"This is a passionate guy," says Dave Pershing, the senior vice president for academic affairs. "He believes passionately in the university and (in making) it a better place. It's, 'What are we doing to make the courses better for students?' It's hiring the best faculty and administration. We were searching for an administrative position once, and he decided none of the candidates was the caliber he wanted. He told us to go back and start again."

Talent scout

Machen, who grew up in St. Louis, comes from deep blue-collar roots. His grandfather was a lumberman and his other grandfather drove a rural postal route. His parents were the first on both sides of their families to graduate from college. Always driven and possessed of a plan, Machen was captain of the football team, valedictorian and senior class vice president and still found time to work in his uncle's orthodontics office.

After graduating from Vanderbilt, he completed dental school at St. Louis University. He wanted to open a private practice, but he also wanted to teach, so he prepared to do both. He took a master's degree in pediatric dentistry and a doctorate in educational psychology at Iowa. Later, his former classmates, bored after years in a private practice but unprepared for other options, would ask him, "How did you know?"

By 1979, he was a professor in the school of dentistry at the University of North Carolina. Eventually, he became dean of the dental schools at North Carolina and Michigan, both for six years, but always maintained a private practice that specialized in the treatment of handicapped children.

He never planned to work in administration, but here he is, the only university president in the country who is a former a dentist. At times he still sounds like he's got someone in the chair. Near the end of a commencement speech, he soothed the audience, "All right, we're almost finished."

As you might expect of a dentist, he is an oddity in his role as administrator. He has never taken a management course — "They tried to send me that stuff at Michigan" — or read any of the trendy management books. He doesn't own a Palm Pilot, and every story ever written about him marvels that he doesn't use a day planner ("Why does he need a day planner when he has three secretaries?" says Chris).

"It's too mechanized," says Machen. "We gave Stephen Covey our alumni award, and I told him I disdain everything he talks about. First of all, leadership is intuitive. My philosophy in life is to deal with people. . . . I'm a talent scout. Identify people who can fit in the system. Then the rest of the job takes care of itself."

Making waves

Machen warns that he requires getting used to, and he's not for everybody.