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pat mcguire, what is it like running trinity washington university? >> it is the best job anybody could ever have. its new and exciting every day. i choose to work in education because i love seeing students blossom in the care of great teachers like the faculty we have at trinity. it's a challenge every day, but it is the best possible kind of work because we literally change lives. >> how long have you been doing it? >> i have been at it for -- i am in my 21st year. i started in 1989, and yet i still feel new and fresh every day. solon's of time is not diminished by my enthusiasm one bit. >> why do you do it?

>> i do it because i think education is one of the best ways to change our society, to help improve people's lives, to help improve the fate of our children, of the young women and older women who come to us. you know there's a saying if you educate the mothers you educate the children and the families of the world. and that's what trinity has been doing for 112 years. and i'd just am happy to be a little part of that. >> how do you do it? >> how do we do it? well that's always the question i get. trinity was founded by religious women, the sisters of notre dame. and like many catholic women universities in the country they didn't have much money -- and we still didn't have much money. >> many women, have come from trinity. nancy pelosi, kathy black. >> barbara kennelly was class of 1958.

she's a dear friend and one of our first great superstars in congress. of course, the speaker of the house nancy pelosi, class of 1962. her class loves to come to reunions. we had maggie williams, class of 1977, hillary clinton's chief of staff when mrs. clinton was in the white house. she was the highest ranking african-american in the clinton white house. class of 1977. even today, the class of the 1990's and of the 2000 plus, we have younger graduates beginning to set the stage for the rate -- for their great careers also. >> of want to thank daniel devise for this. we would not know you without this cover story. washington post magazine a couple of weeks ago. "the soul of trinity."

what led to that? >> it is a wonderful story. dan did a terrific job. most of us are a little sheepish. he did a great story. what i love about the story is he brought our students in, faculty, and alums. it's about the entire institution. it was the occasion of my now 21st year at trinity as -- most college presidents serve six or eight years. i've been serving much longer. he interviewed scores of people. alums, trustees, students, and faculty. he really put together a very accurate and lovely story about how trinity has grown and changed over the years. >> the school was in the dumper

-- probably a lot of people don't want to hear that, but they were in trouble. you were 36 years old. >> i was 36. i did not know anything about being a college president. i was a graduate of georgetown law school. i had run off the street law school at georgetown. i was devoted to keeping the kids in d.c. out of trouble. then i went to running the development office of the law school and helping to raise money to go to the edward bennett williams law library. at age 36 if my alma maters tapped me on the shoulder and asked if i wanted to be president. i thought, this is a great opportunity. a school that i love and for the kind of job that is intellectually extraordinary and fascinating. trinity did have a hard time and it was not unlike most other women's colleges and catholic women's colleges. before coeducation became

popular in the 1960's and 70's, there were 300 women's colleges, 190 of them were catholic. today there are 50 women's colleges still operating, 16 are catholic. if the change was because of title 9 equalizing women opportunities with big universities. for the catholics, the change was also about the nuns had worked for free and it was easy to sustain institutions on the free labor of women. but the nuns went into other ministries or left the convent after the second vatican council for catholics. the whole basis of operating these kinds of institutions changed. we had to decide in 1989 and 1990 if we wanted to continue, if there was a way for continue -- for trinity to continue. >> how many students do you educate every year? >> to thousand students in four different academic units. our traditional women's college, the original historic trinity -- trinity college, has more

than 800 students this year. we had just about 300 when i started. wa in addition, we have students in our school of education, teachers and principals getting their masters degrees. we have a school of professional studies for adult working men and women. we are coeducational in the school of professional studies and school of education and are just getting a school of nursing and health professions. that is popular. the regional healthcare community loves that trinity is getting into nursing and we hope soon to get into allied health. >> what is the tuition? >> $19,360. we will increase it by 2% for next year so it will be 19,700. that is still significantly less than any other private college or university in this region. that is $6,000 less than the national average for private colleges. i should mention that we did we give substantial financial aid. we give trinity grants equal to about 40% of the tuition price. many of our students are also

eligible for pell grants, which are federal. or local grants from the district of columbia or their states. >> i read in that article that 67% of your students are african-american. is that a change? >> pettitte the big change for trinity. when i was a trinity student -- and historical trinity served predominantly catholic women from the east coast and from a few other catholic enclaves, chicago, some from the west coast, predominantly irish catholics, nethnic catholics. as our population declined in 1970's and 1980's because those women went off to the big man's co-ed universities, we had to decide where was our future, should we go co-ed? it was the sisters of notre dame who founded trinity and sustained us all those years who said look right out at your

