'Can
Carolina be both great
and good at the same time?'
Editor's
note: These are excerpts from Chancellor James Moeser's prepared
remarks for his second annual State of the University Address,
which he delivered Sept. 4.
It's
been a quiet week at Lake Wobegon.
It's been an incredible summer in Chapel Hill.
It was just a year ago, Sept. 5, when we gathered in this same
space for my first State of the University Address. The biggest
cloud on our horizon was the gaping hole in the state's budget.
I addressed that issue early in the speech, and then moved on
to raise the question of the long-term vision for Carolina, that
of being the leading public university in America. I laid the
groundwork for a major announcement on University Day of the goal
for the Carolina First campaign, and I concluded with thoughts
about Carolina's noble legacy of moral leadership and how that
legacy should help define our future.
Six days later, a catastrophic act of terrorism changed our world,
altering the context of everything around us. To be sure, we still
have a state budget crisis, and I shall address that again today,
although rather briefly, since there are currently more questions
than answers about the state of the state. We still have a great
vision for Carolina, and I shall center my remarks on that, with
the hope that this will begin a yearlong conversation among all
of us about what precisely it will mean to be America's leading
public university.
The major portion of this address will attempt to put some real
flesh on the bones of this vision, some concrete measures that
we can use to mark our progress. But, as I said last year, there
are also some intangible and immeasurable aspects of a great university,
elements of culture and climate. I shall conclude today with an
invocation of ideals that lie at the heart of our culture and
tradition --- the idea that we exist for a higher purpose, as
a bulwark of light and liberty undergirding freedom itself and
serving, not ourselves, but the people of North Carolina and the
United States. From this idea, we became "the university of the
people."
The
events of the past 12 months have made me proud to be your chancellor.
I am proud of Carolina's response to the tragedy of Sept. 11 --
the outpouring of more than 10,000 people in respectful silence
in Polk Place; the demonstrations of patriotism and public service
that sprang up all over campus; the individual and random acts
of kindness, especially those directed toward members of our community
who are Arab or Muslim; the seminars and teach-ins that asked
probing questions about America and the world.
I am proud of Carolina for the courage to choose a book for the
purpose of helping our students understand the complex and often
contradictory forces that shape our world. Reasonable people can,
of course, disagree about the choice of this book, but our intent
was unmistakable from the beginning. We should extend our understanding
to those who disagree with us.
Finally,
I have been proud to speak for the entire community in defending
our fundamental rights as Americans from any who would seek to
limit the scope of free expression and inquiry. In the past 12
months, UNC has shown the world what it is to be a great, free,
American public university. Last year, I had no idea when I said
we should be a university with the courage of our convictions,
that we would be tested within the year.
We have all watched with grave concern as the governor and members
of the General Assembly have struggled with what many agree is
the most critical financial environment for state government since
the Great Depression. North Carolina has experienced what some
have called "the perfect storm" of bad economic news -- a national
recession, the decline of traditional state industries, several
court decisions with major financial impact, and two major hurricanes,
combined with massive tax cuts enacted in the 1990s and other
fiscal challenges.
In fiscal 2001-2002, the state's budget woes directly resulted
in more than $44 million worth of reductions on our campus. Nearly
$10 million of that total constituted recurring reductions. The
rest was from non-recurring funds or reversions from our state
accounts necessary because of the freeze placed on expenditures
last May. Those losses meant we had to eliminate positions and
people, delay other hiring, defer maintenance, reduce teaching
and cut programs.
I want to say something now about the great staff at this university
whose work and loyalty contribute so much to the quality of the
campus culture. You are the unsung heroes of a great university.
You are the people who do everything from answering the telephones
to maintaining the buildings and grounds to keeping our high-performance
computer networks running efficiently. We are incredibly blessed
with a wonderfully dedicated and underpaid staff.
Enrollment
growth in the UNC system has been funded, at least in part, by
increases in tuition, by action of the Board of Governors, which
increased resident tuition 8 percent and non-resident tuition
12 percent. The leaders of both the Senate and the House have
stated that tuition should not be used to fund enrollment growth,
and they have committed themselves to including university enrollment
growth as a part of the continuation budget in future years. We
strongly support this move with the hope that tuition will not
be used in the future as a means of funding enrollment growth
in the system.
These are troubling times, but we cannot lose sight of Carolina's
long-term prospects. Our state funding may be suffering, but we
must continually remind ourselves that the people of North Carolina
are investing a half-billion dollars in bond funds for new construction
and renovations on this campus, guided by a visionary master plan.
