President Kermit L. Hall
Spring Faculty Address
April 27, 2005
 

Let me also introduce the real power, Richard Nichols II, who is this month's President-for-a-Day. Richard is a sophomore studying economics from the Bronx. Any questions about pay raises and promotions should be directed to Richard.

I offer thanks to all who have been so kind to Phyllis and me through these initial weeks. We have found many good friends and, interestingly, a few old ones; a strong and supportive professional staff; a faculty and student body committed to the welfare of the University; and faculty governance leadership eager to see the University prosper.

I also offer thanks to our legislative delegation for its extraordinary support, Speaker Silver, Governor Pataki and to Senator Bruno especially for his professional and personal kindness. We had a very good year at the legislature. Not only did we capture the largest amount of capital funds of any institution in the state -- $205 million, but we have received help as well with our operating budgets and several special member items.

Not surprisingly, we have also discovered that politics remains alive and well in New York. Indeed, a president of another university in the system called me a few days ago and said that she was resigning in order that she could run for public office. I asked her why, and she replied: "I want to get out of politics."

That said, I admit to feeling a bit like a new college student, who has been through his initial semester and now has to take his first final exam - in front of the entire faculty no less!

Since I stepped off my Utah space ship and landed here, a series of paradoxes of place and purpose have become apparent. Let me share with you a few of them, since they provide an entering wedge in understanding our University.

• It is a place that prides itself on academic success and houses a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, but ranks as the nation's number one party school.
• A place that dramatically expresses the International Style of architecture, but is the least internationalized of the SUNY research centers.
• A place that has made a bold step forward in science, but has a half-empty Life Sciences Building with no clear linkage to a similar enterprise on the East Campus.
• A place that avows its commitment to undergraduate education, but where students struggle to find the courses they need to meet the general education requirements.
• A place that depends on transfer students for its economic life blood, but leaves them to fend largely for themselves.
• A place that has pronounced its determination to become one of the top 30 public universities in the nation, but languishes in the third tier of US News and World Report rankings.
• A place that claims academic excellence, but offers its best prepared students an episodic menu of honors programming, balks at the prospect of its largest college addressing honors education, and leaves its best students untutored in how to compete for the most prestigious national scholarships and fellowships.
• A place that pursued a half-billion dollar campaign, but did so with an existing endowment of less than $16 million.
• A place with significant diversity in its student population, but with few administrators of color and even fewer connections to the neighborhoods that lend color to its community.
• A place that sits in a city, but that has no urban strategy.
• A place that proposes to inform the world about how to plan, but has no signage to direct its visitors across the podium, through its three campuses, and in and out of its buildings.
• A place that has increased its share of Group One students, but has lost enrollment and with it the revenue necessary to finance its ambitions.
• A place that depends on shared governance, but one in which trust has been lost in the administration and with it a consensus on the shared values so necessary to govern.
• A place with an alumni board begging to make a difference, and an alumni giving rate well below the national average.
• A place with a University Council determined to make a difference, but whose existence seems to make no difference at all.
• A place with the nation's second best criminal justice program, but where students in its downtown neighborhood talk casually with the president about gun fire, knifings, drugs, and break-ins,
• where a student writes to the president to explain that her apartment was broken into five times in one year,
• where one parent is so concerned about the safety of her daughter that she suggests we contact Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels to restore order,
• and where freshmen, underage drinkers, shake the president's hand on the street corner then duck for cover when he walks into a bar.

And I could go on.

Of course, these paradoxes are part of any academic community - they are a part of life - and we should not be paralyzed by them. In pointing to them, I mean only to sound an alarm rather than be an alarmist. We have the capacity to address these matters, and when capacity is joined with will, the results can be impressive.

And if you do not think that is the case, then I point to our community's success in addressing Fountain Day. My thanks go not just to the planners and organizers, but to the University at Albany students, faculty, and staff who made it a priority to make the University's reputation a priority.

It is against this background that I offer the following. In doing so, I have several goals.

• First, I want to remind you of the general issues confronting public higher education, what we might call "The Tale of Two Pities."
• Second, I want to explore the University at Albany by addressing the basic numbers that illustrate the institution's current condition.
• Third, I want to recommend a course of action for the short term with what I believe will be important consequences for the long term.
• And fourth, I want to applaud the successes of the academic year just concluding.
  

