Peter Crouch is the dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.

Q. When you came to the University of Hawai'i from Arizona State, was UH looking for a specific type of leader?

A. They were looking for somebody who had a track record in doing things in terms of economic development, workforce development, trying to build relationships between the college and the community. I had done a lot of that as dean of engineering in Arizona so they felt I certainly had the right experience and had the ability to adapt to the culture here in Hawai'i.

Q. Any surprises since you took over two years ago?

A. The extent to which politics enters trying to run the university. While I was warned that that was an issue, it turns out it was a bigger issue than I thought. I guess that was a surprise. The other surprise was the fact that traditionally Hawai'i is not a manufacturing state and that colors the way people think of engineering and I wasn't as prepared as I thought I might be for that type of view. That means I've got to work harder at having people understand why engineering is important for the future of Hawai'i. In my previous position, people didn't need to be convinced that engineering was an important asset.

Q. What is the view or perception of engineering here?

A. People in general take it for granted in the sense that clearly we need engineers for things like construction, the roads, maybe the water. But I don't think people understand the correlation between diversifying the economy in terms of high-tech businesses and engineering. That correlation is harder for people to understand.

Q. How are you going to changing attitudes?

A. Basically being very external, trying to make sure that I market the function of the College of Engineering and what it does, and there are whole sorts of communities out there. There's the engineering alumni community, which is very important. Most of the important engineering positions in the state are filled by alumni from the college. But it's important to extend that base to the emerging high-tech community and basically try to make sure I interface through all the mechanisms I can between the college and those communities. It's very important that the college extends its sphere outside O'ahu and gets to the other islands where some of the other assets are, such as the Pacific Missile Range on Kaua'i and the telescopes and the emerging optical industries on Hawai'i and on Maui.

Q. UH is a state-funded institution, but do you have to seek funds for the college?

A. Absolutely. The role of a dean is marketing and fundraising, which are some of the most important things that the dean does. Fundraising comes in many different ways. We try to raise funds through our alumni, etc. We're celebrating 100 years as an engineering college and so we've got various things going on there. In terms of research funding, we can get that from teaming up with local companies and Mainland companies and working with them to bring in funding, and of course with the Legislature and the governor and trying to understand how to bring in additional funds through those mechanisms to the college.

Q. The college has a high success rate of graduates finding jobs in the field or going to graduate school. Is that something you work hard to achieve?

A. As a professional school, we're linked that much more with the ups and downs of the economy than some other schools. Every semester we have a career fair and we have 80 to 90 companies turn up for a day and try to recruit our students. In the last few years the big message has been that we're not producing enough students to meet the demand for engineers. So clearly I haven't had to work very hard to place students in the last few years. If the economy does take a serious dive, then the work that we have to do to try and place our students will go up. But in general, if you just look at the salaries offered to students they're usually the highest of the disciplines for any student at the university.

Q. When did you decide you wanted to be more on the academic side?

A. I spent my first year out of high school working at an electric company in Britain and then took the summers and worked for the same company. So my realization that I wanted to be an academic took quite a time to evolve. It wasn't until after my last summer spent at the company. At the time, the economic picture wasn't as rosy and so I said, "It doesn't look as though there are so many jobs so I'll go off and go to graduate school." I did end up at a start-up company when I started my first job as a college professor back in Britain. But the start-up company didn't work. We hear a lot about start-up companies that do well, but unfortunately for every start-up company that does well, there's probably 10 that don't. So I dabbled with employment in a large company and start-up company, but my track record shows that maybe my home has been running a college of engineering.

Q. You've worked in various capacities; what do you consider important traits in a good leader?

A. I would say listening to the organization, trying to be politically neutral and looking at the future. I often feel as though one of my jobs is sort of like a big game of chess: trying to understand what is going to happen in the future and trying to create opportunities. It's incredibly difficult and challenging to run an organization and to think about the future. Most of your time is wrapped up with worrying about solving the issues. Most leaders are also managers, so trying to understand how to not simply spend all of your day managing, but thinking about the opportunities that are possible. Have you created opportunities for your organization? I think that's just as important in academia as it is in the commercial world. Keeping current is vitally important, but in this technological age, keeping current actually is very easy because it comes at you electronically all of the time. My assistants here feed me material that they've scanned from various educational outlets so I make a point in reading those and I make a point in actually trying to understand some of the scientific things that are going on.

Q. You've been dean for about two years, where do you see yourself in a few years?

A. My sense is that after a decade here I would like to make sure that folks believe that the College of Engineering is an important component in terms of diversifying the economy. People have to understand that engineering is a very important component for Hawai'i going forward in it's high-tech future. That's the ultimate goal that I have. I think it takes that length of time to make any deep impression in an institution like this. The environment here is a very different environment than the one that I left in Arizona. For me, it's an issue of constantly learning. For me it's another growing experience. I'm learning a lot more skills in those various aspects that hopefully will complement the skills I already learned in Arizona. Hopefully at the end of that I will be an amazingly marketable person.