At the same time, our faculty continues to bring in record amounts
of research dollars, and our alumni and friends are making wonderfully
generous gifts to the University. We will weather this economic
downturn.
We
have a responsibility to manage this University through these
difficult times. We accept that responsibility. I believe that
everyone at UNC, at every level of shared governance, is committed
to managing our affairs through the current budgetary situation.
However, we also have a larger, more profound responsibility to
keep our eyes on the more distant horizon, with a vision for the
future. Indeed, our biggest challenge today is not to become so
totally absorbed in our immediate problems that we lose sight
of our long-term vision. This requires a kind of bifocal view
of reality -- a commitment to both responsible management and
visionary leadership. Our vision is simple but profound -- to
be the leading public university in America.
Our Board of Trustees has embraced this vision. The steering committee
of the Carolina First Campaign has been so inspired and uplifted
by this vision that they have helped us generate over $846 million
in new commitments to Carolina -- 89 newly endowed faculty chairs
toward our goal of 200, more than 160 undergraduate scholarship
funds and nearly 90 graduate fellowship funds. This Oct. 11, a
year later than originally planned, we shall finally make the
public announcement of the campaign's goals. It is amazing to
me, that in one of our economy's darkest periods, we have seen
this incredible outpouring of support for Carolina.
The
key word in this vision is leading -- which carries multiple meanings.
Leading implies an action, a sense of motion, rather than the
goal of an end point. It signals leadership. This past year when
we were the first major American university to call a halt to
binding early decision admissions, we demonstrated leadership
-- moral leadership. We did it because it was the right thing
to do -- right for prospective students, right for their parents,
right for America. I believe that others will follow, but whether
or not they do, we have staked out the high ground on this issue.
The
second key word in this vision is public. Some have argued that
we should remove it from the description, and some of the public
universities created in our image have, indeed, all but removed
public from their self-definition. The former president of one
of our national peers described the evolution of his university
from a state university, to a state-related university, to a state-located
university. Another speaks openly about a "remote relationship
to the state in which it is located."
Meeting with our deans and vice chancellors last week, I was most
pleased to hear a robust commitment to Carolina's status as a
public university -- a proudly public university. In fact, the
question was asked, "Is our vision of being the leading public
university compatible with the idea of being `the university of
the people?'" Are the two reconcilable?
I shall argue that they are; that they must be.
We
must balance our vision of excellence with our history and tradition
of engagement and service to North Carolina. This is part of our
genetic code, a core value. We must be, at the same time, a great
global university and a university that is grounded with a strong
sense of place, remembering that we are owned by the people of
North Carolina. Indeed, the excellence and prominence we seek
is for the benefit of the people, not ourselves.
In October, we expect to see a first draft of the academic plan,
which has been developed over the past several months by a broad
cross-section of faculty to guide a five-year financial planning
process. It will also provide a general outline for more precise
discussions about our collective aspirations for excellence in
the College of Arts and Sciences, and the professional schools.
We will ask each dean to make presentations to the Board of Trustees
in the coming months about areas of strength and future potential.
That process will be very important as we define and articulate
the strengths that will carry Carolina forward in the future.
At our recent retreat with the deans and vice chancellors, we
considered measures of excellence in several broad categories.
In each case, our intention will be to measure and track UNC's
performance against that of the major peer institutions with which
we compete -- the Association of American Universities and specifically
those top four institutions generally regarded as superior to
us in most categories -- Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan and in undergraduate
measures, Virginia. In each of these areas we should focus both
on the point on the scale for each measure as compared to our
peers over time, and on the gradient or direction of the line.
First, we should measure over time the quality of students attracted
to UNC, using metrics that are very familiar to us. More importantly,
we should assess, measure and compare with data from AAU peers,
the quality of the learning environment at Chapel Hill, measuring
such things as the percentage of students in freshman seminars
or senior capstone seminars, the percentage of students engaged
in study abroad or undergraduate research, for example. We must
continue to pay attention to what our students are telling us
in satisfaction surveys of advising, for example, and track that
over time. And we must also constantly strive to build upon our
recent impressive gains in improving the racial and ethnic diversity
of our student population, which continues to grow both in number
and in quality of preparation.
And finally, we should track the outcomes of a Carolina education,
again measuring and tracking our own record against that of our
peers. Beyond the obvious (graduation and retention rates), we
should look at the number of significant awards earned by our
graduates and their placement into prestigious graduate and professional
programs. Similar measures should be created for graduate and
professional degree programs themselves, of course, and we shall
ask every program to tailor measures to fit their individual programs.
