President Lambert outlines 2010-11 priorities in annual address to faculty and staff

President Lambert shared the podium with five faculty members who outlined special initiatives related to diversity and global engagement, redefining the university’s general studies curriculum, and transforming the residential life experience on campus. See a related E-Net story for details of those presentations.

The full text of President Lambert’s opening workshop address is below:

Opening of School Address
McCrary Theater
9:30 a.m.
August 23, 2010

Welcome, colleagues, to the start of a promising new academic year at Elon University. We anticipate with much excitement welcoming the Class of 2014 in just a few days. Move-in weekend is one of the most exciting times of the academic year for me, and I want to say in advance how much I appreciate the efforts of virtually every member of the university community in extending a warm and gracious welcome to our new students and their families. Parents, especially, often report that they expected the move-in process would be a troublesome chore but, instead, were overwhelmingly surprised by the efficiency, friendliness, and warm embrace of the Elon community. I also want to offer a word of congratulations to you all for your efforts in recruiting and enrolling a full and academically very well qualified class of undergraduate students, an effort not to be taken for granted in these tough economic times. Their qualifications show them to be an extraordinary group of young men and women, and they promise to be a credit to the world as Elon alumni.

I hope your summer months gave you an opportunity for some reflection and new perspectives. Laurie and I enjoyed a visit to the Elon in LA program, which is developing as an important center for learning, student recruitment, and alumni employment. We also spent two weeks under the tutelage of Professor Emeritus Jim Pace of the Department of Religious Studies and Associate Chaplain Phil Smith on a tour of Jordan and Israel, which turned out to be a profound learning experience for us and other alumni and parents on our excursion. There were also some other bright spots in the summer. Reading Professor Drew Perry’s wonderful new novel, “This is Just Exactly Like You,” recently published by Viking, reminded me again of the important creative and scholarly accomplishments being made by the Elon faculty; and attendance at five culminating presentations from our students’ summer undergraduate research experiences left me overwhelmingly impressed by the intellectual achievements that are realized by the power of mentoring relationships that develop through undergraduate research.

We are at the dawn of a new strategic plan at Elon University titled The Elon Commitment, a plan that will take this decade and more than a half billion dollars in resources to complete. For those of you who are new to the university this year, our customary practice is to annually set institutional priorities defining the steps that we will take in the current academic year towards the broader longer term objectives of our strategic plan. We pride ourselves at Elon on having our planning processes as open and transparent as possible. I think this is a sign of the collaborative and innovative spirit here that fuels much of our success.

As I have done occasionally in the past, this morning I want to share the podium with five colleagues who will briefly describe work that is under way regarding three of the most important priorities set forth in the Elon Commitment strategic plan. I’d like to introduce each of them and the topics that they will address. Following their presentations, I will come back to the podium and provide some highlights of some other institutional priorities for the year that I believe deserve your special attention.

First, Professor Brooke Barnett of the School of Communications, who is beginning a two-year term as assistant to the president and faculty administrative fellow, has agreed to take coordinating leadership responsibility for the first goal of the Elon Commitment strategic plan: An unprecedented university commitment to diversity and global engagement. Let me try to capture why I think this goal is so essential to the future of the university. The most important work that we do here at Elon is the preparation of global citizens in the great arts and sciences tradition. If we are to be successful in our work of educating global citizens, we must create the richest possible learning environment for our students, both here on the campus at Elon and in other environments in which they will study and learn through international work, internships, and other experiences across the globe. Understand this: seventeen- and eighteen-year-old young women and men choosing a university expect to encounter a diversity of experiences-to meet and interact with a wide variety of people, to engage diverse intellectual perspectives, to experience other cultures, and to gain competencies as people who can move successfully among the many cultures of the world. Elon students should encounter diverse religious perspectives, socio-economic perspectives, and ethnic and cultural perspectives if we truly mean we are preparing them for leadership in the twenty-first century. We must be successful in making continual progress towards this objective if we want to remain relevant and keep our reputation as one of the most innovative and forward-looking institutions in the United States.

Following Professor Barnett, professors Rosemary Haskell and Tom Mould will describe the important work ahead of us in the revision of the university’s general education program, the foundation for every undergraduate student’s program of study and the most important preparation we give to students as life-long learners. The plan states that our goal is to create the nation’s finest general education program. This is a tall order, but as many of you recall from last year’s substantive conversations about the revision of general education, the core objective is the preparation of broadly educated, critically thinking global citizens. This is a shining opportunity for the university to claim true distinction as a leader in undergraduate education.

