Speech at the Faculty-Staff Institute

Dr. Beverley J. Pitts
August 25, 2005

I am pleased to stand before you today as your friend and colleague.  I consider it a great privilege to serve as your president at a time when this university is poised to accomplish such great things, and I am very touched by your personal comments, notes, and words of encouragement over the last several months. Bill and I are very happy to be part of this community.

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank our former president Jerry Israel for the support and opportunity he gave me over the last several months and for his service to this institution. Through his leadership we developed a strategic plan that provided the blueprint for significant changes in the university and a look at the future.

Over the last decade this institution has hired extraordinarily gifted faculty, developed strong academic programs, developed a student body that is well prepared for the university learning environment, and established itself as a distinct university of quality.  We are prepared to “step up” to a new level of excellence.  And we all thank Jerry for his leadership in making that happen.

We are living and working in an environment where resources are limited and expectations are high.  Yet I believe this is an environment in which we can and will do our best work; we will create an aggressive agenda for ourselves that will mark us as an institution of distinction.

Much has already happened to establish this institution’s growing reputation of excellence.  Reflection on last year is a great reminder of the achievements that already mark us as a strong university.

In addition to saying goodbye to a great president, you created a new faculty senate, won accreditation from the American Psychological Association for the doctoral program in clinical psychology, nearly completed an extraordinarily successful capital campaign, and brought in more than two and a half million dollars in external grants. 

In addition, our faculty had some wonderful successes.  Among many publications, Stephen Graham published a book on E. Stanley Jones, John Langdon published a book titled, The Human Strategy: An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Anatomy, Greg Clapper published a book titled, Living Your Heart’s Desire, and Elizabeth Weber published a collection of poetry, titled The Burning House. Dee Schaad participated in 13 ceramic exhibitions and helped gain accreditation for the BFA in Graphic Arts.

Phylis Lan Lin arranged the first joint conference with Stellenbosch University in South Africa on Service Learning, and some of you will be attending that conference this fall.  Nancy Steffel was elected President of the Indiana Reading Professors Association, and Donna Stephenson was named executive director of the Indiana State Reading Association, which will now be housed on our campus. Ann Cutler was selected to be the editor of The Journal of College Science Teaching.

Kathy Hubbard started a chapter of Students in Free Enterprise on campus last year and the group won Rookie of the Year Award in Midwest competition.   Our Department of Theatre was one of 12 programs invited to perform at the prestigious Region 3 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

Our external grant funding included funding for the new Nurse Midwifery program. The University of Indianapolis was named 2005 Radio School of the Year under Scott Uecker’s direction. And Sue Willey was just named National Athletic Administrator of the year in NCAA Division II. Congratulations to all of you.

This short list is only representative of the achievements of our faculty and administrative staff.  There were many more publications, presentations, grants, awards, programs, recognitions, and initiatives. All of you who are doing this great work are indicators, however, of the potential we have to mark ourselves among our peers as a model of what a university like ours can achieve.

So here we are.  Everyone is wondering what is on my agenda.  How will I, as a new president, affect who we are and what we do?  Let me be as honest with you as I can.

First and foremost, I respect this institution’s history, culture, and religious heritage with the United Methodist Church, and everything I do will be built on that base. 

We have to begin by thinking about the context of expectations for us that all of higher education is facing.  We are in a highly competitive business, and the expectations for what a university should do continue to escalate.  Community leaders expect our civic engagement in the arts, culture, and well-being of the community. Businesses expect our engagement in economic development, parents expect us to educate students for careers, adult learners expect us to prepare them for a better work opportunity.  The city and state expect us to be preparing the next generation of leaders for Indiana. 

We are not alone. Coming to the institution from another Indiana institution and having served at yet another, I do have at this moment some perspective on the strengths and challenges we face as they connect to all of higher education.  This is a very competitive environment, and no institution is immune to that competition.  

