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The State of the University

Editor's note: The following is the text of Chancellor James Moeser's "The State of the University" address, which he delivered Sept. 5 in the Great Hall of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union.

Thank you for joining me today. As another school year begins and I have just marked my one-year anniversary in Chapel Hill, I cannot think of a better time to look at where Carolina has been and, perhaps more importantly, where it is going. Today's State of the University address does that.

I want to begin by introducing the vice chancellors -- my colleagues and our senior leaders. With the most recent appointment of the vice chancellor for research and graduate studies, this outstanding team is now complete. Thanks to the faculty, staff, and students who served on search committees over the past year to help put together what I believe is the best administrative group in the country.

First, let me acknowledge the three vice chancellors still in their first year: Tony Waldrop, our newest colleague in research and graduate studies, but certainly no stranger to Chapel Hill as a proud alumnus who has come home to serve; Robert Shelton, who we are so fortunate to have as executive vice chancellor and provost; and Nancy Suttenfield, who leads the key units of finance and administration. They complement our other excellent vice chancellors: Susan Ehringhaus, general counsel; Jeffrey Houpt, medical affairs, who could not be here today; Sue Kitchen, student affairs; Matt Kupec, University advancement; and Marian Moore, information technology.

Seated in front today are members of the Chancellor's Cabinet and the academic deans, who are critical members of the University's leadership. Would all the members of the Cabinet, the deans and the members of the Dean's Council please stand and be recognized.

From off campus, our visitors today include the immediate past chair of our Board of Trustees, Anne Cates, who led our trustees for two years during a critical period and currently serves on the UNC Board of Governors.

I also want to acknowledge Professor Sue Estroff, the chair of the faculty, and her great assistance to me in my first year at Carolina; as well as John Heuer, the chair of the Employee Forum; Justin Young, the president of our student body; and Mikisha Brown, the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation.

Indeed, I should recognize everyone here -- you, your colleagues and our students are the subject and the focus of my remarks today about the state of the University, for you are the University.

I am indebted to Professor Estroff for a provocative article in the July-August Carolina Alumni Review. Sue noted Carolina's special culture that I think all of us celebrate: a culture of community and concern for human values. We participate in a covenant of generosity with the people of North Carolina, she wrote, "a generosity that is both personal and intellectual. ... We know how to work together, and we take a genuine pleasure in the accomplishments of the individuals who make up our community."

At a previous institution I served, I tried to make the case that a culture of excellence was best typified by that very feature: the genuine pride in the accomplishments of others -- one's colleagues or one's students. At the time, I did not realize that what I was describing is Carolina.

Indeed, last year I heard one of this University's most distinguished research faculty members say that this was our secret weapon, our strong tradition of working together across departmental and divisional lines and not caring who gets the credit.

Carolina also has a reputation as a place that values learning for its own sake, a place where the joy of learning is overtly evident in all we do -- in the classroom, the laboratory, the residence hall, and all places in between. This is special, and something we should cherish and celebrate. I have been a part of several other academic communities, and I have never known one that comes even close to what I can feel here -- morale that is buoyant and optimistic, a genuine pride in association with one's colleagues and the University itself.

Last year a senior faculty colleague explained it to me this way. "Chancellor," he said, "do you have any idea what it feels like when I go to my national meeting and say, `I am from Chapel Hill,' and people turn in respect and admiration." Of course, it is the collective eminence of the faculty that created that reputation in the first place. A year later, I can honestly answer that question. "Yes, I do know how that feels. There is pride in saying, "I'm from Chapel Hill." There is also great humility in standing before you as your chancellor.

That same pride can be felt among our students and the staff. I have seen it up close during events like the Chancellor's Student Award ceremony last spring and, just a few weeks ago, during my first opportunity to present Chancellor's Awards to five outstanding faculty and staff. This is a special place. There is a magic here. I love how Frank Porter Graham described it. "There is music in the air of the place," he said.

