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Faculty of great individual achievement and
distinction create the environment and the culture for path-breaking
discovery, learning and programs. Great teaching, great scholarship and
great programs are what it is all about. Faculty distinction is today,
as it always has been, the foundation of the great university, and
recruitment of star quality faculty in head-to-head competition with the
best universities is mandatory to be ranked among the best. Fortunately
we are now competitive for the best. For instance, this past year we
recruited 
Over the last decade the academic distinction of the campus has
increased substantially. In fact essentially every measure of quality
normally used demonstrates our rise: student test scores and grades,
numbers of applications, programs ranked in the top 25, research
support, private giving, honors and special
programs, competitiveness and so on.
At the same time our campus is becoming a much more diverse place, and fast. In 1989 26% of our students were students of color and in 1999 it was 41%. Just as our soaring quality measures span every scale from faculty to students and programs, our increasing diversity spans racial and ethnic minorities. I am struck by how many people find this runs counter to their expectation. It does not to mine. My California experience was identical — increasing racial and ethnic diversity and simultaneously increasing academic achievement. This is our goal — this is my plan — this will be our future.
I am most grateful to Professors Claire Moses and Raymond Johnson for chairing the panel on diversity appointed jointly by the Senate and me last January. Their hard-working panel met two hours per week throughout the spring semester to seek new ideas on methods that would bring together different groups on this diverse campus. It suffices to comment here that the panel was struck vividly by how much we are already doing to facilitate diversity on this campus. Professor Moses commented to me that there is probably no university in the country that is doing more than we are. At the same time, responsibility and accountability are diffuse, in part because of the scale of our activity and the breadth of participation in it. An understanding of all that goes on here exceeds both its documentation and even anyone’s anecdotal grasp. Their report is on the web and I urge all to review it, and to comment on it by September 30. It is replete with recommendations that have already been parceled out to vice presidents, and to myself, for action. I plan to report to the campus on its implementation on October 30 after I have the opportunity to digest your comments.
Leadership
Let’s talk about the second area of focus I mentioned— leadership. Great universities don’t wait to be chosen to lead; they just simply lead. They take it. As I see it, leadership in the state and region is our Flagship role. We don’t lead because we are the Flagship. We are the Flagship because we lead. We should not be the Flagship if we don’t lead. Leadership takes many different forms but each connects the campus to some external body or activity. We connect to business, connect to schools, connect to the state leadership, connect to Washington, to Montgomery County, to Baltimore, connect to universities in the state, to the Shady Grove Center, connect to the technology councils, connect to alumni, connect to parents, to the local communities, to arts organizations, to the media, connect to charitable foundations, connect to the IT businesses in northern Virginia, connect to the biotechnology corridor along I-270, connect to BARC, connect to the federal laboratories, connect to the state’s agricultural interests, and connect to the next generation of university students and their families. You get the idea — connection is ubiquitous. We impact the society, the state and region through these connections.
Dean Lowry took the leadership for the Maryland Digital Library that is funded by the state and supports all public and private higher education in the state. The campus took a leadership role in the state’s e-commerce initiative and will develop applications for e-government through Office of Information Technology under Associate Vice President Don Riley and Professor Sandy Boyson in the Smith School. An original concept in higher education is being developed at Shady Grove to serve a growing population of underserved undergraduate students in Montgomery County. The Smith School was selected to provide the business program, and recently we have taken on the bioscience and general science programs, an opportunity of substantial importance to us and to our future.
The leadership on campus took some remarkable turns this year. Led by the Provost, the 1996 strategic academic plan was updated to create the 2000 plan "Building on Excellence: The Next Steps." The plan was on the web and critiqued widely on campus, endorsed by the Senate and adopted at leadership retreat in June. The updated plan is timely because of changes in campus leadership since 1996 and because the state’s expectation of us has changed too. These campus changes include your president, the provost, two vice presidents, and the deans of all the large units except Dean Goldstein, who thank goodness remains to provide a sense of history. The newly recruited deans include Norma Allewell (Life Sciences), Tom Kunkel (Journalism) and Nariman Farvardin (Engineering) who joined our decanal ranks this past summer along with Steve Halperin (CMPS) and Edna Szymanski (Education) who joined in 1999 to give us superb leadership at the top. This 2000 strategic plan will guide our resource and academic planning over the next five years.
