Detailed biography

Detailed biography of University Chancellor and President Emeritus Michael A. McRobbie

Michael A. McRobbie served as the 18th president of Indiana University for 14 years from July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2021. Prior to stepping down from the IU presidency, he was among the country's longest-serving presidents of a major public research university.

He was appointed university chancellor on July 1, 2021, the position held by IU's legendary Herman Wells from 1962 to 2000. McRobbie is only the third person to be appointed to this position in IU's 200-year history. This appointment recognized his extensive past achievements and contributions to IU, and anticipates his continued work in support of the university's core missions. He also holds the titles of president emeritus and university professor.

Under his leadership, IU's budget grew to exceed $4 billion, with seven main campuses, seven other facilities, more than 40,000 faculty, staff, and graduate student employees, both full and part-time, over 90,000 students, and more than 725,000 living graduates.

In McRobbie's Inaugural Address in 2007, he set out a new vision for IU that stressed and reaffirmed IU's fundamental mission of excellence in research and teaching to be achieved through a great faculty, responsive and relevant education, an enhanced global presence, expanded infrastructure, a rededication to the arts and humanities, and new initiatives in engagement and economic development.

ACHIEVEMENTS

The following briefly describes some of the major accomplishments of his presidency and his earlier career. A more detailed description of these accomplishments can be found in his final State of the University Address.

Affordability and Accessibility. A major priority of McRobbie's presidency was ensuring that an IU education remained affordable and accessible. To this end, tuition was kept low, with increases averaging only 1.3% over the last six years, below inflation. Net in-state tuition in Bloomington was the second-lowest in the Big Ten in FY2020, and the regional campuses remained highly affordable.

Financial aid was increased 175% between FY2008 and FY2020, and 66% of IU students obtained some form of aid in FY2020. New financial literacy programs were implemented, and from FY2012 student borrowing decreased by $140 million or 22%. Nearly 50% of IU students now graduate with no debt, and another 37% with debt less than $30,000. Overall graduation rates at IU grew from 58% to 64% over this period and by 24% to 38% on the regional campuses.

Diversity. The period of McRobbie's presidency saw IU become a more inclusive institution with a remarkable doubling of the total number of minority students at IU to 28% in 2020—a higher percentage than the state, and to over 20,000 minority students for the fourth consecutive year. Graduation rates for students of color rose substantially from 39% to 51%. And during this period, over 50,000 students of color graduated with four-year or advanced degrees. These increases were, in part, the result of numerous new or enhanced programs across all IU campuses, a number of which were funded directly through McRobbie's office.

IU Online. McRobbie established the highly successful online initiative, IU Online, to accelerate, manage, oversee, and coordinate the development and delivery of online IU courses and programs. Presently, IU Online offers over 200 degree and certificate programs, with nearly 10,000 students enrolled in fully online programs. IU is now the state's leading institution for four-year and graduate on-line education.

New and Named Schools. McRobbie led the largest academic restructuring and expansion at IU in over 100 years, with the establishment of 10 new schools: 

A number of these schools were among the 10 schools at IU Bloomington, IUPUI, and IU South Bend that were named over this period, with total naming gifts exceeding $200 million, and which brought to 14 the number of named schools at IU.

Through these new schools and the other IU schools, 589 new degree and certificate programs were added since 2007 including IU's first ever degree programs in the fields of engineering and architecture. Of these, 31% were in STEM fields.

Global Engagement. During his presidency, McRobbie comprehensively reinvigorated IU's global engagement. The number of students studying abroad doubled and in the last year before the pandemic, IU rose to fifth in the nation in this regard out of over 1,000 ranked universities. Alumni chapters were established or rejuvenated in more than 50 countries, and Global Gateway Offices were established in Bangkok (covering ASEAN), Beijing (covering East Asia), Berlin (covering Europe), Mexico City (covering Latin America), and New Delhi (covering South Asia). He led university delegations to China, Korea, Japan, India, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Poland, France, Germany, and Spain, and as well as visiting Israel. He established or renewed cooperative agreements in research and education with premier universities in many of these countries. These global initiatives were the result of IU's International Strategic Plan, the development of which McRobbie oversaw.

