Saunders speaks her mind

On USM's reputation:

"The perception of academic quality is sound. We have been around long enough to have wildly successful alumni who have left their mark. Our reputation as a research institution has been elevated recently. Athletics bring a lot of visibility. The arts bring a lot of visibility. I think there's a very good reputation."

On her priorities for USM:

"I can't give you specific numbers, but I want to be sure that there are a couple of things that I underscore. One is that my reason for being here is to make life better for people in Mississippi, primarily South Mississippi, and we do that through education. This state needs quality college graduates and we have got to figure out how to make that happen. We can't do it by finger pointing. We take what we have and we figure it out. One of the things I never take for granted is the intellectual resource on the university campus. None of us is smarter than all of us. If we can sort of get the herd moving in the same direction we can do anything."

On her leadership style:

"My preferred leadership style is collaborative. We are a multi-faceted complex organization and so I spend a lot of time making sure I get the right people around the table. The challenge to a leader is being far enough ahead of the issue that you can get it to the table. But when the need arises I can be pretty authoritarian. I hope it doesn't arrive often…I always ask the question, 'has everybody who needs to be consulted been consulted?' In public relations, we talk a lot about the various publics upon whom our success and failure depends, and we need to think as often about the people who can help us fail as the people who can help us win."

On her challenges:

"I'm the person that when I press the elevator button, if it doesn't open, I just keep poking it. I'm energetic. I'm not always really patient. And I heard that when they called someone that worked for me and asked … she said 'if you're in a meeting with Martha, you better get to the point quick, because if she starts staring out the window, you've lost her.' I have a low tolerance for waste and time is an important resource for this campus."

On gaining trust on campus:

"I'm picking up that trust is going to be a big challenge…The president has to make sure that people are united... I think it's going to be very important that we work very transparently."

On the arts:

"It's not sufficient to be good; people have to know you're good, and the way they know you're good are by these programs that bring attention. The arts bring attention to the campus. One important part of my vision for the arts is to increase invisibility because the people come and pay attention to one piece of the campus and they'll look around and say, 'oh by golly look what else they do there as well.' My vision for the arts will be one of maintaining and increasing visibility for the institution."

On the relationship between president and provost:

"The provost is the chief operating officer, and depending on some of the direction that I will be taking from this campus, the amount of time I'm here will vary. The president is often out there beating the drum, telling the tale, stirring up money. The provost, as chief operating officer, is doing everything else. The most important relationship on campus is between the president and the provost because the provost is doing everything else so there has to be a lot of good communication, my [current] provost and I talk often. Daily. Hourly. Minute-by-minute. We have to see eye-to-eye."

On feral cats:

"When I was on the campus of the University of West Florida, we had a lot of cats and so at some point, the city or community sent a cat catcher around to catch the cats and destroy them. The students got pretty upset about that and formed a chapter of the humane society and they raise some money to count the cats and nurture them. But when I die and my life passes before my eyes, I will see the day of the great cat roundup. Students all over the campus catching cats…I'll have some fun memories."

On athletics:

"I can't think of many things - or sometimes anything - that brings more visibility to a campus. You can have all the quality you like, but if no one knows about, it doesn't do you a lot of good. Athletics brings an important visibility to campus...You can't grow up in South Mississippi and not appreciate athletics…I will do whatever it takes and whatever I can to maintain a first class athletic program."

On female athletes:

"I resented [not having the opportunity to play a sport in high school] a long time because the ability to work on a team is a growth opportunity. And women didn't get that opportunity then…The justification was 'well we need our girls to be studying so our ACT scores stay high.' A lot has changed, and I think it has changed for the better."

On her involvement with minority students:

"I like to be invited. And I hope I would be welcome to come in. What I would encourage you to do is if at any point you feel like a voice is not being heard, just let me know."

On making international students feel welcomed on campus:

"I'm really high on global perspective. One of the critical roles of international students is that they can teach you there's more than one way to solve a problem…The inclusion of international students is very important to the global perspective of our students."

On building relationships with local politicians:

"I spend a great deal of time with elected officials…[At my current school] I have regular briefings with our legislative delegation. They come to the campus at least once a semester. I give them a personal sort of an update on maybe some of the things they may be reading about or hearing about. And then we go for a walk. And we walk around campus and I take them to the cafeteria. And they sit down with the students and we meet. So, I have developed a good personal relationship. But, we also do a legislative breakfast two, maybe three, times a year, where we bring them in. My staff is there and they're there. We take the gloves off, and we really talk and we hammer it out. And we talk about issues that were reported to them and hot buttons. And we at least are there to give our points of view. That has been very very beneficial as well."

On professional development:

"Well, one of the things that I talk about is how we always try to hire the best faculty and staff. If we're the best out of our class, the best out of our program, we won't stay the best unless we retool and certain programs need more retooling than others. That's hard to do, some campuses have sabbaticals and that works. But one thing we used to do on my campuses was to set aside some money that is for every employee and I have been very pleased. It's not a ton and not everybody uses it, but every employee on our campus knows that they will have a fixed amount of money for professional development. That was a scenario that was very important to me. A term that I will use frequently is competence. We expect our graduates to be competent people, but we can have some real conversation on how we can ensure that competence. It will be wonderful if we can say, 'if you graduate from here, we'll make sure you always stay on your game.' And our employers will say, 'if you hire a USM graduate, there is always that resource.'"

On increasing quality and accreditation:

"Those of us that have professional accreditations within our units and then institutional accreditations sometimes we roll our eyes and think that it's a big chore. There is a good purpose for accreditation, it set standards. That is one way that I make sure that we are on top of where we are because it sets the level. We spend an awful lot of time getting the best and we have to compete. When talking with the deans, they said that were losing a lot of them to the South. The most important thing we do is to hire them and to exceed. We can agree on standards and give plenty of opportunity to reach those standards. As public institution there is also responsibility to educate to students. We have found that there are a lot of innovated ways in schools that people have to even out different backgrounds. Where is the kid with the fire in his belly, with the passion for success and hunger to learn? This factor you cannot measure. If we're not a quality institution, nothing else matters."

On working with the community:

"A hundred years ago when families sent students to universities…the assumption was that when they came out of those doors, society would be better. One of the things that we realized is that we started to see a lot of emphasis on volunteerism and service learning…but the way I see community partnership is that we have a responsibility to work with our community to make them ready and worthy of our graduates. We talk about the best way that we can interact, so it is becoming important for us to take what we know and lift communities and vice versa. There are a lot of opportunities. I've been around and never took for advantage the collective intelligence of a university campus. Look how many smart people are in this room, we can change the world, this is awesome. We can make a lot happen for our community because there is a lot of experience and knowledge and we will."

On fundraising:

"Things have changed for presidents and there's not one around that should not be very involved in the fundraising process. I take a lot of different roles. Presidents broadly enable the work of the university. We beat the drum. I'm the head cheerleader. I tell the story. And sometimes the role is simply building on the relationship. I also take good counsel from the pros. Sometimes I step out of the way. In every relationship there will be people who get along better than others. I would hope I would be beloved by all, but there may be occasions when someone might prefer meeting with a dean and I don't get my feelings hurt at all. This is for the good of the institution."

On the legacy she would like to leave:

"We want to see buildings and campuses and programs, but also I think I would want a climate. That climate would be the one that I felt when I was a student here. That 'it can happen for you [climate].' Student, faculty, employee [or] visitor, it can happen for you here. [I'd like people to say] 'she believed in us and we believed in ourselves.'"