April 28, 2000

Thank you Mr. Rector. Lieutenant Governor Hager, Congressman Goodlatte, Members of the Board of Visitors, distinguished guests, members of the university community, ladies and gentlemen:

I am honored to have been chosen to serve as Virginia Tech's 15th president. It is both a privilege and a challenge to follow and, I hope, to build upon the accomplishments of such distinguished leaders as Marshall Hahn, Bill Lavery, Jim McComas, and Paul Torgersen, who together represent four decades of skilled and inspired commitment to our institution. As I pledged in my first letter to the university community, I mean to commit all the intellect and energy that I can to the cause of advancing this great university.

Each period in the life of a great university has its challenges and its hopes and dreams . . . dreams that must be shared by the entire community, if they are to be realized, and challenges that cannot be overcome unless we join together in our efforts. Today, I want to talk with you about some ideas that to me appear central to the task of crafting a vision for the future of Virginia Tech in the increasingly complex landscape of higher education.

In terms of longevity in Western civilization, the university as an institution is second only to the church. Society has been well served by both the university's resistance to change and by its capacity to foster change. And while this may first appear to be a contradiction, it is not a contradiction at all. The key to success is changing the right things at the right time in order to preserve those essentials that define us.

Throughout the history of this country, there have been key events that defined the age. These events were of such force that they redirected the course of history.

I believe we are in such a period today.

The structure of higher education is in transition. It will of necessity change in order to respond to the rationalization of the marketplace, which has been brought about by the revolution in information technology and the integration of the global economy. New forms of individual freedom and opportunity will emerge. Institutions of higher education must find their place in the new economic order.

The American Revolution established a new concept of social order and individual freedom, where ability and ingenuity are valued above social station. The industrial revolution next unleashed a new economic order based on technology. Today, we are in the midst of a yet another revolution, brought about by the convergence of the information society and the digital economy, which is changing the ways we do our work, teach our students, conduct research, and relate to each other.

The immense change we have witnessed in the ability to travel and to communicate with every quarter of the world over the Internet has given new wings to the mobility of intellectual capital. The best information, the brightest faculty, and most effective course work can be accessed from anywhere on the planet. Therefore, the quality standard that is set is not what may be best in the state, region, or even the nation, but what is best in the world. This is the challenge the new revolution poses to Virginia Tech: to set standards commensurate with standards of global excellence.

As I reflect upon the challenges that lie ahead not only for Virginia Tech, but for all of higher education, I would like to outline briefly the structuring ideas which I believe define and sustain the life of our university.

Most essentially, Virginia Tech is a public, land-grant university. It is a role we embrace with enthusiasm. Since their early beginnings, more than a century ago, land-grant colleges have been change agents for expanded personal opportunity and social or community development. We must not only generate and disseminate new knowledge but also engage the problems that face society today. Virginia Tech is and will be a university that puts knowledge to work.

We must cherish the civil discourse and intellectual climate of the academy. Critical thinking, whether nurtured in a student or faculty member, is fundamental to our mission.

This is what we are and what we must be about.

As we enter a new period of challenge and change, we are fortunate that Virginia Tech enjoys a great deal of positive momentum. Our programs are solid and well recognized, our entering class this fall will be the most qualified in history, and our private resources have grown significantly. Now we must capitalize on this momentum to reach a new level of excellence and service.

In my opinion, major institutions that are up to this challenge of change will not simply maintain their positions, but will grow markedly stronger. While the pace of change will surely accelerate, our goal of quality and accessibility must remain a constant -- quality at a level commensurate with our global competition -- and accessibility as the central feature of our mission as a public university. Not only must we ensure that highly qualified students, regardless of financial circumstances, are able to pursue their education at Virginia Tech, we must also make accessible our programs and resources to ever-expanding nontraditional groups. We must make accessible, for example, the intellectual capital of our faculty. We must make accessible, through new means involving the Internet or other electronic delivery, graduate programs or specialized courses. We must explore new ways to share and exchange knowledge with individuals as they progress through their careers.

I submit to you that in the face of these challenges, Virginia Tech can look to the future with optimism, and that we should, as an academic community, embrace the goal of reaching a new level among research universities.

What does this goal imply for us? I believe that conventional measures, such as total expenditures on research and development, will continue to be important. But other measures will become more significant as well. To suggest just a few: our contributions to economic development and other forms of outreach; our national and international collaborations with other universities and with the private sector; and our ability to innovate in information and communication technology, and thus to connect ourselves with the world.

If we look concretely at the institutions with whom we would like to be compared in 10 years, we must increase significantly our level of sponsored research, and we must also increase our scholarly productivity across the board. And to accomplish the latter goal, we must substantially increase our support for our university libraries -- the heart of the scholarly enterprise.

Today, I propose that we accept the challenge to place Virginia Tech in the top 30 research universities in America by the year 2010.

What other steps must we take to move Virginia Tech into the company of the most distinguished universities in the world? First and foremost come our students. We should and will continue to seek out students of increasingly high academic abilities. Indeed, the bar for admission has already begun to rise significantly. These bright and motivated students stimulate the entire academic enterprise. To this end, I believe we should establish a residential honors college and commit to raising $25 million to endow it, thus cementing our desire to offer a rich and rigorous education to future generations of students who seek that extra measure of challenge for themselves.