doorstep, this is the head -- look at the educational needs of women of the district of columbia, prince george's county, montgomery county, there are women in the washington region who can benefit from this education so much. they don't look like us. they will be predominantly african-american, latina, probably women from low-income households in many cases, but they have the desire to learn. back to that thing about educating the mothers, changes the children. >> march 1, "newsweek tazeen, an article by evan thomas and -- , called "minority report." the picture of diversity, black, white, brown students cavorting together on the quad, is a stock shot in college catalogs. the picture on graduation day is a good deal more monochromatic. if you look at who enters college, it now looks to

america, says hillary pennington, director of post secondary programs for the bill and melinda gates foundation." if you look at who walks across the stage for a diploma, it is still largely the white, upper income population." >> dat is true for most large state universities and for many private universities as well. in fact, the recent data about college completion rates shows that it is not about race, it is about social class and income levels. it is true that the lower the income level, the more likely the students will probably be from a family that is african- american or hispanic or of mixed race or some other factor, but the fact is that students who have to pay for college themselves, who left work while they are in school, whose families cannot afford to pay those tuition bills take a lot longer to complete college.

i happen to believe that many of those students actually do complete college eventually, but not in the four or six years that the traditional completion timetable is. the problem is the way the federal government tracks graduation rates, means students taking longer to complete or maybe switched from full-time to part-time status and finished 10 or 12 years later, they are considered dropouts. if they don't get counted in the graduation rates. one of the things that has happened is a new formula, a new way of tracking student progress through college, to able to capture those students who have stopped out for many reasons. the stock about speakp-outs occa student has had a baby, or caring for sick parent, or may be supporting a husband try to complete his education. it is not always the case, by any stretch, that students just

cannot do the work and decide not to go to college anymore. their educations have been interrupted for many reasons. often they will come back later in life to finish. >> in the middle of your campus, i counted eight buildings. >> eight buildings. >> $23 million sports facility, brand new. what year did you build it? >> wiig broke ground in 2000 and it opened in 2003. it has been a magnificent experience for trinity. prior to having the women's trinity center for girls and sports, we never really had a place where we could convene many thousands of people in large number. if we did not have indoor sports facilities of any serious kind for modern athletics. as a result of creating this center, we now have more than 30,000 visitors come to our campus to participate in programs at the trinity center. we also have improved all our athletic teams.

we are able to support teams like volleyball and lacrosse and soccer and other teams that we were not able to have before, so that helps us. >> where did you get the money? >> we have a wonderful outpouring of support from not only our alums, but also from the local corporate foundations -- corporate and foundation community. we received gifts from the capital campaign. parts of the genius of the trinity center, which many in our local regions like, not only does it support trinity's needs in athletic programs, it is specifically designed to be a center for our community to enjoy. we conduct many different programs through the center for children in the community, a senior citizens, and other. if everybody loves it. >> the washington hospital center brings people over there with cardiac problems and you

have a walk track there and a facility where they can be checked. how much of that -- is this something you've seen in other schools -- where did you get the idea? >> partnership is one of the ideas we really enacted at trinity for the last 20 years. when i get started as president we did not have many partners in the community. we were pretty isolated. one of the things i realized as i went out to work with the business community is talking about trinity was there were many different kinds of organizations who eager to partner with a private university like trinity, but we had not really extended ourselves that way. one of those was the washington hospital center and the mets' farm group. which also includes the national rehab hospital as well and georgetown hospital. as we started constructing the sports center, they began to ask me whether there were ways that could work with us. along the way we developed this

concept of the cardio rehabilitation unit, because the doctors said they really would prefer this location to get their post-procedure therapy people come to a beautiful place like trinity where it was not only convenient but also safe and restful for the patients to work on their recovery. for us if it is a great partnership because it not only brings the patients into the trinity center who ultimately wind up joining our health club, it also is a future opportunity for us as we expand our academic program into allied health professions, to add clinical opportunities right there. we also partner with the girl scouts. they use the center lot. and with many area amateur athletic organizations. the other night we hosted the guns added the mass of a boys' basketball game in the gym. it was quite popular. the building was not designed for a lot of men's sports. -we do have men's sports there