Yes, we do have a wonderful culture and tradition here at Carolina, what I would call a symphonic culture of excellence. This culture is fragile and must not be taken for granted. But what caught my attention in Sue Estroff's article was not her evocation of the good that we know, but the challenge we face to pursue change without fear even though we know it must inevitably involve risks.

To that end, let me outline the key challenges and opportunities facing all of us in this academic year:

We must assess our funding needs in the context of the current legislative session while simultaneously moving forward boldly into the most ambitious fund-raising campaign in our history.

We have launched a process to create an academic plan reflecting campuswide priorities that is thoughtful, comprehensive and includes the broad participation of the academic community.

We must move forward with the full realization of our visionary development plan that will guide the controlled, responsible physical growth for the next decade.

There are many other challenges, but I believe these are the most pressing and require our collective attention as a community during this current academic year.

In the light of the legislative session, let me pose a fundamental question for us to consider: Where do we stand with the people of North Carolina? Our state's entire educational system has been under intense scrutiny as our legislators have wrestled with extremely difficult questions about the state's current and future financial picture. Last fall, citizens ratified the higher education bond referendum by a 3-1 vote, passing this landmark legislation in all 100 counties. Yet, at times during the legislative session, this University was literally placed on the chopping block, threatened by cuts -- real and proposed -- that could quickly eradicate the years of work that allowed Carolina to rise to the status of a great public university. We have serious work to do in taking the University's story -- in particular, the story of why research universities are so important -- to both the people and policy-makers of our state. Over the summer and in these past few days we have been fighting to make sure that this voice has been heard -- every member of the team, the faculty and staff leadership, our student leaders, our trustees and our alumni and friends across the state -- have battled to make the case that a great people deserve a great university.

With respect to the state budget debate, a final resolution continues to elude us, even as I speak today. The state's revenue picture worsened considerably as the summer wore on, sparking a protracted debate in Raleigh over tax increases. In the end, the budget package likely to be approved will probably contain mixed news for us. Tuition for our undergraduates will increase 5 percent for residents and just over 8 percent for non-residents above the rates previously approved last academic year by our campus and by the Board of Governors. We will serve our constituents with fewer staff -- almost 3 percent fewer. Although we appear to have preserved our overhead receipts -- those reimbursements earned by our faculty for the cost of conducting outside research -- our ability to keep such revenue will be challenged again and again. On the positive side, the University will receive funding increases to support enrollment growth. My conclusion about this session is simply that it raises more questions about our state's priorities than it answers. This is clearly a time for vision and courage in North Carolina.

This University has been tested before. In the depths of the Great Depression, Frank Porter Graham recognized that declining revenue was not a sufficient reason to raid our intellectual resources. Said Graham, "Restoration of the vigor of an institution is slow and costly. Because a child survived on two meals a day is not a sound reason to put the child on less food." With vision, courage and leadership, Carolina survived that test and went on to enter a great period of growth and development that led to the modern University we know today.

The vision for Carolina

The challenge today is not to become distracted by these short-term issues from our long-term vision for Carolina. What is that vision? It is to do what Carolina has always done best: to lead. The first public university in America should today be first among America's public universities. That is our history; that is our destiny.

Let me be clear: this vision has nothing to do with journalistic rankings. The latest U.S. News and World Report magazine rankings become public tomorrow night and will be covered by the news media in the coming days. If you must, read what the magazine has to say about us, but let us not for a second be diverted by these arbitrary and artificial ratings from the substance of our vision for excellence.

When we achieve that vision -- of leading the way for America's great public universities -- those benefiting the most will be the people of North Carolina and the future generations of North Carolinians who come through Chapel Hill.

If knowledge is the capital of our new economy, research universities are the source of that capital and will be at the center of thriving economies. We know that. We understand that, but we must make sure that the people and their elected officials understand that, too. It is our duty and responsibility to share such knowledge. The burden lies with us to explain effectively how what we do here improves the daily lives of the people of North Carolina and beyond.

