Queens College President Frank H. Wu spoke with this journalist about being a college administrator in the digital age, leading Queens College during the COVID pandemic, and the future of the college.
“The important thing in life is not victory but combat; it is not to have vanquished but to have fought well,” said Pierre de Coubertin, French Educator who was primarily responsible for the revival of the Olympic Games in 1894. Frank H. Wu is such an individual.
He is the first Asian American president in the history of Queens College.
Background on President Frank H. Wu
Frank H. Wu was named president of Queens College, The City University of New York (CUNY) in July of 2020. Wu previously served as chancellor and dean, and then as Distinguished Professor at University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
Before joining UC Hastings, he was a member of the faculty at Howard University, the nation’s leading historically black college/university (HBCU), for a decade.
He served as dean of Wayne State University Law School in his hometown of Detroit, and he has been a visiting professor at University of Michigan; an adjunct professor at Columbia University; and a Thomas C. Grey Teaching Fellow at Stanford University.
He taught at the Peking University School of Transnational Law in its inaugural year and again a decade later, and at Johns Hopkins University twice.
In his leadership roles at Queens College, UC Hastings and Wayne, as well as on the faculty at Howard, he was the first Asian American to serve in such a capacity.
What does your job description involve as President of Queens College?
The President of Queens College, like the president of other institutions of higher education, is the chief executive officer. That means I am ultimately responsible for all aspects of the school.
The role is both external as well as internal. In the public eye, I am charged with representing QC before government bodies and officials in Washington, D.C., Albany, Manhattan, and Queens, in the media, and before the alumni.
On our beautiful campus, I must ensure excellent education and optimal operations. I am always advocating for our students, in all these contexts.
A good president also delegates: the provost is the chief academic officer, reporting to me, and I rely on her to ensure research and creativity is supported and advanced, and the curriculum developed to best meet the needs of our most important constituents, those whom we are charged with educating and training.
Everything is a team effort. The Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, with her team, takes care of student issues. And so on.
I work closely with the CUNY system, headed by a Chancellor, who happens by coincidence to be my predecessor as well. My days are busy with everything from fundraising and the budget to athletics and the physical facilities.
What do you love about Queens College? (Why would you recommend it to anyone)
I did not set out to be a college president. I said that more than five years ago. It was true. I wanted to be the Queens College President.
I had already had a role in charge of an institution, and my life is not about putting myself in charge for its own sake. People told me about Queens. They said this is exactly what your life has been about. I also had made it through a life-threatening health episode.
That altered my perspective. It’s true for most people. I emerged a better human being, because I learned what truly mattered, and it wasn’t what I had considered important before then. I’m actually grateful that I had to face such an issue.
I am glad I survived it, having a new type of therapy in the initial cohort once it was approved. When I got to Queens, I learned the scientist who invented the therapy, monoclonal antibody infusions, was an alumnus of ours.
His name is Lee Nadler, and it was only shortly after finishing at Queens he had an insight that people mocked, but which led to a scientifically proven alternative to conventional chemotherapy.
I always say to our students that my family is just like their family. My parents came to the United States in the early 1960s. I would not be here, literally, if it were not for American higher education. I have come full circle.
One third of our students are like my parents, immigrants. Another third are like my brothers and me, the American born descendants of those newcomers who sacrificed so much and set standards to encourage their progeny.
Higher education is the engine of the American Dream. That is just as true for those who are heirs to the Great Migration of African Americans of the last century, seeking freedom in the North, and those whose elders were born on these shores but never had the means to pursue a college degree.
A Queens College education is also a great return on your investment, with tuition 10 times less than that of other schools. Student loans can be a crushing burden; some of my classmates have only now finished paying off those debts, in their fifties!
We are a community of communities, as America has been called a nation of nations. Frederick Douglass spoke of “the composite nation” in a famous lecture he would deliver, reprinted as a booklet.
Hillel says we have proportionally more Jewish students than any secular college. An estimated 15 percent of our students are Muslim.
The federal government recognizes us as an Asian American/Pacific Islander-serving institution and a Hispanic-serving institution.
Even within New York City, Queens is the most diverse borough. It is “the world’s borough.” I believe our students have a common bond of being strivers.
They are folks who will do great, if they have that break — not a lucky one, because chance favors the prepared. Our students are talented and ready. They just need the chance.
How does it feel to be a college president in the digital age? (Now with streaming, technology and social media being so prevalent)
This is a challenging time and an exciting one. We are on the cusp of the artificial intelligence revolution. AI is changing everything. It can be positive if we think it through.
I am about action, not being passive. In order for technology to serve us, rather than the other way around, to avoid being captive to our devices, we have to be engaged with the world around us.
We don’t want to end up in the science fiction dystopia of machines coming after us. We need to ensure we use our brains.
Every moment presents the opportunity for the best indulgence, which is of curiosity, of wishing to know more about what is happening.
Queens College should, and does, promote life-long learning. That is the attitude needed for a life that is successful and fulfilling.
How do you use technology in your daily routine?
I grew up programming a computer, back in the day when the Apple II was brand new. I’ve continued to use technology ever since. When I was a lawyer, fax machines and email were just starting to come into use.
Although the fax machine is obsolete, email continues to be important. During the pandemic, we started to use Zoom, and now Teams.
We stream major events. Technology is a tool. It has to be put to use for the betterment of humanity.