and it's popular for many in the community. we host many kinds of events. >> let's talk about -- i have stacks of your blogs. >> oh, dear. >> when did you start blogging and where can people read your blogs? >> on trinity's web site on the front page. trinity.dc.edu. my oldest blog was around 2005. i thought i would explore blogging as a way to put trinity out there in a different way. everybody expects the college president to sell the school and talk about how great the school is. that's what i do and i love doing that. but i also believe that behind selling the school, we have to have ideas, we have to stand for something, we have to help people understand the great issues of our day. i also believe deeply in freedom

of speech. i like to model freedom of speech. as an academic institution, everybody on our campus should be free to speak and say what they believe and want to tell the world. i feel the same for me as others. i used the blog to talk about higher education, i talk a little about trinity, and about contemporary issues in a way that i hope says that trinity is a place that is thoughtful, we identify issues we care about, want to have debates about them. i invite comments on the blog. i hope people always feel free to differ from my opinions. >> do you have one in the washington post? >> i have a different blog in the washington post. and a guest panelists in a blog called "on success. part of the washington post online. if there's a group of 10 of us, different kinds of civilian business leaders in the

washington region. we write about topics on success twice a week. the current blog that is posted is asking the question, can toyota recover its reputation? the one that proposed today or tomorrow is about will jay leno bounce back and how do you recover what was once a successful show? anything having to do with how people get back on their feet or to become successful, we have a lot of blogs around tiger woods, can he ever regain success? i was very pleased to be invited. i enjoy writing. that's in the washington post online. >> this is from your own blog, january 21. my democratic friends are saying i've lost my mind. my republican friends are wondering what i'm up to. for one thing, senator elect brown's chevy truck with 200,000 miles on it sparks new hopes for my possibility of my own senate

seat some day. my truck has 165,000 miles on it, o.k. it's a honda crv, barely classified as a truck. first, the filibuster-proof senate was a bad idea all along. you tell us on many occasions that you are a democrat. >> i am well known for liberal views. while i don't try to be overly political, yes, i am. >> is that often the case where an administrator of a college or university? >> a no, i know many college presidents who are republican or independent. the stereotype that we are a bunch of liberals is not true. >> i did not mean that so much. how many of them on a regular basis are outspoken about their own particular views? >> id10 many college presidents are much more guarded. in some institutions that are not allowed to say things for

fear that donors or trustees would be upset about that. i don't think that is healthy. i think when you are the leader of an academic institution, you need to model the idea that you should be able to speak freely. certainly responsibly. among other things, i tried to emphasize, as i did at the beginning of that article, that we have to look at both sides. in that particular blog, i was saying that the democrats should not be in such a fit about using their filibuster-proof majority in the senate. in fact, most important thing is not which party you are, but do we have a healthy democratic process going on? are we able to engage a debate with a sense of integrity, with a sense of intellectual class? nobody should feel afraid to express their point of view, including me as a college president. but we should honor the idea of robust debate. i fear that has been lost in congress entirely, where everyone is expected to march in

lock step to their party. i disagree with that. >> how often do you get called upon? >> i get called to testify a couple times a year. i am very active with some of our educational associations. the american council on education, the national association of independent colleges and universities, and because i'm local and because i have testified a lot, so i am relieved to the routine and also because trinity is not a conventional type of university and it helps all colleges, for those of us speaking in a different voice to testify, i like to do that. >> does trinity take federal funds? >> trinity itself has very few federal grants directly supporting our programs. but our students of course receive federal financial aid. most of our students have federal loans, pell grants, that sort of thing. >> how much of your tuition does the average student pay herself or himself?

>> the average full time student pays probably no more than 1000 or $2,000 out of pocket directly without some sort of subsidy. in addition to the trinity grant, which comes out to about $8,000, for many students, pell grant can be as much as $5,000. d.c. students get d.c. tuition assistance grants. different states have different programs. then the federal loans can go anywhere and from $2,500 up to $20,000 a year for graduate students. >> is blamed the d.c. tuition grant. >> the d.c. tuition assistance grants came into being in the year 2000. it is a program that eleanor holmes norton and then congressman tom davis wanted very much to be able to provide some kind of support for families in the district of columbia who did not have the same kind of collegiate public opportunities that families in states like virginia or maryland might have.

