Chancellor Jean F. MacCormack Address to the UMass Dartmouth Campus Community
Dartmouth, Massachusetts
February 5, 2004

"From Promise to Pride: UMass Dartmouth as an Intellectual Powerhouse"

Good afternoon. Let me offer a belated welcome back to campus after what I hope was a restful, although very chilly, time. I hope that your holiday seasons offered some inner warmth and that the change of pace and activity of the intersession was reenergizing and renewing. I need you to be reenergized because we have quite a lot to do and accomplish.

I have asked you here to thank you for working together to achieve so much despite difficult challenges. I want to tell you about the state of the campus as I see it and to invite your full participation in our continuing development.

Because of what we've done together, some pretty extraordinary things have happened. Because of your commitment and passion for higher education, our cup is more than half full.

Ever since this campus made the decision to join the University of Massachusetts in 1991 - now a dozen years ago - it has been described as a place with "great potential" - "a place with real promise."

This language, while meant to be positive, also has communicated to us and to others a sense of "not quite ready for prime time," ... or "being on the way" but not quite there yet.

I am reminded of that line from the movie The Graduate-when Ben is asked by his dad's friend---Do you know what the future is---it's Plastics! For us the word has been---potential. While meant to be a compliment, it has felt like a limitation.

So today I propose that we officially shed the moniker of potential...for our University...our region...and ourselves.

The fact is that UMass Dartmouth is no longer just potentially outstanding. It IS outstanding in many significant ways. It is time to recognize and celebrate what this University has achieved already and what we will achieve in the very near future, rather than just talk about vague potential.

I say it is time for our language and, more importantly, our self-perception and our daily activities to shift from making promises about what can be, to taking pride in what we have become.

No more ifs, no more I hopes. Let's adopt the language and action of pride and confidence that says I can, I will, because I have. Such a sense of pride will embolden us to accelerate our ascendance.

There is much we should be proud of.

Before I talk about staff and students, academic, research, and service ideas and achievements, which are the primary source of our encouragement and strength, I want to mention just one administrative milestone--- and do it for the very last time.

Our Budget is balanced.

Structural fiscal problems are in the past. We have turned the corner and even have some reasonable, although modest, reserve funds. We don't have all the money we need or want and we have some continuing shortfalls in core services but for the first time in many years, we have a sustainable fiscal structure, and predictable, reasonable, and diverse revenue sources.

You all know that we received the base rate adjustment money for the contract. This was long overdue, very important and very much appreciated. This week we received $1 million from a supplemental budget, which we will target to classroom improvements-physical enhancements like working blinds, furniture, and technology infrastructure. We hope to complete a lot of the work by June 30. Our goal is improving the learning climate of 10-15 high use classrooms this year.

As state funding normalizes, our revenue will support both our existing programs and make our aspirations attainable.

Funding is important, but make no mistake, what makes the most difference for us is the intellectual energy we have and our determination to transform ourselves with big ideas.

Why do I say that? Over the past several months the Provost, the Vice Chancellors and I have sat down for dinner with more than 75 faculty members and most recently with 18 staff.

I wanted to hear why they became professors or staff members and what they want to accomplish here at UMass Dartmouth, what would make a difference to them in accomplishing their goals, what obstacles they encounter and what keeps them going.

The conversations were interesting and informative; encouraging and inspiring. Despite the budget cuts; attempts to re-organize and diminish the mission of this university; and a long delay in getting the contracts funded, you still believe you have the best job in the world.

You view yourselves as teachers, but also as learners; ...as higher education professionals and experts in your disciplines, but also as servants of the community.

You cherish the opportunity to sit across a table and discuss your ideas with peers from different disciplines and departments.

You recognize your profound responsibility when imparting knowledge to students and you value the insight they offer to you and each other.

Like all of us, you have a deep concern that higher education is in grave danger of being stricken from the list of public goods. You fear the national and individual consequences of such a policy and are prepared to fight it.

In your own voices I heard energy and loyalty to this university that is as steadfast as the New Bedford sea captain as caring for quality as the Fall River craftsman of the past. Like them, you are constantly searching for better ways to do what you do.

The focused commitment of our staff and faculty makes it so clear to me that the reason we are thriving really is because we have faculty, staff and students who possess intellectual vitality, a determination to succeed, and a will to contribute to something bigger than themselves.

So in a fundamental core way, the state of the campus is strong.

***

Beside my own experience here at UMD from which I form judgments about our vibrancy as an institution, I am often in places where I can see and hear what other people think and say about us---In our local community, in the broader University community, around the state and in the national and international arena. I can also see trends in things that are happening within the campus, the UMass system and public higher education. So I can report to you four very significant things.

Our excellence is being recognized and acknowledged. We are not a small little campus that no one knows about.

The quality of our teaching, the importance of our research, and the transformative power of our public service have gotten notice.

We are attracting a rapidly growing student population. Students with steadily ascending academic profiles want to come to UMD. Our applications are up 23 percent in the last four years. SATS are up 25 points; GPA's of entering students average over 3.0.

Many students are choosing UMD as a first choice because of what we do and how well we do it. We did have a fiscal imperative to grow. But our ability to grow is based on students' recognition of the quality of this institution, their belief that you can help them succeed in life.

