Delivered March 27, 2001
On the occasion of a panel discussion as part of the 10th anniversary of the Friday Center

PUBLIC SERVICE OR LIP SERVICE?:
OUTREACH AT A MAJOR RESEARCH UNIVERSITY

By James Moeser

Thanks to all of you for coming tonight to help us celebrate the 10th anniversary of the William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education. This truly is a world-class facility that has helped Carolina enhance its efforts to reach out and to serve the people of North Carolina and beyond. And as the Center moves into the 21st century and begins a second decade of outreach and service, I'm delighted to be here and to have a small part in this program.

In many respects, the Friday Center epitomizes Carolina's commitment to service. The Center derives its existence and its purpose directly from the University's mission "to extend the knowledge-based services and other resources of the University to the Citizens of North Carolina and their institutions [in order] to enhance the quality of life to all the people of the State." Indeed, the Friday Center has become the umbrella for our efforts to provide lifelong learning opportunities to the people of North Carolina and beyond the borders of this state through such efforts as distance education, night classes, conferences and institutes.

This celebration is an ideal time for the University to reassert its commitment to the importance of outreach and public service, the principles at the very core of the Friday Center and, indeed, an integral and a historical part of the University's tripartite mission. Carolina is not a great teaching and research institution at the exclusion of public service. As we move into the third century of public higher education, I'm convinced that our service mission will become even more important and more intertwined with our research and our teaching.

When I came to Chapel Hill last summer and began the process of learning the history and traditions of this University, one of the things that most impressed me was the long legacy of serving the people. As I've learned more about the University through my visits to the schools and departments, as well as conversations with faculty, students, alumni and others, I've been even more struck by this commitment. Carolina truly is a university created "by the people and for the people," and throughout its 206-year history, the people who personify this institution have never strayed from that principle.

The late Albert Coates, the founder of Carolina's Institute of Government and a staunch believer in the service role of the University, loved to compare UNC's outreach and its impact to that of the mighty Gulf Stream, whose "warming effect upon the climates of adjacent land areas is reflected in the extraordinary mildness of the winters ­ permitting vegetables to grow and flowers to bloom in the winter, and bettering the living conditions of the people" in the lands it touches.

"From the coming of the first student to its open doors the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been a magic gulf stream flowing in an ever-widening current through the lives of people in the cities, the counties and the state of North Carolina and beyond ­ tempering the customs, traditions and habits of the people it serves and lifting them to higher levels of living wherever it has gone."

I love those words of Albert Coates. I can't imagine a more appropriate analogy, nor one that more fittingly describes Carolina's public service responsibility and certainly our tradition.

In 1789, the North Carolina General Assembly chartered the University and charged it with preparing future generations for "an honourable discharge of the social duties of life, by paying the strictest attention to their education." That included teaching citizens how to understand, how to improve and defend the principles of our state and nation's fledgling experiment in democratic government.

Carolina never strayed from that commitment. We have educated generation after generation of citizens, government and business leaders, teachers, doctors, and journalists. And the University has grounded them not only in the academics of their chosen professions, but also the responsibilities and obligations that accompany citizenship in an American democracy.

In the early 20th century, President Edward Kidder Graham fervently stressed the University's role to serve the public ­ the people for whom and by whom the University was built, the men and women whose tax dollars supported the school and those whose sons ­ and a few daughters ­ came to our campus to learn. He touted our outreach responsibility in a campaign that encouraged the people of the North Carolina to "Write to the University when you need help." Citizens were urged to call upon the University when they had a problem, and as a result, the campus library was deluged with requests from citizens, from libraries, from the public schools and other colleges.

I'm confident that President Graham's appeal not only gave the people of North Carolina an appreciation of the rich storehouse of talent and knowledge available in Chapel Hill, but also helped those on campus shape their areas of study and research in response to the queries they received. A two-way flow communication between the University and the public was established. Information traveled freely from the campus outward to the people of the state and from the people back to Chapel Hill.

When I first visited Carolina last year, I was struck, as I'm sure many of you have been, by the beautiful stone walls that surround the older campus. Some universities are enclosed by high walls or fences, but the low stature of our walls is symbolic. You can stand on one side and look out into the world. Or you can stand on the other and even reach into the campus. The walls keep no one out and nothing in. While the stones may mark the physical periphery of the Chapel Hill campus, they allow us to see out to our greater campus, the campus beyond the Davie Poplar and the so-called ivory tower. They allow us to see and respond to the campus that spans the state of North Carolina and the citizens we serve.

