Inaugural Speech
February 28, 2004
Chairman Black, Members of the Board of Regents, Chancellor Smith, colleagues, friends, and all who love Texas Tech University:
Advancing academic excellence will be the cornerstone of Texas Tech's rise to greater state-wide and national prominence as a top-tier public research university. Academic excellence will be achieved if the Texas Tech family of students, parents, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, legislators, system's administration, Lubbock and state-wide supporters commit to taking the next big step together. The Tech family, moving down a path to preeminence collectively dedicating ourselves to advancing excellence, will be a powerful force to be reckoned with.
As Texas Tech's 14 th president, I stand before you today to pledge my all to the exciting proposition of advancing academic excellence at Tech. I call upon each of you here today, and to our extended Texas Tech family, to join me in this upward march.
Being a theatre historian and an academic at heart, I feel compelled to explore the historical context for this morning's celebration. A university inauguration is about much more than installing a new president. It represents a chance to reaffirm, by the presence here today of representatives of many of the greatest universities in this country, the extraordinary importance of higher education to the future of the United States and the World.
The inauguration of a university president is a custom that finds its roots in the investiture of knights in medieval Europe . This tradition developed in the earliest American universities of the eighteenth century and the tradition still flourishes today.
The first inauguration at Texas Tech took place on September 30, 1944. Dr. William Whyburn, Tech's fourth president, felt that the time had come for the college to hold an inauguration to announce that it had grown to national stature. I am honored to be a part of this historic national and Texas Tech tradition.
With the installation of a new president comes the opportunity for a university to revisit its purpose, mission, and direction. Whether we use the word “renew,” “rethink,” “reaffirm,” or “reorbit,” today's ceremony, if nothing else, affords me an opportunity to share with the Tech family a clear vision of Texas Tech's dynamic future.
But I am not here to reinvent the university. There is too much already here that is strong and vibrant and of high quality. Great universities are built over decades not in a few months or even in a few years. So, I see my role as bringing new energy, an intense focus, and a revitalized quest for excellence to Texas Tech's academic enterprise--the heart and soul of our university.
Let us reflect on where we came from. Just over 78 years ago, in 1925, Texas Technological College held its first day of classes. President Paul W. Horn addressed the first class of 914 students. He advised them with this prophetic quote that still resonates with meaning today. “ West Texas ,” Horn said, “is a country that lends itself to bigness.” “Let our thoughts be big thoughts and broad thoughts, let our thinking be in worldwide terms.”
In the spirit of the settlers of this region who faced enormous challenges in shaping our land, our founders prevailed in establishing the only science college in the western two-thirds of the state. With big thoughts and even bigger dreams, our predecessors grew the science college into a comprehensive university, embracing not only the sciences, engineering, and agriculture, but also the humanities and arts.
Their thoughts were so big that Texas Tech today stands as one of the largest single employers and largest source of economic development in the western two-thirds of the state. Yet, Texas Tech is a youthful university. It awarded its first Master's degree in 1928 and its first doctorate in 1953. Tech now generates $56 million dollars in sponsored research. And, it has grown to 28, 600 students. Soon Texas Tech will exceed 30,000 students.
In every way, it is appropriate to call Texas Tech an eminent public research university, one that is outstanding in its historical performance and rich in its traditions. These traditions include highly competitive Big XII athletics, the Goin' Band from Raiderland, the strategically placed statue of Will Rogers and Soapsuds, the Masked Rider and Raider Red, the Saddle Tramps and many more. These are wonderful traditions and we must cherish them.
But the time has come to advance academic excellence and achieve preeminence in the 21 st century. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow observed in the tale Kavanagh that others judge you by what you have already done. But, he said, we judge ourselves by what we think we are capable of achieving. This morning I concur with the thinking of Chancellor Smith and our distinguished Regents. The System's TechStar strategic plan announces clearly that Texas Tech University is poised to advance in dramatic fashion. Chancellor Smith calls this new strategy the Path to Preeminence.
Texas Tech's path is a 21 st century path. It is not a path like those the conquistadors staked out on the Llano Estacado centuries ago. Nor is it the wagon trail pioneer families followed to settle the South Plains. It is not a farm to market road, or an interstate, or the much anticipated Ports-to-Plains highway. We are talking about Texas Tech blazing a pathway through the new century into the unlimited future of global thinking and instant global communications. You could even say that Texas Tech is on a high-tech cyberpath to preeminence, and it promises to be an exciting journey!