if there is one public university, the university of the district of columbia for families -- but families in virginia would have george mason, james madison, uva, and a great number of families. families living in d.c. would move to the states in order to have more collegiate opportunities at the public level. and what mrs. norton and congressman davis created was a program that will pay a student up to $10,000 a year to go to any public university in the country, it offsets the out-of- state tuition rate of that public universities outside of d.c.. if they choose private colleges in d.c., they can get up to $2,500 a year. there is another program that matches that called the d.c. college access program. that is a privately funded program that also puts matching money into the student's financial aid package. don graeme of the washington

post is the organizer of that. there are a number of major business leaders now who support dc-cap. those two programs together provide a great deal of scholarship support for d.c. residents to go to college and university across the country. it's a great program. >> if you are a kid in the district, you have a lot of choices. >> there's a lot of financial aid available. there should be no student in the district, a matter their income level, to say they cannot afford to go to college. there are plenty of scholarship support programs, plenty of opportunities for students to go to really great institutions like trinity, but also like some of the great private and public institutions in this region. >> what percentage of your students come from the district itself? >> we have about 40% of our students are from d.c., mostly graduates of the d.c. public schools. approximately another 30% come from the state of maryland.

that is our next largest group. prince george's county, lower montgomery county. >> what is a day like for president pat mcguire? >> my days are great. i have no day that the same. i get about 5:30 every morning. usually at work ethic and are 30 or 7:00 because that is the quiet time, i get work done between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning. then usually starting around 8:00, the meetings start, the staff colleagues start coming and knocking at my door. the students will come in. you're not a very hierarchical organization. my office is on the main corridor of the school. people are welcome to stop by. i have quite a few boards that i sit on off campus or different organizations that i connect to. invariably in the course of the day i will have outside commitments also. lunchtime might be downtown with the board of trade or off with the goodwill of greater washington where i sit on the board.

i try to at some point in the day answer some e-mail. i get a couple hundred every day. so that -- but i try to stay on top of that. and then usually in the evenings is when i tried to write, try to stay on top of the long-range planning that we always have to do. that is when everybody goes home and there's more quiet time. it is a lot of hours on the job, but that is true of every college president. if these are jobs that are not nine-five jobs and require a lot of public space and public debate and then you have to have quiet time so you can think. there are days when i get to 9:00 and realize i have not thought much that day, but i've been reacting. actually doing the different blogs and doing as much writing and public speaking as i do helps me to keep the intellectual side of my life somewhat alive and well. because the danger is you can spend all your time on

administration. >> in the article, it had your salary at $202,000, the talks but the average professor gets $60,000. how do both of those figures track with other principals and professors? >> both of those are lower than the norm for our type of institution. the benchmark our salaries all the time. mine and our faculty. faculty salaries today for us are 90% or 95% of similar salaries at similar institutions. we have made a lot of progress. when i started, those salaries were at 60% of their cohorts. improving faculty salaries has been of some one of my main objectives. that salary is a 10-month salary. it's not a full 12-month salary, because faculty tend to work 9 or 10 months out of the year. they can earn additional money if they want to work in the summer or teach additional courses, that sort of thing. presidential salaries, i feel comfortable that mine is quite

responsible. after 20 years i am still among the more modestly paid presidents in the country. i have a peculiar point of view about presidencies and presidential compensation. i think we are workers in the vineyard along with our faculty. i don't think it is right when presidential salaries or perks get well out of line. so my salary is -- about 70% of varco boards, but i also think there are some salaries that are terribly inflated -- my salary is 70% of cohorsts. >> what is your reaction to ruth simmons of brown university being paid over $200,000 by goldman sachs to sit on their board and making her salary as president of brown university? >> college presidents were sought after to sit on corporate boards for a long time, for

bringing a sense of class and prestige to those boards. there was a time when that was considered to be perfectly acceptable and a feather in the camp of the president and the school. then after the enron scandal and now with the banking collapse, all of a sudden all of these positions are being called into question. so i think it is a little unfair to say that ruth simmons should not be doing that. 10 years ago when she joined goldman sachs it was considered to be a very good thing for brown. now college presidents on corporate boards, how they conduct themselves is an important question. do we have enough knowledge, do we have enough time to devote to that? i was surprised to read that ruth at one time was on three different boards at the same time, corporate boards. that is a lot. because that requires a lot of time. i also am on a corporate board. a life-insurance company board called unified. it pays a lot less than that.