Next, Jeff Stein, newly appointed to the position of special assistant to the president and secretary to the board of trustees and formerly associate dean of students, and Professor Kevin O’Mara from the Love School of Business will give us an update on the planning under way to enhance the residential nature of the Elon community. The Elon Commitment strategic plan calls us to build 1,600 new living spaces for students on campus, integrated with academic and academic support facilities, which I strongly believe will strengthen the learning environment here in dramatic ways. In fact, I have often said that if we carry out this objective well, the long-term impact and influence on the institution will be as important as the pursuit of a Phi Beta Kappa chapter in the recently completed NewCentury@Elon strategic plan.

Professor Barnett will begin, will be immediately followed by her colleagues, and I will return to the podium to complete the remainder of this morning’s presentation.

(PRESENTATIONS)

We look forward to two exciting convocations for honors this year featuring national and world leaders. On October 12, Elon University will welcome President Pervez Musharraf, former president of Pakistan. We look forward to his insights on issues currently facing Pakistan and the region. In spring term, Elon will host a distinguished panel of national leaders who will examine the futures we are leaving our grandchildren in terms of national economic indebtedness, the environment, quality of public education, and what course corrections we might make now to leave the next generations with more sustainable futures. Brian Williams of NBC News, parent of Douglas Williams of the Class of 2013, has agreed to moderate this intriguing discussion.

This is a year in which leadership and leadership development will be an important theme. We welcome Alison Morrison-Shetlar as the new dean of Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, the largest academic unit of the university. We also welcome Professor Connie Book to her new role as associate provost for academic affairs and Professor Tim Peeples as associate provost for faculty affairs. Connie assumes much of the mantle of responsibility from former associate provost Nancy Midgette for whom we are in debt for many, many years of outstanding leadership at the university. Tim’s newly defined role stems from a recommendation from the Presidential Task Force on Scholarship, and we look forward to Tim’s creative leadership supporting many dimensions of faculty life, including our expanding scholarship initiatives. Following the recommendation made last year by two task forces focusing on the leadership development of our faculty and staff, we will commence this fall a search for a director of leadership and organizational development to further leadership preparation of faculty and staff across the university, which is essential given our plans to advance the university across so many fronts simultaneously.

This promises to be another exciting year for Elon University School of Law. The school has been preparing for many months for a site team visit from the American Bar Association for final approval of the school. The ABA will visit Elon September 19-22. In the spring, we look forward to hosting our first national moot court competition, named in honor of three distinguished former North Carolina Supreme Court justices, Rhoda Billings, Jim Exum, and Henry Frye, all of whom are active on the School of Law Advisory Board. We expect to host teams from 16 20 law schools across the nation for this event.

Also in September, we will welcome the site team from the NCAA Committee on Athletic Certification, which will be one of the culminating steps in the ten-year review of our Division I athletics programs, which follows a comprehensive self-study completed last year with participation from across the campus and under the leadership of Dean Paul Parsons of the School of Communications. And hard as it is to believe, it is already time to begin preparations for our next regional re-accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which will take place in 2013. In preparation for re-accreditation, this year we will need to review and reaffirm our university mission statement and begin to plan for an aspect of university life that we wish to study in some depth, titled the Quality Enhancement Plan.

We will re-launch our search for a university chaplain this academic year. Following an initial search, which we opted to suspend in the spring of 2009, we elected to use last academic year as a time of reflection and discernment to examine future directions for the offices of the chaplain and religious and spiritual life and, most specifically, to plan for the construction of the new Multi-faith Center. Most of us can well remember what an important force for good Chaplain Richard McBride was at Elon for 25 years. Richard set a very high bar for leadership of the chaplaincy at Elon, and we are determined to find a wonderful successor. It’s heartening to see the program of spiritual life at Elon continue to blossom, including the naming of Elon University as a “small and mighty campus” by Hillel International and the opening of the Catholic Newman Center in Holland House on South Campus last fall.

This fall we will have ready for review by the graduate council, the curriculum committee, the faculty, and the board of trustees a proposal to establish the university’s newest master’s program in Physician Assistant Studies. After careful and comprehensive review, the evidence is very clear that physician assistants will play an extremely important role in medical care in this nation as we add 30-40 million more people to the country’s health care rolls over the next few years. This is an area in which the university will be able to make an important societal contribution in extending health care, particularly to those who are underserved in both rural and urban areas. We are still weighing options about the placement of the program and are considering both a building in downtown Greensboro proximate to the Elon University School of Law and another site at the former Smithfield property adjacent to Danieley Center, which for the time being we are calling Danieley East. Whatever the location, I am confident the program will be regarded as a regional resource involving both Alamance Regional Medical Center and Moses Cone Hospital as clinical and financial partners. A cornerstone to our fund raising is a proposal to the Duke Endowment, which will be considered this fall, and we have other financial partners ready to support us as well.

