chancellor@ku.edu
I welcome you to the 134th opening fall convocation of the University of Kansas.
According to Clifford Griffin, the university's historian, when the University of Kansas opened on September 12, 1866, during the first fall convocation, "the only things KU had in common with the genuine universities of the time were a name, a charter, and a quarrelsome faculty. Two of the three professors thought that the other, who was also acting president, was both intellectually incompetent and personally uncongenial, and they were conniving with several regents to unseat him."
You can understand why, four years ago, in the fall of 1995, when I opened the first convocation of my tenure as chancellor, I had some uneasiness about this tradition.
Provost David Shulenburger and I will not speak at length today. I will talk generally about the university, and he will talk specifically about research and graduate education. Our intention, as always, is to provoke a dialogue, which we hope will lead to action over the next nine months. My goal today is to accomplish three purposes:
First, to share with you some of the things which have happened since that 129th annual convocation, in September 1995.
Second, to identify some goals for the future which grow naturally, I believe, from the university's strategic plan.
Finally, to examine a special opportunity for KU created by the Kansas Board of Education.
Five years ago, in the fall of 1995, I was a new chancellor who had been graciously welcomed to Lawrence and told over and over, "It's great to have you here. You seem like a nice enough person. It's too bad that you're coming now, when there isn't any money. The university won't be able to do much. It will be largely status quo."
Interestingly, the fall of 1995 and the fall of 1999 are very similar. Just as 1995 was a tight budget year, it appears that 1999 will be as well. The state budget director has already invited state agencies to submit budgets 6% below last year. Despite the strength of the Kansas economy, despite record profits, high wages, and low unemployment, Kansas State government faces a revenue crisis.
Simply put, during the last four years over one billion dollars in potential tax revenue has been returned to the public through tax cuts. In so doing, the state has not kept enough revenue to adequately fund state services, including higher education. It is particularly depressing to think of how much Kansas higher education might have been improved had even 10% of that unrealized one billion surplus been invested in the state's universities.
But none of that billion dollars was invested in education, which leaves us with a historically familiar question in a state whose motto is "To the Stars Through Difficulties."
Can KU still make progress? My answer is the same in 1999 as it was in 1995. We will not be prisoners of the status quo. We will tighten our belts, find even more economies in our system, and reallocate dollars to accomplish our goals. We will also work night and day to secure public and private support for university funding.
I believe we will make progress in 1999-2000 primarily because I have observed the talent and dedication of KU's faculty and staff over the past four years. The evidence of that talent and dedication speaks for itself. Let me cite some evidence and you decide whether we've been stretching toward the stars or we've been mired in the mud.
I do not want you to think I am claiming that all is perfect. There are other areas where we have not done as well as we hoped. Minority student enrollment has risen, for example, but still is only at about 9.5% of the entering freshmen class, up from 8% in 1995, but still short of our goal of 10% by the year 2000. Clearly, we must work harder in recruiting minority students at all levels this school year.
More specifically, we have not met our goals in faculty and staff salaries. Both classified and unclassified staff salaries have risen only 17% over the past five years, about 5% above inflation. Faculty salaries have risen 18.5%, about 6.5% above inflation, but both figures are still well below our goal of 25% for the five-year period, so that KU salaries can come closer to our peers.
It is some consolation that the regents have recognized this issue and requested faculty salary increases of 8.5% for FY 2000 in order to avoid falling significantly behind our competitors. It is unclear how this request will be received, but we will certainly fight to try and achieve it.
In the 1997-98 school year we initiated a strategic planning process which identified three major goals for KU's future:
Over 130 different goals for KU come from this project and are now being implemented.
Perhaps the most important goal resulting from Acting as One University was the goal to live up to our status as Kansas City's research university. Kansas City contains KU's research triad - faculty from Lawrence, the Medical Center, and the Edwards Campus in Johnson County, contributing research and graduate education, particularly in the health sciences, to the economic and cultural development of the bi-state region called Greater Kansas City.
A second goal of our strategic plan has been to serve Kansans, and groups like the Kansas Geological Survey, KU's Division of Continuing Education, and the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center in Hutchinson, which trains 70% of the law enforcement officers of the state, fulfill that mission.
Of particular note is the way that some research efforts, such as the Kansas Remote Sensing laboratory, serve Kansas by creating commercially viable products, such as the "Green Report" to help Kansans track the progress of wheat production, and provide essential knowledge to both producers and to commodities markets.
The third theme of our strategic plan, "Building Premier Learning Communities," seems particularly important given the recent actions of the Kansas State Board of Education. The board's actions raise for us the question of what constitutes an excellent curriculum for the study of science.
In case you have been stranded on a Pacific Island without contact with the outer world this summer, let me briefly summarize what the Kansas Board of Education has done.
The board voted 6-4 not to include evolution, as it has been commonly defined, in science standards recommended to Kansas Public Schools. The board also removed from the proposed set of science standards references to radioactive aging of rocks, continental drift, and the "big bang theory" of the origin of the universe, apparently because some people have religious beliefs which hold that the universe is only about 10,000 years old, rather than the billions of years which seem to be confirmed by the geological evidence.
