chancellor@ku.edu
It gives me great pleasure as your new Chancellor to welcome faculty back for the beginning of a new school year. I do so with a sense of humility. For most of you, this is your university. You have dedicated your lives and your careers to it.
For some of us, those of us who are new faculty, KU is in the process of becoming our university. We are learning its ways and its history. We are quite conscious that others were here before us.
For example, we know the University of Kansas has conducted the ritual of an "Opening Convocation" 130 times since its creation. We held one version last night; we hold this version today. But it is basically the same ritual that began with "the opening exercises" on September 12, 1866, presided over by The Reverend R.W. Oliver, the first chancellor, who was well qualified for his position, having recently served as a chaplain in the Civil War.
KU's official historian, Clifford Griffin, reports that when KU held that first Opening Convocation "the only things KU had in common with a genuine university were a name, a charter and a quarrelsome faculty."
I have discovered that traditions such as "Opening Convocation" are important to KU, and I spent the summer learning about our traditions. For a long time, for example, I was confused about why people kept talking about "walking down the hill." I finally figured out that it meant Commencement.
We have taken an academic tradition 1,000 years old and shaped it to our particular landscape. It is a nice transformation. "Walking down the hill" is a more poetic phrase, than graduation, or commencement. It gives the ceremony a special local meaning.
Similarly, honoring distinguished faculty at this Opening Convocation is a local academic tradition. We thank Professors Kenneth Klabunde of KSU Chemistry, Donald Worster of History and Environmental Studies, Donald Deshler of Special Education, and C.C. Cheng of Pharmacology and Toxicology, for providing the occasion for our presence. We recognize excellence in our colleagues, and we, thereby, celebrate ourselves and the academic community we are a part of. Simply put, such an academic tradition becomes the tissue which connects our community across time. Because we have been here, in person or in spirit, for 130 years, we have the confidence to face our history, as well as our future.
I have found KU's history reassuring, not as a dramatically successful story, like the parting of the Red Sea, but as an exemplum, illustrating how a covenant with a people can be fulfilled over time, despite drought, grasshoppers, wheat rust, conflagration, hot-tempered governors, and skeptical legislators.
For example, in 1868, two years after Chancellor Oliver's opening ceremonies, KU experienced its first setback. The University's legislative request of $50,000 for a new building was turned down, and the general appropriation to the University was cut 48 percent. Faculty salaries were reduced. The chancellor's salary was eliminated entirely. The buildings and grounds fund was cut 80 percent. It can be fairly said, morale was low.
Despite this, a new chancellor, Dr. John Fraser, arrived to take over as chancellor. Fraser was a professor of mathematics who was also well qualified to be Chancellor, having been a brigadier general in the Civil War, commanding a company of his own students. He had a lively wit, which sometimes turned into fiery bursts of temper. He was also very able. When he assumed office on June 12, 1868, Clifford Griffin writes, "it was immediately obvious to Fraser the University needed more of everything--more money, more faculty, more buildings, more equipment, more students, more books for the library."
Yet within two years, by 1870, Fraser had convinced the City of Lawrence to authorize a $90,000 bond issue to pay for the building that had been rejected in 1868, and the Legislature shortly would contribute an additional $50,000 to that construction project. Less than four years after the initial rejection of the building, and that 48 percent cut, operating funds had more than doubled, the Chancellor's salary had been restored, and more importantly, ground was broken on a magnificent new building, "Old Fraser Hall".
I feel fortunate in 1995 to become chancellor of a university that not only has allocated funds for the Chancellor's salary, but is constructing new buildings, and is a much stronger institution than Chancellor Fraser found in 1868. I don't know what will happen in my first four years, but I want to make clear I am unwilling to let the hard times of the moment distract us from the grand vision of our predecessors. A struggling little college, only four years old, with only three faculty, could imagine, and then create, a building like Old Fraser Hall--300' long by 100' wide, four stories high with twin towers, with room for all the University's departments and classes. The newspaper of the time reported, with only slight hyperbole, "there is no structure on the American continent, erected for educational purposes, equal to this . . . Harvard College has existed more than 230 years without such a building." Old Fraser Hall stood proudly from 1874 to 1965 on the site of the current Fraser Hall, a living symbol of the hopes and dreams of this University on a hill.