Improvement in any of these key areas will bring resource requirements,
and that is why we must connect our aspirations with the goals
of the Carolina First campaign. For example, I propose that we
double the size of the Honors Program, already one of the best
and most accessible in the country. With a new endowment of $25
million, we could add the necessary faculty lines to support this
expansion of the Honors Program, increasing our yield of high-ability
students, and, at the same time, adding faculty to high priority
areas of the college.
Certain
aspects of university life are intangible and not measurable.
A critical aspect of excellence is the degree to which the students
at this university grow not only in knowledge but also in character
and personal ethics. From our earliest days, the concept of honor
has been at the core of a Carolina education. The Honor Code,
and the history at Carolina of a student-administered system of
academic discipline and justice, is one of our most cherished
traditions.
Convinced that this hallowed tradition was in great need of reform
and rejuvenation, last year I appointed a special task force to
review the student judicial system. That committee, chaired by
Professor Marilyn Yarbrough in the School of Law, has now made
its recommendations. The Committee on Student Conduct will solicit
input from the Carolina community before sending proposed legislation
to Student Congress and Faculty Council. The cynics are saying
that the congress and council will talk reform to death. I challenge
us all to prove the cynics wrong.
In
this discussion of students and learning, I have focused on undergraduate
education. However, similar and parallel issues apply at the graduate
and professional level. I call on every graduate and professional
program to apply the same rising standards of admissions and acceptance,
quality of experience, and measurable outcomes for graduate and
professional programs.
Let us turn now to the faculty -- whose collective excellence
defines a great university. There are a number of quantifiable
measures of the quality of a university's faculty -- the number
of those elected to the national academies; the number receiving
significant national awards; peer-reviewed external funding and
publications, all of which can be benchmarked against our peers.
Faculty compensation is an area where UNC has struggled to keep
up. Our situation is complicated by the fact that our competition
is not just the other great public universities, but the well-endowed
private institutions as well. Coupled with woefully inadequate
benefit packages, we find ourselves each year in a mounting struggle
to fend off raids of our best people from other institutions.
We are now tracking these contests -- about half of which we are
winning -- and the cost of the retention packages in the successful
cases, as well as the known salary gaps in those instances where
we were unsuccessful in countering offers. It is, in fact, a mark
of excellence when the most distinguished universities in the
country want our faculty. As one dean remarked last week, we want
to have faculty that the University of Chicago also wants. But
we need the resources to match Chicago's.
Ultimately, our goal of establishing 200 new endowed chairs for
faculty through the Carolina First campaign will be a critical
building block in attracting and retaining the very best faculty.
But that success will not lessen our resolve to continue making
our case in Raleigh to fund pay raises for both faculty and staff.
In the recent past, a major source of funds for faculty salary
increases has been campus-initiated tuition increases. The state
must recognize its responsibility in this regard. We will do our
part in raising private funds and in recommending moderate increases
in tuition, but we must be mindful of our commitment to access.
We cannot, should not, must not place the full burden of faculty
salary increases on our students.
We must also recognize that we have some serious work to do internally
on faculty issues. Very shortly, we shall receive recommendations
from a task force regarding appointments, promotions and tenure.
These are the most important decisions we make. We need to be
certain that we have a rigorous system of peer review and standards
and procedures that are consistently applied across the university.
I do not believe that is the case today.
Chapel Hill continues to make incredible strides with regard to
growth in peer-reviewed funded research, which increased in 2001
to $438 million, up more than 17 percent over the previous year.
A major factor was National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding,
which continues to rise steadily. Last year all five of UNC's
Health Affairs schools -- dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy
and public health -- ranked within the top 25 of public and private
schools according to the NIH. Three of those professional schools
were in the top 5. We also broke into the top 20 universities
receiving science and technology funding from the National Science
Foundation, the only such university in North Carolina so designated.
Our research numbers this year are even more impressive. Total
awards for 2002 exceeded $488 million, an 11 percent increase.
This recent growth in research funding corresponds directly with
the legislature's decision in 1998 permitting the university to
retain and reinvest the reimbursements of the costs of research.
What a return on investment! Let me repeat those numbers . . .
In 2001, $438 million. In 2002, $488 million.
In 2001, we made a significant investment in genomic sciences.
Since then, we have assembled a world-class team of the best scientists
in the world. The School of Public Health was designated by the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the
nation's three centers of excellence along with the universities
of Michigan and Washington.
We continue to build cooperative programs with Duke and N.C. State.