My purpose is to launch a dialogue about what we value at a level appropriate to a great university, but to do so with the prudent urgency appropriate to our situation. I invoke my office as a bully pulpit to urge us to act not merely to discuss.

I feel certain that no one will leave here today wondering what the University should do both to get itself in shape and reach for larger goals. And I do not think anyone will doubt my belief that if we don't take these steps, then all the rhetoric we can muster about being the next great anything will amount to being nothing.

The simple truth is that if we do not put academics first, we are not likely to be considered first among academics. Saying that, however, does not mean that everything else comes last.

American public higher education is itself riddled with contradictions. We love to blame our fate on those who we most need to love. Public universities and the governments that fund them tend to think of each other as ingrates.

American public higher education has grown rapidly in the past half century and it occupies a position now of extraordinary influence. And this is especially so for a unique band of institutions - research universities.

Public research universities are among the most powerful institutions in the nation. They educate 65 percent of the workforce with four-year degrees. They provide 53 percent of the graduate degrees. They train the future generation of American professionals and they are engines of economic opportunity for the nation they serve.

As Richard Florida reminds us in The Rise of the Creative Class, a research university today is, along with a tolerant social order, essential to building the knowledge society upon which America's collective economic future will rest.

But these great public universities also face considerable challenge.

Perhaps most important has been the decline of the social contract that bound them originally to the state governments that created them after World War II. That compact held that the universities would provide opportunities for a broad spectrum of Americans to be educated; in return, the states would provide the funding to do so.

Access and excellence became allies and the result was the creation of the most remarkable system of higher education in the world. SUNY generally and this university in particular were manifestations of that commitment.

In the past decade or so, that social contract has begun to unravel. The evidence is in the decline of public support for universities, the admonition that they increasingly find other revenues, and a growing commitment to merit rather than need-based financial aid.

One of the ironies of the US News and Word Report rat race has been the propensity to forget that students with equal gifts of intelligence do not necessarily come with equal gifts of wealth and credentials, let alone success, once they arrive.

The social contract has frayed as discretionary dollars once directed to higher education become increasingly susceptible to reallocation to entitlement programs.

And from these circumstances emerges the first pity: They don't love us anymore - with the They being policy makers and the Us being higher education. And as this series of slides (see presentation, slides 20-41) reminds us, there is reason for the pity.

• Just look at our decreasing share of state resources.
• Just look at our diminishing share of state funding per $1,000 of personal income.
• Just look at our diminishing share of higher education resources coming from the state.
• Just look at what the reduction in funding has done to drive up tuition.
• Just look at what those reductions have done to force us to rely more on tuition.
• Just look at how the value of Pell Grants has atrophied.
• Just look at how the federal role has shifted from grants to loans.
• Just look at what has happened to the salaries of tenured full professors in public universities.
• In sum, our share is diminishing, their priorities have shifted, and we have been shafted.
  

But wait, the picture is not so clear after all, especially when examined from the perspective of state government. That is the second pity.

"Why is higher education whining?" state leaders respond, noting "It is getting more than ever."

And in New York it has gone up faster than the national average over the past decade -- 5.5% versus 2.1% nationally.

While tuition has gone up, the universities have not used it to address instructional needs, but they have placed it elsewhere.

Moreover, there has been a dramatic increase in the percentage of need-based financial aid in the states and the Pell Grant program has expanded.

So, when we in the universities ask, "Why don't they understand our pain?", those in state government answer: demographics, the finances of mandated entitlements, and uncertain tax revenues.

In New York State, for example, the population of traditional age college students will begin to fall in 2008, while other states will continue to grow rapidly.

And Medicaid and other entitlement spending has soared. And there is not going to be enough money to go around in any case, even in a state with taxation policies as aggressive as that of New York.

In short, from the perspective of state leaders, nobody understands the troubles that they face.

What these figures mean, in general, is the following:

• First, we must build an even greater proportion of our budgets from sources other than the state.
• Second, must become very good at managing enrollment,
• Third, we must maintain our historical public and social compact while acting more like a private university.
• And fourth, and finally, we must carry out our new mission of developing the state's economy. And we are being asked to do so with partners who are by-and-large new to our experience and who bring new pressures to bear on our traditional systems of governance.