External Research Funding. Over McRobbie's presidency, external funding from all sources roughly doubled to exceed $1 billion for the first time in IU's history in FY2021, including $732 million in direct research funding. During this 14-year period, over $8 billion in external research funding was awarded. IU's external research funding has been consistently the largest of any institution in the state.

Grand Challenges Program. McRobbie initiated the Grand Challenges Program, which is investing over $200 million in three multi-disciplinary multi-campus projects all aimed at the improvement in Hoosier quality of life. The goal of the Precision Health Initiative is to tailor advanced medical treatments to an individual's unique genetics, the Prepared for Environmental Change project is aimed at combatting and adapting to the effects of climate change, and the Responding to the Addictions Crisis is focused on the scourge of opioid and other addictions that have devastated many Indiana communities.

Economic Engagement. The last 14 years have seen substantial increase in invention disclosures, patent applications, and the new patents issued at IU. IU intellectual property has been aggressively commercialized, and this period has seen IU obtain over $100 million in licensing revenue while nearly 70 new companies have been founded.

Collections. McRobbie established a major initiative to revitalize IU's extensive and irreplaceable collections to ensure that they are developed, appreciated, utilized, and maintained in a way that best serves the university's academic mission. This required raising over $100 million from government, philanthropic, and university sources. For IU's over 300 physical object collections, this involved the renovation of:

And the digitization of IU's extensive collection of audio, video, and film holdings was recently completed through the Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative, which will ensure their long-term preservation and accessibility to scholars worldwide.

Arts and Humanities. The collections initiative will play a play a vital role in many areas of the arts and humanities providing new opportunities for research and scholarship. Other notable initiatives in the arts and humanities during McRobbie's presidency have been the establishment of the IU Cinema, quickly recognized as one the finest of its type in the nation, and the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design and its Columbus-focused J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program, the major focus on the teaching of languages in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, which teaches more foreign languages than any other university in the country, the renovation of the Musical Arts Center, and the renovation and repurposing of the Madam Walker Legacy Center in Indianapolis with the engagement of IUPUI.

Health Care. As IU president, McRobbie served as the vice chair of the board of Indiana University Health (IUH), the largest hospital system in Indiana with an operating budget of over $6 billion, and which is one of the largest hospital systems in the country. IUH is jointly owned by IU and the Methodist Health Group. He served as a member of a number of IUH board committees, including the finance and research committees, and was chair of its technology and infrastructure committee.

He played a major role in the decision to construct the new $500 million Regional Academic Health Center on the IU Bloomington campus. This co-locates the new IUH Bloomington hospital with Bloomington's Health Sciences Building, which consolidates IU's education programs in medicine, nursing, social work, and speech, language, and hearing sciences in one place. The whole complex will be fully operational in late 2021.

He was also significantly involved in planning for the massive new IUH Academic Health Center in Indianapolis, which will co-locate a major new IUH hospital with a new building complex that will be the center of the IU School of Medicine's education programs. The cost of this will be in excess of $2 billion, and construction will start in late 2021.

New and Renovated Facilities. McRobbie oversaw one of the largest periods of renovation and construction of new facilities in IU's history. During his presidency, nearly 200 major facilities were constructed or renovated across all IU campuses, as well as hundreds of smaller projects completed, with a total value of nearly $2.7 billion. This involved nearly every major building in the university. All of this led to the almost complete elimination of $1 billion of accumulated deferred maintenance.