it is separately compensated. my board as a prove that. but it takes a lot of time. if so you have to be a good steward of the public interest in the board. why do any of us do this? my experience on corporate board and on the non-profit boards i sit on has been a vital part of my continuing education as a college president. i have learned how to manage, to read financial statements, to delve into audit reports and so forth, that literally is worth thousands of dollars worth of continuing education for me. in addition, it opens doors. it helps us with fundraising interests to be able to meet other corporate leaders who may have an interest in helping support the school. so there are many different angles on that question. it's a tough question. the most important thing for any of us in this position is to ask ourselves every day is this engagement responsible stewardship for my institution? i ask myself is this good for trinity?

if it is and i can answer that honestly, then i keep moving forward. i have on occasion declined to serve on boards or even resign from boards where i felt it was not a healthy experience and that i should not continue. >> let's go back to the very basics. what is a college or university supposed to do for its students? >> the first and most important job of any college or university is to provide the students with knowledge, the skill sets, the values, competencies' to be a successful person in life. i say person rather than worker. being a productive worker, part of the work force is very important, but being a successful person is really the ultimate long-term goal. we know that students are likely to change their careers 3 or four times and their jobs 10-12 times in the course of a lifetime. unfortunately today so much of the emphasis on outcomes in

collegiate education focuses on workforce development and that tends to diminish the ultimate value of a college education, which is to form a person who can become a sofa actualized learner, someone who can keep learning no matter what the circumstances are -- self- actualized learner. someone able to adapt to new technologies. when i went to college we did not have the internet or cell phones. somehow we have all learned to use all of today's technology is quite well. we have to educate those students for technology and for circumstances we cannot imagine. the most important thing is students will be successful. they will be ethical. and they will be able to continue to build a successful society far into the future for circumstances we do not know today. >> what are your mcguires?

what do you teach a young person about the basic things you want them to know about life? >> number one that i feel strongly about and we have an honor system at trinity, so we do this is always tell the truth. do not try to manipulate the truth for your own benefit. i tried to live by that myself all the time. shame on me if i get caught not living up to my own standard. second, work hard. there is no such thing as overnight success. i work very hard. i've worked hard all my life. i'm very proud of that. there is no shortcut to being excellent. the third thing is don't expect to measure all of the results of your work by your salary or your perks or how much acclaim you get. the most important thing in doing good, honest, ethical work is have you improved someone else's life today. if somebody of his life has been improved, that is rewards in and of itself.

it may sound like bromides, but it's true. do what you love, like what you do, and work hard. but what is with the camera? >> the camera? >> you are everywhere with your camera. >> thank god for digital photography. i started as a film photographer. it was costing a lot of money. i don't think i was as good at it as i might of been because it was an expensive hobby. when digital came along, suddenly i took to it because digital is far less expensive to learn how to do and to use. what i discovered was on campus, being a photographer and taking pictures of sports and i love to do that, helped bring me closer to students in a very friendly and engaging way. students love their pictures of themselves. i take pictures of the athletes at the athletic banquet every year i give them blown up pictures of themselves and so forth. it's a way to engage with them.

what i have developed in the last 10 years or so as a private hobby for myself is a very restful and serene avocation in wildlife photography. so i have developed some opportunities for myself to go off into the wilderness. i go down to the eastern shore and the adirondacks and i find that sitting in my kayak all day waiting to get the perfect seagull or the perfect osprey shot is not only great photography but it also helps me distress. i have discovered that it is a wonderful way to artistically -- to be artistically expressive and it's very relaxing, so i love doing it. >> how catholic is trinity washington university? >> we are very catholic in ways that we believe are important. sometimes people say there are not many catholics there. we live the gospel every day.

we have the social justice mission of the sisters of notre down. they founded trinity to make higher education accessible to women who were barred from higher registration in 1897. from the first part of our history, those women tended to be catholic women not able to get access to men's universities. today we educate women who cannot get access because of barriers of money or family circumstances or prior academic preparation. we literally are changing lives and saving souls every day. so we live this commitment. most of our students are not catholic. many of our faculty are not catholic. if the issue is are we catholic and how do we live our faith. >> we refers to who? >> to me and my colleagues and the institutional identity. so with our faculty and staff, regardless of their individual religions, we have to honor our

own catholicism and how we live our lives on campus. the most important characteristic of a catholic college is do we live an institutional life that is in service to others that is premised on the idea of charity toward all and that gives a value to others that is dignified and upholds their lives. >> if there are 12 nuns that live there and one that teaches. >> yes, one still teaches. sister mary is a historian and our college archivist. she is one of the great favorites of all of our students and alums. certainly when i went to school there were a lot more sisters from notre dame -- a lot more sisters of notre dame. the number of religious has declined at many schools over the years. young women today do not join religious orders in the numbers that they did in the past. because there are many other ways for catholic women to feel the call.