How will Texas Tech achieve preeminence at this time of increased competition in higher education, shrinking state appropriations, and rising tuition? By putting people first. The only competitive advantage any university has is the quality of its people—its faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends. And we intend to put our resources behind our rhetoric.
People come first, so I am going to introduce you to a few shining stars in Techs current family. I would like to start by introducing to you Dr. Nancy Reed, President of the Faculty Senate. The faculty senate, which Nancy presides over, is a valuable tool for ensuring faculty input into Tech's decision-making. Let's have a round of applause for Nancy and the Faculty Senate. Texas Tech plans to invest in its faculty. We will create new endowed Regents chairs and professorships, hire 100 additional faculty, provide better salary compensation, and develop a faculty diversity hiring program, among other initiatives.
I am very proud of Texas Tech's fine staff. I would like to introduce you to the President of our Staff Senate, Chance Dragich. On the staff side we plan to hire additional staff, mostly in the student services and advising areas, provide better salary compensation, create a new position of staff ombudsperson to provide an informal means for hearing employment related concerns, and create a staff excellence time off awards program as proposed by the staff senate. These examples are just a starting point to improve the employment and work environment of our staff.
Let me introduce you to a few more outstanding members of the Tech Family. The first group are our often unsung heroes—representatives of Tech's first-class staff. We are blessed with a beautiful, well manicured campus. Texas Tech was one of only seven universities in the nation to receive the top award in the Professional Grounds Management Society's Green Star competition two years in a row. Would the representative members of the Grounds Maintenance team please stand? Thank you for our wonderful campus environment.
Next, I am honored to introduce an outstanding member of the faculty who made history this month by becoming the first Texas Tech faculty member ever to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering. This is an extremely prestigious national award, and I am happy to introduce you to the Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Engineering, Dr. Keshor Mehta.
Paul Whitfield Horn Professors represent the very highest achievement in scholarly endeavor at Texas Tech. Would all Horn Professors in the audience please stand and be recognized? Tech's Horn professors exemplify the kind of faculty that we want to develop and nurture from among our existing faculty ranks.
As Daniel Gilman said in his 1872 inaugural address as the second president of the University of California : “It is on the faculty more than on any other body that the building of a university depends. They give their lives to the work. It is not the site, nor the apparatus, nor the halls, nor the library, nor the board of regents, which draws the scholars: it is a body of living teachers, skilled in their specialties, eminent in their calling, loving to teach. Such a body of teachers will make a university anywhere.” Even, or especially, here on the South Plains of Texas , I might add.
Texas Tech has scores of outstanding students. First, I will introduce Mr. Jeremy Brown, President of the student government. If Jeremy is any example of our country's future leaders, we are in great hands.
The 2003 Texas Tech Intercollegiate Meat Judging Team recently earned the title of "National Champions.” Last November, Texas Tech University triumphed over Oklahoma State University (2nd) and Texas A&M University (3rd) to win the coveted International Intercollegiate Meat Judging Contest . Would our national champions please stand?
The McNair Scholars Program is a federally funded program that helps first-generation college students make the transition into higher education graduate programs. Texas Tech has one of the top programs in the nation. Would faculty and students from the McNair Scholars Program please stand?
I am also pleased to welcome home Law School graduate Justin Ferguson who graduated last May. Get this. Justin scored the highest score of all applicants on the Texas State Bar exam this past July. Justin, please stand.
We could spend all day meeting and thanking more outstanding members of the Tech family. Tech's staff workforce is made up of meticulous accountants, talented chefs, dedicated custodial staff, caring student advisors, enthusiastic spirit team sponsors, motivational coaches, and many more. These wonderful staff share two characteristics: they advance the education of students at Texas Tech and they will play a critical role in helping the University achieve its goal of preeminence.
