September 12, 2005 - Address to the General Faculty
Larry A. Nielsen
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
September 12, 2005 Address to the NC State Faculty
Thank you for joining me this afternoon to celebrate the start of the Fall 2005 Semester. It is important for us to celebrate, because our life in higher education is truly a blessed life. Notwithstanding the budget cuts, grumpy computer software, bulging classrooms and rare and endangered parking spots, we need to pause to recognize that we are part of a noble profession, and that we enjoy the great privilege of educating tomorrow's leaders in our classrooms and laboratories. We work in beautiful surroundings-albeit struggling right now under the wonderful challenge of bond-funded construction-with students who are forever young, forever eager, forever ready to engage us on their journey toward the future.
One of my first pleasures as provost was to join Chancellor Oblinger and Vice Chancellor Stafford on move-in Saturday, to greet our arriving students and their families. Amid the boxes-cardboard and boom-and the lofts and NC State logos, the excitement crackled, powered by new friends, new challenges, new opportunities. If graduation day is the best day of the academic calendar, and I would argue that it is, then move-in day is surely the second best. Taking a turn in the dunking booth at RecFest the next day was the third!
Actually, I've had nothing but "best days" since becoming first Interim Provost and now just plain old provost. I thank you for the chance to serve you and our entire university family as your chief academic officer. And I intend to be your chief academic officer for a long, long time. It shouldn't need to be said, but I will do so for the sake of emphasis-if you have a question, idea, concern, anything, please let me know. And if you'd like me to attend an event, please ask. I'll listen to anyone, go anywhere, speak anytime. That is, of course, if Vicki will let me go! I want the words to James Taylor's song to be true-"You've got a friend."
On move-in day, our new students and their families were saying YES to the challenges and opportunities before them. And that is my theme for today-building a culture of YES at NC State. I trust that my meaning will become clear, but let me state my fundamental point directly right now. Chancellor Oblinger almost always starts his presentations by saying, "NC State is a great university, but it can still be greater." I agree with him, and I believe that developing a culture of YES will take us to the greater future to which we all aspire. The culture of YES requires us to think big and act big; to risk a little and admit when we were wrong; to give ideas a chance rather than expect them to be sure things at the outset; to go boldly where no one has gone-even beyond the edge of the UNC galaxy.
Marvin Malecha, Dean of our College of Design, recently recommended a book to me, The Devil in the White City , by Erik Larson. Larson describes the history of the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. (Marv knew I would go for the book, because I'm from Chicago and wear my love for the Chicago Cubs on my shirtsleeve-usually wet from wiping away my tears.) A fundamental premise of the book is that no one believed Chicago could pull off a magnificent World's Fair-certainly New York City should have been chosen, especially since the task was to out-do the 1889 French World Exposition at which the Eiffel Tower premiered. Although I'm only about 2/3s through the book, I know what happened. Chicago triumphed. Despite the enormous odds against their success, the leaders, workers and citizens of Chicago all adopted a culture of YES, a culture that refused to believe that any vision was too large, any task too complicated, any time too short, or any budget too small. And because of them, we now have the Ferris Wheel, Cracker Jacks, whitewash, and a host of other innovations that emerged from the city known best for its can-do culture.
NC State can be like Chicago-it is like Chicago. Perhaps that is why I've come to love this place so much in the four short years that Sharon and I have been part of the NC State family. This is a place where an individual, each individual-each of you-still matters. Your ideas matter, and your work matters. NC State's greatest days still lie ahead of us. What a thrill it is to be at a place that is inventing its own future, building its own destiny right before our eyes.
Now I'd like to give some examples of how YES can make us greater. And I'd like to do this in the context of the four parts of Chancellor Oblinger's vision and goals for NC State-Scholarship for the 21 st Century, Culture of Innovation, Inclusiveness and Diversity, and Organizational Capability.
Scholarship for the 21 st Century requires us to say YES to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead of us, both in function and in form. We're preparing for that at several levels. Our deans (our deans are a truly remarkable set of leaders who have gelled as a team like no other group I've ever experienced) have been exploring a new set of statements about the distinctiveness of an NC State education and the new scholarly areas in which we should invest. This began under Chancellor Oblinger's leadership while he was provost, and now, again under the chancellor's leadership, the Executive Officers are working as a team to think strategically about our future across all university functions. In early November, we're getting together for a leadership retreat, and I expect exceptional ideas to tumble forward. Our vice provosts have also begun a similar effort. The next task is to knit together the variety of aspirational statements for our university into a coherent whole. Early next semester, after we've stopped yelling at each other, we'll seek your counsel as the next step in the process. Don't be surprised when you see some truly transformational ideas.
One of those ideas is that scholarship for the century ahead will require citizens and professionals who say YES to being part of the global village and marketplace. Therefore, I'm also saying YES to the dean's wishes that we strategically and aggressively plot and implement an expanded international program at NC State. Soon, we will be acquiring the services of an international leader who can help us match our programs to our aspirations. But we are making strong progress in the meantime. Through the leadership of Dean Malecha, the College of Design has opened the Prague Institute, offering classes in the architecturally and artistically rich city of Prague. This program is so successful that we're leasing more space and several colleges are planning courses to be offered at an expanded Prague Institute. Also, Vice Chancellor Gilligan and I have just provided seed funding for a global training initiative, to be directed through Michael Bustle in our Office of International Affairs. But we have much more to do-and we'll need your ideas to help us achieve our aspiration that our graduates will lead not just in North Carolina, but wherever they come to live and work throughout the world.
In tandem with 21 st Century scholarship, and of necessity, we will continue to develop the culture of innovation at NC State. This is hardly new-our faculty, staff and students have been saying YES to innovation for generations. Vice Chancellor Gilligan could cite chapter and verse, but I'll just repeat his quote that we've been recognized as a "powerhouse for life sciences innovation." But our opportunities to say YES to innovation spread in all directions. Let me give you some examples.
