Thank you Chairman Galle.
Distinguished Members of the Platform Party, Regents, Legislators, Foundation Board Members, Alumni Board Members, Community Representatives, Faculty, Staff, Students, Family and Friends. Thank you all for being here. It speaks loudly about your commitment to Emporia State University and I appreciate it!
It is a privilege to have the opportunity to serve as the 15th president of Emporia State University. I appreciate the trust the Board of Regents has placed in selecting me for this position.
One important goal of this celebration week from my perspective is that this celebration is not about me, it is about our University and our Community. After seeing all the wonderful examples of the work of our faculty, staff, and students, I believe the week-long activities have accomplished that goal! Before I begin my formal remarks, I have a couple of important things to do. First, I have many thank you’s to offer.
Let me begin by thanking the Inauguration Steering Committee chaired by Marjorie Werly. This Committee has coordinated all the activities of the week and they have made this a wonderful celebration. Their names are listed in the program and I ask them all to stand and receive our thanks. Thanks also to the Teachers College, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the School of Business, the School of Library and Information Management, and the staff of the University Library and Archives for their wonderful displays, speakers, and programs. Of course, I thank our students for the wonderful parade and activities fair yesterday afternoon. Thank you to Harmonious Voices of Praise for your participation today. Many thanks to our music faculty and all the ensembles that provided a wonderful concert last evening. Finally, a special thanks to Dr. Gary Ziek and the ESU Wind Ensemble and to Dr. Terry Barham and the ESU A Cappella Choir for providing special music today. Our plan was to make this event a celebration of the talents, skills, and knowledge of our faculty, staff, and students, and I believe we succeeded. Please join me in thanking all of these individuals and groups for their extraordinary efforts! Thank you!
Chairman Galle did an excellent job of introducing nearly everyone in attendance today, but there are a few people I would like to introduce and thank. Unlike many new presidents, I do not have the privilege of having parents present as my mother died when I was 15 and my father when I was 25. However, one cannot succeed in life without the support of family. I am fortunate to have in attendance today my two sisters and brothers-in-law. My oldest sister Roberta and her husband Bob had an exceptional impact on my life as they took me in after the death of our mother. They had been married a year-and-a-half and had a five month old daughter Linda. Their constant support during my life has contributed greatly to my success. My sister Donna and her husband Terry have also always been supportive. They carried the family flag at a time when Roberta and Bob had a serious automobile accident and were hospitalized for several months. My niece and Goddaughter Linda who has been much like a younger sister and remains very close to me personally is also here today. I thank each of them for their love and support and their contributions to my success and ask them to stand so we can welcome them to ESU.
Also present today are my in-laws, Chester & Helen McDoniel. I thank them most for the foundation they provided for Peggy. I also appreciate their support as I have moved their daughter around the country five times in 13 years before arriving in Emporia. Also with us today is Peggy’s sister, Terri Terrell, an elementary school teacher, who has provided the grand children for Chester and Helen. Please help me welcome them.
Finally, a very special thank you to my wife and partner Peggy for her unconditional support and willingness to follow me to those five institutions in thirteen years. You are my inspiration, my strength, and my best critic and I am truly blessed that you are in my life and I believe we are blessed to have her as ESU’s First Lady!
Emporia State University is an extraordinary place! I have had the opportunity to work on eight college or university campuses in my career, and I can tell you the ESU faculty and the staff are among the most dedicated to student success that I have ever encountered. It is a little daunting to realize that my job is to work with all of you to make this an even better institution!
As I move into my formal remarks, I wish to address the faculty first:
I learned a great deal from the stakeholders’ surveys returned by our faculty members. There were two major observations about the changing role of faculty members. Among the more challenging things I learned is that many of our faculty members do not like assessment or accountability. Well, I have to tell you in this environment of growing suspicion regarding the performance of American Colleges and Universities, we must be accountable to the citizens of Kansas for the more than $30 million dollars we receive from them annually. The Regents have integrated accountability for student learning into our performance agreement. I ask you, the faculty, to integrate effective, independent measures of student learning into your classes. In other words, assessment of student learning outcomes must become a way of life and we must find ways of embracing it and doing it more efficiently.
Another aspect of the changing role of faculty members is the critical role faculty members now play in student recruitment and retention. We all remember the days of the dean saying to new students “Look to your right and to your left; at the end of this year, one of you will not be here.” Those were the days when we had more students than we knew what to do with (in fact we had more than 7,000 on this campus)!
Today’s market for high-achieving students is very competitive. Experience indicates that the students select their university based upon three primary factors:
In addition to these two new roles, it is important that you continue to do what you do so well – to work as a team to nurture and grow our students – this includes those students who are physically here and those who are virtually here. Your efforts are critical as we expand our reach in Kansas – both on-line and through the Metro Learning Center in Overland Park.
I see many of you doing all these things every day and doing them well! Thank you, and I encourage you to continue.
To our staff:
In my brief time here, it is obvious to me that staff members also care very deeply about the success of our students. It is clear that you understand the importance of your interactions with students. The extraordinary improvement in first to second year retention was accomplished through many initiatives. However, none of these initiatives would have worked in the absence of a committed and caring staff.
I also applaud the work of all of you in the implementation process of Banner (our enterprise software system) in your areas. Your efforts will benefit the long term future of ESU. Keep up the good work!
