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President Williams' Inaugural RemarksFifth President The University of Alabama in Huntsville Installation Speech Spragins Hall Huntsville, Alabama April 11, 2008 Greetings: Let’s talk about the real reason we are here; the future of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. I asked David Read and Al Pense to say a few words of wisdom (if that’s how they can be described) in order to make a point. David and Al are at the pinnacles of academe on either side of the Atlantic; the Royal Society and the National Academy. Their scholarly expertise is respectively mycorrhizal symbiosis and alloy solidification, otherwise known as fungi and welding! Neither is the latest, hot topic – the opto, nano, info world in which we live. So how did they reach these dizzy heights? Through rigorous scholarship of the highest quality, carried out over a lifetime. It doesn’t matter so much what you do; it’s how you do it. If you do it well and consistently your academic reputation will follow. But it takes a lifetime. This coming academic year we are 40 years old as an independent university - barely adolescent compared with all the fine institutions represented here. But 40 is a good age and we will celebrate it. But now we need to learn from our history and commit ourselves now to a lifetime of rigorous scholarship. We were founded through the efforts of many in this community. We need to remain true to the vision of those early supporters of UAH. Wernher von Braun stated, almost 50 years ago, in a landmark speech to the Alabama Legislature: "By building the academic climate in Huntsville….. I am persuaded that we who make our homes in this community believe that this area is destined to continue to grow and become a great and permanent scientific, educational and industrial center." Well, the science has grown (look at MSFC). We’ve helped put men on the moon and women on the space station; our industry has grown (look at Cummings, the second largest university research park in the nation with 48 ribbon cuttings for new industries last year). But to change the tense of Omar Khayyam: "That moving finger has written and moved on." We need to focus on the future and what we will be writing on the wall for the next five years and beyond. It’s time to grow the academics at UAHuntsville. I have talked to more than 50 community and civic leaders: CEOs, Presidents, Directors, and Generals. Everyone speaks highly of our graduates, comparing them favorably with the best from other universities. However, speaking is not sufficient. We need actions, mutually effective partnerships, direct support and realism in our goals. Today I challenge the University and the Huntsville community to make the step from rhetoric to deeds. Before I get into details of our growth just remember the following arithmetic series: 8,8,7,4,3,2,1,0 Huntsville prides itself as a technological and entrepreneurial community: "The sky is not the limit" "It is rocket science" "A smart place to live..." How do we stack up to similar communities around the US and the world? Every leading technological and business community in the world has, at its heart, a leading research university: Silicon Valley has Stanford; Austin has UT; Cambridge has Cambridge; Singapore has NUS; Bangalore has IISc, Shanghai Jiao Tong speaks for itself. Does the State of Alabama have such aspirations for UAH? I have yet to be convinced, but I am an optimist. Does the Huntsville/Madison county community have such aspirations for UAH? Of that I have no doubt.Both the state and the community must step forward to invest in this University so it can attain the academic reputation exemplified by the universities at the heart of those other technological communities. But it is not wise for me to ask for investment from the community without bringing our own investment in the community to the table. Yesterday, Bob Jennings spoke eloquently of the role of a university in the community and we are committed to the educational, technical and cultural growth of our local (but increasingly global) community. We are the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Huntsville is our home. We are not moving. Every year we bring hundreds of new, smart minds here. Once we attract them here, we know they will stay. Almost 70% of our 27,000 alumni live and work here. So we have invested in Huntsville; we serve Huntsville and Huntsville has a vested interest in our success. We intend to get bigger and better and in doing so we will both challenge Huntsville more and serve it better. 1) Students We must grow because the community is growing. We are hard pressed to meet Huntsville’s growing need for technologists, nurses, entrepreneurs, communications majors, etc. So we will grow our student numbers from 7000 to 10,000, in the next five years with 25% from out of state. But, in addition to the quantity, we are proud to proclaim the quality of our students. We have the highest academic standards for entry in the UA system. We will raise our entry standards by 10% even as we grow. We will increase minority students by 30%, build more student housing, improve our freshman retention from mid 70% to mid 80% and reduce our inordinate time to degree. We have great strengths in our co-op and internship programs which supply the Huntsville research and business communities with more than 300 bright young minds annually. We will expand this to 1000 co-op and internship experiences, thus attracting stronger students to better serve this community. 