chancellor@ku.edu
The formality and seriousness of this ceremony creates its own set of expectations.
I know, because I have read the inaugural speeches of all my predecessors. Since the installation of Dr. John Fraser, KU's second chancellor, in 1868, there has always been an inauguration ceremony, and the chancellor has usually given a formal speech, noble in purpose, high in rhetoric.
For example, almost a century ago, during an inauguration that lasted four days and included a five-hour formal dinner for a thousand people, Chancellor Frank Strong issued a clarion call to KU supporters: "Men and women of Kansas, do you love this state? Do you love its broad prairies where in the springtime the wandering breath of God stirs the perfume of a million flowers? Do you love the memory of its pioneers, their struggles, their hardships, their tears? Do you love your children? Then do not allow the University of Kansas to miss its destiny."
These are noble sentiments, nobly expressed, and I admit to you today that I tried to write such a speech.
I must be honest. It was terrible. I will not inflict it upon you. You don't know how glad you should be. You will thank me for years to come.
Fortunately, thirty-five years ago, Clarke Wescoe stood on the stage of Hoch Auditorium and in plain and simple words identified the purpose of this occasion. "Leadership of the university is responsible to the society within which and for which it exists. You are entitled, therefore, to hear from me my personal convictions." I agree with Chancellor Wescoe. I am going to share my personal convictions by telling three stories.
I.
I want to begin with the true story of Ruby Williams of Warner Robins, Georgia. I know about her because a reporter named Kevin Sack, working for the New York Times, has written about her.
Ruby Williams is 84 years old and she has lived a hardscrabble life. From an early age she worked in the Georgia sun, chopping cotton and cutting asparagus.
She didn't go to school often as a young woman, some 70 years ago, and when she did it was only for a month at a time. It was a segregated school, poor and inadequate, three miles from her home. By the age of 14 she had dropped out. She married at 18 and spent a lifetime of sharecropping and domestic work. She was poor and illiterate, unable to read beyond the most simple words.
What is remarkable about Ruby Williams? Ruby Williams, in the year 1995, at the age of 84, learned to read.
"I want to read my Bible," she said, and she learned to do so, working every night with a tutor in a literacy project. She reads slowly, methodically, and phonetically, with her right index finger sliding across the lines of the large-print Bible.
The effect of the Word on Ruby Williams cannot be overemphasized. As she puts it, "I can read, I can read. Sometimes I pick up the Bible and read and read and read, I sure do. Glory, hallelujah!"
Mrs. Williams' story illustrates a basic truth about learning that can serve the University of Kansas well. Even at the age of 84 she has not yet reached her potential as an educated human being. There is more for her to learn, unused capacity in her brain, and she has the will to reach a little higher, push a little harder, to understand her world. She acquired a skill she needed to interpret that world, and it has brought her great joy. Not only does she have the desire to learn, and a potential to learn, she also has a purpose in learning. She wants to experience personally the word of God. Desire, potential, purpose, and joy - these are the raw ingredients of learning that every KU student brings to the classroom. We must respect these human gifts!
Most students who enter here will have the potential to learn enough to graduate from the University of Kansas. A few will not, and a few will fall by the wayside. But until we are confident that every single individual student is being challenged, helped to reach their individual capacity, respected for what they bring here, cared about, we cannot say that we are graduating enough of our students, or that we have fulfilled our mission.
You have named me chancellor, but I also teach. I teach American literature at 7:30 a.m. to a class of 40 freshmen and sophomores. I do so because I love to do it, but also because I believe the chancellor's actions make a statement about his beliefs.
I believe in the classroom. It changed me and it changed Ruby Williams and it will change your son or daughter, grandson or granddaughter. Every one of us sitting here can think back to a teacher who made a difference in our lives. Chancellor Gene Budig, who has been so helpful to me in this transition, said it well on his inauguration, 15 years ago: "The faculty are a priceless asset for the state of Kansas." My own personal belief is that faculty recreate the University of Kansas every time they enter the classroom. When you believe in the classroom, you recognize its many different forms. The classroom is a group of medical students on grand rounds in Kansas City. It is a fourth-year family practice student seeing a patient in Wichita. The classroom is a graduate student in pharmacy finishing an experiment that may lead to a cure for cancer. It is a pianist in a master class in a studio. It is a group of civil engineering students in the field in Topeka, finding a way to save the city a million dollars in storm sewer design. The classroom is a social work practicum in the Juniper Gardens project in Wyandotte County, and it is a seminar for a screenwriter in the Hall Center for the Humanities in Lawrence.
In all these classrooms, the common element must be a high standard. Students will strive to meet the standards set. We find our students' potential when we extend their horizons.
"Jump at the sun," a mother told her children. "You may not reach the sun, but at least you'll get off the ground." Only high standards will produce a university Kansas can be proud of. I believe in the description of a university once attributed to Thomas Jefferson, "an aristocracy of achievement in a democracy of opportunity."
Students, you honor us with your presence. If we can discover your desire, challenge you to fulfill your potential, and care enough about you as human beings to find the purpose for your learning, we will have a student centered university. We will all know the joy of learning that Ruby Williams knows. We will all say, "Glory, Hallelujah."
