This is my 25th year in higher education and the start of my seventh at RWU. Each fall I have the privilege of sharing with you the State of the University.

We had a great start to the year with record enrollment, the largest community service day in Rhode Island—Community Connections—a thoughtful fall faculty conference, a new board of trustees, a historic agreement with the town of Bristol and a new entrance.

Summer seems a long time ago; I hope you had a good one. I went off on University business to Istanbul, Dubai and Afghanistan only to return to Rhode Island and the issues facing the board of trustees over the unacceptable remarks by the former chairman of the board and board governance.

I am not going to rehash what happened; you have all read or heard parts of the story. But most observers differentiated the University—which is doing fine—from a board that was clearly out of synch. Enough said. It’s time to move forward, not backward.

We now have a new and improved board including 13 new trustees, new bylaws, term limits and conflict of interest policies. Of these new trustees, six are women, four are people of color, three are international. They are alumni, parents, educators, business leaders and philanthropists who will bring competencies and commitment to RWU; in other words, a board consistent with our values.

Joining us today is a special guest, Rick Bready, the new Chairman of the board. He has been a trustee at St. Anselms College, on the corporation of Northeastern, and recognized by the council of Christians and Jews. He is a philanthropist and a champion for education and the underserved.
Rick, would you stand and be recognized.  

We also have outstanding new academic leadership in our provost and senior vice president Dr. Laura de Abruna, the number two officer of the University. She is a scholar, a teacher and an accomplished administrator having served at Heidelberg, Susquehanna, Ithaca and other institutions. She is thoughtful, accomplished and smart and is already having an impact. Let me thank the search committee co-chair Richard Potter for his leadership in our recruitment effort.

At the heart of any University is the faculty. This summer we hired 25 new full-time faculty members. They join a very strong and committed faculty; nearly 40 percent of whom have been hired in my time.

We have new deans in Robert Cole in Arts and Sciences and Meiko Kamii in Education and other non-academic leaders—but no less smart—in Lorraine Lalli, the associate dean of students at the law school and Didier Bouvet as dean of undergraduate admissions—both alumni.

We have been fortunate to hire some extraordinary people and retain others. Judi Johnson has joined us as executive director of communications and Public Affairs. Judi is a consummate pro and was of invaluable assistance and consistency during this summer’s challenges. She has held executive positions at Johnson & Wales, Simmons and elsewhere. Brian Clark in that office has been promoted to associate director. 

Greg Rogers joined us as director of institutional research, having been at Nebraska and other major universities. There is no data that escapes his mining—ask him the entering GPA of architecture students from Mamaroneck, the percentage of alumni from Warwick who are over 6 feet tall that contribute to the annual fund, or Jim Tackach’s lifetime batting average. The numbers are not always pretty, but Greg has them.

After a highly competitive search we hired a new Public Safety director in David Smith, to replace Brendan Doherty, who is now the head of the Rhode Island State Police. Director Smith is the former chief of police in Narragansett and Westerly and is a national leader in law enforcement, and we are lucky to have him.

Kassandra Jolley has joined us as vice president for university advancement. She will oversee alumni, development and major campus cultivation events. She comes to us from Simmons College where she served as associate vice president.

We have had terrific additions to student affairs, including Ande Diaz as associate dean of students and director of the Intercultural Center; she is a recognized scholar and practitioner. Don Mayes has joined us as assistant director of the Intercultural Center and we have a new head women’s basketball coach in Tracy Hathaway-James.

 I want to recognize John King’s quiet leadership in these successful searches—Dr. John King—since he received his Ed.D from the University of Massachusetts this spring.

We also have promoted from within. Joe Pangborn, our excellent chief information officer, now oversees capital projects and facilities working with Tom Martin, John Tameo and our great facilities crew. And a special thanks to Matt Clement and his team for the greening of our campus.

I promised myself that I would give the entirety of my remarks without any statistics, but I can’t resist.
This fall we had more than 7,600 applicants for a class of 1,150. That’s a 100 percent increase in applicants in the past six years.

During that time, our acceptance rate has improved by 26 percent; our graduation rate has gone from 36 percent to over 61 percent. The national average, by the way, is only 56 percent.

And, as I often say, rankings don’t matter—except when you’re in them. This fall, we were ranked ninth in U.S. News & World Report among 60 northeastern schools in our category. Five years ago, we struggled to crack the top 20.

