Preparing for departure

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John Hudzik never stays in one spot — or one country — for too long. He has traveled to Washington, D.C., three separate times for various NAFSA: Association of International Educators meetings and workshops. He has been to Toronto to speak at a conference. He even has been to the United Arab Emirates to visit MSU Dubai. And that is just a snippet of his travel schedule for the past three weeks.

As MSU’s vice president for global engagement and strategic projects, Hudzik is responsible for building and extending the university’s connections in global international education circles. He estimates he has visited about 70 different countries on six continents for university business since 1995 — the year he became the dean of MSU’s international studies and programs.

Hudzik’s position only has been around for three years, but MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon announced last month it will be eliminated at the end of December as part of the original plan for the position. Hudzik will remain at MSU as a faculty member and researcher in the School of Criminal Justice.

“I really felt after another few years it would be time to have a leadership change because everyone benefits from fresh ideas,” Hudzik said. “(Simon) told me she would like me to consider spending another couple years to step back from the operational fray and sort of think about the university’s longer-range goals and think through, ‘Are we on the right track?’ I agreed to do this until Dec. 31, 2009.”

Despite his departure from an administrative post, Hudzik said the vision he helped carve for MSU becoming a world grant university will continue.

“I’ve done what I think needed to be done and what the president asked me to do,” Hudzik said. “It’s time now for others to make it happen.”

MSU Provost Kim Wilcox said it is difficult to narrow Hudzik’s accomplishments in the vice presidential position because of the role he played in strengthening MSU’s global connections.

“It’s hard to capture the key aspects of what he’s done because he’s touched so many parts,” Wilcox said. “John has led us, but at the same time, we’ve been preparing for his departure, so we’re ready for the handoff of the administrative role.”

Hudzik’s said his administrative tenure began with then-MSU President M. Peter McPherson, who asked him to lead a task force evaluating MSU’s study abroad program. The group turned in a report calling for MSU to triple the number of students it sent abroad and Hudzik’s involvement on the task force later evolved into an appointment as MSU’s international studies and programs dean.

“When I was asked to apply and become dean of international studies and programs, my first reaction to the very highly placed person in the university was to say, ‘Are you out of your mind?’” Hudzik said, laughing. “I never thought of myself as trying to drive and lead a university with a huge international agenda as large as Michigan State University’s agenda.”

Jeffrey Riedinger, the current dean of international studies and programs, said Hudzik’s impact on MSU is visible by looking at the university’s increase in study abroad participants in the last decade and the creation MSU Dubai.

“(Hudzik) continued the work he had been doing … looking at how we could better position Michigan State University in the very important Middle East region,” Riedinger said of Hudzik’s involvement in Dubai. “John really had been, until quite recently, the single most important driving force behind making that a reality.”

And although Hudzik’s tenure as the face of MSU’s international outreach is ending, his position was an important step forward for MSU, James Madison College Associate Dean Norman Graham said.

“It was important,” Graham said in an e-mail. “It was in one sense a logical follow on to work done previously for President McPherson by (former MSU Vice President for University Projects) Charlie Greenleaf. Major new initiatives in areas not traditionally a focus for MSU probably needed this kind of appointment.”

Hudzik will continue to keep MSU in the spotlight in multiple national and international policy circles, but he said he is looking forward to his return to the classroom.

“When I would see someone in class struggling then suddenly the light bulb went off in their head, I would get excited,” Hudzik said. “I’m not trying to be soapy here, but that kind of thing tickles me. I want to get back into the classroom and do more of that.”

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