These projects were carried out in accordance with master plans that he initiated for the Bloomington and IUPUI campuses, which were completed in 2009. Some notable projects completed or underway included the renovation of all buildings in the historic Old Crescent of the Bloomington campus, new or renovated space for most of the university's new schools, the creation of the Mind Brain Machine Quadrangle at IU Bloomington, the renovation of all student residence halls on the Bloomington campus, and the construction of a major new student residence hall at IUPUI.

Approximately 70 percent of these construction and renovation projects have been funded by private or internal university sources.

Athletics. McRobbie returned strong and stable leadership and management to athletics at IU that resulted in improved success on the playing fields and greatly improved performance in the classrooms by IU's student athletes on all campuses. His presidency also saw the completion of the $250 million master plan for IU Bloomington Athletics, and nearly every one of the 15 men's and women's sports now have new or renovated facilities. All other campuses saw improved facilities, or planning begin for these, as well as also seeing improved performance in the classrooms.

Campaign Fundraising. As chair of the board of the IU Foundation during his period as president, McRobbie oversaw three fundraising campaigns during his presidency that raised a total of over $6 billion: the $1.1 billion "Matching the Promise" endowment campaign at IU Bloomington (2010), the $1.39 billion "IMPACT" campaign on the Indianapolis campus (2013), and the largest fundraising campaign in IU's history and one of the largest ever by a public university, the all-campus "For All: The Indiana University Bicentennial Campaign." The latter campaign, conducted in conjunction with IU's 200th anniversary, concluded in September 2020, and raised nearly $4 billion, far surpassing its original $2.5 billion goal. The campaign raised funds to endow more than 5,800 undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships—a 45.4% increase over the total created during the university's entire 190-year history before the campaign. The campaign also raised funds to endow 235 professorial positions—a 51.5% increase over the previous total.

IU Bicentennial Strategic Plan. Many of the initiatives just described were components of The Bicentennial Strategic Plan for Indiana University, the development of which McRobbie oversaw. It was approved by the IU Board of Trustees in 2014 and completed in 2020. The Bicentennial Strategic Plan included a comprehensive set of strategic initiatives covering all IU campuses that were implemented in the years leading up to the university's bicentennial year of 2020.

CAREER

IU Academic Appointments. McRobbie is university professor and holds faculty appointments in computer science, philosophy, cognitive science, informatics, and computer technology. He is a computer scientist and philosopher, and he has been an active researcher in high performance computing and networking, artificial intelligence, automated reasoning, and various areas of logic. He has been principal investigator on numerous large grants totaling in excess of $100 million, has published a number of books and articles, and has served on many editorial boards and conference committees.

Career before IU. A native of Australia, McRobbie became a U.S. citizen in 2010 and now holds dual American and Australian citizenship. He holds a B.A. in philosophy with first class honors from the University of Queensland and a Ph.D. in logic from the Australian National University (ANU). He held postdoctoral appointments at Latrobe University and the University of Melbourne, where his research interests turned to artificial intelligence and computer science. In 1983, he returned to ANU, where he held a variety of academic and senior administrative appointments, serving as a professor of information science from 1990 to 1996. At ANU, he founded and led research centers in various areas including artificial intelligence, information science and high-performance computing, and communications. He also co-founded the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN), which involved the development of high-performance Internet connectivity in and between countries in the Asia Pacific.

Career at IU: Vice President for IT and CIO 1997-2007. McRobbie joined IU in 1997 as the university's first IU's vice president for information technology and chief information officer, with responsibility for IT on all IU campuses. He carried out a comprehensive reorganization of IT and led the development of IU's first IT strategic plan. Additionally, he conceived and led major initiatives in: 

  • the fiscally sustainable modernization and systemization of IU's IT infrastructure.
  • supercomputing, through the acquisition of supercomputer systems including Big Red 1, 2, and, later, 200.
  • massive data storage infrastructure.
  • replacement and modernization of IU's administrative systems.
  • establishment of state, national, and international high-performance research and education networks (I-Light and its successors, Internet2, TransPAC).
  • establishment of the Global Network Operations Center.

