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video highlights from the address.
State of
the University Address
Delivered by Chancellor James Moeser
September 29, 2004
Great Hall, Frank Porter Graham Student Union
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the address: PDF
Good afternoon.
Thanks for coming. Let me recognize several special guests and ask
them to stand: the chairman of our Board of Trustees, Richard "Stick"
Williams of Charlotte, and Trustee Roger Perry of Chapel Hill.
It is also
a privilege to recognize our past chancellors: William Aycock and
Paul Hardin. Please join me in welcoming our new senior administrators:
Peggy Jablonski, vice chancellor for student affairs; Dan Reed,
vice chancellor for information technology, who is not with us,
Jose-Marie Griffiths, dean, School of Information and Library Sciences,
and Sarah Michalak, University Librarian, along with two familiar
colleagues who have changed positions – Bernadette Gray-Little,
now dean, College of Arts and Sciences, and Bill Roper, now vice
chancellor for medical affairs and dean, School of Medicine.
Now, I recognize
all of the other academic deans, our vice chancellors, and members
of the Chancellor's Cabinet. Please stand.
I also want
to recognize our student, faculty, and staff leaders: Matt Calabria,
student body president; Jennifer Bushman, Graduate and Professional
Student Federation president; Judith Wegner, faculty chair; and
Tommy Griffin, Employee Forum chair.
"Carolina
Connects"
A leading
public university is an engaged university. It is a university that
always puts its state first. I have traveled across North Carolina,
visiting people in small communities and big cities from every corner
of our state.
These visits
show the connections between the University and the people of North
Carolina, focusing on the work our faculty, staff, and students
do to improve people's lives in all 100 counties. This University
truly serves North Carolina every day in meaningful, relevant ways.
In short, Carolina connects.
"Carolina
Connects" has been well received. My travels have highlighted
different areas of our work in public education, health care, and
economic development. Conversations with community leaders, elected
officials, alumni, parents, and others have been invaluable.
Let me mention
just a few of the wonderful people I have met from Carolina and
in our state's communities:
- Jill Fitzgerald,
a School of Education professor, taught for a year at Siler City
Elementary School, which, in many ways, mirrors our state. The
school is dealing with an influx of immigrants who do not speak
English as a first language. Jill says her experience in that
Siler City classroom changed about 80 percent of what she had
been teaching her own UNC students.
- Stuart
Gold, a pediatric oncology specialist, epitomizes the roles that
the Area Health Education Centers Program and UNC Health Care
play across our state. Stuart's work at Wilmington's AHEC clinic
helps save families the hardship of traveling to Chapel Hill for
specialized care for their children that the local hospital cannot
provide.
- Jin Yi
Kwon, a dental student, has taught oral hygiene in a nursing home
in Greensboro. She and the entire School of Dentistry's Class
of 2007 have made a commitment to give four to eight hours each
month to dental-related community service after they graduate.
- Rick Leuttich
and faculty at the Institute of Marine Sciences provide a direct
economic benefit to Carteret County. Their work with Duke and
other public-private partners contributes $127 million and more
than 3,100 jobs to the county's economy. Their research informs
us about our state's coast, considered the "world's largest
wet lab" for marine and coastal environmental sciences.
- Anita Brown-Graham
and Kevin FitzGerald of the School of Government and Jim Johnson
of the Kenan-Flagler Business School assist Curtis Wynn in his
efforts to spur economic development in northeastern North Carolina.
Wynn, CEO of the Roanoke Electric Cooperative, hopes to reverse
the historical economic challenges facing Bertie, Hertford, Gates,
and Northampton counties.
Tomorrow,
I will be in Kernersville with Mike Smith, dean of the School of
Government, one of the jewels of our public service efforts, to
participate in an economic development forum.
I have not
hidden my ambition to help Chapel Hill be the leading public university
in America. In some respects, we already are. But really being the
leading public university starts with fulfilling our mission close
to home. This University must continue defining its research and
public service agendas around the needs of the state. That is the
definition of engagement. We work on real-world problems. We address
local, as well as global, needs.