Although with our strong freshman class and growing retention rates, it may seem like we have our corner on the market, so to speak; in an instant, that could be lost to us if we do not prepare ourselves well to provide the quality experience all of those students and their parents expect. 

Everything from the courses we have available, to the living environment we create for students, to the personal experiences they have both in and out of the classroom, to the quality of the instruction they receive, to the technology we provide, to cost, to reputation –all are factors in keeping us competitive.

It is easy to tell ourselves that we have something unique in higher education.  It’s easy to fall into phrases like, “We have a very personal learning environment where faculty engage with students, something you are not going to get at a large university.” 

In fact, many faculty engage with students in a very personal way at Purdue, at IU, and at IUPUI, so we don’t “own” any of those characteristics.  But it is the combination of characteristics that make the institution unique and the quality of these characteristics that make the institution’s reputation.

And the University of Indianapolis is the perfect example of doing that well. 

The combination of the strong liberal arts-based residential experience, connection to service and community, professional programs, personal care and concern of faculty, staff, and administrators, quality in the classroom, reputation and credentials of faculty, great facilities, and financial stability creates a portrait of an institution of quality. 

Right now, that picture is a good one for us. I have never met a faculty or administrative staff more committed to the mission of the institution than the people I have met here.

So what’s ahead for us?  What is on my agenda, you are asking yourself.

That question is a little misleading, because it isn’t my agenda, it’s ours, and what is ahead for us will begin to unfold through planning processes in which we will all engage.

But I do understand that a president’s leadership does shape the direction an institution will go, so let me share with you, after this most brief time on campus, some of the expectations I have for this great place.

I think many of you know that I have been very engaged in liberal education throughout my career.  I have said publicly on many occasions that the best possible education at the undergraduate level is a liberal arts-based education at a small school.

Let me speak first of my hopes for us in terms of our educational core.  We cannot and should not abandon in any way our commitment to a liberal arts-based undergraduate educational experience for our students.  Our core mission is grounded in the rich tradition of the liberal arts and sciences. 

I would hope that we would continue to examine the core undergraduate liberal arts and sciences experience our students have and strengthen it.  Our core liberal arts experience combined with a social environment that nurtures the growth of students both socially and spiritually, linked with strong professional programs are the core of who we are. That is our core business and we should focus our energies on making it strong.

I also see great promise and opportunity in our outstanding professional and graduate programs.  We have two graduate programs ranked among the top in the nation, something that would be the envy of many research institutions.  I have also been significantly impressed with the way we serve adult learners.  Our faculty represent the best of a diverse set of disciplines, and the curriculum represents the best of liberal and professional education at both the graduate and undergraduate level.

To maintain that, of course, requires of us to be appropriately academically credentialed and also well prepared for undergraduate- through doctoral-level instruction.

Therefore, offering the faculty the opportunity to continue to strengthen their teaching and scholarship is an important goal for all of us, and I know it has been a goal of the new Senate.  

To assist in that agenda, I will strengthen our faculty development grant funds and work with the Senate, the Provost and deans to provide directed funding for new initiatives for faculty development.

There seem to be some negative perceptions about the budgeting process and the allocation of resources in a year when student enrollment continues to climb.  Let me say directly to you that I am committed to putting resources into the institution to address that growth.  I will work to have an open process that protects the long-term financial stability of the institution and places resources where they are needed.

We have also come to the place where more support is needed for seeking external funding opportunities.  We have had significant successes and are poised to take advantage of external resources that can help us achieve our goals, and that means putting in place both the incentives and the structures of support to make that happen.  

Another significant strength of the institution is its international agenda.  I am impressed with our outreach and with our international students.   The Ceremony of the Flags is an event I am looking forward to.  Given that most of our students come from Indiana and they will work in a global environment, nothing we can do in expanding their experiences may be more important that providing them with an international experience.  

I will work to continue to build strong international ties for the institution, and my hope is that we can focus our efforts in the next few years on providing more opportunity for our students to study abroad, both on their own and with our own faculty. 