For example, we are developing a new Ph.D. in biomedical engineering
with N.C. State, building on the strength in science and medicine
at Chapel Hill and engineering at State. We have just established
a new Triangle National Lithography Center, with significant investments
from both Carolina and N.C. State, which will focus on green manufacturing
methods and nanoscale structures. The real beneficiary of this
new center will be North Carolina's economy, with the stimulus
of new business and job creation.
We have additional strengths within UNC-Chapel Hill that will
eventually lead to the development of our own new campus at Carolina
North. As a first step in that direction, I propose the creation
of a new Institute for Advanced Materials, Nanoscience and Technology,
building on existing strengths already present in the departments
of chemistry, physics, computer science and other units engaged
in this critical technology.
Some will argue that we cannot afford new initiatives in the current
environment. I would respond that, while we must be very judicious
in taking on new projects, we cannot afford not to build on our
strengths to be the very best that we can be. I think we should
all agree on one thing -- that we will start nothing that we are
not willing to support sufficiently to make it a top-10 program
within a reasonable period of time. We must be willing to pull
the plug of life support on new programs that fail to meet that
threshold.
We should not only invest in big science, in programs that span
the traditional disciplines, we should do the same in the humanities,
the social sciences and the professions.
I am enormously proud of our social scientists who have teamed
up with the Chinese Academy of Social Science to make UNC the
lead institution in the study of the impact of the Olympic Games
in the urbanization of China. We have invested in the Center for
the Study of the American South, and Chapel Hill is once again
the "go-to" place for study of this region.
The School of Law recently created a new Center for Civil Rights,
which is committed to the study of civil rights and social justice,
especially in the American South, and is directed by Julius Chambers,
a UNC law graduate and one of the nation's great champions of
civil rights. This new center just hosted with Harvard and other
partners a major conference examining the resegregation of Southern
schools.
The Kenan-Flagler Business School has launched its new OneMBA
program, linking it with partners around the world for a truly
global program in executive education.
Next month, we shall open with pride the new Institute for Arts
and Humanities, built entirely with private support. Long one
of the jewels of the Carolina culture, the institute will now
be housed in a jewel box of a facility. Later in the fall, we
shall unveil the plan for the arts common, a truly visionary plan
that will provide the footprint for an orderly build-out of new
and renovated facilities for the arts spanning the next 50 years.
This
is the vision of a great university that has captured the imagination
of those who love Chapel Hill. But does this vision matter to
the people of North Carolina? And why should it?
The answer, I hope, is obvious. As a proudly public university,
we should mark our progress not only by measuring ourselves against
our peers. We must also judge ourselves by what we contribute
to North Carolina. This commitment is best expressed through our
engagement with the state, a mission that transcends public service,
linking our research and creativity to the felt needs of the state.
I want to go further and suggest, in conclusion, an even more
profound relationship with the people that goes back to the very
18th-century conception of the university. Peter Gomes, the Plummer
Professor of Christian Morals and Minister to the Memorial Church
at Harvard, in his new book "The Good Life," quotes a Harvard
student, who asked, in despair over some of Harvard's own policies
and actions, "Why can't Harvard be both great and good at the
same time?"
Let me re-phrase that question for us: Can Carolina be both great
and good at the same time? That suggests a university with a moral
compass, a university with a sense of public virtue. As I study
the history of this place, that is the characteristic that shines
through in our greatest moments. From our earliest days through
the recent past, Chapel Hill has been both a rock of stability
and an agent of change always characterized by a culture of civility
and humanity. The words of the prophet Micah are inscribed on
Gerrard Hall, the second chapel erected on this campus in 1822:
"What does the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."
We can pursue a vision of excellence -- of being America's leading
public university -- and not lose the faith of the people whose
university this is -- if we maintain that spirit of doing justice,
loving kindness, in a spirit of humility. Excellence without pretension.
There is no standard set of metrics for that kind of university.
But we who love this place know the feel, the smell, the sound
of such a university. Thomas Wolfe called it magical. Frank Porter
Graham talked about the music in the air.
As we begin a new academic year, we must remind ourselves that
each year we must re-create this culture of excellence and engagement,
of creativity and commitment, of being rather than seeming; doing
justice, loving kindness and walking in humility. Grounded with
that moral compass, we can shine as a true light on the hill.
The brightest star of all.
Full
text, video and audio versions
available online
To
read Chancellor James Moeser's entire State of the University
Address or to download video or audio versions, go to stateofuniversity.unc.edu.