and to live their lives. most of us who are lake catholics feel very challenged to continue these ministries in schools like -- in schools like trinity, so we try to understand the mission of the sisters who founded the place and hope that we do a good job to continue it. >> when you walk in the front door of the main building there's a big banner saluting nancy pelosi. i have something that won't surprise you. this is from an operation called light news.com the controversy is about what your relationship is with nancy pelosi, the catholic church's relationship with her. it's as "trinity president patricia mcguire attended the speech- >> president bush opposes state of the union address years ago. >> when she was speaker. then after that mrs. sebelius gave the response for the democratic party. the whole issue is and i'll read this, but nowhere on the trinity

web site is sebelius's support for abortion," patrick riley, the president of the group, told, "by deliberately associating itself with vocal advocates of what pope john paul called a culture of death, trinity university has taken the low road." >> i disagree with that, although they have every right to express their opinions. the fact of the matter is nancy pelosi and kathleen sebelius have chosen careers in politics. as part of the work and life of politicians to represent their constituents as they see fit and also to engage with the tough political issues of our time. in both cases, i know both women, both of them are very good women who care deeply about their faith, they are mothers, themselves, they have raised good families, and they have

thought deeply about these issues. they have engaged with conversations -- with this about these issues. the role of bishops calling each of us in leadership to fidelity in church teachings. if they think i or mrs. pelosi or secretary sebelius or others are going off a teachings, the bishops speak about it. the archbishop and i have had conversations. but does he criticize you? >> no, he's been very pastoral. he's talked about the fact that as a diverse institution with many graduates doing many different things, we, in fact, honor our graduates and honor their accomplishments. honoring a graduate like secretary sebelius or speaker pelosi for their great accomplishments, as the first women or one of few women to achieve these positions does not mean we agree with every political position they have and it is not necessarily diverge at

all from church teachings. we are faithful to church teachings. but do you take a position on abortion? >> i have spoken out in my blog spirit i am pro-life. i've addressed this issue in my blog several times, where we can certainly express pride in our famous political graduates without agreeing with them on their positions on abortion. i have said that several times. >> what do you think about organizations that take you on for that? >> i think we need to recognize them as political organizations also. they do not necessarily always speak for the catholic church. the church is a large organization and a very diverse organization. it is clear that the church teachings prohibit abortion and prohibits support of any legislation that would promote abortion. pro-choice is not acceptable to the church. i think i've been clear in my blog and what i say about

that. >> who in the church has anything to say about you? >> it would be the bishop in washington. the rules governing catholic universities require each of us to have a relationship with our local bishop. so he is the person to whom i relate and to whom i go. i will sometimes start the discussion, saying that this is troubling and how do we deal with this. we have a wonderful relationship and he's very pastoral. thomas is a cost to operate every year? >> this year at trinity we have a $28 million budget, which is quite small. we could have a budget that was significantly larger, but we are lean operation. we measure every penny and every dollar. >> how many professors? >> 50 full time faculty and 100 part time. >> back to your blogs, in this noisy imminently narcissistic culture, where fame is often

prized over excellence, parents and teachers face considerable challenges in teaching children about real success. with the news full of teachable moments such as these e slahis, opportunities abound for refundable adults to talk about kids -- to talk with kids about the difference between-- rather than talk about the party crashers, talk about the legitimate guest list and why people of achievement were invited to the white house." >> we are in the business of trying to help our students, predominantly young women and some older women and men coming to us, understand that you should focus on achievement in your own life and not be looking to grab headlines. this is a age of thisidol, the age -- "american idol" and so

many television shows. unfortunately, too many young people believe they should be rewarded for showing up, believe that a'they that as because they wrote the paper -- believe they should get a's because they wrote the paper. sometimes is lonely work and sometimes it takes years to reach the pinnacle of achievement. the pop culture suggests that we can blow through all that and just crash the party and show up and be on television. that is a myth. if you cannot ultimately be successful if you don't have the knowledge and if the skill sets that will support real success. >> on gerberry 20 on your blog, "in my next life i will eat wheaties every day. i will take care of my knees from day one. i will stop being afraid of small patches of ice. i will learn to slide and skate with my knees bent.