The numbers at the University at Albany tell a similar tale.

Before going further, however, let me remind us that we should measure what we value, not merely value what we can measure. My purpose is to have us instructed by these numbers, not controlled by them.

State appropriations for operations have gone down since 2001. Tuition fees and research dollars have gone up. At the same time, the percentage of full time students receiving financial aid has stayed steady.

But our All Funds budget has increased dramatically since 2001, by more than $100 million!

How can it be that we have 100 million more dollars and we seem to be struggling?

The answer is that: research dollars have gone up, tuition has gone up, the prices charged for auxiliary services has gone up, and private giving has increased, although not nearly as quickly as it should. But while we have more funds we do not necessarily have more flexible funds.

And the dashboard reminds us how unique we are.

Albany has about 30 percent of its 14,500 students in graduate education. That makes us a remarkably small research university.

Our academic portfolio is oddly shaped, when we begin to compare ourselves with our competitors since there is no traditional college of engineering and only an emerging presence in the health sciences.

When it comes to dollars and cents, the dashboard makes dramatically visible one of the greatest weaknesses of the University -- its endowment. We are the second smallest of the research centers in faculty and staff, but even more importantly we have the lowest endowment of any of them and the next to the last lowest endowment of our peers.

We are heavily dependent on our enrollment for financial stability and institutional growth. Our enrollment has dropped by about 600 full time students in the past three years and that has cost the University $2 million dollars. And, to complicate matters, the university has a built-in structural deficit of $4.1 million that is a constant drag on our ability to deal with issues such as faculty size, facilities improvements, and student-based program services.

Even more troubling is that the numbers of students applying to the University are down as well, almost 900 since 2002. The explanation for this drop is manifold.

• First, the University has become more selective and that tends to discourage marginal applicants.
• Second, the University is almost surely suffering from its party school image. As I attended our first two admissions open houses, I was struck by how many parents asked me what we were doing about the Princeton Review, about Fountain Day, and about the safety of their sons and daughters. We have seen a steady erosion in applications from Group-One students. This trend has to be arrested in the long-term interests of the University's academic and financial health. We are making up for these losses with more applications from less well-prepared students and from transfer students, but we cannot sustain this pattern and should not do so as a research center - especially since in 2008 demographic trends turn south for the traditional college age, New York students that Albany has historically recruited.
• Third, and associated with the first two, the University in the Student Opinion Survey comes out last or near last in almost every category. The one bright spot is the Library which ranks at the top in terms of service and support for our undergraduate students.
• Fourth, as tuition has gone up, so too has the cost of going to school.
• And fifth, we are dealing with a moving target - we have to get smarter and better because our competitors are getting smarter and better.

Taken together, these numbers warn us against business as usual when it comes to the recruitment and treatment of students.

The students that do come here leave behind somewhat contradictory patterns. For example, they are retained at a fairly high rate from their first to second year -- 83 percent, but that still puts us below the average of our peer institutions and below Buffalo, Binghamton, and Stony Brook. And of that group, we lose a disproportionately large number of the best-prepared students.

The same pattern holds in the area of graduation. Our six-year graduation rate of 64 percent is better than either Buffalo or Stony Brook, but well below Binghamton and slightly below the average for all of our peers.

In athletics, our students rank number 40 in academic performance out of 325 universities in Division I. We are top ranked in the state among public division one schools.

Over the past three years, the percentage of Group 1 students has gone up by more than 10 percent, with about 40 percent of the new student population in this group. At the same time, however, the overall student population has declined.

This year, however, we have seen a drop in applications from both this group and group 2, while students from groups 3 and 4 are applying in greater numbers.

We have increased the numbers of out-of-state students in the undergraduate population, but we need to double their number over the next five years. We need special support from our out-of-state alumni and innovative recruiting programs that will bring applications from their sons and daughters.

And our student population is diverse, giving the university a realistic face for the 21st century and our students a realistic environment in which to prepare for the 21st Century.

Our students, of course, are taught by a faculty whose numbers have changed little over the past five years. What the dashboard does not reflect, however, is that the distribution of these faculty has changed, with net losses of 47 faculty in Arts and Sciences and gains in other areas. Since this college has a particular responsibility for delivering the core curriculum, it should come as no surprise that at a recent Voice of the Student session we heard that there are difficulties in securing General Education classes.

