Once or twice a week he sits in classrooms or visits research laboratories, quizzing professors about their work, observing experiments and listening to lectures.

"It's a little staged; they know I'm coming, but I am learning things about the university so I know the whole picture," he said.

Young is striving to connect the various departments — interdisciplinary cooperation, the U. calls it — in the classroom and in research, to prevent overlap and to foster broader education and more effective research.

In his mind, it's not enough for, say, a chemistry student to study only chemistry; he needs to learn technology to function in the high-tech world and business to be an entrepreneur and other cultures to compete abroad.

The U. is famous, for example, for computer graphics, but those graphics were commercialized outside of Utah. Young's brainchild is technology venture development, in which a branch of the business department is working with the biotechnology department to ensure that technology developed by the U. is commercialized in Utah.

The way Young envisions it, there will be more joint ventures like the one that has teamed mechanical and bioengineering departments with the Brain Institute to develop wireless electrode implants that could provide artificial vision for the blind and stimulate paralyzed body parts.

On a roll

It is clear that the U. and its president are on a roll, and not just in the athletic department.

"Sports are a metaphor for what's happening across the campus," said Dave Pershing, senior vice president of academic affairs. The Utes are nationally ranked in health science, business, fine arts, humanities, among others.

Given his varied background in international politics, business and law, Young is trying to put the U. on the world stage, sending students abroad, bringing foreign exchange students to the campus, ensuring that international cultures and business customs are being taught on campus.

Young believes Utah has a unique student body. For one thing, its students might have the best foreign-language skills of any public university in the country (think LDS missionaries), and he believes those skills are being underutilized. They could be advantageous on the growing world market.

Undoubtedly, Young inherited a university that was already headed in the right direction, but he has pushed the agenda ahead at a new pace and added his own agenda and considerable passion.

"He's so excited about what he's doing," said Young's wife, Suzan. "He keeps saying, 'This is a jewel, and nobody knows about it.' "