North Carolina
needs our help. Improving health and public education. Creating
jobs and contributing to the state's tax base. We have a great record
of accomplishment, but we can and should do more. We recently appointed
Jesse White the former head of the Appalachian Regional Commission
and the Southern Growth Policies Board, to lead our new Office of
Economic and Business Development, which matches faculty and campus
resources with statewide needs.
History shows
why such efforts are so important. In the 1930s, Carolina Professor
Howard Odum and UNC President Frank Porter Graham were at the cutting
edge of social and economic reform in the South. In 1938 President
Roosevelt asked Dr. Graham to chair an Advisory Committee on the
Economic Conditions in the South, citing it as the nation's number
one economic problem. 1
In a recent
essay, Law School Dean Gene Nichol wrote that the South is still
the native home of American poverty. "It continues to sustain
the highest poverty rate and the lowest average income of any section
of the country. Nearly 14 percent of Southerners are poor and our
income levels fall thousands of dollars below national averages."
Nichol noted that North Carolina's median income is nearly $5,000
below the national average. "We are one of ten states whose
median income actually fell from the year before – in our case
by 4.4 percent." 2
The Carolina
Covenant: Reaching More Deserving Students
We recognize
that access to higher education is the key to opportunity for a
better life in a knowledge-based economy. That is why last year
we launched the Carolina Covenant, a first for a major U.S. public
university. The Carolina Covenant promises admitted students from
low-income families that we will provide the full cost of their
education so that they will not accumulate any debt.
This fall,
we enrolled 225 Carolina Covenant Scholars. I met some of these
students and their parents during my "Carolina Connects"
visits. They are truly outstanding students who have impressed me
with their academic credentials, their passions, and their interests.
More than half of them are first-generation college students. They
came to us highly prepared, with an average 4.21 GPA and 1,209 SAT
score.
These are
students and families who need our help. To put that into perspective,
the average annual family income for a Carolina Covenant Scholar
last year was $13,400. That is $400 less than what it costs a North
Carolinian to attend the University this year. Recognizing that
tuition accounts for only a third of the total cost of attendance,
the Carolina Covenant goes even further to cover room and board,
books, and other expenses.
Other universities,
including Virginia, Maryland, Nebraska, and Harvard, have followed
suit with their own programs to support high-ability, low-income
students. And Brown University just joined that list.
Today, I am
pleased to announce that we are raising the bar even higher to extend
the reach of the Carolina Covenant. We are expanding the program
for families from 150 percent of the federal poverty level to 200
percent. And that raises the threshold to cover a family of four
with an annual income of about $37,000 or a single parent with a
child who makes about $24,000. This adjustment begins with next
fall's freshman class and will add an estimated 120 new Carolina
Covenant Scholars.
These changes
send an even stronger message about accessibility and the traditional
commitment to opportunity in Chapel Hill for qualified students
– regardless of their ability to pay.
Our University
is leading a true movement in American higher education. We hope
our leadership last year in establishing the Carolina Covenant,
and our increased commitment to the Covenant today, will challenge
other universities to make similar investments to ensure affordability
and access for deserving students.
This increased
commitment is possible because of our trustees' policies emphasizing
need-based aid and strong support from the State in funding financial
aid as the cost of education rises. Increasingly, donors are pledging
gifts – nearly $2.7 million to date – to support the Carolina
Covenant through the Carolina First Campaign.
But what about
the students from middle-class families? Do they bear the burden
of higher tuition and costs of attendance? Not at this University.
We meet the full need of middle-income students, with financial
aid packages comprised of two-thirds grants and scholarships and
one-third loans and work-study. And here is the proof: the average
debt load among our graduating seniors who borrowed dropped from
$13,700 in 2000 to $11,519 last year.
