Urban universities like the University of Akron face a broad range of both challenges and opportunities, said UA president Gary Miller.

"If you look at a university like Akron and draw a line out through the city and beyond into the suburbs and then on into the rural areas, on that continuum is virtually every major challenge and opportunity in America," Miller said.

The chance to make a wide-reaching difference was exciting to both Miller and his wife, Georgia Nix Miller.

Gary Miller started his tenure as the University of Akron's 18th president on Oct. 1. He took on that role from interim president John C. Green, who was the latest leader in a turbulent few years at the university, following the short tenures of Matthew Wilson and Scott Scarborough.

Miller said he hopes he and his wife are in Akron for a "long run." He has a lot of plans, as well as tactics he'd like to employ to accomplish them, but developing relationships is the first step.

"We've got to build some trust and goodwill," he said. "I think this university is so fantastic, and we need to reaffirm that to ourselves."

The Millers have been through this process before. Gary Miller's entire career has been in higher education. He's worked as a provost, a dean and a faculty member. Most recently, he served as chancellor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and then at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

He and Georgia met when he was working at the University of Mississippi and she was earning her master's degree there. The couple has three children and five grandchildren.

Georgia Nix Miller has been active in the communities in which they've lived, serving on boards but also starting a nonprofit working with underserved women and children in Mississippi and helping found a charter school in North Carolina.

The couple has found "common ground" in the issue of access to higher education, Nix Miller said. That's been a driving force for both of them in the past 15 years.

"The networks that we build in support of the university and particularly in support of opportunities for students, we do those together," Gary Miller said. "So our community efforts are a partnership. I wouldn't even try to do this job without this kind of partnership."

The Millers are still getting to know Akron with the help of the university's transition committee. Georgia Nix Miller said she's planning to learn more about the Akron school system as a start. She's also passionate about access to the arts in the community and wants to see more collaboration between the school district, the university and social service agencies.

At the university level, the changes have already begun. On Oct. 9, Gary Miller announced the university would do away with its split leadership model in the Office of Academic Affairs and begin a search for a new provost. On Oct. 23, he named an interim provost to serve in that role during the search.

The unconventional approach to the Office of Academic Affairs was something Gary Miller knew he wanted to change when he interviewed for the role of president, and he said he let the board of trustees know that. Finding a lot of faculty and staff support for the change, he moved quickly to implement it.

The challenges the university has been facing aren't necessarily unique, he said, and many are situations he's tackled before at other universities. Take, for example, the university's enrollment decline. Some of that is based on demographics, which can't be controlled.

At the University of Wisconsin- Green Bay, Miller oversaw changes, like a reorganization and an all-university enrollment strategy, that led to enrollment growth. The university also started an engineering school in that time, which Georgia Nix Miller said was based on community needs.

That "whole-university enrollment strategy" is something Gary Miller said he'd like to see at the University of Akron.

The university can't focus just on transfers or first-year students; it needs to look at different potential enrollment venues, even those outside of traditional degree programs. And it can't rely solely on the admissions office to do this work. The university benefits when faculty are involved in recruitment and retention, Gary Miller said.

"It's well known that students stay if they have a close connection with a faculty member," he noted.

The university needs to look at the potential student pools it's targeting and the ways it's delivering education, finding nontraditional approaches to expand its offerings, Miller said. For example, he doesn't think there should be a stigma around taking more than four years to complete a degree, since many students have to work. He added he's open to "providing the University of Akron experience" in different ways.

More changes could come through a new strategic plan for the university, the process for which the board approved in early October.

Gary Miller said the university doesn't need a traditional strategic planning process, as that can take up to two years to complete and isn't often related to the budget. He's long been critical of that approach.

In Akron, he said he wants to take on a focused approach that identifies themes, priorities and actions.

"We need a strategic horizon about three to five years where we really make some hard choices, go with our strengths and move the university through the current proximate difficulties," he said.