President's Inaugural Address

Friday, May 30, 2005

Throughout my youth, I was always getting into trouble. If I was told to do something, I did the exact opposite. When I was in kindergarten, my mother was called into the principal's office because I had convinced the entire class to sing Hanukah songs when the teacher was trying to teach us Christmas songs. A few years later, I was sent home three weeks into a six week summer camp because I had convinced my entire cabin that we should all go home.

In short, I was in my youth and I remain to this day what leadership experts refer to as a contrarian leader. And, frankly, I think this is exactly the kind of leadership style the University of New Haven needs at this point in its history, which is one reason why I am so thrilled to be the president of this wonderful institution: I think we are a perfect match for one another in many ways.

I would like to thank everyone here today for joining us for this special occasion.

First, I'd like to welcome and thank my two predecessors who are with us today, Phillip Kaplan and Larry DeNardis. Between 1973 and 1991, Phil Kaplan presided over an extraordinary period of programmatic expansion. Under his visionary leadership, UNH began offering graduate programs and created new, high profile programs in emerging areas in public safety and business.

From 1991 to 2004, Larry DeNardis helped launch several new professional programs and moved the University ever closer towards a full residential college status, an essential and truly visionary strategic decision.

Under the leadership of these two presidents, this institution was transformed and has become known as an international leader in such areas as forensic science and criminal justice.

Next, I'd like to welcome and thank the members of the Board of Governors, and especially the Board Chair, Robert Alvine, for putting their trust in me just a little over a year ago. I fully intend to justify your trust.

I am delighted that so many members of the UNH community are with us today. Faculty, staff, students, and alumni: Collectively, you are our reason for being. I am humbled to lead an institution you hold so deeply in your hearts.

We are also fortunate to have with us today a large number of UNH's friends from the greater New Haven community and beyond. We are lifted by your friendship, buoyed by your support.

I would also like to express my gratitude to the more than one hundred delegates in attendance today, who represent colleges and universities from four continents.

A special thanks as well to all from the UNH faculty and staff who have volunteered their time to make this event such a success, and an extra special thanks to Ira Kleinfeld, Jill Zamparo, and Katherine Hinds.

Finally, and most of all, I'd like to welcome and thank my extremely supportive family and friends who have traveled from across the country, and in the case of my mother-in-law Helga, across an ocean, to be here today. Time alone keeps me from naming each of our friends who are here to share this special day with us.

To my sister Randi and my stepbrother Richard and his family, thank you for traveling so far to be here. Mom and Irv, I would not be standing here were it not for the many times and ways you have supported my dreams and given me guidance. And above all others, I would like to recognize my beautiful and brilliant wife, Anemone, and our four wonderful children, of whom we are so proud. Thank you for giving my life meaning, providing me with sustenance, and for inspiring and informing everything I do.

I'd like to speak today about the University of New Haven's past, our present, and our future. I will close by asking for your support in helping us build UNH over the coming decade into one of the best comprehensive universities in the Northeast. In the process, we will be bold, not timid; focused, not fragmented; realistic, while stretching the imagination to its limits.

This institution was founded in 1920 on the Yale campus as New Haven College to train students in business and engineering to meet the needs of the local community. Then, as now, we provided upward mobility to young men and women who otherwise would not have been able to receive a college education. From the outset, business courses were taught in part by local business leaders; and engineering courses were taught by practicing engineers. From the beginning, our philosophy has been driven by pragmatic professionalism.

Throughout the 20s, 30s, and the war years of the 40s, the College adapted its curriculum to meet the evolving needs of the city and the region. And during World War II, the "Work Study" concept took root, as the College more aggressively integrated students' educational work with experience in business and industry.

We embarked upon a Cooperative Education program in 1949, when ivory towerism dominated higher education and terms like "internship" and "co-op" were not even whispered in polite academic circles. We launched the School of Executive Development in 1952, long before the term "adult education" had entered the daily lexicon.

We purchased our present campus for $350,000 in 1960, a spectacular real estate bargain as well as a shrewd strategic move.