The dashboard does not presently indicate it, but in the area of graduate education we continue to have substantial strength. We have nine programs ranked in the top 25.

But the University's overall performance, as measured by US News and World Report, still has us in the third tier. Indeed, the University has see-sawed between the second and third rank for the past five years. Other research centers in New York are ranked in either tier one or tier two; indeed, every other peer institution for this university is ranked in one of those first two categories.

Finally, the dashboard reminds us of one of the central weaknesses of the University - its private and alumni base of support. The University has the lowest endowment of any of its peer institutions - and the lowest of the research centers in New York. There are remarkably few private resources with which to work. And the percentage of alumni giving to the university is equally low, although about in line with the other research centers.

So, what do these dashboard numbers mean when taken together?

The answer is that the University needs to perform better but it does not follow that it is failing. It needs a tune-up and tone-up, but it does not need to be re-invented. The underlying model is not broken.

So, what is the way forward?

Interestingly, this year's Fountain Day may provide a lesson.

We need a little home cooking, some basic planning, and some re-calibration. I offer this view while keeping in mind Mark Twain's observation that "I am all for progress, but it is change that I can't stand." The way forward, at least in the short term, looks to me to involve the following:

• A re-calibration of our basic planning and budget processes - the not-so-sexy but essential stuff that makes universities work;
• A re-commitment to the student experience generally with particularly strong but not exclusive attention given to the undergraduate experience;
• A re-energized alumni and development program;
• A renewed dedication to an urban mission, to the neighborhoods in which we teach and learn, and to providing opportunities for the diverse ethnic and racial groups form these neighborhoods;
• And a re-vitalized program of Government, Media, and Public Relations.
  

First, the University has a plan -- a long and diffuse document sprinkled with hope for everyone and laced with uncertainty for all.

My suggestion is that we revise this document, doing so through a process called compact planning. This scheme will prompt a discussion in the University about basic values, driven from the bottom up. The focus needs to be on values, on linking those values to initiatives between and among units of the University, and to emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary commitments to our collective future.

I have asked Dr. Bruce Szelest to undertake the important work of fitting the compact planning process to the culture of shared governance that so characterizes us. This planning process is critical because it will ultimately drive our ability to do the following:

• Settle on goals that are associated with a great public university.
• Force us to develop and hone our story internally before we take it externally: who we are, why we exist, what we value, and what difference we make. There is no glory without goals and there is no persuading those whose help we need -- the legislature, the governor, SUNY, our alums, and supporters -- if we cannot in fact persuade ourselves of what it is that we value.
• We need to develop a compelling explanation for the University in order to have a chance to make a compelling case to build its endowment. We cannot run a comprehensive campaign without taking the time to develop that story and then test it on those whose support we want.
• The planning process needs to be informed by discipline and structure in the budget process -- something that is non-existent in the University. In fact, as best I can tell, there is no budget process, which is why those in the governance structure complain that they cannot find it. It is hard to hide something that does not exist. No one knows how to make a claim on resources, what decisions are to be rewarded, and what initiatives on the margin will garner incremental support let alone how to deal with core budgeting issues. As presently played, the current budget deliberations are a zero-sum game with no rules.
  

We need a planning process, moreover, because we have so many plans. As I have combed through the University's past decade of activity, I am struck by how many task force and other kinds of reports there are, dealing with undergraduate education, honors programs, international education, multi-cultural affairs, the undergraduate experience, parking, food services, Fuller Road, the East Campus, signage, and on and on. It is as if an army had been lined up but never fired a bullet.

Never has one group of people planned so much for so little result. And that surely helps to explain why one and all would be wary of yet more calls for planning.

Let me offer this suggestion. Let's begin by dusting off the existing plans, taking them into the governance system, deciding what makes the most sense, and then using compact planning and a revised budget process to give discipline and action to them. In short, we have to find the courage to make choices.

The person to oversee this process should be our provost, whose selection I hope will be completed shortly. The search committee for the provost, chaired by Distinguished Service Professor John Pipkin, has done a remarkable job under extraordinarily tight time constraints. However, in order to complete the search this academic year, the candidates will be visiting the campus during the final examination period. I realize that this is unusual, but it is the only way that we can complete this search this year with faculty consultation. And I am asking every faculty and staff member on this campus for your assistance. The details of the campus visits will be emailed to each of you.