The University of Maryland College Park Foundation was created and began accepting gifts in May, taking in $6 million that month. My wife Patsy and I were thrilled to have made the first gift and first pledge to it. We really do enjoy donating money to causes we love. It makes us feel so good about ourselves. But a truly wonderful early gift to this foundation was an anonymous $3.5 million designated to fund a faculty chair and graduate fellowships both carrying the name of Dr. Herbert Rabin of engineering. They honor his mentorship. I know that makes Herb feel superb — there is almost nothing better except possibly getting the $3.5 million yourself.
Our supporters have welcomed the creation of this foundation and many have moved their earlier gifts to it — nearly $50 million in fact has been moved and the foundation board has yet to meet. Not a bad start for a new foundation. The fundraising and outreach efforts of the campus will be built around this foundation and it will pull the many campus development operations together.
State Relationship
Our state relationship is important to think about because its meaning to us is profound. My message to the state leadership has been simple and straight. When we think of the state’s future, we need to realize that the University of Maryland is the State’s greatest asset. We are in the knowledge business, and this is the knowledge economy. It is here to stay for the foreseeable future. In this period where knowing things has become more important than earning a degree, a research university of this caliber is irreplaceable. We educate one third of the System students and spend over 40% of the System budget. The top faculty are here. The top programs are here. The top high school students want to come here. When our graduate programs are thrown in, our certain impact on the future of the state becomes even more striking.
In many ways the futures of the state and University of Maryland are linked inextricably. Our achievements will be coupled explicitly. We are bound by need, necessity and reality. We carry the banner of the state, and it should carry ours.
Let’s face it. The state really does not have many other good choices. It has only one distinguished research university with statewide responsibility. There is no one else who could serve this purpose for the state within the next few decades. The state has officially denoted us the Flagship and charged us with leadership responsibility. As we go, the state goes.
So each of us needs to consider how we can enhance our special relationship with the state. We need to facilitate our connections to all appropriate niches. Many here are already working hard in this direction — OIT working with the Governor’s office on e-government and e-commerce, Cooperative Extension has offices in every county in the state, the has offices in every county in the state, the Maryland Applied Information Technology Initiative will at least double the technology workforce, our College of Education is working closely with the state and Prince George’s County leadership on its initiatives. Our connections to the state define our special role.
Culture of Excellence, Tolerance and Civility
While I speak often about our culture of excellence extending across the campus, I should also speak to our culture of tolerance and civility that need to go along with it. While last year saw accomplishments on every front, we also experienced the pain of intolerance on a couple of occasions. Experience shows that when diversity increases, incidents of intolerance and insensitivity also increase. Therefore, we must work even harder with each other to create and maintain a welcoming community where all of us feel safe, can be ourselves and can grow through our connections to different people.
Let me digress from this for a moment to talk about organizational demons. Yes, I said demons. Irv Goldstein may cringe at my dalliance in organizational psychology, and I have not yet received his counsel on my thinking or his permission to speak. In short, though we are pals, don’t blame him for what I say. But nonetheless I have observed that every organization is plagued by demons. There can be many of them. They lurk in the shadows; lie in the interstices of the operations. While they are seen fleetingly, if at all, their grip on the organization is steely indeed. You need to look below the surface a level or two to see what happens to the organization in order to realize that they are at work. Excellence in administration is in part success at identifying and suppressing these demons.
They are on our playing fields, in the hallways and dining commons, in the dorms, in the campus bureaucracy. I’m certain that after some thought you will have your favorites. Talking about all of them is a topic for another day. But today I would like to mention two demons that I find to be among our most difficult. I call them the intolerance demon and the even more difficult to handle insensitivity demon. In my two years here almost every serious campus-wide problem has been the work of one or the other of these two demons.
Let me give you a couple of examples. You recall the hate crime we experienced last November where student leaders were threatened because of their race. These assaults were vicious, immoral and felonious, and they required our maximal response to help the victims and seek to arrest the criminals. Our response was clear, obvious and not widely controversial. When intolerance shows itself in this vivid way, it can be confronted. Frankly, these are the relatively easy cases to handle because our campus community demands a strong response. While we continue to be troubled by its intermittent appearance, our collective commitment to fight intolerance together gives us strength and the chance to suppress this demon. Accordingly we will keep it at bay even though it will continue to harass us on occasion.