From those earliest days right on through until today, certain principles have remained constant, guiding our decisions and defining our heritage: service to the community; experiential education; professional preparation; and academic excellence.

Our future success depends primarily upon our ability to remain true to our remarkable past.

So where are we today? Just what have we been doing since my arrival on campus on July 1 of last year, and where are we heading?

When I was appointed President, I told the Board that we must be bold. And bold we have been during the past fifteen months.

Last summer, I met with more than 300 staff in small groups to hear their concerns and discuss their ideas. In the fall, I met with the entire faculty and many of our students in small groups. And I also went out and met with our alumni and members of the community. In total, I met with close to 800 people in intense and open discussions. My reaction after all those meetings? This job is going to be a lot of fun!

Fun and exhilarating. Those conversations resulted in numerous actions. Consider what has taken place in just over a year:

We raised $10 million this past year, over twice the amount of cash gifts ever raised in a single year by the University.

We received an extraordinary $5.25 million gift from the Tagliatela family of North Haven to name the Tagliatela College of Engineering. To our knowledge, this is the largest single gift made to an educational institution in the New Haven region, with the exception of Yale.

We have also received an exceptional commitment of support from an anonymous source of $4 million toward the building of a new recreation center, a $12.5 million project. And our Board of Governors provided unprecedented and unanimous support for a smart classroom initiative led by Hank Bartels and Bob Alvine.

Over the past year we have transformed 85% of our classrooms into "smart classrooms," so that they are as good as any classrooms in the world in terms of their technological capability, infrastructure, and aesthetics. We have also made substantial investments in laboratories in a number of our most prominent programs.

We have begun a major renovation process of our apartment-style housing with the goal of using these for learning communities. Half of these were completed this summer, accommodating almost 300 of our 1500 residential students. From last summer to this summer we have invested $4.6 million into academic spaces, $3.3 million into residential and student life facilities, and an additional $4.4 million into infrastructure and campus beautification, with much more construction and renovation on the immediate horizon.

During the past year, we have assembled a superb management team to lead the University over the next decade. We are in very good hands.

In September, we sent a number of students to our new study abroad programs in China, Puerto Rico, and Ireland – a first for UNH, with more on the drawing board.

We just admitted the largest and most qualified class in the University's history; and we are thus already significantly ahead of the targets we established in the aggressive, eighty page, five-year business plan we developed in the first months of my presidency.

We have 40,000 alumni, 20,000 of whom live in the great State of Connecticut; and we are reaching out to them and receiving their support in unprecedented ways.

Over the past few years we have reinvented our core engineering courses with funding from the National Science Foundation, putting our programs at the vanguard of engineering education.

We have gained national and even international prominence in a number of academic programs that attract students from 40 states and 52 countries.

But at the end of the day, UNH is not about numbers and programs. It is about helping people realize ambitious dreams.

People like undergraduates Amanda Gunn and Jennifer Hopkins who traveled to Beijing, China this past summer to present a paper on their research on using nanotechnology for distance determination in gun-shot-related forensic cases. Or people like Mark Elinson, a graduate of the Music & Sound Recording program, who recently won two Emmy awards for his work at ESPN within just a few years after graduating from UNH.

Or people like Christine Ponds, who, as an undergraduate, wrote a program that simulates a Pratt and Whitney Jet Engine as a senior project. She now works at Pratt and Whitney and her simulation is used to train operators of their jet engine test facility. Or people like Matthew Robinson who, as an undergraduate student this year, became an expert in Geographic Information Systems. He used that expertise to produce a GIS data base for San Salvador that was published and is now used by researchers worldwide.

And, clearly, the many successes of our students depend on our faculty: a highly qualified group of individuals who are regularly quoted in places like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and appear on CNN and network news. Our faculty collectively have published hundreds of scholarly research findings and dozens of books.

While students, faculty, staff, and alumni have been making their marks on campus, in the region, across the U.S. and around the world, the University of New Haven, according to many, has been roaring along this past year at whirlwind speed. That said, there's a lot more work to do.

Let's talk, then, about the future. What are we going to do next? More important, what do we want to be?