The board's action grew out of an earlier attempt by three board members to rewrite the set of science standards requested by the board from a group of 27 board-appointed science teachers and science professionals. This rewritten version became an alternative document which included numerous explicit references to "creationism" and "intelligent design," and also made the claim that since both evolution and gravity were only scientific theories, neither should be taught as fact.
This alternative document was eventually abandoned however, perhaps because the teaching of creationism in a science classroom has been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, violating the principle of separation of church and state.
The science standards which were finally adopted by the 6-4 vote made references to evolution in terms of "micro evolution" - minor genetic changes observed in a population over time - but eliminated references to evolution as scientists normally understand and define it and certainly as the accumulated empirical evidence of the past two centuries would seem to support it.
As you may have observed, or experienced personally, the board's action has become a topic of international derision. Talk show hosts as well as Salman Rushdie have responded with comedy or satire. Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard geologist, wrote in Time Magazine that the Kansas board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of the new millennium might exclaim, "They still call it Kansas, but I don't think we're in the real world anymore."
One of the most unfortunate aspects of this whole mess is that the board has promulgated the belief that science and religion are incompatible, that one cannot believe in both God and evolution. This is not more true today than it was in 1925 in the Scopes trial, in Tennessee, and must be particularly offensive to scientists secure in both their religious faith and in their scientific knowledge. It is certainly a surprise to the Catholic Church, most Jewish theologians, and the majority of Protestant denominations, all of whom have asserted the belief that science and religion are not incompatible.
It is inviting to deride the Board of Education members who have made Kansas such an object of scorn and embarrassment. In their frustration many have done so, repudiating the board.
I would propose a more constructive view. I believe the board is filled with well-meaning people, duly elected by the people of Kansas, who take seriously their statutory responsibility for public education policy in the K-12 system. Obviously, Kansans will have an opportunity at the ballot box or in the legislative arena to show what they feel about this controversy, and that is as it should be.
The actions of some board members may reflect their personal religious beliefs, and may even be an attempt to impose their beliefs on others, but it serves little purpose for us to challenge those religious convictions or to personally attack the members for living their faith, or carrying out their responsibility as they see it.
However, if we believe in the United States Constitution, which says that there should be separation between church and state, and if we believe that these attempts to undermine the teaching of science grow from a misunderstanding of scientific principles, as well as a mistaken notion that one must choose between God and science, then we really have only one choice. We should help make our university - the University of Kansas - the leader in both Kansas and in the nation in science education. We need to show support for science teachers across Kansas, many of whom are feeling beleaguered, and we need to prepare teachers and citizens who understand the public role of science.
We live in an exceedingly complex world shaped in many ways by scientific knowledge. As citizens we have to form opinions about scientific issues. If we don't, we fail in our responsibility to be contributing members to the democratic discourse that ultimately determines the nature and quality of our society. Whether it is the environment, medical care, or highways, science affects our life.
As Robert Hagen and James Trefill state in their book, Science Matters, "More and more scientific and technological issues dominate national debate, from the greenhouse effect to the economic threat from foreign technology. Being able to understand these debates is becoming as important to you as being able to read. You must become scientifically literate."
That is my challenge: let KU become a national leader in educating scientists, science teachers, and scientifically literate citizens. Scientific literacy as I define it here means quite simply, a sufficient understanding of science to understand and contribute meaningfully to debate on public issues. For example, science literacy is not the ability to sequence DNA, but an ability to understand and comprehend the ways in which the mapping of DNA in the human genome project will affect the practice of medicine, and consequently, one's health care.
Scientific literacy is not "doing science." Only highly educated professionals "do science." A scientifically literate person uses a knowledge of science to understand the ways that scientific discoveries will affect one's life and change one's society.
Thus, let us establish three special goals for the premier learning community that will be KU in the 21st Century.
Let us decide now and marshal the economic means, human resources, and political will to accomplish the following goals:
I do not know whether the current controversy created by the Board of Education is partially the result of our "educational shortcomings," but I do believe that the Board of Education's action creates tremendous opportunities for KU. KU can and should, in my opinion, exercise the leadership that will help redeem the educational reputation of Kansas and contribute to Kansas becoming the national leader among the states in scientific literacy.
I will be asking many of you to serve on a major task force with the charge to determine the feasibility of making scientific literacy a major goal of KU's learning community. To do so, we must decide what role scientific literacy should play in General Education, Internet course development, undergraduate research, and in graduate training.
I suspect that there are many, both within the state and nationally, who will be willing to help us if we move ahead. They know that what has happened in Kansas could happen in other states. Of one thing I am certain, there is a need for scientific literacy everywhere in the country, not just in Kansas. If those who were shocked by the Board of Education's decision really care about young people learning science, and are not just indulging prejudices about the Midwest, or the people of Kansas, they should be the first to enlist in our cause. Let's see a Phoenix rise from these ashes. To the stars through difficulty. Let KU rise to star status in science education, and overcome the difficulties which the summer of 1999 has imposed on every Kansan proud of this state and respectful of its people.
