chancellor@ku.edu
This is the 132nd time that Kansas University has held an opening convocation to mark the beginning of a new academic year. This year we do so in a beautiful building that symbolizes something KU does especially well - combine the memory of the past, the Hoch facade, with the promise of the future--the state of the art electronics in this handsome space.
So, like a Phoenix, Budig Hall rises from the ashes of Hoch Auditorium, reinvented, grounded, we hope against the effects of a Kansas thunderstorm.
If Budig Hall suggests KU's respect for the physical past, convocations for one and one-third centuries suggest KU's respect for the rituals of the academic year, the annual welcoming of new faculty, the greeting of old colleagues, the challenging of fresh students.
Two years ago, as a chancellor with three month's experience on the job, I had the privilege of joining this faculty convocation for the first time. I shared with you ten characteristics of a great university and offered goals for the year 2000. We have made progress over the past two years. In 1995, there were 47 National Merit Scholars enrolled as we met for the opening convocation. Ninety National Merit Scholars enrolled in KU with this 1997 freshman class. What is even more important, I think, is that the average ACT score of our freshman class has risen from 23.6 last year to 24 this year. (Kathleen McCluskey-Fawcett, Alan Cerveny and the admissions staff have done a wonderful job.)
Two years ago I stated my belief that a great university creates new knowledge; its capacity for research a manifestation of its belief that the discovery of new knowledge insures a better future. In the 1996-97 school year, for the second year in a row, KU received more than $100 million in external research funds, one of the measures - not the only measure but one of the measures - of a university's research success. The research goal which I suggested then was $120 million in external research funds by the year 2000. I believe we will meet that goal. But no chancellor should claim any credit for a faculty doing research. The $120 million will be the natural and inevitable result of an excellent faculty practicing their profession.
The role of an administration and the role of a chancellor is to serve. Specifically, to serve faculty doing the work of the university. Our new research administration, headed by Dr. Robert Barnhill, will help in advancing toward our research goals. After a year of intense work under the excellent leadership of Howard Mossberg, faculty and staff have been able to put into place a new and expanded Center for Research, Inc. The advisory committee for the new CRINC has now been appointed. Together with Dr. Barnhill they will see to it that the new CRINC serves you by providing the proper environment for a research facility.
The expanded CRINC has a threefold mission. First, it will ensure that the user-friendly services of CRINC, and the freedom from bureaucracy that comes with being an affiliated corporation, will now be available to the entire campus, yet without any diminishment of service for the engineering faculty. Secondly, the expanded CRINC will make sure that KU makes the necessary reinvestment of indirect cost funds into the research capabilities of KU faculty, especially our young faculty just beginning their scholarly careers. We will not, as sometimes happened at KU in the past, use new indirect cost funds as part of the general budget. Thirdly, an expanded CRINC means new and additional funds will be allocated to support the research and creative work of this entire faculty in all areas - the arts and the humanities as well as the social sciences, the natural and physical sciences as well as the health sciences.
Why is this restructuring of the KU research administration so important? Because research is part of KU's destiny.
In contrast to Japan where research is primarily a part of industrial planning, or in contrast to many European countries where research is funded in government operated academies or institutes, the majority of basic research in the United States has been conducted in universities. Beginning during the Second World War when university scientists helped win the war by developing atomic energy and microwave radar, continuing after the war with the Federal Research Compact which funded university research through NSF, NIH and other government agencies, an elite group of 150 or so research universities, including the University of Kansas, accepted responsibility for a dual mission in post-war America. The university's mission has been to conduct the basic research necessary to expand the economy and maintain world intellectual leadership, and at the same time and with the same faculty educate the next generation of scholars, thinkers, and scientists. The genius of this research compact is that basic research in the United States has been institutionally wedded to education. The terms research and graduate studies, for example, are virtually synonymous in American higher education. Research Assistants are not laboratory technicians, but students studying for a graduate degree. Teaching Assistants are those students doing research in a graduate degree program while simultaneously developing and demonstrating teaching skills. Earning a Ph.D., the highest degree in our educational system, identifies the Ph.D. as the reward for conducting research.
This identification has shaped the modern American university. We believe as an article of faith that research is the medium for learning. The American research university expresses certain intellectual truths: knowledge follows inquiry, wisdom follows discovery. Research and education have become cause and effect. One does research in order to become educated. It is vital that this research university, KU, be supported by a research infrastructure that guarantees help and support for the faculty member conducting her or his research, and the graduate student pursuing her or his degree. The expanded CRINC, in cooperation with KU's graduate programs and graduate school, will perform that mission.