Our challenge in the last half decade of the 20th Century is not to build a new university, but to fulfill the promise of the old one--the promise imagined by those first faculty, and symbolized by "Old Fraser". I cannot stand here and guarantee you that we will be as successful as Chancellor Fraser and his faculty were only four years after that rejection in 1868, but we will be true to the tradition of academic excellence which has characterized the University of Kansas over the past 130 years.
The University of Kansas articulates for the entire State of Kansas, every day, the value of academic standards, educational opportunity, and intellectual achievement. What happens when you place a first rate faculty in the middle of the prairie and ask them to create excellence over the next 130 years?
You achieve a university with a School of Business considered to be one of the 15 best buys in America. You achieve a School of Education considered to be the 17th best School of Education in the country. You achieve a university where the School of Social Welfare is ranked 18th of 110 accredited social work schools in the United States. You achieve a university where the Public Administration program is considered to be the sixth best in the nation according to the U.S. News and World Report. You achieve a university where the Department of Special Education is cited by the same national magazine as the very best Department of Special Education in the country. You achieve a university in which the School of Architecture is one of the American Institute of Architects top 15 architectural schools. You achieve a university whose College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is known throughout the country for the breadth and excellence of its offerings.
You achieve a university in which the School of Law is ranked by the judges of this country as the 44th best law school of 177 accredited law schools. You achieve a university that enrolls more National Merit Scholars than all of the other schools in Kansas combined. You achieve a university with an Engineering School whose students and faculty win national competitions. You achieve a university which is the only University in the State of Kansas to be designated as a Carnegie One research university, a designation shared by only 59 public universities.
You achieve a university that U.S. News says is the 17th best national university when you compare the quality of education available with the cost of tuition, room and board, and fees, 17th out of 227 "national" universities evaluated. You achieve a university which the 1995 Fiske Guide to Colleges gives a four star rating in all categories--academics, social life and quality of living--the only Kansas school even cited in the guide. You achieve a university that when the U.S. News calculates academic reputation, it places KU 26th among 146 public universities, and 51st among all 229 major universities.
I stress all of this not to blow our own horn, because whatever our ranking--with the possible exception of special education--it can be improved. The rankings simply focus our challenge. Our challenge today is how to take a good university and make it an even better university during a time that seems hostile to higher education.
I cannot tell you how many times since I began my work that I have met people who have looked at me with great sympathy and have said, "It's great to have you here. It's too bad that you're coming here now when there isn't any money."
I can't tell you the number of times people have come up to me after I have given a speech and said, "You're absolutely right. We have to do something about computer networking, or we have to do something about undergraduate education, or we have to do something about advising, or we have to do something about lab equipment, but you know, we just don't have any money now. It's a hard time. We just aren't going to be able to do very much."
I am unwilling to accept that construction. I refuse to say that we will be unable to do anything at the University of Kansas in 1995 and 1996 and 1997 and 1998 and 1999. I am not willing to accept the notion that we cannot move ahead at this time in the history of the University of Kansas--any more than Chancellor Fraser and his faculty, quarrelsome though they were, were willing to say, we cannot move forward at the University of Kansas because the Civil War just ended, it's hard times, there are a lot of grasshoppers, and there's not much money.
I am going to suggest ten ways that we can move ahead, and I believe it is within our means to do so. My ten goals grow out of the ten characteristics of a great public university which I shared with the campus this spring. Chancellors are always asked about their vision for the university. My vision for KU is that of a great university. To be a great university we must:
1. Welcome all peoples, respecting their differences, while teaching tolerance for each human being; a great American university demonstrates the value of a democratic way of life, thereby ensuring a democratic future. What are the practical implications of this statement?
If we respect all peoples, then we recruit all peoples, both as students and faculty. We cannot serve as an American democratic model unless we reflect the mosaic of the American republic.
This means that we will have to give a priority, whether it is politically fashionable or not, to ensuring that KU is a university for all the people of Kansas and all the people of the world.
Consequently, our goal at the freshman level for next year will be 360 minority freshmen, 10 percent of the freshman class. Currently it is about 8 percent.
Our goal at the faculty level will be to increase the number of minority faculty, from 124 to 200 by the year 2000. By minority faculty, I mean African American, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian American faculty.
We can do both of these things without sacrificing one iota of our standards. Indeed, it is racism to suggest that minority hiring means a relaxation of hiring standards. We don't have to compromise those standards because there are plenty of prospective minority faculty who meet them.
