First Involvement

Well, I had seen the board close up and seen what was happening. At board meetings I would often come in a week or more before and do some consulting for Janice, interviewing people on staff; people on faculty; giving advice as schools were starting to develop, and some of the other functions were beginning to be developed, finance and human resources and the like. So I had a pretty good understanding of the institution and the people, and I liked the people a lot. That's one of the things, maybe we can get to a little later. But the staff, the students were attractive. The students weren't there when I started, but there were there shortly thereafter. But I was confident of the people. 

I had seen indirectly, a year and a half of experience with the commitments that Singapore had made to the university, which to my knowledge, they kept throughout my presidency, and throughout subsequent presidencies. And those commitments involved a substantial amount of resources.

In some ways, I'd argue Janice and I had the best possible set of conditions you could imagine to try to create a new university not that it wasn't a challenge but nonetheless, you couldn't ask for more favourable conditions in a government and in a country.