Our progress
in this area stands in direct contrast to national trends, where
the average for student debt loan doubled to about $17,000 in just
a decade. Having made this massive commitment to need-based aid,
we must now turn our attention to increasing the funding for non-need
based merit scholarships, to make sure that we are competitive for
the very best students who have offers from other institutions.
We can do this without any compromise to our commitment to access
and affordability.
Creating A
Better Workplace
Over the past
year, we have devoted a significant amount of attention to the needs
of our staff through the Chancellor's Task Force for a Better Workplace,
which I co-chaired with Tommy Griffin.
Let me list
a few steps we are taking to implement the task force's recommendations:
- We established
an ombuds office, which will provide confidential, informal, and
neutral dispute resolution services to employees with job-related
concerns. We shall make two appointments in the coming weeks.
- Next fall,
we will launch a pilot program for up to 10 employees with some
college experience to earn undergraduate credit toward degrees
as part-time students while working full time.
- We jumpstarted
a computer loan initiative.
- We created
a privately funded staff emergency loan program. I designated
$25,000 of a recent estate gift to initiate this fund. And I have
directed, with trustee approval, that another $200,000 from that
gift remain in the endowment to support a scholarship program
for children of our employees.
- We added
another tier in the sliding-scale parking permit fee structure
for employees making $25,000 or less.
- We expanded
the C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Awards, going from four
to six recipients and increasing the monetary award in this, the
25th anniversary year of this program.
I am honored
now to recognize those recipients, who represent the very best of
an outstanding workforce: Sandra Caulberg, administrative officer,
Office of University Counsel; David Godschalk, Stephen Baxter Professor
Emeritus, department of city and regional planning; Linda Naylor,
administrative assistant, Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor
and Provost; David Perry, executive associate dean for administration,
School of Medicine; Elizabeth "Betsy" Taylor, student
services manager, Academic Advising Program, College of Arts and
Sciences; and Avon Seymore, grounds crew leader, Facilities Services
Division, who could not be with us today. Please join me in applauding
for all of these exceptional individuals.
Positive Accomplishments
Build Momentum
Great things
are happening at Carolina, and this past year has only added to
the positive momentum. We just enrolled the most academically prepared
freshman class in the University's history. We made major progress
in a multi-year construction program that is bringing our campus
master plan to life. Faculty research funding grew stronger. Enlightened
alumni and friends demonstrated an extraordinary commitment by contributing
generously to the Carolina First campaign.
Against that
backdrop, this past session of the General Assembly was highly successful
for the University. For the first time in recent memory, there was
not a single recorded vote on the overhead receipts we receive from
research grants and contracts. Reductions in our budget were minimal
and offset by funding for enrollment growth and salary increases.
Our legislators
authorized $180 million to build a world-class hospital in Chapel
Hill for cancer patients and their families from North Carolina
and beyond. We have seen a 23 percent increase in the number of
cancer patients coming here for care in the last five years. Over
the next 30 years, the number of cancer cases in our state alone
is expected to double. When completed, the new hospital will become
the largest freestanding university cancer hospital in the Southeast
and the clinical home for the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer
Center, one of only 38 National Cancer Institute-designated centers.
We are grateful
to Governor Easley and the General Assembly for this support. I
also want to acknowledge the work of our own faculty, and most especially,
the cancer patients themselves, who made the case so eloquently
for this funding.
Seven University
Priorities to Guide the Future
This summer,
at our annual retreat, the Board of Trustees and I worked together
on a list of the University's top priorities. I want to share them
with you now. Each priority is keyed to our academic plan. Each
builds upon and supports the others. And each priority addresses
our overarching vision of being America's leading public university.
Strengthen
Faculty Support
Our number
one priority is strengthening faculty recruitment, retention, and
development. We want to recruit and retain the very best minds and
enhance the faculty culture that creates a lasting bond with the
University and with North Carolina.