Texas Tech's faculty is comprised of highly regarded scientists and engineers, gifted poets, musicians, architects, lawyers, mathematicians and many more. We have plans to expand their numbers, with an eye toward funding more interdisciplinary positions. Texas Tech will not just hire a hundred new faculty scattered hither and yon across the university. The Provost's office is developing innovative plans to hire faculty in multidisciplinary clusters. Cluster hiring will build on our academic strengths and bring greater national recognition. In the coming months the faculty, deans, and the Provost's Office will identify several unique areas of interdisciplinary research and teaching. These areas are where we will focus much of our new faculty hiring.
Two topics have emerged in our initial deliberations. First is the study of the Southwest, its border, geology, environment, history, demographics, and politics, its massive Hispanic influence, its literature, art, culture, and sociology. Southwestern studies is already a recognized topic of expertise at Texas Tech, but with the targeted hiring of new faculty and expansion of our wonderful Southwest library collections, Tech will gain national and international recognition as a center for the study of the Southwest and its Pan-Hispanic influences.
A second critical topic is water. From resources for future sustenance, to environmental safety, to legal issues; from water in agriculture and rural economic development to the political realities of water usage, water dominates much public discourse in the West, Southwest, and global arid regions. With additional faculty housed in an array of departments, Tech will become an international authority on water issues.
In reviewing these topics, I don't want us to lose sight of the centrality of the liberal arts and humanities. They have played a core part of Texas Tech's grand history. Let's not forget that our first president's background was in English literature. We will keep the liberal arts and humanities strong and vibrant. And I pledge to keep our wonderful libraries strong and current.
The hallmark of all great universities is that they are bastions of open communication and communities that champion debate and the free exchange of ideas. Texas Tech must be a place where freedom to think, to question, to criticize, to invent, and to create are woven into its rich tapestry of traditions and values. The free exchange of ideas on our campus requires that we give special attention to our core values of integrity, dignity, civility, compassion, and diversity. These values help define ethical standards in human intercourse. Discussions of ethical values should infuse all our academic disciplines.
Diversity, in all its glorious dimensions, has a special place at Texas Tech. This institution must more closely reflect the ethnic richness of our great State. Tech students deserve to attend classes with students of different economic, social, cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. As the Supreme Court recently reaffirmed, and as our Regents have boldly supported, American universities have a compelling interest to attract a diverse group of students, faculty, and staff. In order to advance the many dimensions of diversity at Tech, I plan to create a new position of special assistant to the president for diversity. Diversity must be at the forefront of our push for academic excellence.
As president, I will continue to make communication with the Tech family a priority. I will continue to attend faculty, staff, and student senate meetings, as well as host open town hall meetings and visit with students at Starbucks and in the dining halls. I will meet with community leaders, legislators, and alumni. I want to know what is on the minds of the extended Tech family, both on and off campus. I want all of you to participate in the planning and decision-making processes at Tech.
Great universities do research. They make profound discoveries that change the course of the world, or change people's lives for the better, or deepen people's understanding of what it means to be human. A central part of Texas Tech's rise to preeminence will be by expanding our research and scholarship portfolios. Tech's faculty are not just teachers, they are researchers, scholars, and creative artists. Tech students, both graduate and undergraduate, must actively participate in research activities in laboratories, field stations, rehearsal halls, archives, and libraries. We are building the next generation of creative thinkers, problem solvers, and intellectual pioneers.
In order to position Texas Tech's research in the best possible future light, we will conduct a thorough review of our research and tech transfer operations with an eye toward building on our current research strengths and identifying new areas of discovery that will embolden our research profile for the future. A team of three national research experts will visit campus this spring. They will offer advice that will help us improve our research profile and our technology transfer operations.
Future goals for our research enterprise include increasing the number of graduate and postdoctoral students in targeted areas, completing construction of our experimental science research building, increasing funding for research faculty start up packages, and significantly increasing federally funded research, both through direct appropriations and peer-reviewed investigation. We will also partner with Lubbock and West Texas to increase our transfer of intellectual property.
Another way Texas Tech will achieve national preeminence is through our continuing commitment to being a university of first choice for the best high school and transfer students in Texas and surrounding states. To improve undergraduate education, we will do these things: create more endowed scholarships; expand the Honors College; build a new state of the art residence hall; hire additional faculty and advisors; offer a new four year graduation contract to entering students; create a free-standing College of Communication; build a magnificent high tech general classroom building; build a new home for the Rawls College of Business, and construct a student health and wellness center.
