State of the University 1998
Dave Frohnmayer
President
University of Oregon
October 7, 1998
I now wish, in the order of business of this University Assembly, to speak to the State of the University.
Theologian and social critic Thomas Merton captured rhapsodically this time in our collective experience of autumn:
"October is a fine and dangerous season in America. It is dry and cool and the land is wild with red and gold and crimson, and all the lassitudes of August have seeped out of your blood, and you are full of ambition. It is a wonderful time to begin anything at all."
Thomas Merton might have gotten the "dry" part wrong, at least for our part of the world, but his richly tapestried words remind us that indeed this is a season of renewal and beginnings.
Especially here at the University of Oregon . . .
This autumn marks the beginning of bright academic careers for new faculty, many of whom are in our presence today. We bid you welcome to an institution, a community and a state that I hope you will agree are uniquely embracing, even wonderful.
It is the beginning of studies for thousands of students, hundreds of whom have never entered a college campus before.
And it is the beginning of a year of great changes internally that promise to energize our work and our academy.
Those of you who have heard me speak to this University Assembly, or to the University Senate, or almost anywhere I can gather more than five people in a room, know that I have reiterated one consistent theme since the beginning of my presidency.
That theme is the imperative of adaptation, through creativity and good-spirit, to the relentless and accelerating pace of change. Our society is undergoing rapid, unstoppable, transformative change. We face changes in our students, our technology, our state, our world economy, and our approach to education.
Let me give you one positive example of how quickly things can change.
Just last January, you heard me criticize the budgeting system within the Oregon University System. Echoing the long-standing disquiet of the elders of this campus, I bemoaned this "arcane" set of formulae that defied logic and made it difficult to argue for adequate state funding.
Our elders were right. A bipartisan high-caliber gubernatorial commission independently agreed. So did the governor of our state, the chancellor and the State Board of Higher Education.
In just one short year, things have turned around 180 degrees, in theory and in commitment.
The chancellor of our Oregon University System and the presidents of all our state universities have agreed to junk the old system and move to a clearer, fairer, more rational, more accountable budgeting mechanism--one that, when adopted in final form, will greatly benefit the University of Oregon, every other institution in the state--and, most important, students and families, who rightly expect tangible educational rewards for their educational expenditures.
The new budget system will reward hard work and innovation. Tuition money will stay on the campuses where it is raised. This model will increase accountability and make our universities more student-centered.
For the first time, state legislators will be able to see clearly where their higher education dollars are spent. We can make a more persuasive case for substantially greater funding--not for anemic "decision packages"--but for restoration of the indispensable base budgets of all universities in the system.
This year, our state university system is asking not simply for enough money to stay even with last year, but for a significant increase in overall support, a $120 million increase over inflationary adjustments. We hope to fund all our state universities at adequate levels, and also to finance the new and innovative academic programs that we need in order to prepare our students for a fast-changing world.
It is vital that our Oregon University System receive at least a major portion of this request. Please feel free to write your legislator and argue in favor of the new funding model, if you are persuaded to support it.
I know that there is concern that some of the smaller campuses in our state will not be adequately funded under the new model. But that is simply not true, if our state legislature embraces the funding model. I have visited all of our sister institutions in the Oregon University System on many occasions--each of them is pursuing vital missions for this state with vigor and excellence. This university, and all of us have a stake in their success, and they in ours.
The new budget model is unselfish in the largest sense. It is student-centered, value-added and desperately necessary for the future of our families, our young (and sometimes not so young) people, and our state.
* * * *
The past year has brought us success closer to home as well.
We are nearing the official end of our Oregon Campaign, the largest fund-raising campaign in the history of this state.
Many of you will remember the trepidation that accompanied our decision, five years ago, to set a goal of $150 million for this campaign--a number unheard of for any charitable purpose, public or private, in Oregon history. We set a lofty goal. We shot for the moon.
And we did more than succeed. We landed perfectly, returned again and relaunched.
With almost three months left to go, we are at $230 million and counting. . . . upward.
We have doubled the number of scholarships for our students.
We have tripled the number of endowed chairs for valued and renowned faculty.
We have built some vitally needed new buildings, and will build and remodel more.
But this has been a campaign for people. And its benefits will be felt for years. The fruits of this historic effort are already helping students and faculty, creating innovative approaches to teaching and opening our doors to more young people.
In a larger sense, The Oregon Campaign has made history in this state; it has raised the bar for every charitable undertaking, and has shown that Oregonians and friends of this university throughout the world have the will and capacity to give much more than anyone thought possible--if the cause is worthy.
As a final highlight, it is especially gratifying that most of the gifts came not from the ultra-rich, but from people of moderate means.
True, we have received some $10-million-plus gifts from selfless and well-to-do alumni.
But note this: The Oregon Campaign succeeded thanks to more than 200,000 individual gifts, thousands of them at the ten-dollar and five-dollar and fifty-dollar level.