Let us focus
for a moment on the faculty culture. This is one of our traditional
strengths. We are a true community made up of faculty who are both
esteemed scholars in their fields, as well as citizens of this community,
engaged with each other across departmental lines, locally and across
the state.
As our most
senior faculty approach retirement, we must think about how we effectively
recreate this culture with our new appointments. In an increasingly
competitive environment, in which other institutions recognize the
quality of our faculty by seeking to lure them away, we must give
special attention to all of the factors that make this an attractive
place in which to live and work.
Our faculty
chair, Judith Wegner, initiated an effort to examine all of these
issues. The Office of Institutional Research recently completed
a survey commissioned by the faculty leadership to gauge the forces
that attract great faculty to Carolina, as well as what motivates
people to stay, to put down roots, to become part of the community,
and to build their careers here, as so many have done.
That is the
culture we are determined to nurture and protect.
But we also
need to understand the negative forces in our midst. Why do people
entertain offers, and why do they leave? We know that stagnation
in salary increases and benefits packages that are less than competitive
have been a major factor, but what are the other, less tangible
factors that can come into play?
Two years
ago, we were alarmed that we lost two-thirds of the faculty receiving
external offers whom we sought to retain. I am pleased that this
past year we reversed that, thanks to efforts led by the provost
and the deans to take appropriate pre-emptive steps to deal with
critical areas of salary compression and equity. I am even more
pleased that, this year, thanks to the General Assembly, and the
campus- and school-based tuition revenue, we have begun to undo
the destructive culture beginning to form that the only way to get
ahead at Chapel Hill was to get an offer from someplace else.
Now it takes
more than one good rainfall to eliminate a major drought. And it
will take several years of salary increases to put Chapel Hill back
into parity with our major national peers.
Therefore,
we will continue to make our case to the General Assembly for increases
in salaries and benefits for faculty and staff. We will seek out
other revenue sources we can generate ourselves, such as moderate
increases in campus- or school-based tuition to support improved
compensation for faculty and graduate teaching assistants. Private
gifts will remain a priority, recognizing that we cannot look to
the state alone to support the intense competition that Chapel Hill
faces from well-endowed private institutions.
Through our
Carolina First campaign, we are making progress in building the
quality of our great faculty. The campaign has secured nearly $211
million for faculty support – more than half of our recently
revised goal of $400 million. Our steering committee increased that
target a few months ago by $100 million because this issue is so
critical. The major initiative in this part of the campaign is to
raise both expendable and endowed funds to support key faculty retention
and recruitment initiatives – research stipends, summer programs,
materials, graduate support and course development, as well as endowed
chairs and professorships. Each school and unit has its own push
underway to boost faculty support in the campaign.
The College
of Arts and Science's Spray-Randleigh Fellowship program is among
the excellent examples of this impact. Funded by a $1.2 million
expendable gift from the Spray Foundation of Atlanta and the Randleigh
Foundation Trust of Chapel Hill, this program provides $15,000 summer
supplements to new and current faculty members. Since 2002, 45 faculty
fellows have benefited, including nine new recruits whose decisions
to come to Carolina were clearly influenced by the fellowship offers.
Across the
University, donors to Carolina First have created 127 endowed professorships
toward our goal of 200. We have now filled 28 of those professorships,
and the Legislature just increased the state matching funds for
distinguished endowed professorships. Overall, we have exceeded
the $1.3 billion mark toward our campaign goal of $1.8 billion.
We are very pleased with this progress.
Create Richest
Learning Environment for Students
Our second
priority is to create the richest possible learning environment
for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. One distinctive
feature of Chapel Hill that sets us apart from the other great research
universities is the culture for learning on this campus. It rivals
that of the finest private liberal arts colleges for undergraduates,
and the finest graduate and professional school environments for
those students.
We are justifiably
proud of that culture, but we must not be complacent about it. We
must find ways to make it even better. Here are some concrete goals:
We should
continue to increase the percentage of undergraduate classes with
fewer than 20 students by doubling the size of the Honors Program.