II.
So I want to tell a second story about learning, about my 8-year-old son, Arna.
He is a very curious boy. He loves to explore the large house that he lives in, and he is always trying to understand what makes things work. Not very long ago this curiosity took him to the basement, screwdriver in hand, where he proceeded to remove the wall plates covering the basement electrical outlets, so he could see the wires inside.
I concluded that curiosity can be dangerous. I sat down with him to try to communicate why this was not a good idea. I explained that he could be shocked or electrocuted.
"What is 'electrocuted'?" he asked.
I tried to explain electricity, and how he could be badly injured if he played with electrical outlets. Searching for a dramatic example, I said, "When really bad murderers are executed, they are strapped in a chair and electricity goes through their bodies and they die." Arna thought a moment. Then he looked up.
"Wouldn't it just be easier to give them a screwdriver and tell him to unscrew the outlet plate?"
Human beings are driven to discover what is behind the protective wall plate, what causes things to work. What is electricity and how does it happen? Like most research scholars, Arna was willing to take risks to find out. At a research university this quest to learn how things work, why things happen, is carried out at its most sophisticated level. Faculty at a research university are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to satisfy their curiosity.
I once spent eight years of my life and travelled 30,000 miles in a pickup camper, doing research on the life and times of Zora Neale Hurston, a brilliant African-American woman writer. Hurston called research "formalized curiosity."
KU is a research university because every day faculty and students are driven by the need for original intellectual inquiry. The Harvard mathematician and philosopher Sir Alfred North Whitehead has described this research process with great eloquence.
In his essay "Universities and Their Function," Whitehead argues that universities are both schools of education and schools of research, but the primary reason for the university's existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students, or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to members of the faculty. He says that so far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the 15th century. He means that so long as there are books, we can always acquire information by ourselves.
What is the justification for a university then?
The justification for a university, said Whitehead, is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and "zest for life" by uniting young and old in "the imaginative consideration of learning." What does this mean? Is this some empty rhetorical flourish? I don't think so. It means, says Whitehead, that the "atmosphere of excitement arising from imaginative consideration transforms knowledge. A fact is no longer a bare fact. It is invested with all its possibilities."
In Arna's story, the bare fact of the wall plug and the nature of electricity are invested with possibility as soon as he understands the danger. He sees possibilities in the wall plug that his father never imagined.
At its most basic level, research in the university "invests bare facts with all their possibilities." If A is true, then B, C, D, and E may be true. We test the hypothesis and reflect on its consequences. If DNA really has this double helix structure, then that fact becomes invested with a world of possibilities. All of a sudden, biology itself is transformed, as it was in the '60s, and molecular biology is born.
Research has been an integral part of KU's identity for a very long time. In 1906, KU Professor of Chemistry Hamilton Cady discovered the occurrence of helium in natural gas, a discovery that eventually led to the commercial development of helium in the Hugoton gas field.
In 1930, a KU student, Clyde Tombaugh, discovered the planet Pluto.
KU Professor Tak Higuchi in the 1960s became recognized internationally as the father of physical chemistry. His collaborative research efforts led to the development of the timed release capsule.
This week, ABC News has been at the KU Medical Center to film KU doctors Steve Wilkinson and William Koller implant an electrode into the brain of a Parkinson's patient. The electrode enables the patient to control the tremors caused by Parkinson's disease.
Forty-five years ago, the former dean of the Medical Center, Franklin Murphy, in his inaugural address, pointed out that it was a matter of pride to Kansans that they have a research university of KU's distinction in the state.
"Always Kansas has prided itself on its university, and always the university has striven to reflect credit on the state."
Let us consider that mutual pride for a moment, and how it has grown over the past 130 years.
In 1866 when the University of Kansas accepted its first class, it had three professors, $21,000, and one building. As one of its first chancellors admitted, in truth it was little more than a high school. Its one building, described by KU's historian was a "jerry-built three-story structure, 50 feet square, set on a high, windswept, treeless hill in Lawrence called Hogback Ridge."
Today, the University of Kansas is an academic community of 7,500 employees, 2,000 faculty, 28,000 students and 130,000 alumni. It has a $600 million budget, only 32 percent of which comes from state appropriations. Over $100 million of this budget comes from research funds awarded to the university by outside agencies, most from the federal government. Its total population of students and staff would make it the ninth largest city in Kansas. It has the most loyal alumni association and the most generous endowment association of any university I know of.
It grants 58 percent of the doctoral and professional degrees in the state and 35 percent of the undergraduate degrees. U.S. News and World Report says that KU's academic reputation ranks it 28th among universities in the United States. Various other rankings place KU's library in the top 30 in the nation, its medical school in the top 25, its MBA program in the top 15, its public administration program in the top six, its Spanish doctoral program in the top three and U.S. News says KU's special education program is number one in the country. As you may have heard, there is also a top 10 ranked basketball and football team, too, and we are proud of them, and of all KU student athletes.
