Posted: Sun, 26 Dec 2010 12:57 PM - 11,401 Readers
By: Michael Barnes
photography by Jay Janner
Almost outside the peripheral vision of the speakers, the dean strides to the window. She nimbly flips open the wooden slats of the blinds. At a meeting about sustainability programs, Mary Ann Rankin, dean of the University of Texas' second-largest college, lets in the light. With the same gesture, she also silently, subtly signals that it is time to change the subject.
The circular arguments and buzz words that sometimes make university meetings feel like jogging with a nail in one's shoe are, to some extent, unavoidable.
Yet somehow, Rankin negotiates countless encounters like this one in the Will C. Hogg Building — and much more, including her research on the physiological basis of insect behavior and her near-constant presence on Austin's sprawling social scene — with a humor, dignity and tact that allow her to steer the College of Natural Sciences through cycles of plenty and poverty.
"Rankin has the ability to deal comfortably with all the players important to a great research university," said Larry Gilbert, director of UT's once-endangered Brackenridge Field Laboratory , which Rankin championed before top administrators and the UT System Board of Regents. "She is a kind person, but when the going gets tough on key issues, she can be hardheaded and is willing to go all in and risk her job."
Times are tough now, given mandatory cuts for state-supported universities.
Yet Rankin, 65, has helped raise more than $700 million in charitable donations during her 16-year tenure as dean and manages an annual budget of $250 million.
She's overseen the construction or renovation of more than a dozen buildings on campus, including the handsome Norman Hackerman Building , set to open in early 2011, and the 140,000-square-foot, interconnected Bill and Melinda Gates Computer Science Complex and Dell Computer Science Hall , for which UT just broke ground.
By any standards, that makes her one of the city's top fundraisers. Add to that the college's recent history of scoring research dollars.
"Under her leadership, the College of Natural Sciences has been instrumental in UT attracting more external research funding than any other American university without a medical school, with the exception of MIT," UT President William Powers Jr. said. "While Mary Ann is a leader nationally in higher education, she (also) finds time to serve the Austin community."
A rarity among her gender as a leader of a large science institution — only 20 percent of top scientists in the country are female, according to the Association of Women in Science — Rankin runs a college with 350 faculty members.
Their numbers include 16 members of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering , as well as 17 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and two Nobel Prize winners.
The college's 14 departments and schools — plus 34 research units — engage about 9,000 undergraduate students and 1,800 graduate students.
Biology, math, chemistry and computer science remain among the college's historical strengths.
In its 2010 rankings, U.S News & World Report put 12 of the college's programs in the top 10 in their fields among American universities.
Besides the Brackenridge lab, once recommended for removal from its site on Lake Austin Boulevard by development consultants working for the UT System, the college also runs the popular McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis and the Plant Science Center, which holds more than 1 million plant species, making it the largest herbarium in the southwestern United States.
Observers credit Rankin with much of the college's success in recent years.
"Mary Ann has incredible visions and ideas for the future and the ability to implement that vision," said Jean K. Durkee, a famed cookbook author who serves on the college's advisory board. "She is soft-spoken, but she has the determination to get the job done."
Even given the social obligations of Powers or, for instance, football coach Mack Brown, Rankin may be the most visible UT leader on the Austin social scene.
She's often spotted at luncheons, receptions and galas — dressed-down or formal — floating from conversation to conversation. She serves on several boards of directors, including that of Austin Lyric Opera.
At charity events, she appears as much at ease with titans of commerce like Michael Dell and Bill Gates as she does with the white-coated workers in a biological lab.
Married to Wes Thompson, with one daughter, Anne Thompson, Rankin steers through this complicated, overscheduled life with the aura of a casual and relaxed Audrey Hepburn.
"I am always amazed at the organized life Mary Ann must lead," Durkee said. "Not only is she calm and prepared for each meeting, but she is a very classy lady with a beautiful wardrobe."
In fact, few extended conversations about Rankin pass without mention of her sartorial presence, always snappy and stylish.
Gilbert, the Brackenridge lab director, was assigned to pick up Rankin at the Austin airport when she was a candidate for a teaching position in 1974.
"I didn't know what she looked like, so I searched for someone who looked like Margaret Mead," he said. "However, the only lone passenger remaining in the baggage-claim area looked to be a professional model, not a biologist."
Her looks actually worked against her during the hiring process, even though she scored the highest rank from the search committee.
"There were a few of the older, more traditional faculty who clearly had difficulty seeing past physical appearances to recognize the substance of her mind, energy and ambition," Gilbert said. "Mary Ann has been defeating male — and female — biases about female scientists for her entire career."
Rankin was born into a large, distinctly musical family in Gary, Ind. Her father, Edward Richmond, was a professor of voice; her mother, Anne McIsaac, had been an opera singer. Both sang constantly at home.
In the way of university families, they moved around, first to Michigan, then to Iowa. Her four thoroughly educated siblings went on to become teachers, musicians or computer experts.