i look great in full length spandex. i will get a gold medal for championship dreaming." >> yes. i doubt i will be a snowboarder. although i watched them at the olympics, thinking, wow, what must it be like to be able to do that. in my younger days i was a basketball player. i wrecked my knees. it is hard to stay fit. i do swim every day at our school at the trinity center. if in the summer times when i can get in my kayak, i love to go kayaking up the weis or down on the potomac river. i think it's very important for all of us who sometimes struggle with staying fit to say that we are keeping that ball in front of us and we're going to keep working on it. i love the olympics, so it gave me new hopes for getting back in shape. >> this is what we did for one of your washington post columns. "no pointing ever -- no whining ever. not at work. not about your existential

ennui, not about your co-workers left to put up with your obsession with your unhappy to as of this occupation. not about the size of the paycheck. not about the time you spent tweeting your complaints. not about your boss who has spent sleepless nights trying to figure out how to make you happy." >> yes, i meant every word of that. in fact, i really believe this is another piece of what i tried to say to students and others. this comes from my employer hat. you have to love what you do and you have to understand that if you are in the workplace and you are not happy, you should not spread that disease. you should instead figure out how to get to a different place in your life. i believe, for most people who are reasonably well educated and who have made to its is about where they will work, they have

to decide that if it's not working out for them, they need to move on. that is very hard. choosing -- making a decision that you will not continue to do something that you thought would work out for you sometimes can be the hardest decision of all. when to leave, when to part company. but i have seen people hold places of business hostage because they were unhappy, were not doing their jobs very well, making everybody else unhappy as well. part of being a real grownup in the workplace and emotionally mature is willing to get out of it. >> who sits on your board? >> i have 17 trustees, the chair is laura phillips, a lawyer in town. about half the board are -- there are four sisters from our founding congregation. and we have business leaders from the washington region who

are very interested in trinity. for example, barbara lang, president of the d.c. chamber of congress is a member of our board. dr. ed hilton, but with the chief medical officer at the national rehabilitation hospital is on our board. if it is a wonderful board. >> are they all catholic? >> no, they're very diverse. most are catholic, but they only have to bea -- they don't have to be. >> you grew up in a family of seven. >> five boys and one sister. my sister is the oldest, 10 years older than me. if the rest are bourse. >> where were you born? >> philadelphia, pennsylvania. i was the third child out of the seven. we were a wonderful family. my mom is still with us, god love her, i go to see her quite regularly. they were pretty conservative household. dad was a nixon republican and

he made sure that we were all wearing nixon buttons in 1960 and our catholic school in the first grade i wore a nixon button and the nuns could not figure that one out because most catholics were for kennedy in those days. but when did you become a democrat? >> this was the interesting story. when i came away to college, i loved politics. i thought i would run for elective office one day. instead i had a different kind of political job. when i came to trinity -- i chose trinity -- i had a full tuition scholarship. because it was in washington, i loved the idea of coming to school in d.c. as i became involved, this was 1970, came to trinity, got involved in the anti-war movement, suddenly became exposed to many new and different ideas that i had never seen before. over time i became increasingly liberal and soon became a

democrat, much to my dad's chagrin. we had many long talks about what was happening to me. that is part of the occasional process. i just wish that he had lived longer because we might have closed the loop again on some of those discussions. >> are all of your siblings alive? >> yes, thank god. >> for the breakdown of politics among them? >> i do not ask that question. we do not discuss politics when we get together. we make jokes about it. i suspect most of them are probably still pretty conservative, from the social views they express. >> in this article that started all this, the discussion with daniel devise, near the end the rights, "as mcguire enters her third decade of for presidency, her value to the school cannot be overstated. she seems to run every administrative meeting, to attend every campus event, to photograph every basketball game.