Second, we need to revisit the student experience in general and the experience of our undergraduate students in particular. The task before us is simple: we need get our student enrollment back to where it was, given our financial model, and we need better prepared students, given our role as a research university. And those students need to have the best possible experience that we can provide.

Of all of the issues before the University, the student experience has the greatest urgency.

If we can successfully manage the issues involving the student experience, then I believe that a climb in our reputation will be inevitable.

That said, the University has generated over the past eight years a host of reports and reviews that bear on both undergraduate and graduate education, certainly as an academic matter but also as a matter of student life.

What do these documents suggest? Let me tick off some items for action:

• Living Learning Centers
• support for nationally competitive scholarships
• an identity for the University
• greater involvement by alumni in recruiting and placing students,
• service learning,
• volunteerism
• more and stronger governmental internship programs
• undergraduate research
• better sign-up for housing
• more effective parking and parking regulation
• management of classrooms and their assignment
• better integration of enrollment, registration, student support services, financial aid, and admissions
• course access
• direct admission of students to the major
• legacy alumni scholarship programs for out-of-state students
• more effective orientation for transfer students
• a business process review of how we put students through the system
• better use of the web
• better contact with accepted but not yet enrolled students
• more attention to the lives of international students
• better campus lighting
• fewer alarms about safety and crime
• better food
• more access to wellness facilities
• more attention to quiet study areas
• renewed attention to safe housing off campus
• minimum one small-group or small-class experience for undergraduates in their first two years
• creation of a Principles of Community document
• meaningful roles and rewards for supporting a teaching experience in tenure promotion discussions
• revised teaching awards system
• departmental award program for teaching
• regular nomination of faculty for prestigious awards such as the Carnegie Professor of the Year
• systematic commitment to regularly nominating faculty and advisors for national advising awards

To discover how important these ideas are, I encourage you to read this past Sunday's "Education Life" supplement in The New York Times.

All of these, by the way, have one important goal: to break this large university into smaller places of student success.

I am asking today that we make an unprecedented effort over the next nine months to address these issues -- not by the formation of yet another task force to retrieve data, analyze, and report. Instead, I envision a large action group composed of the administration, the undergraduate and graduate student associations, the staff, and the University Senate. The purpose of this group is to present an action plan on how to improve the student experience at the University at Albany with clear steps and priorities. We would then involve the administration and the governance system in monitoring the actions taken, the investments made, and the results attained.

The third priority for the University must be the creation of a successful private fund raising effort, enhanced use of alumni, and renewal and redirection of the University at Albany's foundation in support of those efforts.

We have already taken two important steps to achieve these goals.

First, the Bold.Vision. Campaign has been ended, offering the opportunity to mount a new and better directed campaign.

The priorities of this campaign seem clear: more scholarship and fellowship dollars, more endowed professorships and program support, and selected capital facilities, including plans underway for our School of Business and Athletic facilities.

Second, the search for a permanent vice president for development is under way and from it should emerge stable, experienced leadership.

Third, we need to open an office in New York City to establish a presence in the financial and philanthropic capital of the east coast. The University at Albany is presently invisible to the alumni, corporations, and foundations located there.

Fourth, we need to recommit ourselves to our alumni base and do so with the goal of making them more effective contributors.

Fifth, with the leadership and assistance of George Hearst, we have begun what will be a wholesale review of the University at Albany Foundation, its responsibilities, its management of assets, and its charge of fees for service.

Let me shift our attention to another area for short-term attention but long-term gain. The University has played a critical role in economic development of the region. These efforts need to continue, especially as Albany and the region become increasingly attractive for these kinds of businesses. Part of the social compact for public universities in our time is precisely that, and this university in the capital city of the state cannot walk away from that responsibility.

But the social compact for our university runs in another direction, one that has received less attention but is, I believe, equally vital.

The University needs to make a sustained commitment, at its highest levels, to working with the neighborhoods immediately adjacent to each of our campuses, particularly our downtown campus. That campus, I would note, needs attention, both in its infrastructure and its integration into the neighborhood.

