Meet Justin Schwartz, the New Chancellor at the University of Colorado Boulder

Justin Schwartz has been around higher education his entire life. Growing up in Evanston, Illinois, home to Northwestern University, he was a faculty kid. “I grew up asking my friends not what your parents do,” he says, “but what do they teach?”

He attended the University of Illinois as an undergraduate before pursuing his doctorate in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From there, he stayed on state campuses, going on to lead a national lab at Florida State University and then the engineering department at North Carolina State University. In 2017, he was hired as the dean of engineering at Penn State before being promoted to provost—and he might have stayed there. But last fall, longtime chancellor of the University of Colorado Boulder Phil DiStefano announced he would retire from the role he’d held for 15 years, opening a national search that brought in applicants from across the country—including one from State College, Pennsylvania.

“If you were to have asked me to sit down and write what I want to do for the next five or 10 years in my career, it would have looked almost exactly like this position,” Schwartz says. “I think I wrote the first draft of my cover letter in 20 minutes—and I’m not a fast writer.”

In April, CU announced Schwartz as the next chancellor of the university—a job he officially began on July 1. We sat down with the new leader during his first week on campus to hear about his vision for the Buffs.

Editor’s Note: This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

5280: You’ve only been in Colorado for a couple of days, and this is your second official day on the job. How’s it going?
Justin Schwartz: It’s a big, complex campus, and there are lots of people to get to know. You can only know so much from the outside—and from the outside you can see: ‘Wow, this a really successful campus.’ But to build on success and elevate it further, you have to understand why it’s successful. What are the things internally that make it work and make it tick? The first few days have also been going to the office, showing my passport, confirming I can legally be employed. I went to the DMV this morning, and I had lunch with student government leaders yesterday. On Sunday, I had tea and refreshments at the governor’s house.

What are your first impressions?
Every experience has been perpetually reaffirming. People have been extremely welcoming, and I’m just happy that people seem to be as excited about me coming as I am to be here. I’m not worried about things like getting alignment about what I’d like to do and where the campus would like to go. You see those things a lot. Someone shows up and one person wants to drive east while the university wants to drive due west. There is alignment between my passions and interests and the direction the university is already going.

Had you spent much time in Colorado previously?
Not significantly, no. The state is fantastic. We’ve always been mountains-not-beach people. If you asked my wife and me where we’d have wanted to end up in 10 years it would have been in the mountains of Colorado. My wife has been a triathlete for 25 years or so, and I have been for five or six years. Boulder is the mecca for that. Our son is about to be a senior in high school. CU Boulder was already one of the top schools on his list. Last fall, we had booked a trip for him to come out and visit, and out of pure coincidence, he was here visiting while I was in the president’s office interviewing. We flew separately, we never saw each other, but it was literally the same day.

Tell us about the interview process. You met with faculty, staff, administrators, and students. How was it and what were frequently discussed topics?
It was fun and energizing. Obviously, there are nerves when you’re standing in front of a room of 100 faculty and you’re livestreaming. I heard from people that [CU Boulder] does so much in the area of sustainability, so why aren’t we better known for it? We have a community culture that wants to do better with diversity, equity, and inclusion. We had questions about student safety. I heard questions about affordability, and there are two pieces of that: affordability of tuition and of living in Boulder. There is a housing shortage. Those topics came up. They’re important.

The University of Colorado has a different governance model than Penn State, where you just came from. Is this role similar to the provost position you previously held?
No, it’s not. Penn State is a very different university. Penn State is state-related but not a state university, and it’s structured very differently. It’s 24 campuses within one university, but there’s one provost. I was provost over all campuses. There are some similarities, though. Both universities were founded within 10 years of each other. They both have a passion for sustainability. Both states have a history of oil and gas.

This position description specifically refers to Boulder as the flagship university for the state. So, yes, my job description is to lead CU Boulder. But CU Boulder’s job description is to lead higher education in Colorado. So we have a responsibility to lead as an institution.

I know it’s only your first week, but do you have a sense of what your day-to-day schedule will look like?
Can we have this conversation again in four months?

Of course.
Seriously, though, we’re putting together our cadence of leadership meetings, one-on-one meetings with my direct reports, meetings with students, and engagements with faculty. In about a month, the Big 12 will be here. There’s a lot happening in college athletics, and it’s important to be engaged with that. I’m really lucky to come in with an athletic director [Rick George] who just won AD of the year.

You came from a Power 5 Football School. What are you looking forward to at CU?
I’m looking forward to running with Ralphie at some point. I have to get permission for that and get my running legs with me. I’m looking forward to the excitement it brings across campus.

Have you met Deion yet?
I have.

How was that?
He is a genuinely empathic person who cares deeply about his student athletes and is truly dedicated to their personal growth. I was impressed. I had a great conversation with him. There’s always something special about a packed football stadium and the excitement that comes with that. I’m looking forward to beating Penn State in the national championship game this year.

You wear a ton of different hats in your role: fundraiser, recruiter, spokesperson, and cheerleader. How do you balance all that, and what do you see as the biggest opportunity?
I’m only able to think about doing it because I have great people around me doing it. In terms of opportunities, we want to build on decades of history. We want to be number one in sustainability. If we don’t figure out sustainability, it doesn’t matter what else we do. There’s also this challenge around higher education right now. People want to know: Is higher education worth it? That should be an easy question to answer. But I don’t know that higher ed has done a great job explaining why. It’s not telling kids what to think. It’s helping them learn how to think critically. It’s developing that ability to think through a topic or an idea and make it better.

One thing I told myself from the beginning: Remember all your past experiences and forget all your past experiences. Just because something worked at Penn State and NC State doesn’t mean it will work here. Just because it didn’t work at Penn State or NC State doesn’t mean it won’t work here. The culture is different, the enterprise is different. I understand higher ed as an industry. I want to understand CU Boulder in the context of higher ed in the country.