Future of the University
Brian C. Mitchell
Oct. 27, 2007
Maryjane and I are pleased to be with you today.
On behalf of the University, I want to thank all of you for joining us for Family Weekend. Your engagement in the life of Bucknell is a crucial element of this special community we have the privilege of sharing together. I want to take a moment to extend appreciation to Sam Lundquist, Ann DiStefano, and the entire team in Development and Alumni Relations, which has done an outstanding job re-conceptualizing Family Weekend. It is an extraordinary effort requiring countless hours of planning and organization. Those involved make Bucknell look good.
Family Weekend is a time to celebrate a campus community bound together by the Bucknell experience. It is a time for parents and other members of our students’ families to be together with their children and enjoy the excitement of Bucknell. This University offers tremendous opportunities for students to grow, to explore possibilities, to discover new dreams, and to establish the foundation for a fulfilling career and a rewarding life. Bucknell education
We appreciate the families who have stood with their children throughout their lives and made a Bucknell education possible.
Please join me in extending the thanks of the University to our Bucknell families. Our students – who comprise the best of our University – are today part of Bucknell at a pivotal time in the life of this institution. It has been a time in which we have taken stock of the University’s direction and set a bold vision for the future. This vision builds on what has been the blessed inheritance of today’s generation of Bucknellians. Bucknell has a proud heritage of achieving the highest level of academic excellence based on the liberal arts. The University did not reach its place in American higher education through good fortune. Across its history, Bucknell has adapted to changing times, and moved strategically forward at critical junctures, as circumstances required. At a turning point
Today, we find ourselves at another turning point. We face it knowing that Bucknell has never been shy about the merit of noble ambitions. In 1923, President Emory A. Hunt declared: Bucknell will “be out-ranked by not a single similar institution in America.” This vision is really not much different from the vision that guides our modern strategic plan, The Plan for Bucknell. It says that Bucknell aims “to provide students with the premier undergraduate experience in American higher education.” Aim to be the best
As you may know, the precise language of this modern version of Bucknell’s aspiration was provided by Bucknell students. Bucknell students appreciate from their own experience what the University has long said of itself: It must aim to be the best. And why not? We have exceptional students. We have a community of outstanding faculty. We offer comprehensive learning opportunities that stretch from the Bucknell campus to study, research, and service sites literally around the world. We have great academic and residential facilities. State-of-the-art lab equipment. Extracurricular opportunities for just about every interest a student might have. And one of the best Division I student-athlete programs in America.
Will remain strong
We are determined to ensure that today’s Bucknellians can make the most of these opportunities, and build valuable lifelong friendships with classmates and professors, just as those who came before them have done. The University is strong, and it will remain strong. Our guide in fulfilling these objectives is our strategic plan. As you probably know, this plan was put in place officially in April 2006, following unanimous approval by the student government, the faculty, and the Board of Trustees. Since The Plan for Bucknell became official, individuals from across the University have submitted tactics to bring The Plan into reality.
This is not a plan meant to sit on a shelf and gather dust. It is meant to be a living document that makes this University better with each passing day. Nearly 400 tactics
I am happy to report that nearly 400 tactics have already been submitted from across the University. That fantastic level of engagement suggests the momentum behind The Plan. In fact, earlier this month we welcomed Ed Loftus as our new director of strategy implementation. He is charged with assisting the Bucknell community in developing and implementing tactical proposals to fulfill the goals of The Plan. He brings a wealth of experience in project leadership and strategic planning. He knows how to translate complex ideas and issues into action, and is already making his mark at the University. Ed arrives at a crucial time. During the past year, we have implemented about two dozen major tactics related to the goals of The Plan.
Step by step
The campus has put excellent ideas forward, and step by step, we are assessing them, listening to the reasoning behind them, connecting them to the University’s goals, and putting them in place to improve this already exceptional institution.
