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The amazing Mary Ann Rankin
In case you missed the front-page profile of Mary Ann Rankin, dean of the University of Texas College of Natural Sciences, in Sunday’s newspaper, here’s a tease. Link here for full story.
Almost outside the peripheral vision of the speakers, the dean strides to the window. She nimbly flips open the wooden slats of the blinds. At a meeting about sustainability programs, Mary Ann Rankin, dean of the University of Texas’ second-largest college, lets in the light. With the same gesture, she also silently, subtly signals that it is time to change the subject.
The circular arguments and buzz words that sometimes make university meetings feel like jogging with a nail in one’s shoe are, to some extent, unavoidable.
“Rankin has the ability to deal comfortably with all the players important to a great research university,” said Larry Gilbert, director of UT’s once-endangered Brackenridge Field Laboratory , which Rankin championed before top administrators and the UT System Board of Regents. “She is a kind person, but when the going gets tough on key issues, she can be hardheaded and is willing to go all in and risk her job.”
Times are tough now, given mandatory cuts for state-supported universities. Yet Rankin, 65, has helped raise more than $700 million in charitable donations during her 16-year tenure as dean and manages an annual budget of $250 million.
She’s overseen the construction or renovation of more than a dozen buildings on campus, including the handsome Norman Hackerman Building , set to open in early 2011, and the 140,000-square-foot, interconnected Bill and Melinda Gates Computer Science Complex and Dell Computer Science Hall , for which UT just broke ground.
By any standards, that makes her one of the city’s top fundraisers. Add to that the college’s recent history of scoring research dollars.
“Under her leadership, the College of Natural Sciences has been instrumental in UT attracting more external research funding than any other American university without a medical school, with the exception of MIT,” UT President William Powers Jr. said. “While Mary Ann is a leader nationally in higher education, she (also) finds time to serve the Austin community.”
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