2) Academics We will develop innovative education programs that a) attract the right faculty and students and b) distinguish us from our peers. I challenge the faculty, to develop at least ten new interdisciplinary, integrated degree programs, without the need for significant infrastructure investment. Because we cross boundaries in our scholarship on a regular basis, we should do likewise in our teaching. Yesterday Greg Farrington talked on the role of undergraduate education and other speakers stressed the importance of global and distance education. We are the only Alabama University on the National Lambda Rail; the biggest academic internet pipeline. We must use this not only for our research in climate modeling and data mining but also for new degrees that require the highest quality distance education. In those new programs we must focus on educating technologists and entrepreneurs to embrace the role of the humanities and the arts. But likewise we must educate those in the humanities and arts about the technological world in which we all live. We must build on the presence of that extraordinary new Huntsville presence, the Hudson Alpha Institute. Let me give you some possible cross-cultural examples and please note the theme: Technology and Language More than 40% of the world’s steel is made in China and 40% of the 10 wealthiest entrepreneurs in the world are from India. An engineer or business major who speaks Mandarin or Hindi possesses an extraordinary commercial advantage. Graduates prepared to gamble on a career in Kenya or Kuala Lumpur will gain more experience in less time than any job in this country. Caring through technology There is more scientific equipment in the critical-care hospital room than in the average science research lab. A nurse who doesn’t just run but also understands the technology that keeps patients alive will deliver better care. The Technology of Art The multi-spectral digitization of our cultural heritage is growing apace. The art historian who understands data mining and image analysis will learn more about the world’s art treasures, will be a more rigorous scholar and a more innovative educator. The Technological Stage The scientist who can portray Macbeth or sing Curly’s lead role will be a star at seminars, business meetings and the classroom. We should be the first to ensure that all our students have the opportunity to graduate with an understanding of the technology that we use in our daily lives, and a working knowledge of a relevant foreign language. Our teachers and nurses must be exposed to the best science, math, engineering and technology courses that we can offer. Innovative education means creative restructuring of majors, selectively sacrificing depth for breadth and a clear understanding that HOW those of us over 50 learned as students is NOT HOW we should be teaching today. The world and our students have changed; we professors must adjust our teaching to augment our students’ strengths; not bemoan their perceived weaknesses (since by doing so we reveal our own). Graeme Davies reminded us that education is part of a global community and while we have students from almost 80 countries on this campus we need to grow both in the quantity and the quality of our international programs. Despite our own best efforts, many around the world still regard the US higher educational system as worth emulating. At UAHuntsville we have nationally regarded programs in Atmospheric and Space-related Sciences, in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Management of Science amongst others. If there is a global icon for Huntsville it is the Saturn V that you can just about see from here. Soon it will be the Ares V. We must explore how we can market our iconic disciplines internationally and I challenge the faculty to work with the UA system to establish at least one space-technology related Alabama campus abroad. 3) Research, Industrial Partnerships Economic Development Jeff Wadsworth reminded us of the key role of partnerships with industry and the national laboratories. In Huntsville, the shortage of technologists and entrepreneurs, particularly with security clearances is reaching crisis proportions. For the past ten years the percentage of non US citizens earning PhDs in every major engineering field has risen from around 50% to more than 70%. And what do we do with these highly educated aliens - we tell them that there aren’t enough H1B visas to go around. So where do they go? Back to Bangalore and Shanghai – the intellectual and commercial centers of the next generation, courtesy of the US higher education system. So we at UAHuntsville are working closely with our about 20 industry partners to develop a different approach to funding PhDs. Companies will hire students as professionals, paid at professional-level BS or MS salaries ($50k or more) with full benefits and tuition paid. These employees will work with our faculty to solve industrially oriented PhD projects with academic-level intellectual challenges. In turn, we commit to completing the academic work in four years or less. Perhaps when we can offer $50k/year salary, with tuition and benefits covered and a PhD in four years, the occasional American engineer may pause before she heads for Wall Street or advertising.com! Anyone who wants to sign on contact me afterwards. Kristina Johnson talked about research at Johns Hopkins, reminding us of that extraordinary institution’s $1.5B annual research budget. We are not there yet, but in less than 40 years we have built our annual research expenditures to $65 million. We will build on the creative entrepreneurship endemic to Huntsville and be academic entrepreneurs ourselves. We will use partnerships with industry and the federal government to grow our annual research expenditures to $100M /year. With $100M/year and the innovative educational approach to the PhD, it should be straightforward to grow our PhD output to 100/year. At this level, we will move into the top 150 nationally in terms of PhDs granted and the top 100 in terms of total federal research expenditures. This is the most direct route to gaining the recognition of our peers. The other routes are age and size. We will always be a young university and we can only grow as fast our increasing entry standards allow so we must find a third, less traveled, path. Our unique position in this technological and entrepreneurial community offers us opportunities that few if any other universities can match. For a public institution of our size, our research expenditures are the greatest in the USA. Several of our academic programs