It seems worth giving you a sense of how immediate the impact of The Plan has been, and the kind of impact it will have on our future. These initiatives affect every aspect of life on campus, from the faculty in the classroom to living spaces, from safety issues to the breadth of degree programs offered. The Plan was designed to have a comprehensive impact, and through the tactics, that is happening. Let me start with the faculty, because the faculty is, of course, the key to the student experience at Bucknell. The faculty made it clear upon my arrival, and for good reason, that it was high time the teaching load at Bucknell changed. They were right. Five-course teaching load
So following a recommendation by the administration to the Board of Trustees, we have begun implementing what we call in the language of academia “the five-course teaching load.” The language is not nearly as exciting as what this change means. Moving to this arrangement will allow the faculty to teach an average of five courses per academic year instead of the current six-courses. A five-course teaching load gives faculty more time for other work – more time, that is, to work with students and on research and scholarship and thereby strengthen their teaching. This change marks Bucknell’s re-commitment to offering the best possible liberal arts education. To get this change implemented by fall 2009 and keep our comprehensive curriculum, we will hire more than 35 new faculty during these three years.
A major investment
This is a major investment for the University. Following extensive national searches, we hired 11 new faculty who arrived this fall. In fact, between this new hiring process and replacing faculty who will retire, we will welcome about 60 new faculty over the next few years. They will comprise as much as 20 percent of the total faculty. As we begin the 21st century, we have a rare opportunity to strengthen the outstanding combination we have of senior and junior faculty who bring both experience and youthful energy to the classroom. Taking yet another step in implementing The Plan for Bucknell, we have launched two new multidisciplinary centers. Both are significant enhancements to academic life, and the ideas for them came forth from faculty and students. Teaching and Learning Center
First, in fall 2006, we established the Teaching and Learning Center. The job of the center is to enhance the hallmark of Bucknell, namely its focus on teaching and learning.
The center, under Geoff Schneider and Brian Gockley, has introduced extensive programming to support faculty as teachers, and this year has begun expanding the student-learning component of its work. The center has been very popular. You can see by the timing of this initiative the linkage to the arrival of a dramatically increased number of new faculty as well. A second academic center has generated equal excitement. Students today have tremendous interest in the environment and issues such as global warming, preservation, and sustainability. We also have faculty who are highly engaged in a broad cross-section of related work. Environmental Center
Building on that base, the Bucknell Environmental Center went into operation last fall. It brings together faculty, and it capitalizes on our location along the Susquehanna River. Already, about 55 faculty members are working together with students from the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and engineering on projects aimed at better understanding the link between humans and the environment, including our surrounding area. It is a real model for interdisciplinary teaching and localized and global research. We intend to innovate and fund to the level of a top undergraduate program in America. On a related note, earlier this year we had some especially good news. The Environmental Center received a grant of $450,000 from one of the most prestigious foundations, the Henry Luce Foundation. It will allow us to expand our programs of teaching, research, and community outreach related to the ecology of the Susquehanna River. The project could well involve 100 students from programs across campus over the next four years. Academic and leadership programs
In addition to the new centers, our focus on innovation has led to the introduction of two new programs, one academic, one leadership-oriented. Effective this fall, we have established a bachelor of science degree in computer engineering.
A program like this takes a massive amount of preparation and planning, in this case by the College of Engineering. At a time when computers shape so much of modern life, this program is a natural step for Bucknell to take. It also is another feather in the cap of our outstanding engineering programs.
On the leadership side, we have created a unique executive internship program for undergraduates. It began this fall as well. I am proud to say our students were a big part of shaping it. With their leadership in a competitive recruitment process last spring, we selected eight undergraduates to participate. They are now working in various offices of the President’s Senior Staff. They attend staff meetings, engage in discussion with professionals in these offices about their work, and in fact help shape a variety of plans and decisions. The program gives the students a rather different depth of pre-career experience, and frankly helps bring even more of the student perspective to administrative deliberations. To outline other major areas of progress, I must mention two important partnerships. Jack Kent Cooke Foundation
First, as of this summer, we have formally implemented our Jack Kent Cooke Foundation grant. In spring 2006, Bucknell was one of eight universities around the country selected by that foundation to build a transfer program for outstanding, highly qualified community college transfer students from partner institutions of our choice. We received this grant in a national competition with the top 126 colleges and universities in the country. The grant was for four years, and is worth $890,000. As a result, this fall, following a transition program for the students this summer, we enrolled 16 of the finest Pennsylvania and Maryland community college students.