Second, we must continue to improve the appearance and the utility of our remarkably beautiful campus. For example, during the last five years, the university has made great progress in improving our facilities and addressing critical space needs, by adding thousands of square feet of new space. And new science, research, and other services buildings are in the offing.

However, I believe we should also commit to improving the university¹s currently inadequate fine and performing arts spaces. As a university, we must always strive to educate the whole person. The study of the arts is compelling because it enables us to sort and select, to analyze and interpret sense data that structure experience in ways that educate us as rational thinkers and moral actors. We owe the student more than a preparation for life at work; we owe him or her the opportunity and means to educate themselves beyond work and after work. To that end, a new home for the fine and performing arts will culturally enrich the lives of our students, and the entire university community as well. I am pleased to note that $5 million in private monies already are committed for a new concert hall and gallery. This will not only bolster academic programs, but also be a resource to the community. Quite simply, it reflects our commitment to being a multi-dimensional, comprehensive university.

As our students graduate, we must strengthen our ability to communicate with them, and strengthen their bonds to their alma mater as well. On commencement day in May, Virginia Tech will send students into a world quite different from the one I entered as a graduate in 1969.

The personal computer did not exist, and I recall working problems with my slide rule. Now, technology is changing so rapidly and the growth rate of knowledge is so rapid, that our education must be a continuous process. I want to see Virginia Tech play a lifelong, active role in the lives of our alumni. As a result, I established a task force to consider how we might best make available computer-based instruction that would be of value in the continuing development of the careers of all our graduates. We need to reconceptualize the traditional courses and develop strategies for just-in-time learning at the graduate level. A pilot program is scheduled to begin this fall. Today, a survey of educational needs will be sent via the internet to 46,000 of our alumni.

In addition to expanding the delivery of our educational programs, Outreach and Extension will continue to provide service across the commonwealth. To better focus this effort, five regional advisory councils will be established by our outreach program to assist Virginia Tech in establishing priorities for economic development and other programs. The first such council is being organized to assist the Southwest and Southside as they address the significant challenge of rejuvenating the economies of the tobacco, textile, and coal regions that are now in sharp decline.

To accomplish all of these goals will require new resources. Although we have benefited from state support and the very generous gifts of alumni and friends, these will not provide sufficient resources to make the transformational steps necessary to achieve our goals. It is our intention to launch a major fund-raising campaign in 2003, a campaign that we envision at two or three times the magnitude of our recently concluded effort.

New alliances with business and government will be critical to leverage support for our projects. Three examples illustrate this point. The first is the Carilion Biomedical Institute -- a partnership between Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, and Carilion Health Systems. A $20-million gift from Carilion set the stage for a whole new direction in our research to advance biomedical sciences and generate new applications to improve health care and contribute to economic development.

The second is the new program in Bioinformatics, which will receive its first two years of funding from the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission. This new program operates at the convergence of two of our cross-cutting initiatives, biotechnology and information technology. We are currently recruiting scientists of international caliber, and if our plans are realized, this will become a $100-million program, with support from state, federal, and private sources.

The third example is the recently announced World Institute for Disaster Risk Management. This was created jointly by Virginia Tech and the ETH system, the premier technical universities of Switzerland in conjunction with the World Bank. It is representative of the new type of international alliances necessary to insure success in the future.

These new initiatives and alliances will affect how we manage resources and how the university itself must be organized and managed. In order to prepare for this, we will be conducting an examination of the senior executive structure across the university, which will be completed in the next several months. New types of alliances with industry and government as well as other universities will require that we reconfigure management responsibilities to insure our fiduciary obligations are met and to take full advantage of new opportunities. We must continue to develop our cross-cutting initiatives and to find resources to support these efforts. The most exciting issues in both basic and applied research today cross departmental and college boundaries, and we must continue to encourage faculty to pursue research with their colleagues in other disciplines.

As I conclude these remarks, it is important to offer some thoughts about the life of a university and what that means.

The life of the university is defined by the intellectual, emotional, and physical well being of our community. In that regard, we must encourage an environment that fosters respect, stimulates debate, and provides opportunity for persons and groups to pursue mutual interests for the betterment of all.

Athletics has a special place in the life of the university. We want to encourage diverse and robust intramural programs and provide the necessary facilities for these programs. For our intercollegiate teams, we have every hope to sustain a strong national presence and to provide facilities to assist these programs in realizing that goal.

Moreover, we share an obligation to create a civilized and reflective environment. The university should, and indeed must, be a place that mirrors our broader society. At Virginia Tech, we have made progress, admittedly slow, in providing opportunities for women and minorities. We must do better. I will charge the staff to prepare a concrete plan for expanding African American enrollment by at least 20 percent. And I commit to a personal involvement in that effort. Once we have achieved that first goal, we will look to further improvements. I will also ask staff to look at improving opportunities for other underrepresented groups in the faculty, staff, and student bodies. We must also expand the international and multi-cultural perspective in our curricula and in the life of our campus community, if we are to function successfully at the global level in the ways to which we aspire.

On this Founders Day in the year 2000, the future of Virginia Tech is a bright one.

• We have an organizational culture that fosters motivation and is willing to experiment with new ideas.
• We have a community of faculty, staff, and students possessed of exceptional talent and promise.
• We have the will to act.
• We have the capacity to take risks.
• And together we will complete a new vision for advancing this university in the next decade.

I look forward to our working together with great enthusiasm and hope for the future.

Thank you.