And, at the Roger Williams University School of Law, a national study on faculty productivity—as measured by scholarly articles in top 50 journals—rated this law school fourth in New England, behind Harvard and Yale, but nearly tied with Boston College—all places older and richer. What a great accomplishment.

 Instead of resting on our laurels, we are actively engaged in strategic planning, taking a 360-degree look at how we function as a University. From admissions to the core—from how we organize schools and departments, to the role of interdisciplinary learning, graduate programs, diversity, campus planning and technology—we are examining what we do and how we do it, not only for the students of today, but for the next generation.

Roger Williams 2020, named not for the long running television program, but for the fact that the first grader of today will be enrolling in college somewhere in 2020. We’d like some of them to come here.

 When I became President, we launched a strategic planning process; many of you were involved in that effort. Carl Bogus turned us on to the Socrates Café, which has become a mainstay of our campus community; Kathy Micken taught us about building a brand, which has morphed into University identity embodied in the phrase “Learning to Bridge the World.”

Back then, it was about fixing a University that needed some fixing. The University was running an annual operating deficit; the acceptance rate was 93 percent, the graduation rate 36 percent. But what we had was a terrific location, an interesting set of academic offerings, and a very committed faculty.

Together we fixed a lot of things but this strategic plan. Roger Williams 2020 isn’t about the past, it’s about the future because the world has changed and our competitive set is very different. 

 In the next several years, the Northeast—Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and other Northeastern states—will experience a precipitous decline in graduating high school students. The baby bust. That’s where a vast majority of our current students come from; the Northeast, a region which is home to hundreds of quality public and private institutions of higher learning.

There will be enrollment opportunities and growth in the decades ahead from the international market, the adult lifelong learner, students from the Sun Belt. They will increasingly be black, brown, Asian, biracial, multiracial, immigrant and from lower socioeconomic groups. Not traditional markets for this University.

We must be prepared for this demographic shift by becoming more national and international, by being more diverse and inclusive, by being worth the price of admission, by being not necessarily bigger, but better. We do this not only because of this demographic reality, but because these changes make for better education for all of our students, and because it’s the right thing to do.

What won’t change is our commitment to the primacy of teaching, the importance of service, the connection to the world beyond the classroom, the value of inquiry and research—whatever the form—and our desire to create global citizen-scholars.

Rather than recite these values, I want to exemplify them with proof points those actions, large and more modest, that show the University understands the challenges ahead.

This summer, we approved a campus master plan involving over $80 million in new projects. A new academic building on the footprint of the old dining hall will open in fall 2009 with over a dozen classrooms, graphic design and language labs, faculty offices, adjunct spaces, communication classrooms and a state of the art television studio.

We are expanding our marine science labs, building new residence halls as living-learning communities and retrofitting Feinstein Hall, for starters.

In addition, we believe in sustainability. Soon the smell of French fries will waft through the air as we convert its trans fat free byproduct to biodiesel fuel to power our campus shuttle. Thanks to Scott Yonan, Leo Bonnenfant, Andy Costanza and others.

We are exploring the use of geothermal energy to heat buildings, working on potential LEED certification, taking recycling to a higher level, reducing our carbon footprint and with the law school as leader, studying how to reduce or eliminate the use of plastic bottles for beverages.

Less than two years ago, we made a decision to go with Bon Appetit as our food provider and built this building. I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Paula Nirschel for her pioneering leadership in that effort as she has been instrumental to so many other major changes on campus.

Today we are a campus that celebrates healthier approaches to eating. Soon we will have a campus greenhouse. We are drinking Rhody Fresh Milk from local cows—I know, I milked them…they don’t like to be milked.

And speaking of food, in a national survey of student satisfaction we have gone from the bottom 10 percent of college and University food in 2001 to the top 2 percent in the country. What an accomplishment and a tribute to Paul Bulau and his team.

In addition to “Bridging the World,” it’s important to be a good neighbor locally. Last week, the board approved and I signed, an agreement with the town of Bristol which, over its lifetime, will provide over $40 million to the town in payments, in lieu of taxes, the purchase of vehicles and equipment for our first responders and expanded scholarships, all as a way of expressing our pride in having Bristol as our hometown. Chris Neronha in the Office of General Counsel and Pete Wilbur were of great help on this, but let me also acknowledge Ray Cordiero for his steadfast support.