We expect--and I challenge us all--to hit the tape running at full speed on December 31. And so--with faith in your selfless devotion to building something truly great--we intend to ask you to give yet again.
We have begun a campaign targeted to faculty and staff this fall, and will ask all faculty and staff to contribute what you can.
You should receive a letter in campus mail during the second week of October. I hope that each of you will find a way to help.
Let me tell you about one woman who found a way to do just that.
Her name is Karen Tarter. Karen was a student here in anthropology, following a dream of some day going on archaeological digs with Madonna Moss, Jon Erlandson, and others in our anthropology department, finding out about Pacific Coast Native American prehistory.
Karen Tarter had wanted for many years, ever since reading "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" as a young woman, to give something back, to right some wrongs, to find a way to help Native American peoples.
Then, while she was a student here in the summer of 1994, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
But that did not stop her. She fought the disease, studied hard, and received her bachelor's degree with honors in 1997.
She was accepted into our graduate program in anthropology. Then, tragically, her cancer returned.
Now she is confined to bed, where she reads. She rereads "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." She reads Homer's Odyssey.
And a few months ago, she read a copy of our university magazine, Oregon Quarterly.
In that issue was a story about one of our dreams here at the university, a dream of building a Many Nations Longhouse as a cultural center for our Native American students, and a regional center for Native American education and research. And in its largest sense, it will be a source of community for all races, all ethnicities for moments of special celebration and renewal.
Karen read that story, and realized, as she said, "maybe I could still do something, even now, even from here."
Early in August, she and her family donated $700 to our Many Nations Longhouse fund.
I view this as a breathtakingly generous gift. What she had to give, she gave.
She has given us as well a powerful message that anyone, regardless of resources, can leave a legacy for others.
I hope you will find your own dream at the university, and that you can find a way to help make it happen.
* * * *
Now let me shift the focus away from dollars and toward sense. That's spelled with an "s."
In my address last year, I challenged you to participate in a "Process for Change," a grassroots planning process designed to draft us a wild river guide for the future to help us navigate "permanent whitewater."
Hundreds of you answered the call, joining in planning groups and generating ideas.
Scores more of us are now engaged in the final, most delicate and--Thomas Merton is right about October--"dangerous" stage of this process--deciding which of the many ideas we've generated will be implemented on campus, or simply, how soon and with what?
Many of you here today are hearing this for the first time, so let me review in broad terms what we are seeking to achieve through our grassroots planning process for change.
We intend to transform the lives of our students through knowledge--and, I hope, continue that process with ourselves;
We intend to provide a learning experience that is challenging and exciting;
We intend to attract the brightest and most motivated students;
We intend to equip our students--our fellow learners--with a broad base of skills and knowledge that will enable them to influence and succeed in a fast-changing world;
We intend to undertake and complete research that changes lives for the better;
And we intend those things to happen in a campus environment that is uniquely gifted--I sometimes think made almost magical--by a beautiful setting, by generations of creative toil, intelligence and belief, and most of all by people--faculty, staff and students--people who are supportive, creative and open to new ideas, people who listen and guide with the greatest care, people who comprise this University of Oregon.
These words and thoughts are in my mind at the start of this year, because these are declarations of central ethical worth, despite potentially divisive perspectives of academic subdisciplines, politics, gender, ethnicity or--save us from this--ethical indifference in a community that depends, ultimately, upon our connections of personal humanity to make it function.
These are the core values that define us.
Our Process for Change is designed not to change those values, but to reinvigorate them and make them focused anew for this next generation of students.
It is a new generation indeed.
I was amused, then startled, then awakened, by a message I received recently noting some facts about our entering class of freshmen:
Most of them were born in 1980, but have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan era.
The Cold War, Vietnam, Watergate all happened before they were born. It is ancient history.
They were 11 years old when the Soviet Union dissolved.
They can really only remember one president of the United States. They have known only one pope.
They are too young to remember the Space Shuttle blowing up, and Tienanmin Square means little, if anything to them.
They have never had a polio shot, and likely don't know what polio terror was--or perhaps even understand how quickly and cruelly that bulbar polio killed my 6th-grade best friend.
But they have lived a lifetime with AIDS.
The compact disc was introduced about the time they were born. To our freshmen, the expression "You sound like a broken record" is without literal or experiential meaning.
Jay Leno has always starred on the Tonight Show. They do not know who J.R. was, much less care who shot him. They have never heard "Where's the beef?" or "I'd walk a mile for a Camel."
Most have never seen a black-and-white television or anything without a remote control.
Well, I suddenly feel older.
Yet I do not choose to experience chronological advance without some gain in wisdom. I hope you take these points with introspection and a sense of self-deprecation. After all, if we can laugh at ourselves, at least sometime, most of us know we have a lot of material to work with!
* * * *
I spoke of our Process for Change with a faculty member recently, and got a one-liner in response:
She said, "Enough process--where's the change?"