They are superb undergraduates, and they bring insight and life experiences to the classroom and to campus life that enrich us in many ways. This program establishes Bucknell as a leader in tapping into one of America’s best sources of otherwise largely un-tapped talent, namely our community colleges. On a related note, we have continued to expand our Posse Scholars Program. The Posse Foundation
The Posse Foundation is a national college access and leadership program that identifies, recruits, and trains groups of outstanding young leaders from public schools in urban areas. It has earned a tremendous and well-deserved reputation around the United States over the last 25 years. I am proud to say that Bucknell has been participating, since 2005, with Posse Scholar classes from the Boston area as well as Washington, D.C. With the arrival of the class of 2011, we now have 21 new Bucknell Posse Scholars attending Bucknell. They bring our total Posse enrollment to 42. We are excited about the kinds of contributions they are making to academic and campus life. We live in a global society, and with our Posse and Cooke scholars, we have on campus excellent students who bring different perspectives that benefit everyone who gets to know them. The Posse and Cooke Scholars reflect the overall strength of the student population, actually. The Class of 2011 is no exception. Eight hundred ninety-five students were chosen from the second largest applicant pool in Bucknell’s history, out of 8,945 applicants. The class represents 37 states plus the District of Columbia, and 14 countries. Class of 2011
Congratulations parents and families of the Class of 2011. We know numbers make for good bragging points, so I’ll give you a few more. We extended offers of admission to just 2,675 students, or 30 percent of those applying. That makes Bucknell one of the top four percent most selective schools in the nation. One other set of numbers to mention: 81 percent of the admitted students in the Class of 2011 were in the top 10 percent of their high school graduation class, while 94 percent were in the top 20 percent of their class. Which I think means all of you did pretty well helping these students get to Bucknell. Finally, I should mention our latest investments in campus living as part of The Plan for Bucknell. The two most notable projects have been upgrading 7th Street House and renovating Swartz residence hall. Following the renovation of The Bison dining hall and Rooke Chapel last year, these two projects were completed this summer. They provide significantly improved living spaces for our students. Emergency preparedness
With regard to residential life, I must stress how seriously we take the security of the University and the processes and systems we have in place to keep students, faculty, and staff safe. Obviously, it is our highest priority. With the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech late last spring, we undertook our annual review of campus emergency preparedness with special urgency this summer. This year, we did the review in concert with an ad hoc committee of the Board of Trustees. As you can imagine, the Board, which includes a number of Bucknell parents, takes campus safety most seriously. Following this review, we have decided to make a number of new investments. As we announced early this semester, we now have an emergency cell phone notification system in place. If your child has not already registered a cell phone number with this system, please urge her or him to do so. We also will be introducing a campus PA system, and we have put in place a new campus locking procedure. Early in 2008, we will install a high-end access control system. And of course, we will continue to review our campus emergency preparedness and stay on top of best practices. In one way, this work plays into one of the most important initiatives Bucknell will pursue in this early stage of the 21st century, the “campus master plan.”