Let me elaborate on just two of these initiatives. One of the great success stories at Tech in recent years has been the spectacular growth of the Honors College . The quality of students it attracts is second to none. The entering freshman class, this year, averaged 1347 on the SAT. The 980 current students in the Honors College carry a grade point average of 3.7 (out of 4.0). Fine marks, indeed. The Honors College is the centerpiece for attracting the best and brightest students to Texas Tech.
The biggest threats to access and quality for our undergraduate students lie in the unprecedented, rapid growth in our student population, the loss of state funding, and in the rising dependence upon tuition to fund growth while maintaining quality. To help mitigate some of the potential hardship brought on by impending tuition increases, I recently announced a new cost-saving plan for students and their parents. Starting this fall, we will offer all entering freshmen a four year graduation contract that will guarantee freshman students will get the courses they need to graduate in four years, if they follow their advisor's advice and take an average of 15 to 16 hours per semester. Texas Tech is the first university in Texas to offer this graduation contract.
How will this save a student money, you may be thinking? The average Texas Tech student today takes 5.5 years to graduate. Only 24 percent of Texas Tech students graduate in four years. With Tech's new four year contract, a student can save one and one half years of college-going expenses—tuition, fees, books, room and board, transportation, and entertainment—that could be as much as $18,000. Even when tuition goes up, if time to graduation is cut substantially under the four year contract, the overall cost of education does not need to rise, it could even fall. Texas Tech is committed to doing its part to keep the cost of education down and make access affordable. But we will never compromise on quality.
To summarize, let me repeat the core elements of our shared vision for advancing academic excellence and marching down the cyber-path to preeminence at Texas Tech:
We will invest in people and put them first.
We will hire new faculty and staff of superior quality and dedication.
We will compensate current employees better.
We will increase diversity and champion inclusively, transparency, and open communications.
We will expand graduate education and re-energize our research and tech transfer operations.
We will continuously improve the undergraduate experience, both inside and outside the classroom.
We will partner with the Lubbock community, with community colleges, business and industry, with not-for-profit agencies, and with state and federal governments to advance our quest of top-tier status.
This march will not be easy. It will require sweat and determination. A sweeping vision of excellence, built to match the vastness of the West Texas plains, is Texas Tech's clarion call for the next five years. Stretching and reaching, moving from eminence to preeminence is our challenge. I have no doubt that we, the Tech family, can do it, together.
Thank you.
Post Script
As a postscript, I have many thanks yous to give.
My deep appreciation goes to Chairman Black and to our Board of Regents. Upon you falls the ultimate responsibility of the Texas Tech System. Your volunteer service is invaluable to Texas Tech's future. Thank you Chancellor Smith for your kind words of introduction, your selection of me to be the 14 th president, and for your leadership in the Path to Preeminence plan for the future of the System.
Texas Tech is blessed with a creative and effective Provost and highly competent Vice Presidents. Quite frankly, they have saved me from appearing stupid time and time again since my arrival. Thanks, Bill, Michael, Michael, Max, and Bob.
Our office staff have, among many things, pointed me to the right buildings and organized my time well. Not easy tasks. Thanks, Ronald, Cathy, Margaret, Jessica and our student helpers.
I am grateful to a gaggle of deans and department chairs that carry on the day-to-day work of the academic arena with grace, good spirits, and skillful aplomb. Staff leaders, directors, and supervisors help keep the many motors and wheels and pulleys of Texas Tech oiled and running smoothly. I tip my hat to you.
The Lubbock community, the LISD, and our many civic leaders have welcomed Jennifer and me and our family with open arms. We are grateful. The town/gown relationship here is extraordinary.
I would like to thank Vice Provost Jim Brink and Margaret Lutherer and Cathy Kay from our office, and their many helpers, for organizing the splendid reception last night and this inauguration.
My final thanks go to special friends who traveled from afar. Especially, family from West Virginia and Minnesota . Friends from Iowa and Kansas , and our Texas friends from Austin , Dallas , and San Antonio . You've made this day special.
Jennifer, Ian, Amy, I can't say enough about your support and your willingness to take on this new adventure. Bless each of you.
Thank you, Texas Tech family, for sharing this day.