As a public university, Carolina cannot operate in a vacuum. We must recognize the pressures that state government faces. Our plea to the state is for financial stability and freedom from micromanagement. Threats of 7 percent cuts, even if unrealized, depict great financial instability and send shock waves that are felt not only here at home, but around the world as we seek to recruit the best and brightest faculty, staff and students. Attempts to divert our overhead receipts from grants to other state needs do great harm to the productivity of our faculty, who last year averaged bringing into the University $149,000 per capita in external, peer-reviewed competitive grants.

Stability from the state would give us a platform of funding adjusted for inflation and future enrollment growth. With that platform of stability, we would do the rest. Last year, I made a pledge to the people of North Carolina that we would triple the impact of the bond issue on this campus with private fund raising. We intend to keep that pledge. I would further pledge that if we can achieve the financial stability I am describing, Carolina will do the rest in finding additional funds that can make the critical margin of excellence.

Clearly, we must continue with graduated and measured campus-initiated increases in tuition over the next several years to address issues about the quality of the education we provide. We will remain faithful to the state constitution by allocating a sufficient portion of that revenue to need-based financial aid so no student is denied access to Carolina because of financial need. Later this fall, we shall take to the Board of Trustees an updated five-year plan for tuition necessary to support excellence.

Just in this past year, we have lost significant ground with salaries and benefits. Over the next five years, approximately one-third of our faculty will reach retirement age, and we will be competing with the other great universities across the country for the next generation of faculty. We also seek the flexibility to make salaries and benefits for our dedicated staff competitive in this tough Triangle labor market. This year our staff will receive only a modest pay increase that will not even cover the cost of their rising health insurance premiums. Some employees tell me they are worried about the affordability of basic health insurance. That is unacceptable. We must keep fighting for competitive and equitable compensation packages.

On University Day, we will unveil the public phase of our major fund-raising campaign, the largest in our history. On that day, we will announce the results of our efforts in the "quiet phase" of this campaign, as well as the overall goal which will, more than anything else, define Carolina's future. This campaign will put us at the very forefront of public universities seeking private support. It will make us more competitive in recruiting the best minds -- students, faculty, and staff. We shall seek 200 new endowed professorships (a nearly 70 percent increase over our current complement) and 1,000 new scholarships and fellowships. Think of the impact! Those numbers help demonstrate how this campaign will help meet our academic goals. It will also help fund the research and public service that will enable Carolina to make our state and our world a better place. And indeed, this effort will determine whether or not we reach our ultimate vision.

All of you are invited to help us celebrate Carolina's 208th birthday on University Day, Oct. 12th. This is a great day in the life of the University, and this year will mark the beginning of our future -- what can be Carolina's Golden Age, if we are all successful. Please be there.

Research growth

The research productivity of Carolina's faculty continues growing at a steady pace. Last year, our research funding increased 9 percent overall, spurred largely by an impressive 20 percent boost from the National Institutes of Health. Last year, peer-reviewed external funding reached $375 million, and all signs indicate that this year will show another healthy gain. Just yesterday, we announced a new $26 million federally funded study led by Etta Pisano in medicine. The goal is to save lives of women who develop breast cancer by determining the effectiveness of digital mammography. Such exciting work demonstrates the excellence of our faculty.

Much of the research funding growth in the last three years has resulted from the reinvestment of our overhead receipts from federally funded grants to construct new research facilities in the basic and health sciences. These dollars are our seed corn, our investment for the future. That is why we have fought so hard (and will continue to fight) to prevent the diversion of those funds to other portions of the state budget.

Our research is making its way directly to the North Carolina economy at an accelerated pace through the creation of tax-paying, for-profit spin-off companies that are solving local, state and national problems and creating new jobs. Last year alone, technology developed in Carolina research programs spawned a dozen new companies.

Success stories abound, carrying with them important economic development and educational messages. Consider Holden Thorp, an award-winning chemistry professor whose research led to the creation of Xanthon Inc., which is commercializing a patented electrochemical detection technology to analyze DNA, RNA and proteins. Now Thorp has turned his experiences in growing that business into the topic of a new first-year seminar.

