Getting to know UT’s first female president

Sharon Gaber

It’s time to move again.

Sharon Gaber is no stranger to moving. After five moves across several state lines, the newly elected University of Toledo president is familiar with the process of packing up her things and getting used to a new area. “I have lived in different areas,” she said in a phone interview. “Grew up in California, went to school in New York, and then went to Nebraska, then to Alabama, then to Arkansas, and now to Ohio … Every place is different and the culture’s a little different.”

The board of trustees announced March 12 that Gaber would be the 17th UT president — and UT’s first female president.

While Gaber is now a leader with several positions in academia under her belt, she wasn’t always the one running the place. Her experience at universities began during her time as a college student at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California — a college that was smaller, in fact, than her high school.

Gaber saw the small student population as an opportunity to be involved and get to know people, and she took that opportunity by becoming an RA in the dorms for a year and working internships. Her time at Occidental taught her “the importance of having small communities, activities for students to be involved in, the ability to know your faculty and to have support groups.”

“It was a great experience and I really enjoyed it, and the faculty that I worked with were supportive and encouraged me to go on to grad school which was very nice.”

Gaber looks back fondly on her time at Occidental, but one class in particular came to her mind as a favorite memory.

“I was in an econometrics class,” Gaber said,”and I was sitting in the back row of the class and the professor stops the class and he said, ‘Okay, let me go over that point again,’ and I was thinking, ‘Well thank goodness’ and he looked at me and he said ‘Sharon, I can tell. I gauged the entire class on the expression that you have, and right now I can tell that you didn’t get what I said.”

Gaber found it interesting that the professor had realized how the whole class felt by her expression, and thought it was good that he was paying attention to the class.

“And then I decided that it was time to have a little more of a poker face,” she said, laughing.

While in college, Gaber immersed herself in business-oriented classes, never imagining she would become a university president one day.

“When I was in college … I was an economics major and then I did urban studies,” Gaber said. “My interest at that point was either to go work in business — whatever that meant — or work for a city in the planning department.”

She did work for a city’s planning department for a while as a graduate student, but she realized it wasn’t quite the right fit for her. While the job wasn’t what she would grow to pursue a career in, she still really enjoyed urban planning and decided to get a master’s degree in it.

“While I was getting my master’s degree I enjoyed it and was selected as the outstanding graduate,” Gaber said. “I went on to get a Ph.D. in it.”

She enjoyed urban planning so much that she became a faculty member and taught it, becoming the only female professor in the department.

“I … wound up learning a lot more about the department because half the students were female,” she said. “I’d wind up talking — they were looking for a mentor, role model, someone to talk to — and I spent time learning much more about the department than did a lot of the other faculty because I wanted to make sure it ran well and that the students enjoyed it.”

This desire to make sure everything worked well helped Gaber become the department chair.

“All of a sudden I started doing this administrative thing that I didn’t really plan on but found that it seemed to work well,” she said.

It wasn’t until she realized it was working well that she became interested in a position as president.

Her journey through higher education was not always easy. In February 2011, the annual mammogram she expected to be normal prompted doctors to schedule a biopsy for Gaber. The result was not what she expected.

“They did the biopsy. I guess I didn’t really think much of that either. And then you know the doctor called me that night and said, ‘We’ve discovered you have breast cancer’ — that was a Thursday — ‘and we’ve scheduled you for surgery on Tuesday.’ I’m like, ‘Wait, what? Holy cow!’”

Gaber said it was a tough situation to go through, and she was surprised by it because her family had no history of breast cancer. It was difficult, but she learned a lot from it.

“I feel very fortunate that family, friends, the university community was really great to me,” she said. “It was very interesting because I went through and I had surgery, and then I had to do chemo, and then I had to do radiation, and during all of that the campus community sent me cards, and notes, and emails, and flowers, and food.”

She said everyone’s support, protectiveness and kindness to her was touching during such a trying time.

“That was just really, really overwhelming that people were that wonderful,” she said.

In spite of the difficulties she faced, Gaber said she kept working and tried not to take a lot of time off from work. With everyone’s support, treatments and time, she received some good news.

“I am completely and absolutely free and never have to go back … In October 2014 he [the doctor] said, ‘Well, you’ve done it. You’ve gone through all the post-checkups; you don’t ever have to come back. You’re clear and good.’”

The very support system that helped Gaber get through her battle with breast cancer is one of the things she will miss most about Arkansas when she says goodbye to her current home and embraces a new one.

“I’ve got great colleagues, I’ve got great friends, I’ve got great neighbors, a great community — the people.”

However, Gaber isn’t planning on dwelling on the sad parts of moving. She is already looking forward, and said she is also excited about moving to Toledo and becoming part of a new community, especially because the people she has met from Toledo “have been fantastic.”

“I envision having all of that there. It’s just meeting new people and being able to make that shift, but right now I’ve got … a great group of people, and that’s what I look forward to at the University of Toledo, is having that great group of students, faculty, staff and the broader community to become a part of.”