The insensitivity demon, however, often does not show itself completely, and our response to it is less clear and often controversial. An insensitive incident is frequently inadvertent, such as that with the invitation of the Bloodhound Gang with its racist lyrics that performed at Art Attack last spring, or with the blasphemous article in the campus humor magazine, the Maryland Cow Nipple, that characterized Allah as human and having human failings. These incidents created great stress for some members of our campus community, but they did not do so for others. At other times our insensitivity is fully intentional, such as with the "you suck" jeers directed at opponent basketball players at Cole Field House. In both cases I believe the perpetrators do not see themselves as insensitive or intolerant of others - just fun loving and high-spirited. Accordingly, they don’t want to change what they do. Our campus response is more measured. Hence, the insensitivity demon lives.
In these instances the administration is frequently called on to do something about the insensitivity. Typically, the opponents want the administration to stop the event, cut off financial support and live up to its goal to create a welcoming and civil campus society. On the other side the proponents claim the rights of Free Speech and the inappropriateness of any administrative action that would constrain discourse. In one letter delivered to me last year our beloved band director Richmond Sparks was compared to a Nuremberg Trial war criminal for failing to play The Song.
Of course, free speech is not the issue here. You don’t have to invite someone into your home to yell insults at you even if he has the civil right to do so. And the issue is not the administration's taking back authority delegated to student groups when it finds their lawful programmatic content unacceptable. That would be a chilling policy for a top-quality university.
We, together, must be willing to tackle the insensitivity demon in our normal everyday discourse. Do we have the will for it? That is our question. Only we can answer it through the culture we establish, the content of our speech, and the actions we take. Think about it. Act on it. Act on it as a Senate. Our Office of Human Relations is working hard trying to get all of us to "walk in the other guy’s shoes" through its program Crossing Borders, Building Communities. To them I send kudos and say "right on" for that is the only way we will ever combat insensitivity — suppress the insensitivity demon. As an institution, this is our most difficult challenge.
The Year of Connections
Let’s talk for a moment about our connections. Our recent history shows that we can rank among the best universities in the country. This transformation has been rapid, in fact so rapid that many outside the campus do not realize what has transpired here. And frankly speaking, there is only one sure way to fix this problem. Only one. In a word, it’s connections. We need to forge strong connections both internally and to our external constituencies. The personal knowledge gained from a direct connection to the campus is irreplaceable. Meeting the students, listening to faculty and even walking on the grass builds authentic connections to us. There is no substitute for it — not advertising, not newspaper stories, not newsletters, press releases, or radio spots. A focus for this year for all of us has to be to make new personal connections on all fronts. All of us can make these connections to our many constituencies in the state and region, indeed in the nation and world. Let me mention a couple of connections to illustrate my point, but I will only scratch the proverbial surface.
Connection to Research
Connecting the campus research enterprise to the external community is fundamental to our support and impact. Hosting "research days" where individuals, corporations, and agencies are invited to the campus for show-and-tell will facilitate this. A research day for information and communication that was held last spring brought hundreds to the campus, and one scheduled for bioscience and biotechnology this November should do the same. Our beautiful new magazine, Maryland Research, which I recommend to you highly for both its content and presentation, is another mode of connection to these important technology sectors. This research day concept can be expanded across our academic spectrum.
Our commitment to the bioscience initiatives will be enhanced greatly by these connections to the corporate sectors residing along I-270 and I-95. Our other major program initiatives, the Demography of Inequality and Scientific Computation, will also be facilitated through their connections outside the campus.
Our research connection will not be fully effective until large and small corporate research enterprises develop in our neighborhood. It may happen in a classic research park or it may be a distributed version of one. In any case what is needed is the creation of an entrepreneurial culture in the vicinity of the campus, one that values innovation and development of new ideas and products. The entrepreneurial environment would provide opportunity for students, for faculty, and for the campus to promote the economic development of the state. It would also facilitate technology transfer and provide a possible home for our incubator bred start-up companies. Our value to the state will not be realized fully without the development of the technology transition phase provided by a research park. This is complex to say the least but I will concentrate on making this connection in the near term. I plan to have more to report to you on this next year.