In 1999 and 2000, McRobbie worked with then-president Myles Brand to establish what is now the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. He also founded IU's Pervasive Technology Institute, funded in 1999 by a grant of $30 million from the Lilly Endowment—then the largest research grant to IU from a private organization. His efforts in information technology were recognized when he was named one of the Premier 100 IT leaders by Computerworld Magazine in 2004.

Career at IU: Vice President for Research 2003-2007. In May 2003, McRobbie took on additional responsibilities as vice president for research. He worked to substantially improve the environment for research at IU by increasing external funding, expanding and modernizing research space and facilities, and improving research support services. McRobbie was instrumental in securing a $53 million grant from the Lilly Endowment for the Indiana Metabolomics and Cytomics Initiative (METACyt)—the largest externally funded grant ever obtained at IU Bloomington. He established the highly successful New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Program to support scholarship and creative endeavors in the arts and humanities. He initiated a study of IU's research space needs which documented and quantified for the first time the shortfall in research space needs at IU.

Career at IU: Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs 2006-2007. In 2006, McRobbie was appointed interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at IU Bloomington in addition to his other roles. In that position, he worked to rebuild academic leadership by appointing six new deans and a number of other key senior leaders, oversaw the completion of the IU Life Sciences Strategic Plan, further addressed the needs of arts and humanities programs, and oversaw the move of IU Bloomington to become a more academically selective campus, while ensuring that it remained accessible and affordable to low-income and minority students through a major increase in financial aid.

Committee and Board Service. McRobbie has served on numerous national and international committees in many areas of higher education, science, research, national security, and related fields.

He has chaired the boards of the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Big Ten Athletics Conference, and Internet 2, and served on the board of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU). 

He served as co-chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Committee on the Future of Voting which produced the highly influential report Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy.

He also served as a member of the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which was an interface between research universities and national security agencies, the board of the Indiana Innovation Institute (IN3), a nonprofit institute in Indiana focused on the development of technologies to enhance national security, and the joint AAU-APLU Presidential Working Group on Research Security. He is a former chair of the Universities Research Association, which is involved in the oversight of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

He served on the executive committee of the Indianapolis Prize, which supports worldwide animal conservation.

He also serves on the boards of two private companies, the OneAmerica insurance company and Strategic Education Inc.

Honors and Awards. McRobbie holds numerous awards and honors. He has received honorary doctorates from:

  • the University of Queensland (2007).
  • Sung Kyun Kwan University in Korea (2008).
  • the Australian National University (2010).
  • South East European University in North Macedonia (2011), which IU helped found.
  • Griffith University in Australia (2014).
  • Indiana University (2021).

On his retirement from the IU presidency, he was given IU's highest award, the University Medal. He also received the Chancellor's medals from the chancellors of IU's five regional campuses, the first person ever to receive all five of these medals.

He is a two-time recipient of the Sagamore of the Wabash (2007, 2017), one of the highest honors the governor of Indiana can bestow.

In 2010, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia, Australia's national honors system.

In 2007, he was elected an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities.

In 2012, he became the first sitting IU president to be elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The same year, he was listed as one of America's 10 most popular university presidents.

In 2016, he was elected a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 2019, he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

And in 2022, he received the President's Award from the Indiana Chapter of the American Institute of Architects for his commitment to architecture during his 14 years as IU president.

In 2014, McRobbie received the Anti-Defamation League's "Man of Achievement Award," which recognizes individuals who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to community, justice, and equal opportunity." In 2015, the Australian National University honored him as Alumnus of the Year. In 2016, he received the International Center's International Citizen of the Year Award, which honors those who have made outstanding contributions to the globalization of Indiana. He received the Bicentenary Medal of the University of Warsaw in Poland (2016), and the Prince Naradhip Bongsprabandha Plaque (2013) for services to international education from the National Institute for Development Administration in Thailand.

Updated September 2021.