What did serving as President of Queens College teach you about yourself?
I love to learn. That is why I became an academic and then an administrator. I wanted to continue my own education.
That includes taking on the challenge of leadership, which involves understanding human behavior at the level of individuals and the level of groups.
Over time, I have learned that the most important skills are not measured by grades and test scores. You have to develop your intelligence and acquire knowledge.
True wisdom comes from making mistakes and learning from them, cultivating humility and forbearance, appreciating human foibles, developing resilience.
I learn every day from our faculty about their areas of expertise, from the staff who have practical skills I depend on, and, most of all, from our students whose life experiences are vast and varied.
Were there any moments with Queens College that have helped define you?
To start this job during the pandemic was defining. People would say it must be difficult. Perhaps I am a contrarian. In a sense, it was easier.
The reason is we had a priority, a single issue that whoever you were, whatever your background or beliefs or station in life, everywhere in the world for more than a year, we all had to address. Every aspect of life was affected. We made it. We did it together.
The vaccines are a good example of the social contract. I said at the time, and I continue to believe, that as important as those shots were to each of us — I was relieved to get mine, then the boosters — they were as important for the next person, the person seated next to you, a stranger except you were sharing the same space.
Much of our day-to-day life is isolated and selfish. Ironically given its name, “social media” is anything but social in orientation: it is so enticing, we cease to interact in a genuine manner.
When we had to shelter, avoiding contact with others, we came to appreciate the need for the hurly burly of the public square.
We have long had a space on campus named the “Agora,” a Greek term for a universal concept: the marketplace of goods and ideas, where people would come from near and far, to trade with one another, to talk, to participate through a structure and a process with those from other communities, confident the exchange would benefit each part.
Whether it was selling the bounty of the harvest or bartering for manufactured goods that you yourself could not make, to listening to a lecture, or being exposed to faiths, languages, and customs that were unfamiliar but which might become your own.
Where do you see Queens College in the next five years?
I believe we will be better than ever. We offer something unique: a high level of access to a high quality of education. Queens College has been great since it opened its doors in 1937.
That was the Great Depression. The leaders of the borough invested. They believed their young people could prosper, even in the depths of an economic setback the nation had never seen.
If you consider Great American Novels, the era of Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, with its depiction of the jazz age and memorable description of Flushing Meadows before it was revitalized, had given way to Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, a saga of despair.
Queens College opened its doors in confidence. College education was rare then, and it was for the elite.
The good people, more hard working than privileged, if the neighborhoods that continue to be home to our students, were confident they could come together to improve their lot in life, as individuals and as a community.
Now, we have a new Arts School and a new Business School. We opened both at the same time. Everyone should consider being a double major or having a major and a minor.
Art students should take a business course, so they can market themselves or someday run a museum. Business students should take an art course, to develop fully as citizens and human beings.
In our Education School, which trains more principals and teachers than any other institution in the area, for our metropolis, embraces the notion, as students learn history or chemistry on the one hand and how to transmit the knowledge through the best practices of pedagogy on the other hand.
Math and Natural Sciences includes world class researchers, such as John Dennehy. He developed a virus testing method using wastewater, crucial during the COVID-19 era and adapted since to cover so many other threats to public health.
Social sciences and the humanities have winners of awards such as the recently announced Guggenheim prizes for Karen Strassler and John Yao.
What does the word success mean to you? (My favorite question)
To me, success is about helping others and giving back — not self-aggrandizement. Our institutional motto translates in English as we learn so that we may serve. I believe in that.
Our students succeed and their families with them. The belief in something bigger than ourselves, a common good, is what creates civil society.
Over Memorial Day, I went to the John F. Kennedy Library and Memorial. I was inspired by his idealism.
What would you like to say to our readers about Queens College? (What’s the one thing you want them to get out of it)
I would like them to know that the Queens College experience is available to everyone, regardless of your age or if you have attended college at CUNY or elsewhere and didn’t finish your degree, or if you’re looking to make a career change or earn a promotion—there are programs available to you like CUNY Reconnect.
It’s an initiative to help more adults return to higher education that provides personalized support to help navigate your next move.
Joining the Queens College family also translates into a larger economic benefit to the borough, city, state, and region. A 2020 economic impact study revealed that the college adds more than $1.8 billion to the New York City metropolitan area and provides a return of $4.90 for every dollar spent by taxpayers.
A significant portion of the income added—$1.5 billion—is the result of alumni impact. Alumni impact represents the collective earnings of alumni, taxes paid on those earnings, jobs created by alumni, taxes paid by their businesses, and spending by alumni.
The report showed that nearly 85 percent of QC students stay in the metropolitan area after graduating. They earn an average of $34,500 more annually and $1.5 million more in a working lifetime over a person with only a high school diploma.
And the impact of our alumni contributions to the arts, humanities, and natural sciences is worldwide and immeasurable.
The same holds true for our extraordinarily talented alumni that have contributed to the fields of math and science, as well as to the world of entertainment.
We are a civic institution. We welcome everyone. Even if you didn’t graduate from QC, you probably graduated at QC in a ceremony held at our Colden Center auditorium.
We host high school and junior high school ceremonies there, along with cultural acts and performers of interest to every ethnicity and faith.
To learn more about Queens College, visit its official homepage, and follow the academic institution on Instagram.