2. A great university creates new knowledge of the world and its peoples, its capacity for research a manifestation of its belief that the discovery of new knowledge ensures a better future.
KU has a strong research tradition in the liberal arts, and currently ranks fourth among all public universities in the number of humanities Ph.D.s which it graduates. It has great strength also in the social sciences.
We will preserve KU's strong liberal arts traditions in research, but we must also expand our grant and contract activity elsewhere if we are to preserve our status as a major American research university.
This year $92 million in research funds came into the university. By the year 2000, this number should be $120 million. To achieve that goal we must make commitments toward start-up funds, equipment purchases and matching funds. We also must phase out the use of indirect cost recoveries in our base budget, and use those funds for re-investment in research.
3. A great university believes in the sanctity of the relationship between student and teacher, the sharing of knowledge in that communion resulting in the best possible hope for human progress.
The quality of the undergraduate experience at KU will be the single most important determinant of how well the people of Kansas support this university. This year we will have two major opportunities to improve the undergraduate experience at KU.
First, we will be recruiting high achieving academic students wherever they are found in the State of Kansas--whether in Finney County or Johnson County, whether in Liberal or Iola or Olathe. The recruiting strategy of KU will be to achieve a student body commensurate with the quality of its faculty, its graduates, and its academic reputation. We will recruit the best students, and good students will follow. Because we are recruiting good students, better students will enroll.
Faculty are critical to this effort and are the first and best recruiter. If you demonstrate how much KU cares about students and student learning, if you set standards which challenge students, if you make teaching well a priority for your department, if you take the time to help and advise a perplexed freshman, if you will call students, and be available to talk to them on campus visits, then the University of Kansas will be successful in its recruitment strategy. If you think of recruiting as a function delegated to the central administration, we will not be successful. This is everyone's responsibility, because the quality of our student body will determine our reputation. There is no great university without a distinguished student body.
Working together, we can increase the number of National Merit Scholars enrolling in the freshman class to 100 within the next five years. We will have to raise private scholarship funds to do so, but we will also need your commitment to the undergraduate experience.
Second, we will have the opportunity this year to debate and implement the recommendations in the Freshman-Sophomore Experience report. This is a report which will be in your hands shortly. And it contains a number of thoughtful recommendations which will enable us to establish from the very first moment a student arrives on campus, that KU is a student-centered campus. I ask you to act on the recommendations of this report, and I pledge to find money to support it. Together we can institutionalize an attitude that says, the student is at the center of the University of Kansas.
4. A great university recognizes its obligation to contribute to an educated workforce for the society that supports it, particularly responding to labor shortages as they occur in that society.
If we are to be responsive to the needs of Kansas for an educated workforce, it means we must support and enhance the Regents Center on KU's Edwards Campus in Johnson County. That campus has grown from a modest program for public school teachers to a full blown graduate center, offering ten M.A. degrees and one doctorate. It currently provides 21 percent of the total graduate student credit hours of the University of Kansas. I believe KU must support and enhance and grow the Edwards Campus, offering more courses and degrees there. It will be one of the primary ways we will contribute to the economic success story of metropolitan Kansas City.
5. A great university serves the society that supports it. It helps to ensure food and shelter for all people, health care for the general population, a self-sustaining natural environment, the perpetuation of public education, and economic development.
KU must fulfill its statewide mission in all its service responsibilities, from the Geological Survey to Continuing Education. We must be present in western Kansas as well as Kansas City. We have a special statewide responsibility for the health and well being of the people of Kansas. We have the only medical school in the State, and the only academic health center in the State. We serve not only Wichita and Kansas City, where our medical school is located, but the entire State through our outreach in Nursing, Allied Health, and rural medicine. This is KU's special mission, and we must help Kansas re-create its health-care delivery system. Especially, we must do everything in our power to insure that the 375,000 patient visits per year to our Medical Center and to our rural clinics meet a standard for patient care which cannot be challenged. We must be patient-friendly and patient-oriented in every part of the State.
6. A great university is an international university, one whose programs have an impact on the entire world because its faculty think beyond local and national borders, and its students understand the inter-relatedness of a world where ideas and capital flow easily across geographical borders.
