Liz McMillen is the editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Her career at the Chronicle includes stints covering faculty issues as a reporter and supervising the paper’s coverage of scholarship, research, and publishing. Before she moderated a panel on what universities are for, she revealed the strangest story she has edited at the paper, the writer she’d get a beer with, and what being an editor means.
What’s the last board game you played?
Backgammon.
Who’s the one person, living or dead, you’d most like to have a beer with?
Hemingway. He seems like the kind of guy who would be fun to have a beer with.
What is the strangest story you’ve edited at The Chronicle of Higher Education?
That’s a tough one. One of the staples of our coverage is researchers with crazy ideas. Sometimes there are people who study UFOs. There are people who study how they can transplant their brains into a computer. There was one about the neuroscience of immortality that I worked on three years ago. Very futuristic. It was something they were trying to build so your brain would be immortal.
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
For a while I thought being a vet would be something I’d like to do. I got interested in writing a little later in high school.
If you didn’t live in the U.S., what country would you want to live in?
I’m very fond of Spain. The food, the culture, the light, the way of life, the wine, the siestas—the whole thing. Nothing to argue with.
What did you write your college admissions essay about?
I have no idea. Geez. I mean, I grew up in a small town in rural Pennsylvania and I very much wanted to go to a city. So it must have been something about that. It was a while ago.
What keeps you up at night?
Trying to make sure that our publication is thriving in both print and digital realms. I think a lot of journalists would answer the same way. That’s the challenge right now—to do both really well.
What’s your favorite plant?
I love hydrangeas—blue and pink.
How are you different from who you were 10 years ago?
I’m in a very different job than I was in 10 years ago. God, people actually listen to me because I’m the editor. Actually, sometimes they don’t.
You spent a lot of time in Philadelphia as a college student and working for the Associated Press. Cheez Whiz, provolone, or American on your cheesesteaks?
American, no question.