Connections to the Community
Connection to community is all our responsibility and it takes many
shapes. Let’s consider two of them: the raising of private money
and the building of pride in the university. The campus exceeded its
fundraising goal last year by raising about $71 million and the numbers
of donors and alumni association members also increased.
This year we will put into place a new program that will connect the campus directly to nine high schools in Baltimore. Each year one student will be selected from each high school to join the program. These students, who will come from the most disadvantaged circumstances, will be awarded a four-year room and board plus tuition and fees scholarship, be mentored comprehensively and they will connect us to their former high schools and other students. We will choose students that satisfy our admission requirements and that have the qualities of character needed to succeed here. We will raise private money, and a lot of it, to fund this program, and it will change the face of our campus’s relationship to Baltimore. I predict that it will become a model for this state and region.
Pride in the university is growing everyday and most people in this room are nurturing it. The new Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center has opened and is already reaching beyond the campus. I have received its first year’s performance programs even as the Center prepares for its gala opening one year hence. You may be interested to know that recently Clarice and Robert Smith increased their original $15 million gift to the Center by an additional $2.5 million to help defray the costs of the grounds and construction. We remain forever grateful to them for their vision and generosity. Support like theirs makes the difference between a fine performing arts center and a truly great one. Pride in the university and support of it go hand in hand. I hope you agree.
Connection to Learning Environment
We must continue to connect to our own learning environment. While we have done a fine job, this job is never done. What can we do to improve the infrastructure and how can we connect our students more closely to the learning environment? These questions are ever present.
Some would argue that mentorship is the most important part of the student experience. Even the harshest critics might say it's not the most important part, it is only a very important part of the student experience. In any event, each of us, I expect, can recall a mentor that changed the course of our life. For me this mentoring often came about through unstructured conversation rather than a "life’s planning session." We must expand the mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students; involve more faculty and appropriate staff members in mentorship. Each of us and each unit should examine our own commitments to mentoring. I understand the difficulty of what I ask and after nearly four decades in this business I have probably heard all the pro and con arguments. But for me the controlling argument is that something so important to the achievement of our campus mission cannot be neglected. What can we accomplish with our various resources? Mentorship can also be expanded through offices, like the new National Scholarship Office that will prepare students to compete for major national scholarships like those carrying the name of Rhodes, Marshall, Truman and Goldwater. As an institution we need to think about mentorship. I plan to mentor four or five students myself this year, but we need to move toward a comprehensive mentorship agenda and need to address this question this year.
We need to take seriously our graduation rate of full-time students. Simply put, a graduation rate of 63% in six years for full-time students is too low. The high and increasing application pressure from highly qualified students, and this low graduation rate are incongruous. Low graduation rate means inadequate student advancement; loss of state funding; fewer students having access to education; lower rankings for the university and unfulfilled state expectations. Frankly, I can’t think of anything good to say about it. Truly part-time students, who have jobs and other major commitments, are not the issue. Graduation at all for them can be a heroic deed in itself. Their needs should be separated from full-time students who can enroll in 12 or more credits per term but don’t do so. 22% of campus students enroll in 9 or fewer credits each term. If half of them increased their course load to 10-14 credits per term our graduation rate would be 74%. If all increased to 10-14, our graduation rate would be 80%. These numbers simply don’t compute when over 95% of the entering freshman class declares its intent to be full-time students.
The time has come to move toward changes in campus culture and policy that will result in an increased graduation rate. This year we need to identify and begin to implement changes that will move us toward a full-time graduation rate in the 80% range over the near term.
Closing
In closing let me thank you Senators and members of the campus community for striving together to build this fine university into a great one. This is our mandate from the state; more importantly this will be our legacy to future generations. You are succeeding beautifully in this most noble enterprise; the quantitative evidence is everywhere. When we reach the airy plateau of greatness, it will be through your extraordinary work. It is your unbending expectation of distinction, your unrelenting pursuit of top quality, and your willingness to commit to being the best that will make it happen. I am inordinately proud of this campus, all of you and our progress.
CDM, Jr.
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