U. President: 'Call me Bernie'

In the wide, high-ceilinged hallways of the University of Utah's Park Building, the school's presidents stare at you from large portraits on the walls. They are somber in their black suits and black academic robes, and every president from the past 40 years is wearing a gold medallion around his neck.

Except one. He sports a light-colored suit with no black robe or medallion, and he's grinning.

Current U. President J. Bernard ("call me Bernie") Machen is more casual and proud of it. It's as if the school, with its presidential portraits, were giving passers-by an old grade-school test: Which one's not like the other ones?

Machen stands out in a crowd. Name another president who can deliver a commencement speech and do a root canal. Machen seems to make a point of being a different breed of president. When he was named to the post almost four years ago, he refused to have an inauguration; instead, he was "installed" as president. "But Bernie," a friend complained, "we install refrigerators, not school presidents."

He refused to wear a gold medallion or a black robe for his official portrait and doesn't like to be called president. "Doesn't fit my style," he says. "I don't think a president should be such a mysterious or imperial position."

At 57, Machen wears jeans and an open shirt to the office some days, rides a new Harley-Davidson (why not put that in the portrait?), swears like a rap star when the heat's on, shuns meetings and so-called management techniques, hates to be bothered with details and once told Stephen R. Covey himself that he has no use for day planners.

"The previous guy was a former military officer," he says. "Things were pretty rigid. I think a casual environment loosens up people. . . . I'm different."

Machen can afford to be different for one reason: He has nothing to lose. His presidency is all a big accident anyway. Just six years ago he was a dentist.

"I'm at a place now that I never thought about going," he says. "I'm only doing this because it's fun. I don't need this. My life's dream wasn't to be a university president. I just sort of parachuted in."

Changing lives

Before coming to the U., Machen was dean of the dental school at the University of Michigan, and, in his mind, it didn't get any better than that. His fate turned when the school began searching for a new provost, or academic vice president.

"Half the deans at the school wanted the job," recalls Machen. "The president wanted to do a search. He wanted someone who didn't want it. The criterion that I met was that I absolutely did not want it. I had my dream job. I'm a dentist. I was dean of the best dental school in the country."