To our Community:
In 2002, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) published a document entitled “Stewards of Place”. In part, this report says:
“AASCU institutions, then, should embrace public engagement as a core value and defining characteristic, and encourage activities that authentically promote these ends including:
ESU already has a history of these kinds of activities. Members of our community have identified that economic development will result from a growing institution. It is the responsibility of the University to find ways to give back to the community. In its best form, this relationship is a symbiotic partnership. We will continue, and I hope, expand these activities in the future. I ask that the community continue to treat ESU students as “your own.” Help them when they are in your stores and continue to enjoy the many activities they offer including athletic events, plays, concerts, lectures, and art exhibits.
To our students:
I want to share a brief story about global change and how dramatically things can change in a short lifetime.
When I was in grammar school about a half century ago, we used to have a drill – like a fire drill. When the alarm sounded, we were to get under our desks and cover ourselves up in order to survive a nuclear attack. Now, I’m sure many you who are under 30 maybe even 40, think I made this up. I would like to ask everyone in the room who shares this experience with me to stand up.
Now, what does this have to do with the changing world? The country we were concerned with launching that nuclear attack was the Soviet Union. In March of 1991, I first stepped on the ground at the St. Petersburg, Russia International Airport. As we deplaned onto the tarmac, our route to the terminal was lined with Russian soldiers carrying AK-47 rifles. Ten years later, in May of 2001, the last time I flew into Russia, I landed at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow. With the exception of seeing signs written in Cyrillic (as well as English), I could have been in any airport in any major city in the free world.
What I learned most during my several visits to Russia in that decade is that the people in Russia, the people I feared during my youth, are people very much like us with similar dreams, ambitions, and desires. The University I was representing subsequently negotiated an excellent partnership with Samara State University in Samara Russia.
The other country I never expected to visit while I was growing up is the People’s Republic of China. Peggy and I had the privilege of visiting Beijing and Tianjin in the fall of 2005. Today we have 137 students on ESU’s campus from the People’s Republic of China and the universities there are some of our most significant international partners.
A new president cannot deliver a significant address about the future and global issues without reference to Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat”, so here goes. Friedman is impressed to find sushi in Bentonville, Arkansas (the home of Walmart). Well, I was similarly impressed to find McDonalds in Moscow in 1991 and Peggy and I were impressed to find Baskin-Robbins, Pizza Hut, Microsoft and Hewlett/Packard in Beijing, China in 2005.
My point? The time is rapidly approaching when an ESU graduate will have the opportunity to visit Baghdad or Teheran to form professional partnerships. The world will continue to change and the opportunities you have here at ESU can help prepare you for those life-changing opportunities, if you take advantage of them! Take a chance, the 137 Chinese students studying on our campus have, why not you?
To our Foundation Trustees and Alumni Board
As part of the ESU family, our Foundation Trustees and our Alumni Board members will continue to play a critical role in our long-term success. As proponents for ESU, you have the opportunity to persuade prospective students to matriculate. As advocates for the university, you have the ability and responsibility to identify and direct prospective supporters to the university. Both increases in enrollment of quality students and increases in the financial support of the university will be essential to achieving our long-term goals.
Concerning Us All!
One of my most important challenges as president of Emporia State University is to identify and attract significant resources to the University and the Foundation. Let me outline a few opportunities which await us. I believe we can accomplish these and progress on our journey to greatness as a regional public university
Opportunities to achieve greatness:
We also have a significant challenge:
Most of you are aware that our faculty and our staff are below the average earnings of comparable positions in the state and in the region. We must address this challenge.
Points of Pride:
One of the things I learned from the stakeholders survey is that we insiders (faculty, staff and students), for whatever reason, do not openly express our pride in ESU. Maybe it is the Midwestern ethic of humility. Whatever it is, we need to get over it. Let me mention a few points of pride (and some associated opportunities). I encourage all of you to mention whenever the opportunity arises:
Emporia State University has:
This is just a short list of accomplishments. There are many more activities and awards worthy of including and I apologize to all whom I was unable to include due to time constraints. Clearly we can and should take pride in the accomplishments of our faculty, staff, students, and alumni!
Where to from here?
I am pleased to tell you that I have learned a great deal about ESU and our community through the stakeholders’ survey and the many wonderful activities this past week, but I still have much more to learn.
Many of you would like to hear my detailed plan to make ESU greater. I do not believe that a plan developed by one person can lead to that greatness. The best way to accomplish greatness is all of us working together to develop the plan and then to achieve the goals of the plan.
I am committed to broad-based planning, accountability for achieving the plan, and a significant comprehensive development campaign to provide the resources we need!
Early in the fall semester, a new strategic planning process will begin. SWOT (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analyses have already begun in the Colleges, Schools, and administrative units. As we move forward with our planning I ask you to keep the following quote in mind.
Professor Joseph Lagowski, University of Texas at Austin said:
“We are attempting to educate and prepare students (hire people in the workforce) today so that they are ready to solve future problems, not yet identified, using technologies not yet invented, based on scientific knowledge not yet discovered.”
Keeping that in mind we will consider issues such as:
While doing this we must maintain our core competency of being a student-centered institution.
As we move into this process, I ask that we consider another concept from the Gartner Group as laid out in Friedman’s “The World is Flat.” That is the concept of: “Educating Versatilists.” Friedman says,
“Versatilists apply depth of skill to a progressively widening scope of situations and experiences, gaining new competencies, building relationships, and assuming new roles. Versatilists are capable not only of constantly adapting but also of constantly learning and growing.”
That sounds like the kind of outcomes we might want to consider for our graduates.
In conclusion, you have my personal commitment to keep the lines of communication open and moving in both directions.
I am excited about our future and I look forward to traveling with you on our journey to greatness! Thank you very much!