ann pauley once walked into the president's office to find mcguire assembling one of the ikea lamps that light the marble hall in the administration building. the reason i mention that is one of the criticisms you get is your successor and how long you're going to do this? >> how long i'm going to do this is probably the most pertinent question. i always said, god and the board of the trustees willing. it's not my decision. it's up to the lord and to the board. we have a big project that we are just organizing right now to build a new academic center that would include new classroom building, renovation of our library and science building. that is at least a five-year or longer project. i am just 57. i started this job when i was very young. in many ways i have had if three or four presidencies in the same job and have grown and changed. i still wake up every morning with a great zeal and

enthusiasm and a feeling that maybe today i really going to get it right. i never feel self-satisfied that i've done it all. that article makes me feel little foolish because it puts praise on things i think i can do that better, so i'm always striving. having said that, i've been in business long enough and amin of a corporate leader to know that you always have to have a strong team behind you. because i could get bitten by the dust or decide to keep paddling upstream in my kayak someday and go live with the eagles and osprey. i have a great provost, dr. ginger brothers. we are organized now, multiple academic units, so each unit has a dean. the deans are wonderful and very strong. i have more vice presidents than i can count on most days. if so, building a management team, whose job is to run the plays. people say i go to every

meeting. that's not true. i've just come back from five days in order raising money and visiting alums. somehow i got back on campus and everybody said if she's back, ok, fine, but the school runs. that is the ultimate goal. sunday, when i decide to move on, there will be a national search for this position, i am quite sure. if that is what is done. i hope that there will be a sufficient talent pool on campus and experience that there will be a number of credible candidates on campus. >> what do you expect president obama's to do for college and education, if anything? >> one of the things going on right now that they're trained to do is move the student loan system -- that they are trying to do, is move the student loan system away from private loans banks are giving and completely in to federal funding. that's a good thing because it will put more money into pell grants and make administration of loan programs simpler.

it's a tough road because sallie mae and other private lenders are resisting very much. i also think that to the extent that secretary -- and the administration can help us with a system that provides more transparency thain a good way, d i think that's fine, i don't resist the call to public accountability, which is the mantra of democratic and republican administrations, however, i think there are problems within the department of education about the way they collect the data that make it hard for us to compare apples to apples. i think it would be very harmful to do any kind of ranking system or grading system, which has been talked about. i don't know that obama so far has done that. i also think that there should be some greater attention paid to private colleges and universities. most of the obama initiatives right now have focused on

community colleges, which is great. there are great community colleges that are gateways. but some of the greatest work in the country is being done in places like trinity. you're not the only ones, but if we are one of many smaller private colleges that are creating prototypes for how to educate the new populations of students who previously have not participated in higher education. i think there should be funding for that. >> 2000 students, tuition of $19,000, $28 million operating budget, eight buildings on the campus. right across the street from kaplan university. in the old days that was a men's college. -- from catholic university. what is the difference in running a college and university that caters to women compared with one catering to men? >> that is a great question. one of the big differences that is obvious to most is in a larger co-ed universities, the athletics program and title ix

being the law at coeducational institutions, i cannot speak for catholic university, but men's sports in general tend to be very preoccupied with football, if there's a football team, which is a very expensive sport to operate, and very competitive men's basketball. i don't have to worry about having a football team. i don't after worry about having a law school or medical school or any of those kinds of limits that can be very challenging to the larger universities to run. what i do worry about and want to be competitive on is the quality of our academic facilities, our sciences, our libraries, a quality of the pedagogy in our classrooms, should not be any less or any different than the finest quality facilities and pedagogy in teaching you can get at any other university. it is a scale ability issue. and our wheat the right size of what we're doing. >> a couple moments left.

what is the thing that you say to eventual contributors that get them? >> the most important thing is that we are, in fact, making women today successful at trinity. and a few good men. we are making our students successful in the same way that trinity always has made students successful, but bringing success to students who might not have ever considered themselves to be able to be successful, but for being at trinity. it is the "but for trinity" in their lives that gets to the donors. i just gave a speech in florida to a group of alums. we are making opportunities happen for students will have never known opportunity before. that is the most important thing any donor can support. >> in her 21st year, pat mcguire, president of trinity washington university, thank you for your time. >> so nice to talk to you today. thank you.

>> for a dvd copy of this program, called 1-877-662-7726. for transcript, visit us at the website. the programs are also available as c-span podcast. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> next sunday, a different view on education with michelle easton. she founded and remains president of the clear blue loose policy institute. michelle easton, next week on ""q&a."

on c-span. >> coming up next live, your phone calls and comments on " washington journal." then at 11:00 eastern, president obama in the philadelphia talking about health care. that's live parrot also live it 1:00 p.m., remarks by epa administrator lisa jackson on priorities for this year. .