UNH president seeks public-private partnerships

DURHAM -- University of New Hampshire President Mark Huddleston outlined broad plans to increase the school's public-private partnerships as a way to boost the school's bottom line during a speech to business executives yesterday morning.

Expanding partnerships is something Huddleston said he knows well, having created a similar system called the "Delaware Model" while he worked for the University of Delaware. He said he intends to do the same at UNH to push the school forward in tandem with private enterprises.

"I'm convinced that this institution is poised to become the model for the American university," he said of UNH under the future public-private partnerships.

Citing UNH's organic dairy partnership with Stonyfield Farm as a prime example, Huddleston said the public and private sectors need to work together to succeed.

"Looking ahead, I think there will be many more examples of these partnerships," he said to a group of about 40 business executives at a speech sponsored by UNH's Whittemore School of Business and Economics.

UNH receives the smallest amount of state money for any public school in the nation, Huddleston said. Despite that, UNH still receives a larger percentage of state money than other schools across the country because the state has a smaller budget, he said, making the need for new sources of money even more pressing.

Huddleston said that for UNH to move up to the 49th smallest amount of state money, funding would have to increase 45 percent.

"That's a pretty sobering statistic," he said.

After three months on the job, Huddleston made clear yesterday that a large part of why he was hired was to raise money for the school wherever possible, and he did not hesitate to ask those in attendance to think about investing.

Partnerships between businesses and the university will inevitably help the entire state in the long run, Huddleston said. He previously worked at Ohio Wesleyan University, a private liberal arts college, and said lawmakers in that state had a "hard time coming to grips" with the changing economy even as Ohio hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs.

Huddleston said business partnerships with UNH would allow the entire economy to move forward with new industries such as high technology, with the school providing a robust work force for private enterprise.