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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m N o v e m b e r / D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 8 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 49 CONNECTICUT + MASSACHUSETTS + NEW YORK MURTHALAW.COM at District New Haven 470 James Street ▶ Creative legal counseling for entrepreneuers ▶ Intellectual Property & patent strategies ▶ Cost e ff ective business solutions ▶ Complimentary Business Seminars: Visit bitly.com/LawLabSeminars ▶ LawLab@murthalaw.com Anthony P. Gangemi agangemi@murthalaw.com David A. Menard dmenard@murthalaw.com of students who start and finish within four years at the same school is at an all-time low. It's not that they're not motivated, but this straight-line trajectory has been hampered in recent years. Some students are taking five and six years [to complete undergrad- uate degrees]. And something like 40 percent of college students are no longer the traditional 18-to- 22-year-old who finishes a degree in four years. So I think it's a com- plicated answer. Is attracting more international stu- dents a growth area for Quinnipiac? I feel that being a globalist is es- sential to being an enlightened cit- izen in the 21st century. e world is totally interconnected, with competition, opportunities, threats as likely to come from around the corner as they are from across the planet. So I think that having an international body within our stu- dent body is not just enlightened self-interest, but is an essential component to the education we offer. Sitting next to someone from Mongolia or Tanzania or Sri Lanka will be as much of an education as hearing from your professors. Does it affect to the psychology of this institution that it is eight miles away from another institution that casts such a very long shadow? Every institution has to figure out its distinctiveness. Yale is awesome. It is one of the greatest institutions in the world. It does something that Quinnipiac could never hope to do. It's like you as a person: You can't constantly be comparing yourself to others. You have to know what your true north is, and what makes you special. I think Quinnipiac has a very clear sense of that. It's student-obsessed. It's extremely proud of how it rallies around the student mission, and how it pre- pares these students in a way that is very difficult for many other institutions. Also, we don't have difficulties crossing silos here. e professional schools and Arts and Sciences are constantly collab- orating. at doesn't happen in many other places. We're wholly focused on who we are and to be the best we can be. We don't want to be somebody else. Graduate-school deans get a lot of criticism. University presidents are exposed to many more magnitudes of criticism. How well do you personally take criticism? In the end, you do what you do because you believe it's the right thing. And you hope that what you are doing is communicated well enough, and executed well enough, that others understand that it's the right thing — even if there might be disagreements. He goal isn't that everyone always agrees with you, but that people can see the rationale and the reason [for actions] even when it isn't universally popular. Ultimately, it's about doing the right thing. n "Yale is awesome. It does something that Quinnipiac could never hope to do. But you can't constantly be comparing yourself to others. You have to know what your true north is." - Judy Olian President, Quinnipiac University Murtha

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