At the end of the day, universities are not about money or buildings. They are about ideas and people, so let me share a few of both.

Two and a half years ago we sponsored, along with Harvard, the first official Iraqi student delegation to come to the United States in 35 years—six students—three Sunni, two Shiite, one Christian. They were full of optimism and loved their time at Roger Williams. One of those students was Qussay Al-Attabi, an Iraqi patriot, a Sunni, an academic—in British literature even. He and I became friends.

Since February 2005, hundreds of his colleagues have been killed on college campuses in Iraq; killed because they were Sunni, Shiite, Christian—killed because they loved learning. Thanks to Rebecca Leuchak and many others, Qussay’s career has been saved and more importantly, his life has been saved. He is now here in Rhode Island; a rescued scholar—alive.

Qussay—would you stand up and be recognized.
This summer, I went to Istanbul, Dubai and Kabul. In Dubai, one of our PLUS graduates, Siwar Kalifa, was chosen for a prestigious internship at Leo Burnett in Dubai, one of the largest design agencies in the world with offices in 84 countries, thanks to a teacher and mentor in Sharon Delucca, Robin Beauchamp and Siwar’s own abilities.

Turkish graduates from our master’s in justice studies, like Mehmet Alper Sozer, have emerged as leaders in the Turkish National Police thanks to Bob McKenna and Dean Stephanie Manzi and our justice studies faculty. And in Afghanistan, our young graduates and current students are playing leadership roles with President Karzai, the World Bank and with the Minister of Finance in rebuilding that troubled land.

This fall, Adam Braver’s class is following the cases, along with PEN, the international writers group, of two writers in China who were imprisoned for writing, thinking and in one case blogging a poem, “What is Love,” and considered a threat to the communist Chinese authorities.

Janet Baldwin traveled with a student, Lauren Curran, to Brazil to help a local Rotary Club build rainwater storage tanks. What a great use of our RWU engineering skills in providing this building block of life to those in need. Lauren was recognized at graduation with a presidential core values medallion.

And Julian Bonder organized a thought provoking exhibition, “Knowledge Requires Commitment” as a way of contributing to our ongoing civil discourse efforts.

Mark Sawoski, with the support of many of you, created interdisciplinary international relations major that students are buzzing about. Michael Melton, through his portfolio management class, placed third nationally in the undergraduate equity growth category.

Tim Scott and his colleagues hosted, along with Woods Hole and the New England Council, a major conference on the New England Marine Economy attracting Leon Panetta, both of our United States senators and leaders from around the region, cementing our role as the leader in aquaculture and marine matters.

And the efforts of Avelina Espinosa and Art Greenwood in our Center for Professional Development led to RWU being recognized by the R.I. Tech Collective as its outstanding community partner.
And there are countless other examples where you exemplify love of learning, intellectual inquiry, service and our responsibility to our neighbors and the world.

In ways great and small, we are trying to build a different kind of University here at Roger Williams. So, I want to add a few additional building blocks toward that noble objective.

Simply Wellness. This past year, we were recognized by Gov. Carcieri and the national wellness council for our extraordinary progress in becoming a healthy campus. I am committed to building on this effort of health and wellness.

Beginning in January 2008, we will start the process to make the campus core smoke free. It won’t be easy. It won’t be universally popular. But it’s the right thing to do.

Smoking kills— it causes cancer, it intrudes on the rights and health of the non-smoker, it reduces life expectancy, it contributes to an unhealthy workplace as well as skyrocketing healthcare costs for all of us and, let’s be honest, cigarette butts are ugly.

We will use carrots and sticks—the former suitable for sucking on—with smoke-ender programs, financial incentives with Blue Cross, and other wellness tools, as well as smoking shelters located in out-of-the-way places.

And, consistent with our commitment to wellness, I am pleased to announce that, beginning in January, every full-time member of the faculty and staff will be able to use the Recreation Center free of charge from 6 a.m. to noon. So, I look forward to seeing you on an elliptical trainer—just not at 6 a.m.

Global. Over the past five years, we have doubled the number of students who have gone abroad. We have offered passports to every sophomore with a 3.0 GPA or higher. The number of University-sponsored or sanctioned study-abroad opportunities has grown from five to 42. And, the number of students enrolled in language classes has increased by nearly 60 percent. 

Those are good results, or as I like to say, a solid B, but not nearly good enough for a school whose mantra is “Learning to Bridge the World.”