It is already happening, from Web-based historical atlas maps, to the creation of new majors in Judaic Studies to world class inventions of multi-media use for the arts and music.
It is happening, as it should, at the departmental level. Without notes or crib sheets, our academic deans were able, at our summer retreat, to identify more than 60 innovative programs, courses, curricular ideas or works in progress developed in just one year that are tangible pieces of our renewed culture, a culture of creativity in the pursuit of shared knowledge.
As I noted, the process has moved into its final phase, where the best of the ideas generated this past year will be chosen and implemented.
Given the sometimes glacial speed of academia, I would say we have made more than fair progress. And with your help and support, we will do much more this coming year.
In the meantime, you can accomplish a great deal on your own.
We face a flat enrollment projection this year, not because of any failure to attract new students, but because the numbers of returning students are lower than expected.
This is a challenge for all of us.
It is our challenge--your challenge--because much of the most important work done this year will not happen in administrative committees, or legislative sessions, or in the Governor's Office or even in my office.
The important changes will happen in the classrooms where you teach and the offices where you prepare next week's lectures, labs and seminars, in the hallways where you stop to chat with a student, and the quiet of your home where you work through ideas for your next courses, classes or intellectual encounters.
It will happen in the offices of support staff, every time a student asks for help.
It will happen every time a student seeks advice on a study topic, or wants to discuss a grade.
It is here, at the level of every students' every day experience, that successful institutions are made.
You create that experience.
If you are good, you are the mentor who takes an extra five minutes to counsel a student, desperate for advice and too proud to display the anxiety you might otherwise quickly allay. You are the researcher who takes the time to share the excitement of discovery, to involve students in the research enterprise.
You know, we provide an excellent education here, a point affirmed by our ranking in the Fiske Guide, for the second year in a row, as one of the 43 "Best Buys" among 2,500 American institutions of higher education, based on an analysis of educational quality and cost--and one of only three on the West Coast so honored.
We offer the best information technology support of any public university in the nation.
Per capita, our researchers are among the most productive in the world--this is not an expression of blind pride, but an observation buttressed by an independent analysis of published work.
And just in case you believe we don't run an efficient university, please note that the U.S. General Accounting Office, a few days ago, highlighted our cost-effectiveness in a report to Congress. The GAO concluded that the University of Oregon exemplified success in running a tight ship, and included us as one of only three examples nationally.
We have everything it takes to build something grand here, even in the face of adversity.
And it grows out of pride, and dedication, and--yes, even that precious, overused and underappreciated word--"love" of this university.
Those of you who are new this year might be surprised to hear me use these somewhat non-academic terms when referring to your new intellectual--even spiritual--home, but I do not employ them carelessly.
I assume this rhetorical and personal risk, because I do not want to let anyone here--no one in this room, not even those who assume an arm-folded, drawn-back veneer of cynicism to hide their sincere and passionate dedication to our ultimate value--I want no one to mistake what makes our university what it is.
Pride, dedication, even love.
We all will greet our new faculty members momentarily. I have had the pleasure of meeting many of them. What an exceptional group we welcome this year.
I have attempted to explain to our new arrivals why they have made a very wise cultural choice in coming here.
We here assembled are much more than workers at a job.
We--you, and now our new faculty--are the carriers of culture. We are the flame-bearers who should ignite fires in the minds of our students.
There is no secret handshake to identify us, no incandescent ring . . . we carry no magic key that unlocks the door to a secret garden of intellectual community. But our "culture" does carry this torch amongst us.
We are the stewards of that culture. We simply try to do all that is best for our collective future.
I talk a lot about dollars. I worry about dollars. I am the accountable steward, after all, for an entire institution. But the worth of our enterprise is not denominated in dollars. There is something profoundly more important.
The accreditation team that visited our campus some months ago said it well. After an exhaustive examination and an award of full accreditation, the review committee commended us for, among other things, being "at the leading edge of implementing new technologies," for our "creative and entrepreneurial response to state budget reductions," our "exemplary achievement in optimizing resources and facilitating collaboration" through our interdisciplinary institutes and centers; and for our commitment not only to undergraduate education, but to graduate education as well.
And then they offered this (and I now quote): "There is a sense of the distinctive and special about the University of Oregon. Among the attributes frequently cited are the quality of the program, sense of community, people who care about their institution; the special character of Eugene, the climate and geography, the human scale of the university, and powerful traditions of collaboration, cooperation, openness, and friendliness. There is an ever-present pride and search for excellence."
Continuing that search for excellence is our task this year.
I hope that "all the lassitudes of August have seeped out of your blood, and you are full of ambition.
It is a wonderful time to begin."
Thank you Thomas Merton, for your poetic autumnal words.
Thank you, friends, for all that you are--and most important, all that you aspire to have us become.
In the words of the ancient sailor, and with fullest recognition of our own personal responsibility to determine our collective future, we should now strive mightily as navigators, to "seek fair seas and following winds."
Thank you.