I also talked two years ago about how a great university invests in its work force. We can all be proud of expanding tuition assistance for KU staff from $30,000 in 1995 to $100,000 today. One of my hopes for KU was that we could find ways to reward the dedication of KU's employees. That was one of the motives behind the Kemper Teaching Fellowships, which not only recognize excellent teaching on the first day of the fall semester, but over the course of a five-year period will award $500,000 to 100 faculty as recognition of their teaching excellence.
When it became obvious that a contract with Coca-Cola would bring new revenue into the University, we saw a way to recognize and invest in KU's employee families. Beginning next year, we will be able to award $1,000 scholarships to 150 children of KU faculty and staff, if those children enroll at KU. Details about applications and eligibility will be available soon. But I wanted you to know about this new scholarship program and also why it is proposed. It is part of an overall plan to invest in KU's dedicated people.
In 1995 at that 130th convocation, I said that a great university recognizes the physical legacy - the buildings and grounds - it passes on to the generations who will work and study there in the future. KU has done so magnificently, and we must plan to continue that tradition. It is critical that the Lawrence campus of the University of Kansas have a campus plan, a framework for campus renewal.
We have had many campus plans in our history. Since 1904 planners have tried to imagine what the Lawrence campus should look like and how KU's physical future can best be shaped. The last serious effort was in 1973 and set in place many planning assumptions we hold today: Jayhawk Boulevard as the academic center of the campus, green space as a high priority, facilities not integral to the class-hour day located outside the core campus. We will be featuring in the next few weeks the Lawrence campus' new master plan. There will be an insert in the Oread and the UDK. The plan has been four years in the making and has been widely circulated and discussed.
There are two guiding goals to this plan. These two goals will inform all of our building and renovation efforts so long as I am Chancellor, and I hope for chancellors to come. The first goal can be stated quite simply. We must preserve the beauty of Mt. Oread. This is one of the most beautiful campuses in the world. We must preserve its beauty for those who come after us. The second goal is equally simple. We must create an environment which shows respect for learning. A leaking roof shows no respect for the classroom or laboratory or people underneath.
This campus plan will guide the $155 million of capital construction and landscaping which KU has currently committed to. Much of it is part of the Crumbling Classroom initiative. The plan will also guide the $100 million of future projects which we hope to build, assuming funds can be identified, in the next five to seven years. The list that you see on the screen of current and future projects is a draft, but these lists reflect our best judgments, given current conditions, of how KU can preserve the beauty of its main campus and demonstrate its respect for learning.
Finally, I shared with you in both the 130th and 131st convocations that a great university is a university that has identified its priorities and planned with sufficient intelligence that those priorities receive the resources necessary for their accomplishment. Ninety National Merit Scholars enrolled, an enhanced honors program, the Crumbling Classroom improvements, the half million dollars in Kemper Fellowships, increased academic scholarship funds are all positive steps. But other goals have not been met. We must do a better job of recruiting minority students and minority and women faculty. We have fallen short, because of the political climate, of our goal of improving faculty salaries by 5% per year, although I am happy to report this year the regents' request is for a 4% increase and there is discussion of a special merit pool beyond that.
As the 21st century approaches, we have to contemplate the future. We have goals to be accomplished by the year 2000, but what will be our plan for 2001?
I want to propose three broad initiatives which KU must consider as it contemplates the future. In the 21st century, we will continue to do, as we do every day, the things which are characteristic of a great university. We will welcome and respect all peoples. With the new CRINC, we will create even more new knowledge. We will recognize the sanctity of teaching. We will respond to the needs of the labor market, and we will serve the state which supports us. We will become even more an international university. We will invest in our employees. We will preserve the campus and follow our campus plan. We will conserve our funds and we will identify our priorities. Yet doing all of these things will not be enough. We also must undertake new initiatives in three broad areas if we are to survive the changes which the new century has in store for us.
First, I believe we must act and plan more as one university. I do not mean that all parts of the university will be alike or that the multiple missions of KU will be fused into one. The basic mission of the university will still be carried out by individual faculty organized into departments, centers and institutes. But we do not now, in my opinion, take advantage of the potential of collective strength or pursue the opportunities in communal planning.
The Lawrence campus does not work enough with the Medical Center and the Medical Center campus does not work enough with the Lawrence campus. Neither the Lawrence campus nor the Medical Center campus works closely enough with the Regents Center campus. The Wichita campus of the Kansas University Medical School is not used often enough as a resource for all KU campuses, and Topeka's Capital Center campus is hardly known to anyone.