We have made the commitment to service, stated so well in our motto, Education for Service.  Perhaps nothing attracted me more to the institution than that statement. And it is a statement we clearly live up to.  I am very supportive of our students having a service learning experience, and the goal to have every student have a community-based experience is one we can and should accomplish.

We are serving our community in other ways as well.  Our Center for Excellence in Leadership of Learning is providing guidance in a major overhaul of secondary education in Indianapolis and raising the profile of the institution in the process.

Our Center for Aging and Community is becoming a catalyst for bringing together community leadership in dealing with issues of an aging population.  Each time these centers are recognized for contributions to the betterment of our community, the reputation of the entire institution benefits.  A successful university has room for these kinds of initiatives.

We cannot have this conversation without talking about recognition and reputation.  I am well aware that recognition and reputation come not only from strong programs, but also from visibility. We all get frustrated at the one-dimensional ratings systems like U.S. News and World Report, but whether we like it or not, opinions of us are often based on that information alone.  And we are very pleased to be in the first tier of Midwest masters universities.

But reputation is built on much more than U.S. News ratings, so we have to take charge and address the reputation issue head on.  We have to maintain quality and also talk about it. If we want to be known as a high quality institution, we will have to take the lead in telling that story—over and over—to everyone. We have to let the world know what we are doing.

As a communicator, I am interested in building our reputation and supporting those opportunities that will bring us the recognition we have earned.  I will use the energies and resources of my office to work will all of you to make this a strategic initiative. 

All of these hopes and expectations that I bring to the institution need to be joined with your knowledge, hopes, expectations, and the realities of our environment in a systematic strategic planning process that will help chart our next five years.  That process will be inclusive, and will include faculty, staff and administrators, and it will be linked to the board of trustees.  

In addition, the already-initiated Facilities Master Plan is under way, and it will coincide with our strategic planning.  That planning group will also include faculty and representatives from a wide range of campus constituencies.  It is very important that we engage in a campus-wide conversation about the next few years, and I look forward to initiating that planning process with you soon.

Working in a higher education environment is one of the great privileges of our profession.  Yes, we do face continuing challenges, but we are gifted with unique opportunities to shape lives every day. 

We should remind ourselves that in essence we are creators, not consumers.  We create new leaders, we create new knowledge and we can apply that knowledge not only in serving our students, but also in helping solve some of the social, economic, and cultural problems around us.  There is tremendous opportunity for us to rise to the challenge of demonstrating how universities can be partners in making communities better.

Admittedly, these are lofty goals, and we are challenging ourselves in an environment where the energy of the faculty and professional staff is already directed towards providing an excellent learning environment for our students. 

That means that we have to creatively rethink and redirect our energies to accomplish these goals and find the additional resources necessary to accomplish them. 

The challenges I have laid out are not “over and above” the continuing role of faculty in scholarship, teaching, and service and administrators and staff in support of this mission; they are challenges to make those roles more effective and more recognized.  

The challenges are there.  This is not an easy road.  But we are ready, we have an excellent base to build on, and we have the talent and ability to accomplish the goals.

Many of you have heard me say that universities are messy places.  There is no neat hierarchy.  I like that messiness --the chaos, the variety, the conversation, the argument, the diversity, the inconsistency, the contradictions that make a university what it is.  We can live with our differences and still make progress together. I want to continue this conversation. I will work with the Senate, and I will let you hear more from me.

I want to conclude with this note.  It is very important to remember that institutional excellence--excellence that builds the reputation of an institution—grows out of strong academic commitment in the disciplines. 

No matter how great the program, how high the funding, how grand the plan, nothing will happen without the support and commitment of the faculty, the departments, and the disciplines.  And we have a common bond.

We will not forget our core mission. We will build on it.  The good work of a university happens for the teacher and learner--student by student, faculty member by faculty member, class by class, day by day.  I will work with you to continue to make that happen for all students at the University of Indianapolis.