An endowment of $25 million would allow us to add 14 faculty positions
to targeted departments in the College for this purpose. Let us
focus on the six-year graduation rate, which currently stands at
more than 82 percent. This is very good, but not good enough. Let
us resolve to move this to at least 92 percent, the highest level
of any of our public peers.
Our learning
environment for graduate and professional students is closely linked
with the vigor and excellence of our research enterprise. A key
element of that, however, will be our ability to attract the finest
graduate student talent. Thus, we must redouble our efforts to make
graduate teaching assistant stipends nationally competitive. And
we should seek to increase state funding for graduate tuition remission.
Invest in
Centers of Research Excellence
Third, we
must continue to invest in centers of research excellence. It is
a marvelous tribute to the faculty that our research funding has
risen steadily for more than two decades, solidifying Carolina's
role as a top university.
This past
year, faculty secured $577 million in research funds – up 7.5
percent from 2003, but shy of the double-digit increases we have
seen for the past several years. Most observers expect increases
in federal funding to slow even more. While that is surely a concern,
I see it as an opportunity to turn to other sources.
For example,
less than 2 percent of our funding comes from industry, compared
to more than 20 percent at Duke and roughly 5 percent at most of
our national public peers. There are, to be sure, legitimate concerns:
we must guard the integrity of our research, that it remains free
and independent of inappropriate influence from any funding source.
We can grow our industry-supported funding and remain faithful to
our core principles.
The academic
plan outlines areas of excellence and future opportunity for investment
in five broad, interdisciplinary areas: biological, medical, and
technology sciences; fine arts, humanities, and social sciences;
global citizenship; social problem-solving; and ethics, leadership,
and public life. These are the academic areas in which Carolina
is best positioned to make a difference. I could cite many examples,
but let me pick just one.
Last year,
we launched the Institute for Renaissance Computing, a new interdisciplinary
partnership with Duke University, NC State, and the private sector
in Research Triangle Park, under the leadership of Dan Reed. This
institute offers enormous potential to catalyze research collaborations
and economic development opportunities.
I have also
asked Vice Chancellor Reed to lead a major strategic planning effort
for information technology, encompassing everything from high-speed
computing to what we know will be necessary major investments in
administrative computing to replace systems that are increasingly
obsolete. We have not fully tapped leading-edge information technology
as an intellectual lever to help advance the University's mission.
And we have not yet fully realized the potential of the Carolina
Computing Initiative. This will be a major effort. The leading public
university must lead in technology.
Enhance Global,
Local Engagement
Our fourth
priority is to enhance Carolina's engagement with North Carolina
and the world. I have already shared my thoughts about sustaining
our engagement with the state. However, I think engagement needs
to be understood in global, as well as local, terms. The great universities
of the 21st Century will be defined by their presence on a worldwide
stage. The quality of the educational experience, the significance
of our research, will be judged by the extent to which it is truly
global in nature.
We are building
on existing strengths. We have study-abroad programs in nearly 70
different countries, and our students and faculty are engaged around
the world through hundreds of academic programs, partnerships, and
collaborations. Later this fall, we will break ground for the Global
Education Center that will help bring our international efforts
under one roof and serve as a vibrant hub of international teaching,
research, and public service.
I include
in this category of engagement our commitment to diversity, as an
element of educational quality, since it is one way that we reflect
the reality of the world and the state in which we live. Our students
will be the poorer if we are not successful in creating a truly
inclusive community.
I have appointed
a Chancellor's Task Force on Diversity, chaired by Archie Ervin,
to assess the state of diversity at Carolina and to produce a report
this year to guide our vision for being a diverse campus. Our engagement
with the state and the world will be incomplete, and we cannot be
a leading university, if we do not model as a community the potential
for people of diverse backgrounds and beliefs to live and work together
within a framework of honor, integrity, compassion, and mutual respect.
