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n an October evening in 1999, 18 American astronauts satdown to dinner in West Lafayette, Indiana. At the table wereNeil Armstrong, the first human being to walk on the moon,and Eugene Cernan, who was the last. Another diner was

David Wolf, who lived aboard the Russian space station Mir for fourmonths and boasts more time in space than any other American exceptShannon Lucid.

The host of this exceptional gathering, Steven C. Beering, MD ’58,recalls the night as one that never quit. “They didn’t want to leave,” he says.“They just huddled together. David Wolf wanted to know what it was liketo land on the moon, and Neil Armstrong was immensely curious aboutwhat it was like to fly with the Russians. David—of course—holds the pio-neers on a huge pedestal, as we all do, but at the end of the evening he real-ized that what he had done was exciting and important too, and valued bythe older astronauts. It was the next step, and they regarded him as a pioneer,as he did them.

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20 P I T T M E D

“I couldn’t sleep all that night, I was soexcited,” Beering recalled recently.

It takes something pretty unusual to giveBeering a sleepless night. After graduatingfrom the University of Pittsburgh with a BS in1954 and an MD in 1958, Beering went on tobecome a physician to astronauts, architect ofa medical education system copied across thiscountry and overseas, and dean of one ofAmerica’s premier medical schools (IndianaUniversity School of Medicine). He has accu-mulated eight honorary doctorates and con-ferred 350 others on a heady list of nationaland international dignitaries.

Honors from his alma mater include theDistinguished Alumni Fellows Award, anhonorary Doctor of Science, the Philip HenchDistinguished Medical Alumnus Award, andthe University’s Bicentennial Medallion ofDistinction; the last award has gone to onlyfour other persons, two of them posthumous-ly. And he was recently appointed to Pitt’sBoard of Trustees. His community honorsinclude the titles Sagamore of the Wabash, thestate of Indiana’s highest honor, and KentuckyColonel, which his neighbors in the state nextdoor bestowed on him. That barely getsthrough the first page of his weighty curricu-lum vitae, though there’s one other line onBeering’s CV that especially stands out:President, Purdue University, 1983 to 2000.

After presiding for 17 years over one of thisnation’s top public research universities (aranking Purdue could not claim before histenure), Beering stepped down in August. Hehas moved out of the presidential residenceand turned his office over to his successor,Martin Jischke. Beering and his wife, Jane,whom he met when both were Pitt under-graduates, will continue living and working inWest Lafayette. Beering, who graduated morethan half of Purdue’s living alumni, will con-tinue serving the university as a key envoy.

Jischke, who comes to Purdue after havingserved as chancellor and president to other uni-versities, may want to start dining with astro-nauts, too. After all, these are folks whose mostmemorable views of Indiana are from hundredsof thousands of miles away—and it seems thatone charged with running a university needs toelicit a healthy lot of “big picture” perspectives,no matter how much experience one may have.Imagine the university president’s job descrip-tion: Figure out what the next couple of gener-ations need to know to succeed, lay thegroundwork for a new era of discovery, shep-herd our society’s intellectual future. Under“Additional Responsibilities” it would say

something about partnering with the commu-nity and making no enemies. No wonder uni-versity presidential terms have shrunk to lessthan seven years in the last decade. Beering’s17-year tenure puts him in an elite group.

When Beering arrived at Purdue in 1983as the school’s third president since the end ofWorld War II, not everybody on the facultywas thrilled at the idea of a medical doctorleading their institution; some grumped thathe didn’t have a traditional academic back-ground. At such a moment, faculty membersare looking for clones of themselves, notesRobert L. Ringel, who worked closely withBeering for those 17 years as dean of theschool of liberal arts, dean of the graduateschool, and executive vice president for aca-demic affairs. “They want someone who willput their needs right at the top,” says Ringel.Yet: “People came to accept the president’sability to set priorities.”

A college faculty is far from the only con-stituency that tests presidential mettle.Members of the board of trustees demandtangible results. An unguarded presidentialword at a state budget committee hearingcan jeopardize funding for an entire bienni-um. Alumni and benefactors have to be cul-

tivated so that they support their alma materthrough thick and thin, even bad footballseasons. Then there are the students, some ofwhom are convinced they could run the uni-versity a lot better than that most pejorativeof words in the student lexicon—the“administration.” And who knows when a“gotcha” journalist might pop out of thebushes? This is a job where the consequencesof error run high.

If you asked Robert L. Ringel to describethe ideal university president, he would likelyanswer with a series of abstractions: decisionmaker, delegator, fund-raiser, supportiveadministrator, with a good memory fornames, faces, and personal details and credi-bility in dealings with state legislators. ForRingel, Steven Beering fleshes out all thoseabstractions: “He has made tough decisions,but he has managed to touch the heart of theuniversity in terms of what it can do, what itshould do, and what it can do well.

“Steve is Steve,” says Ringel, “whether it’sMonday morning in the office or Saturday

afternoon on the golf course or Tuesday morn-ing counseling a friend who has called to say hisspouse, or her spouse, is ill. This consistency. . . leads to a much-valued genuineness.”

University presidents are never off stage. “Inthe union building at lunch,” says Ringel,“Steve will sit down with a group of students—take his tray over and sit down and say, ‘Hi, I’mSteve Beering.’ I’ve seen him do this in buffet-style restaurants in the community, too. Heknows a university president is a leader and apublic person and has to be approachable.”