Hogback Ridge? It has been transformed into Mt. Oread, one of the most beautiful settings in America for a college campus. And Mt. Oread's transformation is not the only transformation. Hogback Ridge has also become a Regents Center campus in Johnson County, a capitol center in Topeka, a third- and fourth-year medical school in Wichita, and a major medical center in Kansas City.
The University of Kansas has become a statewide university with a statewide mission. KU has the only public law school, pharmacy school, and medical school in the state. It has research labs in Parsons and a law enforcement training center in Hutchinson. It trains firefighters and law officers from all over Kansas. It teaches total quality management to state employees in Topeka, and how to do business in Japan to corporations in Kansas City. It is not hard to see why Kansas has always taken pride in its university, or how the university has brought credit to the state. The challenge before us will be how to maintain and improve a university of this distinction in an unclear and uncertain future.
III.
And that brings me to my last story. I want to tell a story from a book entitled Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis.
Liar's Poker tells how Lewis became a 25-year-old millionaire as a bond salesman on Wall Street in the late 1980s. He claims no special genius as a bond salesman, and sees himself as the lucky beneficiary of what he calls "a rare and amazing glitch in the fairly predictable history of getting and spending."
Lewis describes a genius of a bond trader named Alexander, whom he knew in London. Alexander was remarkable for his ability to display second- and third-order thinking. He had the ability to see secondary and tertiary effects in any natural disaster.
When the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded, Alexander was on the phone within seconds after the damage was reported on the wire. "Buy Idaho potatoes," he told Lewis.
What did Idaho potatoes have to do with the nuclear reactor meltdown deep in Russia?
Alexander was capable of second- and third-order thinking. The nuclear disaster would mean great human tragedy, but it would also mean a cloud of nuclear radiation, drifting over Northern Europe (the first order of events). Food and water supplies, including the potato crop, would be contaminated (the second order of events). American potatoes raised in the clear mountain air of Idaho would sell for a premium (the third order of events). The trader who held Idaho potato futures would be a richer man.
What is the relevance of this story for KU? I believe we are entering an era in which second- and third-order thinking will become increasingly important to the future of the University.
One phenomenon, in particular, will challenge our abilities:
The telecommunications revolution.
In 1972, there were only 150,000 computers in the world. Today, Intel ships 100 million personal computers a year. Let me illustrate how fast information can be sent to and from these computers. Fiber optic technology has become so sophisticated that a fiber the size of a human hair can deliver in less than one second every issue ever published by the Wall Street Journal.
The combination of the personal computer and the Internet will have a profound impact on the way we teach and do research. Students now have at their personal disposal an entire world of information and interaction, only a keystroke away. If not now, then soon, we will all be able to shop, bank, worship, conduct a courtship, or rid ourselves of aggression by the simple act of accessing the net.
The second- and third-order effects of this revolution are only beginning to be felt on campus. The boundaries of distance matter less and less. Information has become democratized. The Library of Congress will be available at our fingertips, and it can be sorted out to our particular interest, whether we are interested in Plato or Pizza Huts. Our own library's effectiveness will be measured by how well-connected it is with other information sources, not how many volumes it possesses. The acquisition budgets of the 21st century will be for electronic operations.
The economies of scale in bringing large numbers of students together to hear one professorial voice will be reversed. The economies of the future will be in distributing information electronically, with the professor available online as coach and resource, while the student, in the isolation and convenience of personal space and time, interacts with the computer. Curiously, the student-faculty ratio, a function of space, may be less important than the faculty response speed, a function of time. Our challenge will be in figuring out how to maintain the human contact between professor and student, the tissue connecting our academic community.
I believe Kansas and its university will more than meet the need for second- and third-order thinking. I believe Kansas can be a leader, nationally, in demonstrating how state government, private industry, and public higher education created a new partnership for this new century.
The key to this partnership will be the sense of community special to this place, meaning both this university and this state of Kansas.
Leah and I have been overwhelmed by the kindness of the people of Kansas. We have learned there is something special about the human community in this state and this university.
So let me end today with the only part of my earlier highflown speech that I felt was worth keeping, because it addressed the human community gathered here today.
Gov. Graves, Sen. Kassebaum, members of the Board of Regents, members of the Kansas Legislature, I thank you for being here. Your presence emphasizes the importance of this university to the Commonwealth of Kansas. I pledge to you that I will strive to serve Kansas with the integrity demanded by your trust.
Chancellors Wescoe and Shankel, members of the faculty, staff members, students, alumni, members of the Endowment Association, your presence emphasizes the academic community created here in the past, and the community to be sustained in the future, if Kansas University fulfills its destiny. I pledge to you that I will respect this community's values and prize its individuals.
Delegates from other colleges and universities, representatives of learned societies, my colleagues from other Kansas Institutions, friends of Kansas University generally, your presence emphasizes the Kansas belief that an educated citizenry will best perpetuate a democratic way of life.
I pledge to you that I share that belief, and will act upon it, as we continue to construct a great university, working together, building on the excellence of our past. But the past is not enough. Let us join together now to invest with possibility the fact of our future.