As you have already heard, I had the privilege to serve with 26 other current and former college presidents and chancellors on the Kellogg Commission on the future of public and land-grant universities. One of the key areas our commission examined was the need for our institutions to return to their public roots. Indeed, in our 1999 report, the commission called for colleges and universities to become truly "engaged" with their communities ­ and with the word "community" defined in the broadest possible terms.

We wrote: "Engagement goes well beyond extension, conventional outreach, and even most conceptions of public service. Inherited concepts emphasize a one-way process in which the university transfers its expertise to key constituents. Embedded in the engagement ideal is a commitment to sharing and reciprocity.defined by a mutual respect among the partners for what each brings to the table."

Thus engagement involves a redesign of teaching, research and service to bring our campuses and communities closer together, building on the synergy that exists between them. An engaged university can enrich student culture and help change campus culture by increasing opportunities for students and faculty to gain access to research and new knowledge and broaden internships and off-campus learning opportunities. At the same time, an engaged university puts its knowledge and expertise to work for its off-campus partners.

The Kellogg report, which sets a new standard for university outreach and service in modern higher education, offers three criteria by which we can identify an engaged institution:

First, an engaged university is one that "must be organized to respond to the needs of today's students and tomorrow's, not yesterday's." Much as we value our history and traditions, we've got to keep our focus on the future, not the past.

Second, "it must enrich students' experiences by bringing research and engagement into the curriculum and offering practical opportunities for students to prepare for the world [into which] they will enter."

And finally, "it must put its critical resources (knowledge and expertise) to work on the problems the communities it serves face" -- direct application to the real-world problems around us.

Engagement envisions an equal partnership, a two-way street with ideas passing freely in both directions. It is the connection -- the integration, if you will -- of our campus learning and discovery missions with the world around us in an active partnership. In short, it is the university making a difference in the world.

When I arrived in Chapel Hill, I received data that indicated many people believe that Carolinais the single most important institution in this state's history ­ not just the most important university, but the most important institution ­ now and in the entire history of this state. One citizen who was cited called us "the state's greatest man-made asset," while another noted that "Carolina must understand the world and bring us the future." The public has tremendously high expectations for us.

We cannot ­ and at Carolina, I would argue, do not ­ consider engagement an option. Service and engagement must be an integral part of a university's life, not something we practice if we have extra time or if the mood strikes us or if our schedule permits or if it happens to be convenient. We must consider it an obligation and a responsibility, something that we owe society.

Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell summed it up eloquently: "The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth. It is obvious that man is himself a traveler; that the purpose of the world is not 'to have and to hold' but 'to give and to serve.'" What a fitting sentiment as we consider university engagement and public service.

According to the Kellogg Commission, one of the crucial characteristics of an engaged university ­ especially when we talk about a two-way partnership -- is that the university listens. I hope that's something we do every day at this University. We should be listening to the people of North Carolina as they tell us about their concerns, their problems, their needs and aspirations. We need to take what we hear from the public and then translate it into action. We need to do something about the very things our citizens are concerned about. We need to respond.

Consider the plight of North Carolina's rural schools: under-funded, hurting for teachersand often lacking state-of-the-art equipment, especially in the sciences. These challenges come as we face the tough task of promoting high-tech science careers ­ careers that will be vital to our state and nation's future. This University has perhaps a small contribution to make, a small but significant one. It's called Destiny ­ with a capital "D" -- Carolina's 40-foot mobile science lab that travels to rural high schools in the state, introducing students to concepts and equipment they otherwise would not have been exposed to (at least not until college). This bus-mounted lab offers hands-on, high-tech learning opportunities, with programs covering topics relevant to students' lives. Besides engaging them and broadening their awareness of science, Destiny helps promote high-tech science careers to those students. Since hitting the road, Destiny has rolled into small counties down east and large towns as far west as Greensboro. This is a perfect example of the University listening and responding to a problem facing our state and its students.

Along the same lines, Carolina researchers are engaging middle and high school students in science as they explore and manipulate objects at the atomic and molecular level. Most of us can't even imagine such an opportunity, especially at that age! Key to the effort is the nanoManipulator, a microcomputer system created here at UNC that uses virtual reality technology to provide a visual, 3-dimensional image of the sample being examined. Students use a joystick to manipulate and "feel" the 3-D image of a virus on the computer screen ­ an image projected across the Internet from an atomic force microscope on our campus. Two local schools are participating in the project this year, and in the third year, the outreach effort will expand to hundreds of students throughout North Carolina and Iowa. Our faculty hopes the experience will change students' ideas of what scientists do and give them a taste of the excitement and enthusiasm surrounding the scientific endeavor.

Answering yet another call from the public schools is LEARN North Carolina, an online resource for teachers coming out of our School of Education. LEARN allows teachers to chat and share experiences and questions online, and borrow from online lesson plans that meet the state curricular standards. It has created a virtual network of educators all across the state, offering much-needed personal support and information.

