September 20, 2002
I find this time of year - as we recognize the many accomplishments of our faculty and staff - to be energizing, humbling, and gratifying. I extend to all those who will be recognized later my personal thanks, commendation, and sincere appreciation for all that you do for our students, the university, and the professions.
Exactly one year ago, I stood before you at this event. Then I was a little more than one year into my position as president full of hope, ideas, and plans to achieve and excel and to move this university forward. Our country, our state, and our university have sailed some rough waters since that time. Yet, I am still filled with hope, and indeed confidence, that we will achieve our goals of superior academic achievement.
Yes, the state's budget woes loom large in our future. And we may need to make some very hard decisions. But we have the resolve and the talent to climb the ladder of excellence even higher. ....even in light of financial difficulties. Let me recount the year and explain why I feel this way.
A few high points of the year... Virginia Tech is a school of "first choice" for highly qualified students. The incoming class of 4,750 students had an average high school GPA of 3.6 and SAT of 1188. These are bright young men and women who challenge us all....as they should. Minority enrollment is again up this year from 7 to 7.5 percent of the freshman class. Retention is up. On campus enrollment this fall is slightly more than 25,800 students.
Kiplinger Magazine recently ranked Virginia Tech the 15th best value nationally among all public universities. US News earlier this month also ranked us among the best values for public universities. In that survey, the colleges of engineering and business also climbed in their respective rankings.
The Southern Growth Policy Board recently identified our university as one of the 12 best in the nation for technology transfer and economic development.
For those who pay little heed to rankings, we can cite other measures of progress. The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute now employs more than 100 people. It has more than 30 projects underway, totaling more than $25.3 million. There are $8.4 million in grants and contracts with Virginia Tech researchers, and more than $10 million in contracts with external researchers.
Just one example - Plant Pathology and Weed Science and VBI garnered a $6.7 million contract to study disease resistance in soybeans. VBI will soon offer high- speed computational services to the university community on its Core Computing Facility.
Here's another good example of leveraging our strengths through strategic partnerships. The Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Science is up and running. We now need only formal approval from the State Council for Higher Education to grant degrees.
The Virginia Tech Institute for Critical Technologies, a campus wide research consortium led by the College of Engineering, holds great promise for interdisciplinary research. With thematic concentration on energy and the environment, transportation, biotechnology, advanced materials, and information technology, the institute will cluster research groups as industry would, thereby making possible non-traditional education and research opportunities.
I am very pleased that Tom Dingus has accepted the appointment as director of the VTICT. Dr. Dingus has admirably led the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and directed our Smart Road research for the last several years.
The South Atlantic Humanities Center at Virginia Tech recently received a start-up grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In partnership with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia, it will promote and research issues of regional interest in the humanities. Among other actions, the Center will award fellowships and exchanges to research historical, cultural, linguistic, and folkloric issues; developing undergraduate and graduate curricula that focus on the South Atlantic region of the U.S.
In the arena of sponsored research and scholarship, I commend the faculty, and the staff who assisted you, for your extra efforts and success. You submitted a record number of proposals - up by 5 percent over the previous year. And I understand that awards are up 28 percent over the previous year - $157 million versus $123 million. Our NSF reported research for the past year was $216 million, and we are on target for another banner year for FY 02....around $230 million.
This is excellent news, but it's not just the funding that encourages me. Consider just this one example from the Aspires program, which serves to prime the pump for new research projects.
Aspires helped launch a microbe-minerals group headed by Michael Hochella. The group has subsequently invented improvements to the atomic force microscope, published results in Science, received significant funding from the Departments of Energy and the National Science Foundation, and supported several graduate students, including one who presented findings in Switzerland last month.
The National Science Foundation conferred four Career Awards to Virginia Tech faculty. These prestigious grant awards recognize young faculty members for their promising research:
Daniel Crawford, chemistry;
Massimiliano Di Ventra, physics;
Erik Westman, mining and minerals engineering;
and Craig Woolsey, aerospace and ocean engineering.
I could easily go on for hours citing the accomplishments of the faculty and staff in every one of our colleges. You make this university what it is. You are the reason why students and alumni proudly claim Virginia Tech as their alma mater.
And so, it was quite gratifying--but not that surprising--to see the results reported last month that the university again experienced a record year in fund raising, garnering $72.6 million in gifts. People want to give to a quality institution.
Having spent eight years as vice president for development and university relations, I saw first hand the commitment and deep affection that our donors, particularly alums, have for the university. While private giving will never replace base adequacy funding from the state, it is crucial if we are to maintain the extra margin of excellence.
Our next fund raising campaign, so essential to our quest for excellence and national leadership, is now entering an important phase. Some of you may be involved with the Needs Assessment, an exercise where we lay out all our fund raising needs, particularly as they relate to our strategic plan.