"It's good to have family," Rankin says over lunch at the Austin power players' hangout, the Headliners Club atop the Chase Tower. "We fought a lot at the dinner table and grabbed food really fast because we might not get enough to eat."
Something of an outdoorswoman later in life, she recalls being a rather independent tomboy in youth. Rankin attended Catholic schools in Gary; Lansing, Mich.; and Iowa City.
"I was very into school," she says, lowering her head and looking into the middle distance, as she often does during conversations. "I liked art and music. Always enjoyed science."
Why so, in a period when many girls felt discouraged from studying science?
"It was deeply interesting and orderly and important," she says. "And — this is crucial — I had good teachers. I liked chemistry best but went on to focus on biology."
When the Richmonds transferred out West, Rankin chose to attend Adam State College , a second-tier school in Alamosa, Colo. Adam State had hired a charismatic field biologist, who stoked Rankin's curiosity in that area. She followed that interest to Louisiana State University-New Orleans, where she earned her first degree.
In graduate school at the University of Iowa, she studied insect migration, working closely with a distinguished biologist. She took on the milkweed bug.
"Well, they are easy to raise in the lab," she says. "And they come with interesting migration behavior."
Early on, she realized that insect behavior could be compared to the way humans behave in social networks.
"You could pick any life history; there would be an insect who would embody that," she says.
Rankin's fascination with insect life led her to write a sheave of scholarly articles, quickly gaining a reputation in her field. And 36 years ago, she was hired by UT at a time when even fewer female scientists populated the bigger schools than do today.
As dean, Rankin admits she sometimes neglects her lab work. Instead, she finds herself supervising the faculty and staff, guiding the college's rapid physical expansion and, of course, raising money.
"I am not sure there is anyone in modern times associated with UT who has raised more monies in the period of time of her leadership," said businessman and former Austin Mayor Lee Cooke, with whom Rankin has allied to nurture the region's creative class and build its science and technology industries.
"For an academic and scientist, she gets it," Cooke said. "They are doing stuff over there that will not only make a real difference to Texas over the next 25 years as an economic engine, but (also to) the country and beyond. "
Cooke said the college Rankin leads is taking on research with distinct commercial and social implications: dark matter, treatment of alcoholism, climate change, cancer, genetics, safer and more fuel-efficient cars, robotics, cybersecurity and national defense.
Rankin also oversaw the birth of a signature program, UTeach, which prepares science teachers through focused courses, field components, training on research methods, internships and actual teaching in elementary, middle and high schools, overseen by master teachers.
Hundreds of math and science majors have been lured into UTeach through introductory courses; almost all became teachers, and a high percentage have remained in the profession.
"This is revolutionary," Rankin said. "And it's sweeping the country."
Twenty-one other universities have replicated UTeach, and 10 more are under way. The training model is built into many Race to the Top national education initiatives and has been praised lavishly by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Although she ruffled official feathers in the process, Rankin is also admired for preserving the Brackenridge Field Laboratory.
Even those civic leaders who supported the initiative to turn the nearby golf course into a mini-city were convinced by Rankin's arguments that the lab's 80 acres of property were producing research and data that could not be duplicated elsewhere.
"It took guts and probably cost her some relationship and political capital," Cooke said. "But I applaud her for her values."
On a chilly fall day, Rankin, balancing an oversized hard hat, tours the construction site for the Norman Hackerman Building with Katy Hackerman, daughter of the late UT and Rice University president. Now an assistant to the dean, working on development for the science college, Hackerman matches Rankin's inveterate sociability on the Austin and regional scene.
"Science will be learned here!" Rankin exclaims when she sees a thoroughly equipped and finely appointed lab. The whole building reads like a performing arts center for science, with intimate auditoriums, formal staircases, open lobbies and a shady plaza.
Rankin asks minute, courteous questions of the construction company's guide through the half-finished hallways, classrooms and work spaces.
When done, she leads a little entourage over to the nearby Center for Nano- and Molecular Science and Technology .
The previous day, a fire had broken out in a lab, and Rankin wants a peek at the damaged rooms. The center's staff — clearly nervous — hustles to find the dean's group just the right guide.
"This is not an official inspection!" she gasps into a phone, exasperated but composed about the long delay. "We just want to see the rooms. Thank you for your help."
Seconds later, the Rankin group is ushered upstairs to the water-soaked lab. She asks brisk, nonintrusive questions of the workers, mostly graduate students.
As usual, Rankin puts everyone at ease, while extracting the most crucial information.
"What has always impressed me is Mary Ann's sincerity, honesty and empathy — combined with a strong belief in charting her own path — and the capacity to dig in her heels and lead in important battles to improve the college and UT," Gilbert said. "I've occasionally heard my colleagues ranting about a decision Mary Ann had made, but then they hasten to add that she is still a great dean, and they hope she stays in her job as long as possible."
