Speeches & Publications

Faculty & Staff Convocation

This is the fourth time I've had the privilege to address the opening faculty convocation.

I always do so with a sharp sense of history. One hundred thirty-three times this event has taken place. One hundred thirty-three times a Chancellor stood before faculty and students to begin the school year.

We do it in a different way now, with an opening student convocation at the Lied Center and an opening faculty convocation at Budig Hall, which enables us to recognize award-winning faculty. But it is the same event, the same ritual to mark the ceremony of renewal we call the fall semester.

One hundred thirty-three years ago the University of Kansas was a class of 40 students and three faculty meeting on September 12, 1866, in Old North Hall, an unfinished, 50-foot-square, jerry-built structure, on a treeless ridge. Today, the University of Kansas is a major American university of 28,000 students and 2,000 faculty on four campuses, the largest of which is this special piece of greenery called Mt. Oread, which many of us believe is one of the most beautiful campuses in the United States.

We made some minor changes to the chancellor's office this past year, and took the opportunity to hang the portraits of all previous 15 chancellors, including Chancellor R. W. Oliver, that first chancellor of 133 years ago.

Chancellor Oliver, an Episcopal minister, looks stern and somber, a serious reminder of KU's role as the intellectual resource for this society we call Kansas.

Each of those chancellors, I now realize after three and one-half years in Lawrence, prepared the university for the future.

Chancellor Oliver not only oversaw the creation of a curriculum, he also supervised the planting of 500 trees on this barren ridge. It took an extraordinary act of imagination to look at this unpromising beginning - not a single student was ready for a college-level curriculum - and envision the creation of a university like KU. And I have to believe he had this vision, or he never would have planted those 500 trees.

So it is appropriate, I think, each year to take stock of where we've been, what we've accomplished, and test our ability to look beyond the complaints, worries and defects of the present. Do we have the ability and faith and imagination to see into our future?

The future is not the fear of the unknown, the future is being equal to the surprise of opportunity. Will we, as a faculty, as a university, recognize opportunity when it comes?

It is the annual question implicit to these proceedings, from the 19th century to the 20th. And the accumulation of 133 years demonstrates that more often than not, KU has recognized opportunity and acted.

David Shulenburger and I today are going to try and identify some of the opportunities for KU in the 21st century. We all know how easy it is to hold tight to this century, to resist change. We also know how much security comes from holding on to the past - the way things used to be done. It is the easiest, and most comfortable, and certainly the least risky to just continue doing as we've done before.

But what Dave will be talking about on the Lawrence campus, and I will be talking about for the university as a whole, are the possibilities we see in our future. We know it is a vision shared by Executive Vice Chancellor Don Hagen at KUMC. So we know it is a vision that can be shared across the leadership of the university, and we are really asking you as a faculty to share that vision.

I believe we are about to enter another era of heightened opportunity. Passing from one century to another is always a time for reflection, as it was when Henry Adams viewed the dynamo at the eve of the 19th century, and even in his anxiety and ambivalence about the coming of electrical power, still glimpsed the 20th century's future.

Why do I believe we are entering into an era of heightened opportunity? Four reasons.

First, we are living, for the first time in my life, in an era of balanced federal budgets, in fact, even federal surpluses. As the news reports say, ironically, we are drowning in black ink. What will we do with these surpluses? How will our lives be affected? Will higher education benefit from these surpluses? We honestly don't know how to answer these questions because we've never had this opportunity before in recent history. But I believe education will be a beneficiary of federal budget surpluses.

Second, the fundamental relationship between state and federal governments has changed. With the devolution of power and authority from federal to state and local governments, the solutions to our problems lie increasingly in our own hands. Just as the most creative solutions to welfare problems today seem to come from state government, so do the expectations that state universities play an increasingly important role in helping to solve State problems. More than ever, our preparation of students who are creative and imaginative problem solvers becomes an important factor in the state's future.

Thirdly, the extraordinary growth in economic wealth in this country bodes well for a university, like KU, that depends upon private giving to be the margin of excellence which separates us from other Midwestern universities. The KUEA transfers $43 million per year into the university in support of students, faculty and other costs. As we explore the possibilities of the future, the chance to raise additional private funds for university programs becomes an increasing possibility because of the robust wealth of the American economic system.

Finally, we are in the midst of an electronic revolution of extraordinary proportions. The computing and telecommunications revolution is still only in its infancy. We have only begun to assess the opportunities it creates to cure disease, knit the globe together, enhance our mental capabilities. I see nothing but opportunity for a university willing to invest in information technology.

In sum, the future seems a sea of possibility. The key question is: what do we think about that future - are we ready for it? Will we be equal to its opportunities?

I hope that in the past three years that we've been able to show that change can create opportunity.

Consider the way the university looks now, compared to what it was only a few years ago. On the Lawrence campus, we have $150 million of capital construction going on, and a new organizational structure: a chancellor/provost model which I believe, and I gather you believe, is working well. I know we have an excellent provost who makes wise decisions, day in and day out. We have a new research entity, CRINC, which will put faculty first in preparing and administering grant proposals, and which is designed to serve as a vehicle for re-investing indirect costs in young faculty and in productive faculty. Last year research expenditures moved from $100 million to $108 million, and we are well on the road toward our goal of $120 million by the year 2000.

On the Med Center campus, we have an entirely new leadership team, led by Don Hagen's enthusiasm and excellence, the 16 practice foundations functioning as one, Kansas University Physicians Inc., the first new capital construction in almost a decade, and a hospital which on October 1, 1998, will officially become a public authority rather than a state agency. Thereby, for the first time in its history, the hospital will have the freedom to act as a non-profit health care delivery system rather than as a revenue collecting agency of state government.

But whatever changes we have made over the past three years, we still must prepare for the future and the primary way a university does so is to strategically plan. In that first faculty convocation speech four years ago, I identified 10 characteristics of a great university, which I believed had to be part of our day-to-day commitment to excellence. The most important principle of the ten, however, was the last:

A great university identifies its priorities and plans with sufficient intelligence to ensure that those priorities receive the resources necessary so that they can be accomplished.

What does that mean for KU?

100 people from all parts of university: faculty, staff, students
131 recommendations which are now in process of being assigned for implementation or further study.

You can read the recommendations on the KU Web page by clicking on Initiative 2001. All of these recommendations will either be implemented or studied. All will be acted upon.

For example, one recommendation of the one university task force was to simplify reimbursement processes for inter-campus travel. That has been assigned to the director of administration to implement.

But what Initiative 2001 really does is help us identify our institutional priorities and how they will direct our future.

I would like to share with you what seem to me to be the major thrusts coming from Initiative 2001.