Head of SUNY Buffalo Is Named USC President : Education: Trustees give Steven B. Sample high marks for work in academics and community activism.

The University of Southern California’s next president will be Steven B. Sample, an electrical engineer and inventor who has been president of the State University of New York campus at Buffalo since 1982 and is credited with strongly boosting that school’s academic reputation.

In announcing the appointment Wednesday after an extremely secretive search, USC trustees said they chose Sample because he seemed best suited to continue scholarly advances at the Los Angeles university, work more to solve social and economic problems of the area surrounding the campus and meet the constant need for donations and grants.

“He has all the tickets academically, but he also has a very broad experience running a major university,” Forrest N. Shumway, chairman of the USC Board of Trustees, said of Sample. “Look at his track record in Buffalo. It’s been absolutely spectacular.”

Shumway and education officials around the country said Sample’s biggest achievement was getting SUNY Buffalo admitted last year into the Assn. of American Universities, the organization of schools with the most respected research programs. Only 58 universities hold the highly sought membership; USC wasn’t admitted until 1969 and SUNY Buffalo is the only state university in New York or New England in the association.

Sample, who turned 50 last week, will become USC’s 10th president on March 31. He will succeed James H. Zumberge, who has been president for 10 years and announced in February his desire to retire. Sample’s USC salary, while not revealed by trustees, is reliably reported to be above $200,000 a year. He and his wife, Kathryn, who is a surgical assistant, also will get to live rent-free at the Mudd House, USC’s presidential residence in San Marino.

In an interview Wednesday, Sample--a slim man with dark, graying hair set off by tortoise-shell rimmed eyeglasses--said he was attracted to USC because of what he described as the school’s “real hungering after academic excellence and desire to be as strong an institution as any in the country.” He also said he was drawn to Los Angeles because “in some ways it is the center of our culture.”

Sample said it was premature to elaborate on his USC plans. “I don’t have a feeling that USC has some giant problems that are specific to USC,” he said. “It seems to me that USC’s principal problems are those that confront all of American higher education in the ‘90s and specifically private higher education in the ‘90s: endowment and the questions surrounding what is quality undergraduate education.”

Several education experts said that current financial problems in New York government and looming cutbacks at SUNY make this an opportune moment for Sample to leave. “To say it’s a good time for him to get out is an understatement,” said an AAU official who requested anonymity.

SUNY Buffalo this year began charging students for some services, such as shuttle bus passes, that were previously covered by tuition. That prompted student protests and anger directed at Sample.

“He’s done a job that overall is a positive one, but to me a president should be more concerned with student issues,” Kelly P. Sahner, head of the undergraduate student association at SUNY Buffalo, said in a telephone interview. She described him as “stiff and tight,” in contrast with the smiling and easy, joking manner Sample displayed Wednesday at a press conference and at receptions with USC faculty, staff and student leaders.

Sample insisted that budget woes and student protests in New York were not major factors in his decision to take the USC job. “New York has periodic problems and gets through them. And this situation is not as intense as during the ‘70s,” he stated, adding that SUNY Buffalo’s increased federal grants and private donations make it more immune from state budget cuts than in the past.

“We are glad and excited about the opportunities at USC, but we are leaving (Buffalo) with a lot of sadness,” Sample said. He added, however, that he looked forward to the flexibility a private university has without the bureaucratic and legislative constraints at state schools.

According to Buffalo faculty, Sample was a canny scrapper for funds and attention. For example, SUNY Buffalo headed a group of New York schools that won a $25-million federal grant in 1986 to establish a national center for earthquake research, beating a consortium of California campuses, ironically including USC. The Buffalo proposal was investigated for alleged plagiarism that did not involve Sample, but the grant was not rescinded. Californians, maintaining that the research rightfully belonged on the seismically active West Coast, were left grumbling about lobbying by SUNY and Buffalo congressmen.

William A. Miller, chairman of the SUNY Buffalo faculty senate, said Sample “really pulled us up from what was a good university to what is a very much better university. . . . As a representative of the university to the outside and as a raiser of sights on the possibilities for the institution, he’s had an enormously positive effect.”

But some teachers complained that Sample drifted away from grass-roots contacts on campus, said Miller, a dental school professor. Any such trait is sure to be closely watched by USC faculty, who want a president more gregarious and visible than Zumberge, although Zumberge is respected for his fund raising and efforts to improve the intellectual climate.