I see a University:

Where our faculty excels at both teaching and research, fully aware that no artificial boundaries should separate the two endeavors: Good research informs good teaching, and good teaching informs good research.

I see a University:

Where students begin to identify right from the very first day on campus their real interests, strengths, and aspirations. By helping students discover who they are and what really interests them, we can help them realize their full potential. Early on we should encourage among our students independent and collaborative learning and self-discovery. We must create a comprehensive freshman year experience with these goals in mind.

I see a University:

Where students interact with faculty early and often: through advising, mentoring, joint research projects, and through faculty-sponsored internships and co-ops. Interactive, discovery-based learning should be a hallmark of a UNH education.

I see a University:

Where diversity, global awareness, and knowledge of a foreign language represent the norm, not the exception. We must increase the diversity of our student body and our faculty, and, equally important, we must ensure that our students experience other cultures, both on campus and through study abroad programs which span the globe.

I see a University:

Where the concept of service to the community and to the world threads throughout the curriculum. We must broaden and deepen our concept of classroom and our definition of service by making service learning an integral part of our course offerings.

I see a University:

Which taps into the creativity of each of its students. We must add a much stronger emphasis on the visual and performing arts on this campus!

I see a University:

Which integrates technology across all disciplines and throughout the campus. We must infuse technology and information fluency into all aspects of our students' learning experience.

I see a University:

That provides an education based upon the premise – and the fact – that most people today change not just jobs but even careers two, three, and more times during their lives. Indeed, possibly as many as half of our students will end up working in careers that do not even exist today. If we just train people for "a job," we are not a real university. If we prepare our students for just one career, we are not preparing them for the future.

I see a University:

With almost double our current undergraduate student body; and, more important, one with significantly greater numbers of undergraduate students opting to pursue graduate and professional degrees. To achieve this, it will be imperative that all of our faculty engage in scholarly and creative activities and all of our students are given an opportunity to do original research.

I see a University:

Which regains its historical position as a leader in traditional engineering programs while simultaneously being on the cutting edge in the life and computational sciences: a university where the core competencies from the arts and sciences are woven into all of our professional programs.

I see a University:

Even more dedicated to serving as a community resource for the economic development of the region. We must be even more receptive to the business community and even better at using the resources of the region to strengthen our services to our students.

I see a University:

Where seniors engage in a final, comprehensive exercise, an introspective capstone experience, in which they integrate and articulate what they have learned during their time here, critical growth years in which they have entrusted their development to us.

Finally, I see a University:

Which has moved away from measuring student success in terms of credits and grades and is focused far more on its students' development as compassionate, creative, and cultured human beings well prepared to live in a technologically sophisticated, ethnically diverse, and economically interdependent world.

The University of New Haven has come a long way over the past eighty-five years. There is no reason we cannot continue to push this institution to its limits and beyond. We recently launched a strategic planning process at the University to map out a course of action that, over the next decade, will enable us to realize the vision outlined above. I am convinced that once we have a plan in hand - and our goal is to complete the strategic plan by next June - then nothing can stand in the way of our exceptional and dedicated faculty and staff making the plan's major components a reality.

As we prepare for the future, we must preserve the elements that brought us to where we are today: the emphasis on professional programs; the philosophy of experiential learning; the steadfast commitment to the health and economy of the region; and the flexibility to seize new opportunities when appropriate. We must extend and broaden our reach while standing upon a very firm foundation.

Even as we crystallize our plans, we will be setting the stage for a major capital campaign. There's no getting around it: Big dreams require big support. The vision outlined above will require significant investments in: substantially strengthening our core offerings; in foreign language instruction; in the life and computational sciences; in the fine and performing arts; and a commitment to fund undergraduate, graduate, and faculty research.

Based upon the extraordinary gifts to the University this past year, we believe that the boldness of our vision will inspire the generosity of those who share that vision.

In closing, let me be clear: This is a whole new era. This is a whole new day. We cannot be stopped. No one can hold us back.

Let's get to work.

And let's have some fun along the way.

Thank you very much!