We need contact with the various constituencies that make up this neighborhood. We also need to foster a better working relationship with the city, to help every way that we can with the Mid-town re-development plan, and to provide a safer community for our students living there.

Doing so may require some non-traditional approaches to housing in these areas, but it is in our interests to have more viable neighborhoods, safer places for our students to live, and a retail and service sector that will not only attract students but staff and faculty as well.

And the University also needs to make a commitment to the school systems in the region. Our School of Education has undertaken a host of efforts to work with the schools, and those efforts provide a strong base from which to build.

Bringing diversity into our ranks must include those who come from this community. We should be viewed as a good choice for every well-prepared student, but we also should make certain that every student has the opportunity to be well prepared.

I view issues of diversity, community building, and school outreach as reciprocal, re-enforcing, and central to our mission. And I also view them as every bit as significant to the future of Tech Valley.

To that end, I am proposing that we re-name the current of Office of Outreach to become the Office of Diversity and Community/School Relations and charge it accordingly.

And finally, we need to take advantage of being in the capital of the state.

That means we must organize a governmental relations, public relations, and media relations effort that is worthy of the academic and research programs that we have now and aspire to develop.

Our governmental role, however, and the associated quest for new revenues must also make us, a regular and important presence in Washington.

To all of these ends, I believe we should combine our governmental relations with our public and media relations. I propose that we move the current media and public relations office out of the Office of University Advancement and locate these resources with the governmental relations office. I am also proposing that this office be headed by a Vice President for Governmental, Public, and Media Relations.

Let me underscore that these four areas do not encompass all of what we need to do, but they are initial steps toward re-engaging the social compact that has frayed, re-directing attention to our student population, re-affirming our commitment to participating in making Albany and the region a better place to live, work, and study, and re-energizing our efforts to tell our story even better than we have.

All of these steps, as I see it, will make our task of recruiting and retaining the best and the brightest faculty, students and staff easier. I am confident in our ability to address successfully the future of the University without becoming hallucinatory about that future. This is a wonderful university, one whose best days are ahead of it.

The list of successes now scrolling on the screen came from every corner of this University. You and the rest of the world can view them on the President's web pages and below.* (See list* below and presentation, slides 84-112.)

We have navigated one of the most daunting of passages, the creation of a College - The College of Computing and Information. And thanks are due to the faculty and leadership of the Computer Science Department, the School of Information Science & Policy, and the Ph.D. program in Information Science. This exciting combination of disciplines should provide a solid platform that will keep our students well-prepared for today's information age. Our thanks go to Deans Joan Wick-Pelletier and Peter Bloniarz But their achievement also reminds us of the importance of interdisciplinary initiatives and the promise that they hold for our collective academic futures.

And last but not least, Fountain Day was a rousing success with help from faculty and staff. Our students embraced the qualities of self-respect, dignity and accountability while managing to generate school spirit.

Congratulations are due to our new distinguished professor, our new faculty and staff excellence winners, and our two new Collins Fellows, whose names I will announce shortly, and to the four students who reflect the overall quality of the student population.

Thanks are due to those who have generously supported our new Inaugural Scholarship Campaign.

To underscore the importance of private giving and to remind all of us of our priorities, we have come today as close to the inaugural moon as we will get in my life time. Instead, the $100,000 that would have gone to that event has been taken and permanently endowed, funds that have been joined by contributions from many colleagues and friends. To date, we have raised $241,000 from nearly 500 contributors. The names of all the contributors to date are listed on the easels to your right.

We have four contributors here today to present checks to the University.

Would Greg Coady from Chartwells, Hil Estock from Barnes and Noble, Edwina Kaliku of the Senior Class, and Jeff Luks from the Alumni Association please come forward? Each of these groups has pledged $10,000 or more to the fund. And as they are signing their checks, we should also note that both UPC and the Senate have given up their snacks and coffee, which had been paid from funds from the University discretionary accounts. That roughly $10,000 will go each year from the Foundation to the Inaugural Student Scholarship Fund.

Our success is measured in still another way. Let me continue today by recognizing some outstanding UAlbany faculty, staff, and graduate teaching assistants.

When the Collins Fellow Award was established, this University made a statement that service... exceptional, institution-wide service... should be recognized and celebrated. Over the years, those so honored have exemplified the kind of devotion to our University and its students which has allowed us to move forward even in times which challenge our ingenuity and resolve. This year we honor two such outstanding faculty for all they have contributed to our University.