All of us recognize that the Institute of Government (so ably led by Mike Smith who will lead our panel discussion tonight) as one of the jewels in Carolina's public service efforts. The Institute's efforts and expertise in civic education, the courts and justice, governing boards, government finance, law enforcement, municipal and county administration, and other areas is tapped by more than 14,000 officials each year, and faculty members teach more than 200 continuing education classes annually. The Institute staff are constantly listening and responding.

So is Jim Johnson, a Kenan-Flagler professor who is on our panel tonight. In 1995, he launched the Durham Scholars program to serve at-risk inner-city youth and their families by providing after-school, weekend and summer tutorial and enrichment activities, family-crisis intervention, and parental involvement activities. The program has been so successful that ­ thanks to support from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and the Kenan Institute's Urban Investment Strategies Center ­ it is expanding to four other North Carolina communities (Asheville, Kinston, Pembroke and Siler City).

Just a few more examples:

In the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, which so devastated eastern North Carolina, UNC was there to help in so many ways. When drugs and medical supplies were needed in storm-ravaged communities, our School of Pharmacy and other health affairs units set up a hotline to route donations to areas in need. When the state was overwhelmed in spreading information about safety, clean drinking water, mental health concerns and the like, again our faculty and students stepped in. When a strong back and lots of elbow grease were needed to help salvage homes and physically clean up the mess left in the wake of the floods, our campus responded with more than 30 bus trips down east, organized through the Carolina Center for Public Service. More than a thousand students fanned out from this campus across the state.

One of Carolina's best examples of service and engagement is our Area Health Education Centers program, which takes doctors and other health care professionals to all corners of the state, offering training to health care providers in the field and help to patients with little or no access to health care. In 14 western North Carolina counties, for example, low-income residents are being tested for hemochromatosis. Although you probably haven't heard of this disease, it's a common genetic illness in North America, striking one in 200 people. The disease affects how the body processes iron, and left untreated, it can cause liver, pancreas, joint and heart damage. This screening effort should allow patients to be diagnosed and treated earlier, before chronic health problems develop.

Our doctors and researchers in the School of Medicine also listened when statistics concerning AIDS and HIV patients visiting our Chapel Hill clinic indicated that about 10 percent came from Robeson County. Rather than having patients drive five hours to Chapel Hill and back for a 15-minute doctor's appointment, physicians opened an AIDS clinic in the southeastern county one day a week.

These are just a few of the ways that UNC is engaged. I would urge you, however, to think of public service in a larger sense. Consider the University's role of putting knowledge to work for the practical benefit of the public. Consider the wide array of research opportunities that allow us to study real problems in our communities and how the University connects with the people in these communities and uses its expertise to help.

Take, for example, Carolina's recent commitment of $245 million to support genome sciences. Now, that sounds like ­ and it is -- a tremendous boost to our research endeavor. But this is active research, research that will ultimately make a difference in all of our lives. Carolina researchers believe that within our lives ­ within the next five years ­ they could find a cure for debilitating diseases like some strains of cancer and cystic fibrosis. They will be tackling such delicate issues as the ethical dilemmas surrounding how government and businesses should use the genetic information that now each of us has. Who has a right to that information? What are our rights of privacy? What are the policies, ethical decisions and moral decisions that we as a society need to be making? Only a great university with a humanistic social sciences as well as a basic science expertise can really address a huge area like that, which is of enormous benefit to all our society.

Genomics may be an extreme example, but every day Carolina researchers are in the laboratories, in the communities, and in the field applying their expertise to problems that directly affect the public, problems like water pollution, sustainable development, health care, child and family welfare, education, drug and alcohol abuse, and much more.

Our cultural offerings also fit a service niche. Thousands of North Carolina sixth-graders go to the Morehead Planetarium each year to learn about the heavens, and we are developing greater plans to update it to create a state-of-the-art, 21st-century education center to do for those thousands of kids what the science bus does ­ to introduce them and to excite them about the wonders of science. Others visit the Botanical Garden, where we work to preserve plants that are native to the Southeast. Garden staff and visiting instructors led 75 lectures, field trips and workshops for more than 1,500 participants in last year, and another 140 interpretive tours for 2,811 school students and adults. And I could go on about the Ackland Art Museum and all the other places that people interact with this University.

UNC sets a very high standard for engagement. I would suggest that as the first state university, there is no other that has a longer or more prestigious record of service and of engagement than Carolina. Indeed, that was the impetus for this University's creation more than two centuries ago, and today the moral obligation continues to weigh heavily upon us.

