Former interim president to return to engineering campus

Nagi Naganathan

As the semester comes to an end, so too is Interim President Naganathan’s time as acting president for the University of Toledo.

Currently, Naganathan is in the middle of a transitional period, moving from interim president back to dean of the engineering college.

“I’m happy to help the incoming president in any way that I can,” Naganathan said. “I have been impressed with Dr. Gaber and have offered my assistance in any way to help her transition as she comes in as the new president of the university. We all care about the university and our students, so we are united in our mission.”

The key to success

Clayton Notestine, former Student Government president, spoke highly of Naganathan. Notestine said he was an “awesome president” and that he hopes Naganathan will stay involved in campus life.

“President Naganathan knew if he was going to get anywhere, he needed to have people,” Notestine said. “Everyone really liked him and more importantly, he really liked them, which is something that you don’t always see on this campus. He worked with everyone from the individual faculty and professors to the administrators he had to work with on a daily basis.”

Interim Provost John Barrett said there were a number of things that made Naganathan successful, from the way he treated people to his daily motivation.

“First, he is an incredibly kind, caring, gracious person. He always makes people feel valued and when you feel valued, you work harder,” Barrett said. “Secondly, he’s operated in a transparent manner, so we know what’s going on. Third, he likes to say, ‘Let’s do the right things for the right reasons.’ He doesn’t look for gimmicks, he doesn’t look for things that are flashy but don’t work — he tries to build things that are real.”

Barrett went on to say he believed there was a certain key to Naganathan’s success as interim president — the way in which he broke down tasks into manageable chunks.

“When you work with President Nagi, sometimes you don’t see how far you’re moving or how much you are doing because it is all practical steps that move piece by piece, then when you look back, you’re like ‘Oh my, look at how far we’ve come,’” Barrett said. “But what he does is he breaks things down into manageable actions that allow you to move everything forward.

Accomplishments

When asked about his accomplishments during the past year, Naganathan said it is “more important others describe it” than for him to do so, although he does believe that bringing everybody together was significant.

“I think we have been able to come together early in the fall when I made the presentation at the State of the University Address,” Naganathan said. “The theme of the speech was ‘Together We Can’ and that is really what we have done. This has not been just a year in transition. We made a commitment that this will be a year of accomplishments, and thanks to everybody’s contributions, we have accomplished a lot this year.”

Barrett said Naganathan has worked to develop several new degree programs, including the cosmetic science degree in pharmacy and a cyber-security and simulation gaming degree is being prepared for release next year.

Linda Rouillard, associate professor of French, said she thought Naganathan paved the way for a more trusting atmosphere on campus during his time as president.

“I think he has helped transition from a very difficult time in UT’s history during Jacobs’ presidency,” Rouillard said. “I think that President Naganathan has prepared the ground for a new culture — one that I hope will be much more trusting, much more transparent and one that will be much more dedicated to the greater good than we saw during president Jacobs’ presidency.”

In Notestine’s opinion, one of the most important things Naganathan did over the past year was create unison among faculty members.

“I think he really brought together a lot of the faculty. They feel like they were incorporated into the shared governance in Toledo,” Notestine said. “I know Faculty Senate really appreciated his leadership.”

End of a presidency, return to a deanship

Instead of feeling like he is ‘stepping down,’ Naganathan said he feels his departure will be more of a completion of the responsibility he agreed to take. He said he’s excited to be moving back to the engineering campus.

“That is something I have been a part of for 28 years,” Naganathan said. “I look forward to going back and resuming many of the good things that I was part of as an engineering dean.”

According to Barrett, Naganathan’s return to the engineering campus was not unexpected. However, he said Naganathan will be missed and has done great work over the past year.

“I think Nagi has done a fantastic job this year, and the university has moved forward in significant ways,” Barrett said. “Nagi has been helping [Gaber] learn what she needs to know so that she can hit the ground running and has really done nothing but be kind of the perfect partner in moving this transition forward.”

Lessons learned

Naganathan said that during his experience as acting president, he’s had many takeaways — the most exciting of which was being able to work with a larger group of people.

“I got to appreciate the university in a wider circle,” Naganathan said. “I got to work closely with students from all of the colleges. One of the programs we initiated this year — we kind of labeled it Walk with the President — gave me an opportunity to get close to the students, listen to them.”

Final thoughts

“I would like to say that he [Naganathan] has been an absolute pleasure to work for,” Barrett said. “He is a man of integrity that has done a great job. I would just personally like to say thank you to him for all that he has done to make the University of Toledo a better place and for stepping up into this role this year.”

Notestine had a similar message, thanking Naganathan for the experience that he has given him.

“There’s not much to say. I am so happy to call him a mentor, and I want so desperately to be like him when I am in a position like his someday,” he said. “I cannot find any fault with the man.”

Naganathan said he was grateful for the entire experience and hopes the university will keep striving for improvement in future years.

“I want to thank all of the students, faculty and staff that I’ve had the pleasure to work with. It is due to their cooperative engagement that we are able to get things done,” Naganathan said. “And I think if we come together, this university will continue to get better every day.”