First, let me introduce this year's new Collins Fellows: Bruce L. Miroff, professor of political science, and Leonard A. Slade, Jr., professor of Africana studies. May I ask Professors Miroff and Slade to come forward.

May I also ask that all of the Collins Fellows who are here today please stand and be recognized.

It is a tremendous pleasure for me to acknowledge one of our colleagues whom the Board of Trustees has promoted this year to the highest academic rank within the State University of New York. Please join me in congratulating: Distinguished Professor Kajal Lahiri of the Department of Economics. Would Professor Lahiri please come forward.

And I would also ask that all faculty in the audience today who hold the Distinguished rank to also stand and be recognized.

Now, I am pleased to recognize colleagues who have been selected for the 2005 President's Awards for Excellence by asking them to join me.

Please join me in congratulating all of these exceptional colleagues and thanking them for their dedication and contributions to our University.

And there are many other examples of success. (See presentation.)

Today, we have four extraordinary students, whom I would now ask to join us. Dara Stofenberg is a graduating senior, with a bachelor's degree in public policy. She's a Presidential Scholar with a 4.0 average. Min Xie (Gee) is a doctoral student in Criminal Justice who is receiving the Eliot Lumbard Award for Academic Excellence, the School's highest recognition for graduate student achievement. Yuliana Antonia De Los Santos came to UAlbany through the Educational Opportunity Program, and will graduate this May with a bachelor of science degree in biology, with a combined minor in mathematics, chemistry and physics. Edgardo Sosa is a junior, who has won a Goldwater Scholarship for the 2005-06 academic year. Edgardo is a double major in biochemistry-molecular biology and anthropology, at the intersection of so much that is happening in science.

I will now ask the contributors to the Inaugural Scholarship Fund to present their checks to the students.

So much for "The Tale of Two Pities," so much for the paradoxes of place and purpose, so much for the idea that we cannot compete.

Faculty excellence, philanthropic generosity, and student academic achievements remind us that we have much to build on and therefore every reason to aspire to success.

Our task is simple but bracing: to re-energize and re-invigorate this powerful place of learning and re-calibrate the social compact by which we exist and according to which we will be remembered.

Thank you.

