By: Janice Bitters

The Minnesota Daily sat down with University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler on Monday for its monthly Kickin’ It With Kaler interview.

Kaler talked about his recent trip to China, new administrators, the effect of the recent DOMA ruling on the University and more.

You visited China at the beginning of this month. Can you talk about what you did or some of the highlights?

It was an amazing trip. I’m still recovering, but a great opportunity to meet a lot of our partners in China. I visited many research universities … [I] also met a group of entering students who will make their way to Minnesota in the fall and their parents, so that was fun to hear some of their concerns and just feel some of the excitement that they have for their trip to Minnesota.

… There are students and faculty that are coming here, so the faculty who I met at various places on the trip were also working with their colleagues and collaborators, identifying some opportunities for joint research. So really the full range.

DOMA was recently struck down in the Supreme Court of the United States. How will this impact the University, in terms of faculty, staff and students?

To be honest with you, I don’t know what impact that’s going to bring, and our HR people are looking carefully to be sure that what we do is completely in line … A) with the law and B) is in the interest of our faculty, staff and students.

So we will be looking at what the impact of that is, and if we need to make changes we will communicate them and take as much feedback as we need to move those policies, but I don’t have a specific knowledge of what changes we will need to make.

As we move into your third year in office, you will be working with fully three-quarters new administration, according to the Board of Regents. I’m interested in knowing the ‘whys.’ Was this strategic at all?

I think it’s just sort of a natural thing that happens. President [Bob] Bruininks had been in office for a reasonably long period of time, and his senior leaders had reached opportunities or times in their careers to either move elsewhere — as the provost did — or to separate from the University. … I’m very happy with the new people that we’ve hired. I think they are doing a tremendous job. There is, of course, a loss of institutional memory when you have senior leaders depart, but we also have a core of people who have been with the University for a long time.

Many are happy with the resident tuition freeze, but some are wondering about non-resident tuition. How much of a priority will non-resident tuition be in the future?

Well, I think when you look at non-resident tuition, even with the increase that we have, it is still well below non-resident tuition for many of our peer institutions and it represents still a good value for students who want to come the University of Minnesota. I do believe that it is important that the University be affordable to all students, but I think it’s also fair to have a differential between the [in-state] and out-of-state students.

So in coming years do you anticipate more increases? Would you say probably not a freeze for out-of-state students?

I don’t think we will be able to freeze out-of-state tuition, so I would anticipate that it would continue to increase but at as modest a rate as we can manage.

Read Wednesday’s Daily for the full interview, including readers’ questions from Twitter.