Nor are their schedules flexible. DavidBeering recalls what it was like to be the son ofa university president: “We’d plan major events. . . around the university’s official schedule. Weknew we were not gonna get married in June.”In fact, sometimes Beering-family qualitymoments ended up including tens of thousandsof other people. David Beering remembers sit-ting among his classmates during his 1985commencement as his father stood at a podiumreading an anonymous letter written by a par-ent to a graduate: “The relationship betweenparents and children has to survive a lot ofstress through the years,” he read from the let-ter. “This is because each of us starts outexpecting too much of the other. . . . We have

grown up when we accept each other as we are.I think you are now old and wise enough tolove an imperfect father. . . .”

The hall stirred in recognition as Beeringdirected the letter’s closing to his own son, mak-ing it clear that, yes, Beering was the anonymousfather: “You will encounter obstacles . . . but youwill triumph over your troubles, David, just asyou managed to cope with the problem of beingthe son of a university president.”

You wouldn’t guess it from his nearlyunaccented Midwestern speech, butSteven Beering was born in Berlin, in

1932. He arrived in this country 16 years later,after a period in London, and made his way toPittsburgh in time to graduate with the TaylorAllderdice High School Class of 1950 and goon to Pitt for his BS and MD.

What happened next was the first timeBeering’s fortunes intersected those of thecountry’s space pioneers. During 11 years in theAir Force Medical Corps—much of the time atLackland Air Force Base near San Antonio,

Not everybody on the faculty was thrilled at the idea

of a medical doctor leading their institution.

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Beering will wince. Purdue faced problems that plagued many urban campuses; he paintsa picture: “There were four public streets goingthrough the heart of campus, the noise wasdeafening, the smog and pollution tremen-dous. We had accidents regularly. People onbicycles were hit. So we closed this off andmade the space into a mall.” Everything aboutthe university grew: new buildings on the flag-ship campus, four new regional campuses tocarry the Purdue name, academic programs,research. Enrollment shot up 27 percent to itscurrent total of 66,500 system-wide.

Beering doesn’t dwell on bricks and mortaror dollars and cents when he reflects on histime as president. The Pitt alum would rathertalk about how he built the largest contingentof international programs of any US univer-sity or his strategies for luring exceptional stu-dents. And there’s the way research has grown.When he arrived, Purdue was doing about$35 million in research; this year it reached$263 million, putting the school among thetop public research universities. “I’mimmensely pleased by that,” says Beering.“That’s the lifeblood of the academy—touncover and discover and to be creative.”

Beering’s arrival at Purdue reestab-lished his long association withAmerica’s astronaut corps.

Through its engineering department(which includes an astronautical pro-gram), Purdue has graduated 21 menand women who have flown in space.Beering was at Canaveral on severallaunch days, but he has never, to his dis-appointment, seen a rocket lift off. The

closest he got was a launch that wasscrubbed with three seconds to go. Hisschedule never allowed him to wait aroundfor the next launch window, a fact he reportswith regret but without giving the impres-sion that it shattered a dream.

Despite all the talk of antigravity condi-tions, one gets the sense that Steven Beering’sfeet are planted firmly on the ground. Yet he’llenjoy musing a bit on, say, delta-wing space-ships—how someday they’ll take off like anyairliner, go into space, then return for a con-trolled landing. “The way we launch now isreally a controlled explosion,” Beering says,cringing. If that delta-wing ship were rolledout tomorrow, would he volunteer to climbaboard? He laughs and quotes his friend NeilArmstrong’s quip about emulating JohnGlenn’s return to space at age 77: “Perhapswhen I’m a little older.” �

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thing radically new in the delivery of medicaleducation: Instead of constructing an expen-sive new school, it proposed creating cost-effective satellites of the Indiana University(IU) School of Medicine for half of its first-and second-year students, placing them onthe campuses of several public and privateuniversities where they could benefit fromthe science faculties of those schools whilegetting to know the community. The ideaworked, and the plan has been copied exten-sively, but it was bold at the time. The nextthing Beering knew, he was invited to runthe program. By 1974, he was serving asdean of IU’s School of Medicine. (Mentionhis name today to many of Indiana’s practic-ing physicians and the word “mentor” willenter the conversation.)

By any measuring stick, Purdue has thrivedunder its MD president. Ask about the state ofthe campus when he arrived though, and

Texas, where he ended up as chief of internalmedicine at Wilford Hall Medical Center—Beering served on the medical support teamsfor the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.An endocrinologist, Beering studied hormonalchanges in the body resulting from environ-mental stress—in an attempt to decipher whatwould happen to human bodies in space. Someof his research is still classified, so he’s notallowed to talk about it in detail.

Beering met Neil Armstrong when theastronaut candidate came through SanAntonio for a medical evaluation. Years later onJuly 20, 1969, when Armstrong descendedfrom the lunar lander to put footprints on themoon, the Beerings were watching from a newhome in Indianapolis, surrounded by boxes notyet unpacked after a move from Texas.

A couple of years earlier, Beering hadserved as a consultant to the state of Indiana,where a debate was raging about whether andwhere to build a second medical school to helpkeep physicians in the state. He was part of agovernor’s commission that designed some-

The average tenure for a university presi-

dent has shrunk to less than seven years.

Beering served Purdue for 17.

BELOW: (Left to right) Astronaut Gene

Cernan, Steven Beering, Neil Armstrong,

and Purdue capital campaign cochair

Richard Hanson in 1994 at the victory cele-

bration for a Purdue fund-raising campaign.