We are delighted that Mary Easley, First Lady of North Carolina, said YES to our offer to join our faculty. Along with teaching duties in CHASS and Management, she will be developing and implementing a new university program, tentatively called the "NC State Millennium Seminars-Innovation, Leadership and Higher Education." Twice each semester, starting about mid-January 2006, we'll bring a national leader to campus to present a National-Press-Club-type seminar that will address the world from their perspective and explore how we in higher education need to respond. We expect the Millennium Seminars to become a foundation for national dialogue about the future of universities.
We are also working with SAS on an initiative to improve the use of electronic technology in teaching, learning and educational administration, led by Vice Provosts Sam Averritt and Tom Miller. Remember, "Learning in a Technology Rich Environment" is on e of our stated priority areas for the next decade. Through this SAS-NC State partnership, we will do great new things at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, with our Virtual Computer Laboratory project, and others. But most exciting is the possibility to establish a new institute for analytics-the process for turning the daily deluge of data into useful outcomes to aid our decision-making.
Now, let me speculate for a few minutes about innovations yet to come. We are currently reviewing our general education requirements, through a taskforce headed by John Ambrose in our division of Undergraduate Academic Programs. I'm asking them to think way outside the YES-box. Perhaps our GER could only be partially course based. Perhaps we could say YES to including the experiences that we know are so valuable to students-study abroad, service learning, undergraduate research, independent study, internships. And perhaps we could say YES to rearranging our academic schedule somewhat, allowing a block term-in the junior year, perhaps, or just before spring graduation-during which these opportunities could be realized.
We also have great aspirations to expand our graduate student programs. If you haven't heard this message yet, you will be soon because I will be banging the drum for graduate education loudly and long. And you need to say YES with enthusiasm! But perhaps we need to address graduate education innovatively as well. Perhaps the traditional Ph.D., E.D., DVM and Masters degrees are not all that is needed. Perhaps we need to explore new packaging, not as an add-on, but as a core part of our offerings. Graduate certificates and distance education come to mind most readily, but are there other models?
An inclusive and diverse community is Chancellor Oblinger's third vision element. Those of you who know me even a little also know that this idea lies at the core of my YES-thinking. To achieve our other aspirations, we must say YES to creating a university community that is as diverse as the state, nation and world we seek to serve. It is morally right, and it is necessary for success. We scored a major victory when Jose Picart said YES and joined us almost two years ago as our Vice Provost for Diversity and African American Affairs, and he recently scored another victory when Fred Hord said YES and joined us as Director of our African American Cultural Center. Particularly noteworthy is that Fred brings with him the executive leadership of the National Association of Black Cultural Centers, which now has its home at NC State. With leadership like this, we-you and I-will be saying YES to many more of the challenges and opportunities that inclusiveness and diversity provide.
The last element of our chancellor's vision is organizational capability , which I translate as efficiency and effectiveness. We have much to do before we check the YES boxes to questions about efficiency and effectiveness-but we are getting after it. Through the Faculty Budget Advisory Committee, we are developing a set of "Budget Principles" to help guide how we absorb budget cuts and allocate new resources. Using these principles, which are still in draft form, Chancellor Oblinger, Vice Chancellor Charlie Leffler and I worked through our recent budget cuts, and together-working as a team committed to NC State's highest good-we protected the classroom, protected the library, promoted graduate education and invested in critically new infrastructure for student-record administration-saying YES where we should and NO where we had to. Those of you whose budgets aren't mentioned there may not be feeling too good about the process, but you should-we've done the most thoughtful and deliberate accounting of the budget since I've been here. And we'll be sharing all of this with you in the coming months through another event that we hope our Faculty Senate will sponsor.
We've also been listening closely and carefully to the ideas that our Faculty, Staff and Student Senates have brought forward-ideas to improve the success of our university, and all of us have been finding ways to say YES. Based on Faculty Senate input, Bob Sowell, Dean of the Graduate School, has increased the number of countries for which we don't require the TOEFL exam from a few to more than 50. Based on Student Senate input, our Committee on Committees added an additional student to each of 14 standing committees, saying YES to their desire to be more involved and hence more motivated to help. Based on input from both the Staff and Faculty Senates, we have engaged a consultant to explore the possibility for a university-related child care center, and I hope that we will soon have all the information needed to say YES to this need. And through all three parts of our university population and the input of many others, we have developed a proposal for creating an ecological laboratory and reserve encompassing the woods around the southwestern portion of Lake Raleigh, a proposal that is now being considered in the Master Plan revision process-and I hope we'll find a way to say YES to that once-in-a-university's-lifetime opportunity.
I'm fond of saying that if a step in a process doesn't add value to the product, don't do it-just say NO. I intend to use that sentence a lot in the coming months and years as we examine what we do and how we do it. We've already streamlined several minor processes and some big ones are on the horizon, including assessment and course/curriculum approvals. If you have candidates for processes that can be improved, let me know-but please be gentle, I'm still new at this!
I hope this has given you a glimpse into what is on my mind and my agenda at the start of my provost learning curve, a curve that I know is long, but also I hope steep. I love to say YES-I've said YES 29 times in these remarks already-and I hope you will approach your work and our work in the YES-style that sees and values the possibilities in every person, every idea, every situation. I hope you'll offer your ideas to me and that together we'll work through them, giving the best at least a tentative YES. Because brewing out there among you are the ideas that can be our Ferris Wheel, our Cracker Jacks, our Chicago Columbian Exposition-our Great NC State 21 st Century Exposition, the exposition of YES!
Thank you for listening.