Part of being a president and chancellor of a major university means spreading the name and mission the institution across the academic world. More often, this means sacrificing time on campus to cultivate relationships with trustees, potential donors and other universities.

For Chancellor Nancy Cantor, this means leaving the same campus she is trying to serve, as well as her husband, SU sociology professor Steve Brechin and their 17-year-old son, Archie. Without the responsibility of raising money for the university, Cantor admitted she would have more time with her family.

‘The world has changed. More and more deans and presidents, chancellors, whatever their name might be, are external people,’ said Melvin Stith, dean of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. ‘If we sit here like the Maytag salesperson waiting for somebody to call us, you guys wouldn’t be very happy on this campus.’

In the past six weeks, Cantor has left Syracuse for a total of 15 days, including one week in February with trustees and alumni in Puerto Rico.

‘You have to spend time on campus to know where people are at. Then you take it out,’ said Thomas Walsh, senior vice president for institutional advancement. ‘It’s a relationship business.’

‘So much of my job is to be back and forth between what our faculty and students and deans want, and who are the partners in the world,’ Cantor said.

But because of his teaching duties, Brechin said he often can’t go along with his wife, especially if the event isn’t one other representatives’ spouses will attend.

‘Arch and I, we ‘bach’ it,’ he said. Brechin described his son’s interest in cooking and going out for pizza on Marshall Street.

The 17-year-old is a junior at Manlius Pebble Hill high school. Brechin and Cantor’s daugher, Madeleine Brechin, is a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

As for being a faculty member and husband to the chancellor, Steve Brechin said the two roles rarely interfere with each other. ‘So I wear two hats,’ he said. ‘I wear the faculty hat and I wear the family hat.’

‘She puts in 100 hours a week,’ Brechin said of his wife. ‘We don’t talk shop at home much.’

 

Published on March 27, 2007 at 12:00 pm