are recognized by the NSF as being in the top echelon in national funding including Environmental Science, Computer Science and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Atmospheric Science is in the top ten and Business and Management in the top five. We will invest more in the scholarly areas in which we already lead using cluster hires to grow our research. We are an entrepreneurial, technological, research-intensive university dependent on the arts, humanities and nursing for our distinction and we will become more so. These scholarly achievements are EXTRAORDINARY. Many older, larger and better-recognized universities would give large fractions of their endowments for such numbers. I remind those who tell me we should compete with certain other institutions to temper their expectations with academic realism (and that is not an oxymoron). We have achieved our research leadership with one fifth the annual state investment of GA Tech, and one thirtieth the endowment of GA Tech., while employing one quarter the number of full-time faculty as MIT and charging one seventh the annual tuition of MIT. Think what we could do if we were supported by the state and the community to the same levels as those two fine institutions. I challenge both the state and the community to help us compete at the levels that you expect and that you need if Huntsville is to become truly a leading technological city as Von Braun envisioned. You now have a suspicion of what is needed. But our impressive scholarly and educational achievements on a shoestring are still not enough. Most of you here have benefited from public education and I count myself as the product of public education (that is K-PhD, not just part of that spectrum). This was only possible because our parents’ generation paid for the education of our generation. We in turn must pay for the education of the next generation. Huntsville knows the value of public financing. The wealth of this community comes from the public purse; NASA, Redstone, Federal contractors, aerospace and defense companies and public universities. A generation ago, Huntsville was the watercress capital of the world. But 100 publicly educated immigrants came and taught us how to build rockets. The growth of this region has been fueled by the intellectual capital of this largely public-educated community. Ultimately, we cannot compete with the workforces of Asia who already dominate in building automobiles and ships, and will eventually dominate in the building of aircraft and maybe even space vehicles. Our long-term solution in Alabama and throughout the USA must be to produce the best high-technology, intellectual, entrepreneurial workforce. As we know, it is this workforce which periodically revolutionizes manufacturing in this country (e.g. semi-conductors, optical fibers) or develops entirely new products which the world did not know it needed (ipods, Google). Basic economics still dictate that we must make something that others want if we wish to have a future. One of the very few areas in which the US is still recognized as leading the world is higher education. Now is the time for greater investment in the workforce of the future. In Huntsville, workforce development is the production of MBAs and PhDs through research universities such as UAHuntsville. We produce sharp minds and Huntsville is a smart place to learn. This is where we need to invest. 4) Advancement So now you know what we bring to the table. What are our expectations of the Huntsville community? Any university worth its academic status has an endowment and annual giving which reflects the community that it serves. For a young university we are doing reasonably well with $45M in endowment between our advancement efforts and the land sales of the UAH Foundation. If Huntsville wants to be a great city, it must have a great university, and it must be willing to pay for it. So far we have not had the temerity to ask. This changes today. We have hired a new VP for Advancement who knows how to ask (and to receive). So, be prepared to be asked! Our goals are simple: $10M/year in annual giving and $100M endowment in five years. More than $30B passes through this community every year from the Federal Government, some of which stays. You can do the math as well as I can. If this community values the major supplier of its intellectual capacity on which it depends for its wealth, then a percent or so of he federal largesse will meet our goals and take us all the way up to 1/13th!! the current endowment of GA Tech. Ladies and Gentlemen – UAHuntsville is an adolescent institution – we are a teenager, not quite sure who we are yet. But we will enter the realms of recognized research universities. However, our historical reliance on funding from the state and the federal appropriations is no longer sufficient. But we can achieve our full potential that everyone keeps telling me about, if you support us. If you support us, we will deliver – the graduates, the faculty experts and the national visibility. So we will grow together – just as Huntsville always has. Our mission statement is (and if you’ve been listening, you will recognize some of the phrases used throughout this speech): The University of Alabama in Huntsville, a research-intensive university, is committed to rigorous scholarship, innovative education, technological research, cultural growth and entrepreneurial creativity in order to enrich our global community. And now you know where we are going. Let me summarize our five-year goals: Research: 8 $100,000,000 in annual research expenditures ($108) Endowment 8, 7 $100,000,000 in endowment ($108) $10,000,000 in annual giving ($107) Enrollment 4, 3 10,000 students (104) 1000 entrepreneurial co-ops and internships/year (103) Academics; 2,1,0 100 rigorous scholarly PhDs/year (102) 10 innovative educational degrees (101) 1 international campus to enrich our global community (100) If you need to remember our eight goals, just recall the powers of ten: 8, 8,7,4,3,2,1,0 Thank you. |
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