a nurse who is finishing her certification and they can only take classes in the evening. These people are a huge part of who we are and it they are not going to go away. In fact, it enriches the diversity of people who are on the campus. Where as other, traditional universities only have one, kind of cookie cutter learner. You either are this one eighteen to twenty-two student who lives on campus and does these things or they don’t have room for you there. Well that isn’t Mason, the non-traditional student is a large part of our diversity.”

Mason has often pushed against the ideas of a “traditional” university, choosing to not heavily support programs such as Greek life. Here at Mason Greek life has still managed to grow exponentially over the past years on campus. Do you plan to encourage it, let it grow on its own or are you still skeptical of it on campus?

“The more I have gotten to leaders in fraternities and sororities on campus I think they have been great. I have been very impressed by what is happening. I think that fraternities and sororities provide a great opportunity for many students as a platform of strong friends and values. I believe that we have a very healthy Greek life on campus and I would even like to see it grow stronger. A healthy Greek life grows on its own, supported be the university. We’ll be there to support it, but they’re the ones that take the lead.”

Another large growing group of organizations on campus are the religious organizations. A number of large universities are shutting out their religious centers in an effort to become more secular. How do you feel about this? Will the prayer rooms in the JC and UChurch be disappearing soon?

“First of all, we are a public university so by definition we are a secular, non-religious organization. Now that doesn’t mean that religion doesn’t play a role. In fact, religion plays a large role in many of our student faculty’s lives.  Since religion plays a role in our community it will play a role here, but we just need to be careful that as a public university, which is supposed to be secular, how we play this role. For instance, we have a terrific ministry. I have spent time with leaders of all the religious centers, that operate independent of the university, but are integrated and work with the students. The religious leaders do a fabulous job and add to the diversity of our campus. That is all part of the college experience since some of us may have grown up in more homogenous surroundings, where everyone practices the same religion and here you will be exposed to people of all different faiths. It is not in contradiction to be a public, secular university that does not have an official religion, but at the same time be a very welcoming place where people can express their faith and faith can play a role in the life of our community.”

Another feature on Mason’s campus is one that you cannot miss is all the construction. Is a magic genie allowed you to instantly build a structure on campus, which one would you spring up today?

“It is hard to choose just one. We need a new theater for the arts, a whole new building for the College of Health and Human Services, and towing with the idea of a new School of Management. There is so much planned in the way of construction and it would be hard to say which of these would take top priority, but at the same time we have to be very careful. We have built up a lot of debt as a university. These building do a lot to enrich life on campus, but we have to pay for them so we have to be careful of which projects we pursue.

A big part of our new vision is a commitment to affordability, but at the same time we want to provide our students with a top notch, transformational experience. So what we need to figure out is what are the must haves and what are it would be nice to have, what at the investments that will really have an impact on your time as a student.”

One of the things a lot of students want is a football team, but that comes as an added expense. Where does that rank in priority?

“Athletics play a role. For instance the role that our basketball team played with the 2006 final four had a massive impact for Mason and was fantastic. Some people say if you get that value from your basketball team, why does Mason not have a football team? If you start doing the numbers it turns out that it is not such a great deal. I get a lot of letter from alumni who do not why it is not the best option, thinking that with money from television and ticket sales it will do so much for the university’s name, that all of the sudden the school will be much better financially. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Except for a few schools across the country, the majority of schools lose money with their football programs because they are very expensive, with the cost of scholarships and the stadium. How do you think all that is financed? With 90% of the schools that have football fund it by raising student tuitions to cover the cost. When I get letters from alumni I say it is great that you would love a football team when you are no longer paying tuition here. If I ask the current students if they would mind paying an extra $1000 in student’s fees for a football team, they tend to say not so much. If we magically had this magical benefactor to cut us a sixty million dollar check to build a new football team then I would love to! But, I have a commitment to affordability and I cannot have commit to something that will be costing students without directly benefitting their education.”

As the president of the largest university in VA, how do you keep on top of 30,000 students?

“Mason is like a town. We have our own police force, food halls, and dorms, even a hotel. It is very complex with all this in addition to the core of what we do, teaching and researching. I think the key is that approaching this job like the CEO of a company and thinking that you can dictate what happens means that you are doomed to fail. What makes a great university is to create a place where people can make it special. I see my role more as a facilitator and enabler. I want to figure out how to support people like you who will make the campus special.  We are not trying to be on top of everything that happens, we want people to drive the life on campus and we are just facilitators trying to take out road blocks where we can.”

I believe the students really appreciate your presences on campus. You’re a very trendy president with your blog and twitter account. So, have you seen the latest trend, GMU Confessions?

“Yes, I have looked into it. I was fascinated, fascinated and then I got to the TMI stage where I felt that maybe this was too much information for me about the students. I think it is interesting, another manifestation of social media where people can reveal their souls in such a public way. I find it a fascinating exercise.”