This information is next filtered through a matrix of potential givers - what's known as a feasibility study - to come up with our fund raising potential. After that comes the quiet phase of the campaign, where we seek to secure the largest donations before the public campaign is launched.
Also approaching on the financial horizon is a referendum before Virginia voters to approve $900 million in bonds to construct or repair facilities on Virginia college campuses. These monies are absolutely essential to maintaining quality - to providing the classrooms and labs our students and faculty must have in the 21st century educational environment. I urge you to give it your serious consideration and exercise your right to vote.
The strategic planning and restructuring processes we have just completed will guide our systematic decision making and enable us to stay focused on our priorities.
The state will expect us to bear more cuts, possibly even deeper than those given up just a few months ago. And that may mean higher tuition as well. This afternoon, we indicated in the plan we submitted to the administration in Richmond that we cannot endure another round of reductions and maintain credible top-flight education programs. We will do what must be done to ensure academic quality and integrity.
Irrespective of the financial picture, the demographics of our faculty are such that we will be hiring many new members over the next decade. And even during these uncertain times, we will make reinvestments in targeted areas. Accordingly, we are currently reviewing procedures that guide all faculty hires. We plan to other strategies including the use of "targets of opportunity for excellence," cluster hires, and pipeline efforts.
In order for Virginia Tech to achieve true world-class status, we must recruit the nation's leading talent in selected areas. We call those targets of opportunity for excellence. Such faculty can help jump-start a research focus with dramatic results. There are attendant issues of compensation, start-up packages, and research space.
Which brings me to the next and related topic: cluster hires. The current world of research is ever more interdisciplinary. When we look at one academic focus, we must actually look at several related disciplines. For example, as we grow the new biomedical engineering program, we will need experts from not only the health disciplines, but also materials and bio chemistry, and host of other areas.
Search committees may be empowered to review, analyze, and recommend hiring for several positions across many related disciplines.
We have seen a trend over the last 3-5 years of more students matriculating as University Studies majors. These are highly academically qualified students who prefer to decide after enrollment which major they wish to pursue. Unfortunately, the budget limitations have meant that many students are not able to transfer into their first-choice majors. Parents and students need to understand that this is a direct result of the budget reductions
Restructuring is not a response to the budget cuts; it is a response to the changing times. This was a good opportunity to re-evaluate the university's structure and examine how we can be the most effective and meet the goals set out in the strategic plan.
We will be working throughout the academic year to nail down the specifics of the plan, and will be hosting many additional meetings to seek input from the university community. By the next academic year, we will have established the two new colleges, and some of the new schools.
We also hope at that time, that elements of the consortia will be moving into place, but we see this as an evolving process.
On the news front, I have asked Jim Bohland, who performed admirably as interim provost, to assume a new role in northern Virginia as executive director of northern Virginia operations. Jim will continue to look for ways to find synergy among our programs and further expand our research activities. He will also lay a critical eye on programs and activities that may not fit within the mix that he defined several years ago as the "footprints."
As you know, searches for several academic deans currently are under way. In the College of Engineering, we hope to make an offer by mid-October. In Human Sciences and Education, the search is starting over with the aim to conclude by the end of spring semester. The search in Agriculture and Life Sciences is active, and we plan to have someone named by the time Dean Swiger retires January 1.
We are also working on a new comprehensive policy dealing with anti-discrimination and harassment prevention. The current harassment policy needs updating because it deals only with sexual harassment. The new policy will combine existing policies on sexual harassment and anti-discrimination.
Over the summer, several newspaper articles brought heightened visibility--and scrutiny--to the university's diversity efforts. In light of this, we recently underwent a review of our admissions, financial aid, employment practices, and academic programs with regard to gender and race. Our General Counsel tells us that our current practices are in compliance with state and federal law.
Last Friday, I was very encouraged by a meeting that Dr. Dixon, Dr. McNamee, and I had with a group of African-American alumni. This was a wonderful group of successful men and women who are eager to become re-engaged with the university and assist in our recruitment and retention efforts for minority students, faculty, and staff. They are full of enthusiasm and care deeply about this university. We look forward to working with them--as well as with any other such alumni groups that may emerge.
In conclusion, there are two more points I would like to make. Regardless of the state's inability to fund higher education, we will not deviate from our goal of world-class excellence. We are not quitters. And we will take the struggle for adequate funding straight to the people of Virginia.
For us, education is much more than a vocation. It is a commitment to sharing the transforming power of knowledge...a transformation to be free thinking men and women. Though we may be experiencing financial hardships of our own, knowing that our efforts have such long-lasting impact on the lives of so many, instills in us the motivation we need to carry on.