Also in chemistry, research conducted by Joe DeSimone and two of his students led to Micell Technologies several years ago. Among many results of that research, perhaps the most impressive has been DuPont's expansion of its Bladen County site with a $40 million Teflon facility. Ultimately, plans call for a total investment of $275 million and 100 permanent jobs.

Other distinguished Carolina scientists have made discoveries with important implications for the marketplace and the public. Let me quickly mention just a few:

* Richard Boucher in medicine just spun off his second company, CyFi Inc., a start-up pursuing technology he developed with applications in chronic bronchitis and other respiratory diseases.

* Khalid Ishaq in pharmacy was instrumental in helping Wake Forest colleagues launch Kucera Pharmaceutical Company, which is coupling new compounds with existing drugs to increase their effectiveness against cancer and viruses including HIV/AIDS.

* Timm Crowder, who only recently left the ranks of our graduate students and is now in biomedical engineering, just had dry powder inhaler technology he helped invent turn into Oriel Inc., which is seeking funding for commercial applications.

* Otto Zhou in physics developed technology that resulted in Applied Nanotechnologies Inc., which is devising industrial applications for carbon nanotubes that include electrodes for batteries and gas discharge tubes for telecommunications circuit protection.

* Also in the rapidly emerging area of nanotechnology, consider the success of our nanoManipulator user interface technology, marketed through 3rd Tech Inc., which won an R&D 100 Award for licensed technology and is based on the outstanding work of Richard Superfine, Russ Taylor and Sean Washburn from physics and computer science.

Ultimately, we want to do even more to get Carolina-created technology into the hands of the public, and our goal is to create our own venture capital fund and incubator space to further stimulate this kind of activity.

Those examples just briefly touch on the many positive ways in which our faculty are helping bolster the North Carolina economy. We should aggressively pursue the transfer of our technology -- through licensing agreements, patent activity and the like -- into the marketplace to get those products into the hands of consumers who need them, while at the same time generating revenue for the University to continue conducting research.

But there are limits, ethical and moral limits, raised by research and its ownership. What are the proper boundaries of patent rights and royalties? Who should benefit from discoveries involving the human body. Those are questions a great university like Carolina should address.

Academic planning

A key activity that should engage us all will be the development of the academic plan. This far-reaching effort will distill our current areas of strength and use our best thinking to pinpoint future areas of opportunity where Carolina can shine.

Provost Robert Shelton will lead this work. This plan should represent our vision -- not my vision, not the provost's, but our collective vision -- resulting from the collaboration and engagement of the entire academic community. I hope you will consider this my invitation to join in this important process.

This is also an opportunity to restate my commitment to the tradition of shared governance at Carolina. We have a wonderful culture of collegiality, where faculty, staff and students have an opportunity to participate meaningfully in decisions that broadly affect the campus. Let us all commit ourselves to the preservation of that culture.

Development plan

Questions about our physical growth provide just such an example. Development of our master plan involved community participation and input -- both on and off campus -- for more than three years. That paid big dividends because the final plan benefited enormously from such an open and participatory process. The same will be true about the Horace Williams tract planning process, which will now be led by Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies Tony Waldrop.

On Oct. 3rd, the Chapel Hill Town Council will vote on our development plan, which we have submitted in accordance with the ordinance approved in July to rezone the central campus. If approved, the plan will allow us to move forward over the next decade to realize the physical building of the campus, including critical bond-funded projects, essential new research buildings, major new cultural facilities for the benefit of the larger community, undergraduate residence halls, student family housing and parking facilities. Ultimately, we aim to create a campus that is even more beautiful than the one we love today with a South Campus that is more welcoming to the students and families who live there as well as to the patients traveling here from afar.

As you know, our neighbors in Chapel Hill, many of whom are also members of our own faculty and staff, have great interest in this plan, especially where it abuts individual neighborhoods. The University has adjusted the plan in recognition of many neighbors' concerns. In the Mason Farm neighborhood, we are committed to working with residents in discussing design plans for the student family housing along Mason Farm Road. We believe that graduate students and their families will be excellent neighbors. All of us have concerns about growth. All of us understand the tension between the desire to keep things the way they are and the need for progress and improvement. We look forward to working with the neighbors on all sides of campus.