There is a special culture inherent in UNC, one that celebrates excellence but that is equally committed to service and, beyond service, to social justice and to a transformative interaction in the lives of our students that builds a lifelong commitment to service. One of the most fascinating and, to me, satisfying developments I've seen are the student-initiated programs. One of the most notable is our APPLES Service-Learning Program. This was student-initiated, student-run. It brings together students, faculty and community partners to address social concerns and needs of North Carolina communities. Students work at integrating service into coursework for academic credit. APPLES does an excellent job of linking the classroom and community work for our students. It helps them understand the responsibility of public service and, indeed, the joy that accompanies it.

Likewise, many of our student groups have a strong service component in their mission. Of Carolina's 460 recognized student organizations, some 250 designate public service as a major theme of their existence and all of them report some service component. Think about the many Campus Y groups, the Black Cultural Center and even the Greek community, for example, all of which do an outstanding job of teaching students about the value and importance of service.

But can Carolina do more? Could we become engaged at a greater level? Of course we can, and that's what we're working toward. Engagement is not a static state. It changes. It evolves, just as the world around us is changing and evolving.

As we move into the 21st century, we must continue to keep the flame of engagement alive. There are many things to do, but I'd like to suggest just a few:

First, we must reward public service and outreach and recognize it as an equal in UNC's three-part mission. We must very clearly send the message far and wide ­ to all parts of our campus and all corners of our state ­ that we take public service just as seriously and value it just as highly as we do teaching and researchthat it is equally important and equally necessary for us to fulfill our obligation to North Carolina citizens. So as we look at tenure and post-tenure review, we must consider how public service and engagement fit into the formula. We must send a message loudly and clearly from the highest levels of the University that service is valued, just as teaching and research are. We clearly need more opportunities, such as the fellowships and grants offered through the Carolina Center for Public Service, to encourage and reward dedication in this area.

Second, we must make sure that engagement is an integral part of the campus plan. Each college or professional school, as well as the University itself, must clearly articulate not only their goals to further engage the people of North Carolina, but how they intend to do so ­ what actions they are prepared to take to commit themselves to this level of engagement.

Third, we must find new and innovative ways to dedicate -- or rededicate ­ University resources to help our communities, our schools, our families and youth. That's going to require all of us to think creatively about engagement and service and how we best can deploy our resources, especially in an atmosphere where resources are fixed or even declining. Consider, for example, the work being done at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center on teen driving. It's not just research for the sake of research. It can be ­ and is­ immediately put to use. In North Carolina, it has been applied to bolster the argument for graduated drivers' licenses, while in Georgia it's being used to argue for legislation concerning teen driver curfews and the number of teenagers allowed to ride with young drivers. That's an application of active research ­ research that can be put to work and make a difference.

Finally, I'd like to suggest that we must actively seek out and implement partnerships with local communities ­ partnerships in which we can help address concerns about the environment, about culture, business and the economy, health and welfare. Another example: Take Chemistry Professor Joe DeSimone's new dry cleaning process. Using research and technology developed on this campus, he has created a new system of ecologically friendly dry cleaning that uses the bubbling power of liquid CO2 rather than harsh solvents. Working with experts in our business school, he developed a business plan and is selling franchise opportunities around the state and the nation. Not only is his science keeping our environment healthier, the business opportunities associated with the franchises are pumping dollars into local economies. It's hard to place a value on such service. Indeed, this same technology led to a $250 million investment in Bladen County by DuPont and led to the creation of a hundred permanent new jobs there.

As the state of North Carolina's economy shifts from manufacturing jobs, from textiles, from all the aspects of tobacco and from all the aspects of the old economy, it will become, in fact, a knowledge-based economy. The trick for a great research university is to transform the knowledge created there into the engine that drives the economy of the future. This may be one of the most significant ways in which we engage the people of this state.

Carolina has an excellent record of service to the people of North Carolina and society as a whole. But we cannot afford to rest on our laurels. We must continually strive to strengthen that record, to do more, to help more, to engage more. To do any less would be to offer mere lip service to this important part of UNC's mission. To do less would be to shirk a time-honored tradition of public higher education ­ a tradition that can, in fact, be traced back to the founding of the University of North Carolina as the first public university. To do less would be to fail the citizens of North Carolina and the United States, the many others who count on us and, ultimately, it would be to fail ourselves.

As the Friday Center enters its second decade, we have new opportunities to serve the people of North Carolina, new opportunities to engage them, and new technology to take to them. This Center will remain a vital conduit for the University to reach out to the public, one that will become increasingly important in this third century of public higher education. Bearing the proud names of William and Ida Friday, two Tar Heels who share an unparalleled commitment to public service, how can we expect less from this Center? How can we expect less from ourselves?

Thank you.