If KU is to be successful in the 21st century, we must find a way to do joint planning and joint programs between Lawrence and Kansas City - meaning the Medical Center and the Regents Center. And we probably need to start calling the Regents Center what it is, the Edwards campus of the University of Kansas.
KU should be the institution of first choice in greater Kansas City. It should be the research university that provides the underpinning for economic development in this metropolitan area. Kansas City cannot achieve its aspiration as a city without KU contributing a research environment and graduate and professional education to its future. I-70 and K-10 become lifelines to a world of opportunity.
I don't know all the ways we could be cooperating more fully. Sharing resources, building relationships among faculty, communicating between Lawrence and Kansas City and Wichita and Topeka and Johnson County are the direction of the future. KU has a statewide mission. Until we have tried as one university to gain the maximum benefit from our collective resources and multiple campuses, I know we will be less of a university than we can be.
The second broad initiative which KU must consider in the future is its responsibility to serve Kansans. Because KU is the major public university in Kansas, because Kansas State is the land-grant university, I'm not sure KU has ever immersed itself in the necessary internal dialogue to define its service role. We know that KU will always have a statewide mission to provide quality health care and adequate medical personnel for the operation of the state's health-care system. But what role should KU play in the economic development of the state of Kansas? Of Kansas City? Of the K-10 corridor? Or of Lawrence itself?
We have many important service units at the University of Kansas on all of our campuses. From Continuing Education in Lawrence, to the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center in Hutchinson, to the total quality management training for state employees at the Capital Center in Topeka, to the Medical Center's telecommunications program in Kansas City and Hays, to the primary care clinics on the Wichita campus, KU serves Kansas. But in the 21st century, I believe we will have to look at service in a larger dimension. Derrick Bok, the former president of Harvard, has criticized American higher education for failing to take on those issues which are most important to the person in the street - the quality of our schools, the deficiencies of our government, the persistence of poverty, drugs, illiteracy, crime, and disintegrating families.
We must think through our service mission. How can we best serve Kansans in an age when many of our social problems seem overwhelming? Especially, I believe we must serve Kansas by accepting a special responsibility for civic literacy. The university cannot ignore the deteriorating institutions in our society. Last election, barely half of eligible citizens voted. Our curriculum and our students must reflect the idea of engaged citizenship. A KU graduate should be a socially responsible citizen, concerned not only with others less fortunate, but with the institutions of a democratic society that insure the continuance of our way of life. KU serves Kansans every day. But how will we serve Kansans in the future?
Finally, I believe KU must take the initiative to define and enhance the special nature of the learning communities on all of our campuses, but especially in Lawrence. What will be the future of KU and Lawrence? We have one of the most beautiful residential campuses in the country. We have one of the most cohesive learning communities in the country. Will students continue to come and live on this campus or in the surrounding neighborhoods of Lawrence when they can secure their degrees by way of the Internet? Peter Drucker says residential campuses will be defunct by the year 2030 - dinosaurs that are simply not needed anymore. Three hundred colleges and universities now offer virtual degrees. Will that be the Lawrence campus' fate, or is there a role for a residential campus of the future built around the quality of the learning community created there? What should that special community consist of if it is going to entice young people to choose life at KU over the conveniences of home? What gives the Lawrence campus an edge? A campus ethnically and culturally diverse, international? A campus with a strong honors program, an environmental ethic, a socially responsible curriculum, opportunities in the arts, living and learning spaces that train both the mind and the heart? I don't know what the learning community of 2030 on the Lawrence campus will look like, but I do know we must begin now to plan for the future around that question.
And that is what I leave you with today. Three broad initiatives that need your analysis and contemplation. I am proposing a strategic planning process for 1997-98 that begins with the discussion of these three broad initiatives with various campus groups. We will ask some of you to serve on task forces to examine these initiatives. Others we will ask to consult with the task forces and make recommendations to them. By the spring of 1998, we hope you will have arrived at a series of recommendations which can be funded for the future.
I have no illusions about this process. It will not be easy. We have much to do to just meet the challenges of 1997. And that is what David Shulenburger wants to talk to you about today as we end the 132nd KU opening convocation. How do we sustain our library at a time when circumstances seem to conspire to diminish it and, therefore, to diminish us as a university?
I am not going to give a long introduction to David. It is a privilege to work with him as provost. I was proud to appoint him as provost, and I am even more convinced after a year of working closely with him that it was the right decision.
The provost of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, David Shulenburger.