Let me take this opportunity to bring you up to date. Our staff has been deeply engaged in follow-up work since the July zoning vote to submit the development plan and a lengthy addendum that provided additional data, maps, and other information responding to questions that arose based on the town's review and neighborhood concerns. We have learned recently of additional stipulations that go beyond mutually agreed upon guidelines and standards that described the University's responsibilities for mitigating the impact of growth. These stipulations appear to shift costs disproportionately to the University, its students and ultimately the state.

I am concerned about these reports and a process that conditions approval of our development plan with requirements beyond the standards that were negotiated in good faith during the rezoning of our campus. I remain hopeful that we can continue to work productively. For now, I would be remiss if I did not thank the dozens of University employees in multiple units who have toiled long and hard on many nights and weekends this summer to make possible our submission of the development plan and the nearly equally long addendum. They have also handled our responses to questions and requests from the town and community with aplomb. In particular, I wish to single out the exemplary work of Vice Chancellor Suttenfield, Associate Vice Chancellors Bruce Runberg and Carolyn Elfland and their colleagues.

The information I have just shared demonstrates why it so important for all of you to learn more about our development plan. I urge you to attend a campuswide forum on Sept. 10th at 5:30 p.m. in the Carroll Hall auditorium. The forum is sponsored by the Faculty Council, Employee Forum and Student Government. It is important for the University community to be well-informed about this issue and its implications on campus as well as in the community that we love and live in together.

The arts and humanities

We have focused a great deal on the sciences over the past year -- our $245 million investment in genomics, our great strengths in nanotechnology, computer sciences and the environmental sciences, among others -- but I fear that we have left unsaid our equal commitment to the arts and humanities at Carolina. Lest there be any doubt, let me be quite specific: I do not believe that we can be America's best public university on the strength of science alone. Indeed, without an equal commitment to excellence in the arts and humanities, one might -- with good reason -- question where our values lie. Lest we fall into the trap of putting everything into quantitative terms, let us ask the question, what is the value to our society of the unfunded, but nonetheless significant research of our artists and humanists? What is the value of a sonnet, or a sonata?

This University has not nurtured the arts as it should. That has become clear to me over the past year. With the exception of the PlayMakers Repertory Company, which has few, if any, peers among American universities, our programs in the arts have been neglected, especially from a standpoint of their physical facilities. The bond issue will ultimately rectify the deplorable state of the music library, which houses one of the most distinguished collections in America, but it does nothing for the Department of Music's performance facilities, which remain sub-par. Likewise, the Ackland Art Museum, which has enormous potential for education in the visual arts, is in dire need of renovation and expansion. These projects will be addressed through the fund-raising campaign.

If the arts are the heart of the University, the humanities are the very soul of Carolina. Carolina's strengths in these areas are legendary. We must also pay careful attention to our library, whose holdings are without compare in many areas. Never again should we put the library at risk when budget cuts threaten, no matter how severe the situation. The library must be and continue to be one of our major priorities. We cannot be a great university without a great library.

We must also be a world university. The great universities of the world will be judged on an international stage. That means we must offer a truly superior international education at Chapel Hill, an education that will remain rooted in the finest Carolina tradition, but that will prepare our state and our students for leading in a global economy.

Carolina is making immense progress in becoming a great international university, with major new joint programs involving the College of Arts and Sciences and the schools of public health, journalism and mass communication, education, information and library science and business with the Monterrey Institute of Technology System, Mexico's top technology university, as just one example. Another example of our growing international stature is evident through a proposal now being shepherded by the Kenan-Flagler Business School and the College of Arts and Sciences to establish an undergraduate business degree program in Qatar. The project resulted from an invitation by the Qatar Foundation, which would pay all expenses associated with the venture. Provost Shelton has appointed a committee comprised of representatives from the business school and the college to develop an appropriate curriculum to support such a program. This represents the kind of international opportunities that can serve as a model for the University abroad and help establish our global presence in a meaningful way.

