[TonyLima]

Reminder: Hennessy founded and ran a Silicon Valley firm to sell his RISC chips. IIRC.

MIPS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_Technologies

looks like he was there full time for ~3 years then part time as CTO for ~5 years (while he was also the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and then no longer involved when they were bought by SGI

TYVM! Saw him give a talk quite a few years ago.  Very presidential.

---

Qwerty, I would also recommend a particular workstream on the office of the Provost. I think some focus here would yield strong results. Seems like a lot of opportunity for improvement. As Needle points out, the President-Provost management structure has not changed even as the university has grown and morphed over the years which has resulted in one executive officer with an unmanageable span of control.

About a century ago I was talking to a dean about the provost's job.  He described it as "doing anything and everything the president doesn't want to do."  He went on to allege that 1/3 of provosts go on to be a university president. The other 2/3 go back to being regular faculty.  This does not explain the current situation at Stanford where the BOT appears to have appointed a provost.  Usually the president has a large say in this decision.

As was noted elsewhere, a university president has about as much power as they're willing to exert.  Hennessy was very good at this.  MTL not so much.

[TonyLima]

Reminder: Hennessy founded and ran a Silicon Valley firm to sell his RISC chips. IIRC.

MIPS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_Technologies

looks like he was there full time for ~3 years then part time as CTO for ~5 years (while he was also the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and then no longer involved when they were bought by SGI

TYVM! Saw him give a talk quite a few years ago.  Very presidential.

---

Qwerty, I would also recommend a particular workstream on the office of the Provost. I think some focus here would yield strong results. Seems like a lot of opportunity for improvement. As Needle points out, the President-Provost management structure has not changed even as the university has grown and morphed over the years which has resulted in one executive officer with an unmanageable span of control.

About a century ago I was talking to a dean about the provost's job.  He described it as "doing anything and everything the president doesn't want to do."  He went on to allege that 1/3 of provosts go on to be a university president. The other 2/3 go back to being regular faculty.  This does not explain the current situation at Stanford where the BOT appears to have appointed a provost.  Usually the president has a large say in this decision.

As was noted elsewhere, a university president has about as much power as they're willing to exert.  Hennessy was very good at this.  MTL not so much.