This fall, the provost and I will go to the faculty senate and urge them to endorse the following:

Beginning with the class entering in fall 2009, every student in good academic and judicial standing will have the opportunity to study abroad; curricular impediments will be eliminated and students will have access to funding for a study abroad or a diverse, domestic off-campus learning experience.

To make certain that finances are not an impediment, I have directed our vice president for business and finance Jim Noonan, to dedicate half-a-million dollars each year toward that purpose.

And, the President’s Office will be dedicating funds so that each year, up to 10 faculty and staff members who have not traveled abroad will have the opportunity to do so with the creation of a Presidential Ambassador Travel Program.

Finally, I will also ask the senate to consider mandating a foreign language proficiency in all majors and degrees that have a global orientation.

Along with global citizenship, I want our University to embrace at every level, inclusive excellence, because it’s the right thing to do.

This fall, I am pleased that over 10 percent of our entering freshman class are students or color or international. That’s progress and is the result of lots of effort by lots of people.

We have created intercultural leadership awards providing generous scholarship support to the entering class. We have made application to the POSSE program, a national diversity initiative afforded only the best schools in the country. Through the work of people like Bonita Cade and Charles Trimbach, Rom Woodrfuff and Jason Pina and campus allies, we are engaged in an effort, with outside experts, to assess the campus climate for inclusive excellence and develop strategies and tactics at every level.

Those of you who know me, know that the notion of creating a campus that is more global and diverse is not the idea du jour—it’s something I spoke of at my inauguration in fall 2001. And going forward, every vice president, dean, director, office will be evaluated, not only on their general efforts, but on how their efforts contribute to the inclusive excellence and diversity that we want to be a hallmark of Roger Williams University.

Now, let me speak primarily to the faculty. As I have often said, we are a teaching-centered institution. Without students, and faculty to teach them, the rest of us can just go home.

Several years ago, the faculty approved, by an overwhelming margin, a new progressive contract that provided significant increases in compensation as well as new standards for teaching, scholarship and service, as befitting a University on the move.

For most, it was an easy and natural evolution; for some others hired under different expectations, it represented a sea change. 

For the record, 96 percent of faculty eligible for tenure received it and well over 80 percent of faculty who applied for promotion have received it— high percentages.

And while faculty/administration relationships present challenges from time to time, at the end of the day, this community is ours and this is a University that we are trying to create. We should always be guided by the question “what kind of University are we trying to build and what kind of people do we want to hire, keep and celebrate to help us build it?”

Standards for excellence should be high and they should also reflect the unique contributions that every staff and faculty member makes to our University.

Several months ago, we announced the names of faculty members who were promoted and/or received tenure. I got to call most of them with the good news and it was a happy day for them and me and a good day for the University.

So I wanted to make today a good day for the University and have decided, after much reflection and conversation, to affirm the recommendation of their faculty colleagues and add three additional names to that recent announcement of faculty who have been promoted to full professor, so join me in congratulating them: Professor Nancy Nestor, Professor Tom Sorger and Professor June Speakman. Congratulations!

And finally, we talk about the value of respect for every individual. That should include ethnicity, race, faith—or lack thereof—, gender, lifestyle. We try to exemplify that value by our actions.
But we are not consistent.

Health coverage, with all of us paying our fair share, is a benefit of working at Roger Williams, but it is a benefit provided to only a certain set of employees; and we cannot be a campus that is inclusive if we exclude.

Therefore, effective Jan. 1, 2008, I have directed the Office of Human Resources and the Office of General Counsel to insure that all Roger Williams University employees—married, unmarried, common law, domestic partners, of opposite sex and same sex—be provided access to the same healthcare coverage.

I ask the various bargaining unions to work with us on helping the University in providing this benefit to our employees. It’s overdue, but it’s the right thing to do.

The road ahead for any University in New England like ours is not going to be easy. We face demographic changes in America and the world, uncertainty about the global economy, concerns—real or imagined—about terrorism, fear of the other, the decline of civility on our planet, escalating costs, increased competition, federal oversight, and higher expectations from parents, students, and the public.

It’s at times like these that special institutions emerge and special people surface. As we enter this, the second half of our first century, Roger Williams is a special institution, and you—all of you—are those special people. Thank you all for a great start to this year and for giving me six pretty great years as your President.