*University Successes

• Tomorrow we start the second phase of the President's Diversity Initiative, one that is being conducted with the involvement of the UUP.
• This year we have inaugurated high-performance computing services for researchers, including several "firsts" for the campus. Faculty/researchers using this new capability so far range from the College of Arts and Sciences (anthropology, computer science, chemistry), to East Campus (cancer genomics) to nanosciences. We are positioned for further developments in grid computing.
• We have not lost a single day of network service to all of ResNet in nearly a year. Last spring (2004), at this critical period on the academic year, there were several outages that resulted in the loss of network services to all students. This has been accomplished through superior network management, improved security and devoted user support. At this time of virus, worm and other attacks, ITS kept the student network a safe, robust online service.
• The School of Education has welcomed international fellows (the three new Harbison Fellows), forged innovative partnerships (of a variety of kinds), and seen an extraordinary number of faculty books published.
• The School of Criminal Justice implemented the first criminal justice information technology concentration in the country, and in partnership with the IT Commons hired a second faculty member who will bring cutting-edge IT skills to our students. On April 28-29 the school will host the inaugural Albany Symposium on Crime and Justice, which is bringing together world-renowned scholars on developmental criminology for two days of presentations and discussion. Approximately 100 faculty, students, and criminal justice practitioners representing 14 states, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and 20 universities, will be attending. Papers from the Symposium will be published in a special volume of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. And of course, there is also our #2 ranking for criminology Ph.D. programs.
• The School of Business faculty approved a new policy to admit group 1 freshmen directly into the school beginning fall 2006. The school's faculty also approved a Scholars Program for the direct admit freshmen. The Dean's Advisory Board awarded two grants to faculty members to support their research. The advisory board has provided more than $200,000 in support for the school over the past several years.
• The Division of Intercollegiate Athletics had two notable successes: it was ranked in the 90th percentile and 40th in the country under the new NCAA Academic Progress Rate (APR) and men's lacrosse is ranked #12 in the national poll.
• As a result of new leadership in the office of Financial Aid following the move of the office to Finance and Business, financial aid packages have been processed far earlier than previous years. Freshmen packages are 12 percent ahead of last year, transfers at 65 percent ahead of last year and EOP at 250 percent ahead of last year. Essentially all applications containing complete information have been processed.
• We cleaned up the campus and thanks goes to all who participated.
• Rockefeller College continues to rank in the top five percent out of some 250 public affairs programs in the country with special excellence in the areas of information technology and management in government ("e-administration"), public finance, and public administration. The College's Center for Legislative Development received major new funding from the Agency for International Development to continue its effort to build the administrative capacity necessary for democratic governance in Lebanon. While involved with institutions of the national government, the Center has most recently targeted its assistance at the local level.
• The School of Social Welfare increased research grant success, including federal research grants such as a K award, our school-wide National Institute on Drug Abuse Center and new NIH submissions and awards. It has successful international outreach initiatives with African nations, Peru, Korea, Russia and most recently with helping Tsunami victims in Indonesia. The School has contributed to the community more than $3.5 million in counseling and administrative services each semester through student internships in social work agencies and through our University-wide Community and Public Service Program.
• The College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering has launched its Global Nanotechnology Student Exchange program with Technische Universität-Dresden (TU Dresden), one of Germany's most prestigious universities for nanoelectronics research. And it will serve as the headquarters for the New York Center for Advanced Interconnect Science and Technology (CAIST), a national university consortium with a $2.5 million annual budget funded by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC).
• The University Libraries are very happy with the strong satisfaction ratings from Albany undergraduates and are engaged with groups of graduate students to learn more about their needs and make needed improvements. Library staff successfully implemented the Ex Libris ALEPH library system this year on time and on budget. They have spent much of the academic year developing and fine tuning system functions.
• In three years the School of Public Health has gone from 20 to 60 recruiting visits to campuses across the state. We have received 60 applications more this year from places visited. The Continuing Education programs from the School of Public Health Center for Public Health Preparedness this year reached all 50 states at 450 sites. Additionally, more than 3,000 public health workers and students from around the world successfully completed on-line training in preparedness, cross-cultural communication, and other public health topics.
• In the College of Arts and Sciences, the Life Sciences Research Building officially opened in October 2004 and a new Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer was installed in December. The NMR is a 700 MHz actively shielded spectrometer and it is one of the most modern in the capital district.
• The Economics Department has been chosen for funding by the Council of Graduate Schools. It was awarded a grant in the amount of $25,000 for a two-year period for the implementation of the professional master's degree in economic forecasting. Its proposal was one of the 17 projects chosen by the Council to receive an award.
• Professor Matthew Martens of the Department of Counseling Psychology in the School of Education and Dr. Dolores Cimini, a psychologist in the University Counseling Center, were awarded an $850,000 grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The title of this project is "The Effects of Peer-Facilitated Alcohol Intervention." The grant is an important factor in the equation to reduce high risk drinking rates and to assess the effectiveness of peer-based model interventions. Alcohol abuse is a significant problem in the UAlbany student culture. It is incumbent upon the leadership of this University to make a difference in the lives of our students. Reducing alcohol abuse is at the top of the list!
• The Office of Undergraduate Studies and the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning now have 660 students who are eligible to graduate with honors and wear honors medallions at the graduation ceremony in May. As of now, the count is 293 cum laude, 194 magna cum laude, and 173 summa cum laude.
• And Undergraduate Studies will be holding the second annual University Honors Conference on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression, co-sponsored with the Vice President for Research, on May 12th and 13th 8 a.m.-5 p.m. It will include between 30 and 40 presentations and exhibitions by students from the Departments of English, Women's Studies, Political Science, Communication, History, Biology, East Asian Studies, and Music, and the Schools of Criminal Justice and Business.
• In University Advancement, our graphics standards manual received the national CASE gold award. And private gifts and pledges for fiscal year 2004-2005 are running 62 percent ahead of last year.
• The University's world-renowned New York State Writers Institute completed another outstanding year, featuring visiting writers, film and special programs that celebrate writing and writers, and promote literary and intellectual discourse. The Institute makes a substantial and important contribution to UAlbany's academic program and to the cultural life and vitality of our community and region.