No one, graduate or undergraduate, should receive a degree from KU without some kind of international experience. For some, that experience will be interacting with the international community in residence at KU. For others, it should be travel and study abroad. Today about 750 students study abroad. I would expect that to be at least 2,000 students by the end of the century. About 35 faculty per year teach abroad. I would hope that could be 100 by the year 2000. Currently, there are 2,000 international students studying at KU. I would hope that could be 2,500 in five years.
7. A great university recognizes the wisdom of investing in the human development of the work force, so that each employee is able to pursue personal and professional goals without institutional obstacles. A great university has no glass ceiling.
Not only must we ensure that we have a personnel system in which both men and women encounter no barriers to their personal and professional goals, we should also make conscious investments in our work force as a whole--both classified and unclassified staff.
I will be asking a committee this fall to explore the possibility of enabling any KU full-time employee to take at least one course each semester tuition free, at a time which does not conflict with their work hours, assuming there is space available in the class. Yes, I know it is complicated to implement. But if we really believe in education as a means of improving the work force, then we need to invest in that belief. Let's find a way to do it.
8. A great university recognizes the physical legacy that it passes to the generation who will work and study there in the future and therefore maintains, preserves, and enhances its facilities and physical setting.
We have crumbling classrooms, an antiquated electrical infrastructure, undergraduate science labs which are inferior to those in high schools, and a computing structure which has not enabled us to network our own campus. (Sometimes I feel like Chancellor Fraser.)
I believe we must offer the Board of Regents, the Governor and Legislature of this State a means to maintain the State's physical investment at the University of Kansas. We must become partners with them in an act of stewardship which will preserve the value of this asset for our children. The total infrastructure need is approximately $30 million. The University cannot reallocate sufficient funds to meet this need, but the University proposes to do its part. We will reallocate funds for this purpose from University sources, and we ask the State to do its part. Match our reallocations dollar for dollar, until Kansas can find a mechanism to fund capital budgets for replacement and repair. We cannot do it all through reallocation and matching funds, but we can begin, and protect these assets until a more general solution is found.
9. A great university recognizes its responsibility to conserve the public and private monies that enable it to educate, research and serve. The public trust that accompanies those funds demands that they be allocated so as to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
We will cut our budget by $3,000,000 this year. We will learn to operate the university with a smaller staff and a more streamlined administration. I will be appointing in the next 2 weeks, a 21-member task force which will examine our administrative structure and our business and academic processes, looking for ways to streamline, re-engineer, improve, and economize in all offices, from the Chancellor's Office to Housekeeping, in all functions, from registration to purchasing. I need your help to accomplish this. Either by contributing ideas to the task force, or by sending your ideas directly to me. I believe there are savings to be achieved in this effort, and increased productivity to be gained. I ask that you join with me to find them.
10. A great university is one that has identified its priorities and planned with sufficient intelligence to ensure that those priorities receive the resources necessary for their accomplishment.
Once we are past this semester of budget cuts, in Spring, 1996, I will create a strategic planning process to identify strategic opportunities for KU between now and the end of the century. It will be a process built around these ten characteristics of a great university. I cannot predict everything that will be in that plan. But I can say with confidence that one thing which must be in that plan is an improvement in faculty salaries at the University of Kansas.
We have fallen behind other universities in the competition for labor in the university market. Faculty and staff at KU have been understanding and patient. But we must increase salaries by a minimum of 25% between now and the end of the century. That is a modest goal, and it is a minimum goal, and it is an achievable goal. It is so because again we can form a partnership with the Regents, the Governor and the Legislature to achieve this goal. We are in the process of downsizing the University workforce. As we do so, funds can be freed up to reallocate toward salaries. These reallocations, together with legislative appropriations can lead us toward this goal of 25 percent over five years, even though we know that this year, given the State's revenue picture, raises will be modest. The key is what happens over a five-year period, not what happens in any given year.
We can move forward and we will, despite the times, despite difficult circumstances. Past chancellors and past faculty whose spirit is present in 130 years of opening convocations are owed that courage and commitment.
So to sum up, I propose that we:
I ask you to join in this effort. We will do much more than I have outlined here, but these goals serve to illustrate the scope of our efforts. I believe that five years from today, when we attend the Opening Faculty Convocation, and honor the University's Higuchi Award winners, these will be achievements which any 21st Century university can be proud of.