SUNY Buffalo and USC have similarities besides their struggles for academic respect. Buffalo has about 28,000 students and is the largest of the 64 schools in the New York state university system, while USC has about 27,700 students and is the largest private university in California. Both have medical, dental, pharmacy, engineering and law schools and the health science programs at both schools are on campuses separate from most other disciplines.

But, there are significant differences.

Tuition at SUNY Buffalo is only $1,350, while tuition and fees at USC are $14,378, not including room and board. Rising USC tuition is partly responsible for the 18% drop in the size of the freshman class this year. Recruiting more students, particularly from outside California, is widely reported to be one of the challenges of the post-Zumberge era.

USC recently completed a $641-million, six-year fund drive while SUNY Buffalo in 1987 began the first capital campaign by a SUNY school and has garnered about half of its $52-million goal. That is small scale by USC standards--but still an achievement that impressed USC trustees seeking a proven fund-raiser.

Calm, suburban neighborhoods surround SUNY Buffalo’s main campus while USC is in the heart of central Los Angeles, with its accompanying crime and suspicion from area black and Latino residents that USC wants to evict them. Still, Sample has a reputation for community activism, particularly in economic development helping western New York to recover from industrial flight.

“Personally, I was looking for a president who would be active in the community, particularly in improving the environment around the university because, as you know, we have a lot of problems there,” said Jack K. Horton, the USC trustee who was chairman of the presidential selection committee that recommended Sample to the full Board of Trustees.

Carmelo Armenia, president of the SUNY Buffalo Alumni Assn., described Sample as “the first president we’ve had who made a sincere and successful attempt to integrate the university with the community.”

Then there is sports, key for fanatically loyal Trojan fans and USC’s nationally known teams. SUNY Buffalo is in the process of moving its athletics from NCAA Division III to Division I. Amid much controversy a few years ago, Sample successfully lobbied SUNY trustees to allow the athletic scholarships needed for such a switch. Sample says he is well acquainted with the pressures of a big-time sports program such as USC’s because, before becoming president at Buffalo, he was executive vice president for academic affairs and dean of graduate programs for eight years at the University of Nebraska.

At Nebraska, Sample knew Zumberge, who was chancellor of the Lincoln campus at the time. Before that, Sample held an administrative post with the Illinois Board of Higher Education and an associate professorship at Purdue University in Indiana. He holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering, all from the University of Illinois at Urbana.

A specialist in electromagnetic theories, Sample also is an inventor of control systems that are now standard features behind touch panels of millions of microwave ovens. He has no financial link to that invention, which he developed as a consultant for an Indiana company.

His fans say that Sample is an attractive candidate because his interests are much wider than those of many engineers. For example, he taught a course about science and literature in the English department at Buffalo and helped found a new institute on the humanities there. Also, as a teen-ager, he was a timpanist with the St. Louis Philharmonic and reportedly retains a strong interest in music.

The Samples have two daughters, both of whom were graduated from the University of Nebraska. One daughter is a banker in Buffalo and the other is working at a law firm and hopes to attend a law school next year.

USC campus reaction to the selection was upbeat, although most students and some professors said they hadn’t heard of Sample before.

Steven Webber, president of USC’s Student Senate, said Sample’s stress on academics seemed genuine compared to what Webber complained is the “rhetoric” of some current USC administrators. “I think he is going to give this institution a kick in the rear end and get it going,” Webber said.

USC Faculty Senate president Walter Wolf said he too was pleased. “I believe his reputation for working with the faculty in a highly collegial manner bodes well,” Wolf said.

Ten years ago, the search for a USC president became a messy affair, with feuding factions leaking names of top candidates. As a result, candidates withdrew and the process had to be started again, leading to Zumberge. This time, all involved were sworn to secrecy and officials took care to interview prospects off campus. Horton said he got some tips on subterfuge from John A. McCone, the USC trustee who is former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

With the help of a professional executive search firm, a panel of 20 teachers, students, administrators and alumni reviewed about 125 names and gradually cut that down to a list of five names, reliable sources said. The special trustees committee then interviewed those five, all from other universities, and also talked to two current USC officials: provost Cornelius J. Pings and law school dean Scott H. Bice.