Campus master plan
The term refers to an over-arching guide for how the facilities and green spaces of the campus will evolve over the long-term. Building this plan is frankly one of the most challenging and important tasks a university can undertake. As I am sure you know, Bucknell is among the most beautiful and well-cared-for campuses on the East Coast, if not in America. I sit on numerous president-based boards at the state and national level and I can tell you a lot of my fellow presidents are envious of Bucknell’s campus. We take it as our duty to prepare the new campus master plan thoroughly and intensely. The campus we know today evolved out of what was known as the Larson Plan, named after the architect who conceived it about 75 years ago. Our goal is to create a campus master plan that will guide the evolution of the campus for another 75 years. It will encompass everything from classroom sizes to technology, from recreational fields to living spaces, from campus entrance pathways to off-campus living opportunities. Student living spaces
In fact, just to give you a sense of the magnitude of this effort, this work could replace or renovate as much as one-third of Bucknell’s student living spaces over the next 10 years. To help with this massive project, we hired probably the most distinguished campus master planning consulting firm in the United States, Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott. The master plan is moving along well, thanks to a lot of ideas from everyone across campus. We intend to present it to the Board of Trustees for approval in 2008.
Those of you who are readers of the Harrisburg-Patriot News, the state political newspaper of record, may have seen the editorial published this past Sunday about one element of the master plan. It praised the new synergies we are pursuing with Lewisburg. A major aspect of that work is a new public-private partnership we want to develop that would include an investment of additional millions from the Commonwealth. It would be the kind of partnership that Bucknell simply has not established before. Meeting with governor
Toward that end, Vice President for External Relations Charlie Pollock, Vice President for Finance and Administration Dave Surgala and I joined leaders from Lewisburg in a meeting with Governor Rendell two weeks ago. I must say we were very encouraged by the Governor’s interest. We believe we can make this plan a model for how rural universities and their communities work together to improve the quality of life for students and the region. Much of the initiative focuses on protecting the “core community” of Lewisburg, including the downtown commercial district and the Bull Run Gateway Neighborhood that connect Market Street and the campus via Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Streets. Potential features of what we have called the “University Village” project include: - a much-expanded and relocated University bookstore,
- consolidation of a number of University business offices,
- a Bucknell Inn with meeting and conference rooms, and
- parking structures to support these facilities.
As you may have seen, related work is underway with the construction to improve South Seventh Street. We have on the way development of a Bull Run Greenway between South Sixth Street and the railroad tracks that intersect campus – that is, extending Hufnagle Park to campus to create additional recreational and social spaces. Campus entrance
Further, we are studying the merits of building new apartment-style student housing, enhancing the downtown Campus Theatre, developing a regional arts center to complement the theatre, creating “rails-to-trails” that provide a campus and public recreational space, and relocating the Route 15 campus entrance.
These projects could take anywhere from five to 10 years to complete. I also am happy to report that we have begun our national search for a new provost. Because this is a position of great significance to the University – essentially a deputy president – we are casting a net for the most qualified candidates in the country. The search committee includes faculty, staff, and students, and the assistance of a top-flight search firm, Russell Reynolds. In the interim, a team of administrators and staff is handling the responsibilities of the provost’s office. I can tell you it is extremely comforting to have this deep bench of leadership available.
Finally, I am pleased to share with you the enthusiastic response we have received to our new national speakers series titled “The Bucknell Forum: The Citizen and Politics in America.” It is designed to bring outstanding commentators here from a variety of fields to engage our students and community in the issues shaping the presidential election and today’s national discourse. This semester, we have focused on the role of the media in the life of citizens. Our first speaker was renowned NBC newsman Tim Russert. He gave an excellent talk last month to a full house at the Weis Center.
Bucknell Forum video
I hope you got a chance to see the video of the event we placed on the website for alumni and parents. We are going to offer that kind of viewing opportunity for every possible Bucknell Forum event. Not long after Russert’s speech, one parent shared with us that her son suddenly began using a voicemail message that said, “Study hard. Laugh often. Keep your honor.” She was not sure where he got that language. Then she watched the Russert presentation on the Parents myBucknell website and saw that Tim Russert closed his talk by sharing that advice. I love that story. It is about connecting parents and students around the Bucknell learning experience. Last week, as the Forum continued, we welcomed to campus the most prestigious panel of national journalists Bucknell has ever seen. We had the top political correspondents here from ABC television, the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, National Public Radio, the Associated Press, and Politico.com. They were part of a lively and even provocative conversation about the media’s role in the presidential campaign. Our students asked a number of excellent questions.