Also in the area of health-related graduate programs this year, we will be working on a plan to expand the doctoral program in physical therapy and to relocate that program, hopefully by the fall of 2011, from McMichael Science Center to Danieley East. As I explained at the May faculty meeting, this would give us an opportunity for expansion space in McMichael to support undergraduate sciences until a major addition to McMichael is constructed later in this decade.

On a very serious note, I would be negligent if I failed to report that Elon nearly had at least two student deaths last spring due to alcohol poisoning. The students were on the President’s List and, in every respect, exemplary members of our community. What is most troubling to me is that in one of these instances, there is credible evidence that some degree of coercion to drink, or hazing, was involved. While we might jump to the stereotypical conclusion that this type of behavior is limited to Greek fraternities and sororities, in fact, in our experience it extends to academic societies, club sports, and many other student organizations. This fall, Vice President Smith Jackson and I will convene four meetings with student leaders of every student club and organization across the campus to underscore the message that hazing-and individuals and groups who engage in hazing activities involving alcohol consumption-cannot be tolerated on this campus. These behaviors are antithetical to our values as a university community. I hope to engage the students in positive and productive conversation about how we can avoid such dangerous and destructive behavior. As you review our institutional priorities this year, you will notice continued attention to the implementation of the recommendations of the Presidential Task Force on Alcohol, which deserve our continued and focused attention as we struggle with a pandemic that affects nearly every college and university in the nation.

On a much happier note, I am pleased to share with you the news that the Ever Elon campaign has met 80% of its goal and that targets for two of the three capital priorities, Lindner Hall and Alumni Field House, were reached. Attention now is being given towards the raising of funds for the Multi-faith Center and for the renovation of Alumni Gymnasium, a project approved by the Board of Trustees last spring as an interim solution to an athletics space issue, eventually to be resolved by the construction of a convocation center, which will very likely take place as one of the final capital priorities of The Elon Commitment strategic plan. We are heartened by the fact that our attention to endowment building is paying off. For the first time in Elon’s history, the university’s endowment has exceeded $100 million, in large measure due to more than $25 million in endowment campaign gifts contributed as part of the Ever Elon campaign, especially for need-based financial aid. This will be a critical year for the campaign as we steer it into home port, and I extend my sincere gratitude to the large number of faculty and staff who have joined the campaign through participation in the annual faculty-staff giving program and for those who have provided for the future of the university through their estate plans. It is very clear that our ambitions as a university will require greater and greater reliance on private philanthropy, and our own generosity as a faculty and staff speaks volumes to alumni, parents, and friends about how much we care about the future of this place.

In conclusion, let me say I am grateful for the privilege of serving this university and for the meaningful work we share together. I am grateful to have you as my colleagues. I am thankful for the soul of this place-that through programs like Campus Kitchen, the Elon Academy, and Project Pericles, we seek constant engagement in our local and global communities and resist the idea of a university as a place of isolation and privilege. I’m extremely proud of the fact that we have Teach for America graduates from the Class of 2010 placed from Eastern North Carolina to Hawaii, and equally proud that thousands of youngsters starting school again this year will have their lives profoundly influenced by teachers prepared in our School of Education. Talk about the reach of the University!

In late July, the New York Times published a chart of 90 universities with some of the most robust waiting lists and competitive admissions in the nation, including the Ivys, major research universities, elite liberal arts colleges, and top engineering schools. We all work for one of those schools on that list. A few years ago I stood on this spot and said we were on the bottom rung of a new ladder in admissions. The New York Times chart is evidence that Elon is emerging as an institution of national competitiveness. But it is also important to say, honestly, that we have a ways to go to truly reach that place.

As we leave this room today, let us remember that the goal of The Elon Commitment is to move us in a decade from being on the “cusp of national prominence” to an earned place of national prominence. This will happen in myriad ways-through the scholarship of our faculty, through our institutional reputation for innovation, through athletics, through the creation and continual re-creation of the most engaging undergraduate experiences in America, and for being “the best” at a number of things, including, I hope, undergraduate research and general education. At the dawn of a new decade and this new strategic plan, I ask you to continue to give serious thought to how your program, department, or division and each of you personally will take ownership of the idea of leading Elon to national prominence. No doubt, as we have throughout our history, we will need to make creative use of very limited resources. And, above all, we must keep our great soul intact, remembering that, ultimately, our reputation as an institution rests on the individual and collective accomplishments of our alumni, who are called to bring light-Numen and Lumen-to a world requiring much illumination. Let us bear this great responsibility in mind as we welcome the class of 2014 on Friday.