Engagement

I also see a renewed interest in public service on campus. This past year, a group of students from the Apples service-learning program came to see me to tell me what they were doing and to urge me to do all that I could to make sure faculty who integrate service into learning are properly recognized and rewarded for it. There is a growing recognition that active service enhances the learning environment.

I am proud of the commitment to service I see at Carolina, a commitment that is unlike anything I have ever seen before. It is part of our tradition, first articulated by President Edward Kidder Graham, who simply said to the people of North Carolina: "Write to the University when you need help." We must refocus on Carolina's service role, on our responsibility to engage the public, to solve the problems and to make this world a better place.

I recently heard Gene Nichol, the dean of the Law School, make a telling observation in comparing Carolina to our other major national peers -- the other great public universities. (You know them now by heart -- Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan and Virginia.) What sets us apart from each of these, Dean Nichol said, is that Carolina is the only one of this group that wants to be a public university. We embrace the word public.

We cannot -- and at Carolina, I would argue, do not -- consider engagement an option. It is an integral part of a great university's life, not something to be practiced when convenient or if the mood strikes us. We must remember Carolina's tradition of public service, and we must consider such service an obligation and responsibility, a debt we owe to the people of North Carolina as well as to society at large.

The courage of our convictions

Finally, let me close with some thoughts about Carolina's noble legacy of moral leadership and how that legacy should help define our future. Chapel Hill helped define the new South, and in so doing defined itself, by having the moral courage to support controversial research that challenged mores and traditional values. We must be a university that holds contemporary culture up to the critical light in the context of freedom. Light and Liberty. Lux, libertas.

In that light, we have a moral responsibility to our state and our nation as a public university to bring to the public square the great issues of our day, without fear of censorship. Just as Chancellor Aycock and President Friday worked to defeat the repression of free speech embodied in the Speaker Ban Law and just as President Graham spoke out vehemently against the use of the atomic bomb, we must be willing to take a stand on critical issues of the day. We must be tolerant of the opinions expressed by others and ever supportive of their right to express them. But at the end of the day, we must have the courage and the fortitude to stand by our beliefs and act upon them.

Consider Carolina's role in leading the South out of its culture of racism, segregation, and Jim Crow. That work remains unfinished, for we still live with the lingering toxins of racism. Even today there are those who consider us a racist institution because of our own past. We can counter this only with a renewal of our strong commitment to freedom, to equality and equity, to a society of pluralism. I am proud that 50 years ago this fall, Carolina became one of the first major Southern universities to open its doors to African-American students. Today, I am proud that Carolina is given the highest approval marks of any major public university by African-American students as reported by Black Enterprise magazine. I am proud, too, that the Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center building is at last becoming a physical reality on campus, long since it has become a cultural and academic reality. Diversity is a vital component of our vision to become first among America's public universities, and we must all recommit ourselves to this important challenge every day.

I think the same moral responsibility points us directly to the great issues before us today. We should lead in asking these questions: How long will America be the last great nation of the developed world to practice capital punishment? Why should we hide our commitment to nondiscrimination based on a person's sexual orientation? Is it not time that we reclaimed the words "character" and "values" from the extreme right and put them back into the mainstream of secular, public higher education? These are among the questions of our time.

But it is not enough just to ask the questions. We must act on our convictions. This is the complex role of a truly great university: to be both a conservator of culture and values, and a leader of change, both in ourselves and in the larger society.

In so doing, we are faithful to our own traditions of excellence, engagement, and leadership. And thus, the university that became the model for public higher education in America will again be leading the way, to be the "light on the hill" for America and the world.

This is the vision of a great university, a university destined to lead -- a university that embraces excellence in the creation and dissemination of knowledge, engaged with the people whom it serves, and grounded in human values and free expression. Together, let us embrace the vision. Let us by that university.

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