Exchange of ideas
This exchange of ideas is essential to the liberal arts experience, and we intend to encourage more such discourse in the future. Our next event in the series is a November 5th appearance by internationally renowned democracy scholar Benjamin Barber. Let me put this Forum in perspective, to give you some idea of how interesting a place Bucknell is. This semester alone, we will have had as guest speakers the following: - Nobel Prize winning poet and playwright Derek Walcott
- NBC’s Tim Russert
- Philip Zimbardo, perhaps the most well-known psychologist in the country, acclaimed for his “Stanford Prison Experiment” and Abu Ghraib studies
- Richard Alley, one of the top global-warming experts in the world. In fact, he was a crucial part of the work that earned that U.N. research team a co-share of the recent Nobel Peace Prize
- French scholar Gerard Prunier, an expert on the Darfur genocide
- Plus that group of nationally renowned journalists I mentioned, and Benjamin Barber
Not bad for three-and-a-half months. But that is typical of the intellectual liveliness of this campus – and, I would add, its undercurrent of drive and energy. Comprehensive campaign
Which leads me to one final note, about our comprehensive campaign, which began its quiet phase in July. We expect this phase to last about two years. During that time, we will work out the exact goal of the campaign, which will last about seven years. As you know, and as we expect you would expect, our goals will be ambitious. This campaign will be larger by several orders of magnitude than any previous Bucknell campaign.
The resources are essential for Bucknell to live up to the high expectations students, parents, and alumni rightfully have of an institution that has never shied away from the challenge of providing an education of special value in the world. I am confident that we will meet our goals. Maryjane, Sam Lundquist, and I have been encountering that enthusiasm in our visits over the last year with small groups of alumni and donors around the country. For the future
We enter this campaign as we enter the implementation of the University’s strategic plan: determined to strengthen Bucknell now, and for the future. It is a spirit of ambition and aspiration that we have inherited and must carry forward with confidence. This spirit was evident from the outset, when the University’s instrumentally important founder Stephen A. Taylor challenged his fellow Board of Trustee members and the new community of the University to, as he said, “rise and build.” The history of how Bucknell reached the enviable position it now enjoys is in fact a history of individuals dedicated to “a great enterprise,” as the founders described it. They believed that this institution of higher learning could play a profound role in the lives of its students and alumni and become a model in the country. That conviction brought this University forth from “the wilds of Pennsylvania” in 1846. It allowed the University to expand rapidly from its Baptist origins to become a non-sectarian, co-educational institution that had enrolled its first international student within 15 years of its inception.
Unrelenting climb
And then William A. Bucknell stepped forward at a pivotal time in the late 19th century to provide the resources that began Bucknell’s unrelenting climb into the ranks of the finest liberal arts institutions. Along the way, generations of friends and benefactors have supported the University on its rising trajectory. Now Bucknell has something to build on that no program, facility, or person alone can account for, and that is its spirit of ambition and community and shared pride. We see it every year in the arrival of our new classes, as we saw it with the arrival of the Class of 2011.
We see it in events like Homecoming that filled this campus last weekend with alumni from across the country.
We see it this weekend as families and students come together on this magnificent campus. We see it every graduation, in the happiness that families share in congratulating new Bucknell alumni. We see it as well in the number of alumni who proudly look on as their own children graduate. This bond says something not just about those families, but about the community in which such an affection can continue to renew itself. Exceptional institution
Now a new moment has arrived for another major passage forward for this University, day by day, semester by semester, year by year. We are ready for it. This is an exceptional institution where outstanding students aim to become their best. We appreciate your trusting us with them, and assure you that we are committed to living up to their ambitions.
When someone asks me to characterize our students I always say, definitively and without hesitation: “You see in their eyes that they represent the promise of America. They are our first and last best hope for the future.” Welcome back to Bucknell. Thank you.
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