Complete Development
Plan; Start Carolina North
Fifth, we
must successfully complete the campus development plan and begin
Carolina North. The first is critical because of the trust that
the people of North Carolina have placed in us through the passage
of the higher education bond referendum. We have an enormous responsibility
to see that this entire complex of projects, which is among the
largest capital construction programs on any American campus, is
successfully completed.
The initial
implementation of Carolina North must be included in all of our
thinking. This project has issues and problems to be resolved before
it can move forward, but we must keep focused on the ultimate goal
and not relinquish the opportunity to leverage the research of this
University directly into the state's economy.
Carolina North
is our future, and it is vital to the state's economic success.
Strategic
Investments Toward Highest Priorities
Sixth, we
must determine strategies to acquire and allocate resources to our
highest priorities. The Board of Trustees was strong in its determination
that we really put our money where our mouth is – that we are
clear and direct in acquiring and moving resources to support our
highest priorities.
I affirm this
wholeheartedly and like to point to one compelling example. In this
past year, we successfully increased the percentage of classes with
fewer than 20 students and reduced the percentage of classes with
more than 50 students.
This is one
of our measures of excellence, and it is one of the metrics used
by U.S. News and World Report. This improvement helped us gain 21
places among all universities in their most recent assessment of
faculty resources. In tough times, in the midst of budget cuts,
we moved money, mainly in the College of Arts and Sciences, to support
our priority.
Define Leadership
Role
Finally, our
seventh priority is to define Carolina's role as a leader. We take
seriously our vision of being a leader within the state and within
the UNC system. We are doing that with the Citizen-Soldier Initiative,
funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. Our partners include faculty
from NC State, UNC-Charlotte, East Carolina, Fayetteville State,
and Duke Divinity School, along with UNC-TV and universities outside
North Carolina.
A team of
Carolina's faculty – led by Dennis Orthner in the School of
Social Work, and Doug Robertson in the Highway Safety Research Center
– helped conceive this national demonstration project. They
have worked with our partners to create a program to support newly
deployed and returning military reservists and National Guard soldiers
and their families. This effort will bring employers, schools, child-care
providers, health professionals, and faith-based organizations into
a broad network of family support. Our response to these families
shows the reach of a top-tier research university and its capacity
to improve lives. It is a great example of a university that is
leading.
I am visiting
other UNC campuses as I travel this state. This fall, I met with
Chancellor DePaolo in Wilmington, and we discussed potential academic
partnerships. This is a role we should pursue more actively, finding
ways to partner with our sister institutions, as well as with North
Carolina's community colleges.
Conclusion
Two years
ago, I introduced the concept of our being both good and great.
Much of what I have focused on today has been about the goodness
of the University, our commitment to engagement and public service
and our core values as a public institution.
But let us
not take our eye off the ball of excellence, on what it will take
for us to become a truly, distinguished world-class university –
great as well as good. There are only four or five universities
in this country that can even presume to have this conversation,
to talk about being America's leading public university.
This is not
so much a competition with other universities as it is with ourselves
and with our own vision of excellence in harmony with our core values
as a public university. Leaders of the University of Virginia speak
publicly about privatizing the university. Certainly, Virginia's
story is not our story. It is so radically different that my colleague,
Law Dean Gene Nichol, has often said that if Thomas Jefferson were
alive today, he would be a Tar Heel.
Our task is,
as Judith Wegner put it recently, "to reimagine the public
university for the 21st Century and to stay focused on our core
values, on our very soul as a public university." She is exactly
right.
Substance
over image, or in the words of our state's motto:
"Esse
Quam Videri: to be rather than to seem."
1 Ashby, Warren.
Frank Porter Graham: A Southern Liberal. Winston-Salem, N.C.: John
F. Blair, Publisher, 1980, p. 151.
2 Nichol,
Gene. "Ignoring Inequality." In Where We Stand: Voices
of Southern Dissent, edited by Anthony Dunbar, pp. 62-63, Montgomery,
Ala.: NewSouth Books, 2004.
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