News-Letter

Brody spoke to students Tuesday night. (Robin Shaw/News-Letter) [Click to enlarge]

In the second presentation of this fall's Milton S. Eisenhower (MSE) Symposium, Hopkins President William Brody held a workshop for a small group of students titled "What It Takes: Presiding Over the World's Best Hospital and a Top-Tier Research University."

The event included a closed-circle discussion in which undergraduate and graduate students questioned Brody about his role in the university and his perspective on the most effective ways of improving student life.

As the 13th president of Johns Hopkins, Brody identified his role in the university as comparable to the task of managing a baseball team.

"The most important and hardest part of my job is picking the right people," said Brody.

"Running [Hopkins] is like managing a baseball team that has star players who play different positions."

Although the president of a university is frequently compared to the position of chief executive officer of a corporation, Brody pointed out significant differences between the two.

"The president [of a university] is involved in multiple activities [whereas] the C.E.O. of a company [usually] has a single focus."

To this end, Brody suggested that he plays a leading role in generating resources to support education because "without margin, [there is] no mission," and so is one of a president's chief responsibilities.

Besides representing Johns Hopkins to potential donors, Brody also listed his responsibilities as maintaining Hopkins as a leading institution at the frontiers of teaching, research and patient care.

However, some students questioned the direction of the university and the possibility of broadening its areas of strength, after citing the perception that Johns Hopkins is primarily the place for sciences and medicine.

In response, Brody contended that Hopkins is top-notch in multiple fields, ranging from social sciences to humanities, saying that it is just a matter of the "reputation of the university catching up to reality."

Brody then posed a hypothetical question to illustrate the allure of "hot" areas, like biomedical engineering.

"If you had a choice between the two, would you listen to the lecture in the room that is packed with 150 students or to the lecture in the room next door that has only five students?" Dr. Brody asked the audience.

He replied that most students would probably choose the more popular one of the two, but that he would choose the one that the others have decided to levae unexplored.

Brody assured students that the university is taking steps to gradually dilute the university's concentration on biological sciences and medicine among undergraduates by seeking more students who have interests in other fields.

Other students asked about the role that the university plays in the development of Charles Village.

President Brody stated that Johns Hopkins has no direct involvement and that the evolution of the neighborhood depends mostly upon who, namely which developers, decide to come into the area.

Furthermore, Dr. Brody expressed concern about the rising cost of living in Baltimore and said that Johns Hopkins has begun taking action by creating more housing opportunities for upperclassmen, before prices force them to leave the city.

An exchange during the question and answer period on the topic of undergraduate student life grew heated when a student challenged Brody on the quality of student life at Hopkins.

Throughout the workshop, Brody referred to his years of background experience in both the medical and entrepreneurship fields.

Brody has explored a number of fields, ranging from radiology to cardiology, after receiving his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He followed up his doctorate at Stanford University with training in cardiovascular surgery and radiology at the same university, the National Institutes of Health, and the University of California at San Francisco.

Despite first viewing radiology as a "sleepy specialty," Brody went on to teach radiology and electrical engineering at Stanford after his postgraduate training, but then gave up his professorship at the university to head a company pioneering in magnetic resonance imaging.

Brody's involvement in and contribution to radiology eventually brought him to Baltimore as the radiologist-in-chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The association later led to his current position as president of the Johns Hopkins University, a place that he "fell in love with" because of its "unique and collaborative" environment.

"[The university] recognizes that everyone has something to contribute," Brody said.

Brody emphasized that students should explore different fields, and avoid falling into the trap of an "over-competitive [atmosphere] that can [make] higher education something that is not healthy for students."

-- Staff writer Shawn Zardouz contributed to this article.

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