Our enrollment has grown from 6,599 in the Fall of 1998 to 8,284 in five years and will grow to 10,000. Our graduate student population is slowly growing in areas of our strength.

Just yesterday our Board of Trustees approved a Masters in Portuguese Studies and Civil Engineering, and we are in the first stages of approving a Policy Studies Masters program to follow a new minor in policy.

Doctoral students find our programs of high quality. We are attracting high-caliber students to the joint program in Marine Sciences; SNESL still wants to become part of us.

We are focused on attracting a more diverse student body and beginning to slowly see a changing profile.

Students are enrolling, but more importantly, they are staying and they are graduating at very high rates. And they are reporting high levels of satisfaction with their education. We are not delivering it exactly the same as we did 10 years ago, but students are still very much a the center of all our choices and they are very positive about their experience here and they consider their UMD education to be a very personalized UNIVERSITY experience.

Faced with the dramatic impacts of the two early retirements programs, this year we welcomed 24 excellent new faculty to the campus and right now are in the process of searching for another 39. The pools of candidates have been very strong, and by next fall, we will have added close to 100 new full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty members to our community

They join an experienced, wisdom-filled academic corps that has a deep, long-standing devotion to this university's mission and the mission of public higher education, and a critical understanding and respect for the history of this institution and region. I want to find a meaningful way to continue to engage our retired faculty in an ongoing dialogue that allows us to benefit from their wise counsel and rich experience.

Besides having people that want to be here, we continue to hold our place in US New and World Report rankings and now add the recognition that our Engineering College and College of Visual & Performing Arts are ranked nationally in the top 100 Universities for high quality undergraduate education.

Ratings are not the full measure of what we have achieved but they announce to others that here is something worth looking at and taking very seriously.

So we do have excellence that is recognized.

We are getting this attention because we are actively pursuing intellectual innovation. There are wonderful examples of cutting edge work in classrooms and in labs, and applied in partnership projects in the community.

Faculty scholarship and creative activity is embedded in our teaching and research projects and is increasingly acknowledged in awards, seen in the press and in print, and winning juried prizes. And it is so wonderfully diverse.

Did you know that: Brian Rothschild was honored by the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists with the 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Or that Professor James Bohn has been chosen as an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Award recipient. This is the seventh consecutive year he has received this award.

Or that Victor Mendez and his colleagues in the Portuguese Center have produced in their very prestigious journal the largest ever volume on Cape Verdean literature and that it will be the focus of an international colloquium at the Library of Congress Forum later this week? And that the Center was developing a new Archive that will be a vibrant hub of research about the Portuguese-American immigrant experience.

Or that our nursing school is being recognized for taking a leadership role in looking for innovative ways to attract and train more nursing faculty to respond to increased needs to prepare qualified nurses for the field.

Did you know that Woman's Studies program has developed a wonderfully responsive distance learning option for students?

Or that Dr. Nora Barnes and the Slade's Ferry Bank Center secured its largest contract to date, added the Fortune 500 company Scotts Lawn Care Company to its list of clients, and completed a record 34 research studies last year.

Did you know that Jim Griffith and his colleagues in Med Lab Science working in partnership with SNESL, continuing education and related state agencies have established a Center for Molecular Diagnostics to advance the work of clinical, forensic and environmental professionals.

Or that Margali Carrera after finishing her recent book on art history is now developing innovative strategies to train faculty in technology-enhanced learning?

Or that Janine Wong from CVPA and Gerry Lemay from Engineering and their students will be among only 20 teams in the nation to build a solar house in Washington DC. They have partnered with Habitat for humanity so that their house will become someone's real home after the contest.

Did you know that English Prof. Morgan James Peters has organized the New Diaspora Drama Festival, an event set for May of 2004, in New Bedford Massachusetts to provide theatre artists and film makers with the exposure for their work.

Or that SMAST faculty Dr. Kevin Stokesbury and his team conducted the most comprehensive survey of the Atlantic sea scallop resource ever undertaken.

Also at SMAST, Dr. Miles Sundermeyer was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his collaborative project with URI and Dr. Lou Goodman's proposed three-year project was accepted by the Office of Naval Research.

Or that Dr. Samuel Ugbolue organized a successful international exchange program with our European Union collaborators at universities in Spain and France?

Or that UMass Dartmouth librarian Bruce Barnes has created a web site about the important but rare "stick style" architecture. The features photographs, history, and detailed bibliographic references about this American Victorian style dating from 1860-1890?

Did you know, that Student Affairs will be initiating an innovative pilot program for first year students called "The First Year Experience", that is designed to assist freshman in their transition into the life of the University?

Did you get a chance to see the installation artwork of Rebecca Hutchinson, UMD Assistant Professor of Ceramics? Probably not because her work was featured at the Lowe Museum in Miami, Florida in the fall. The installation used organic materials and addresses concerns for the totality of ecosystem functions.

When you learn about such work or hear individuals talk about them with enthusiasm, you realize that our intellectual power is generative and that his campus is indeed and intellectual powerhouse for the region and far beyond.

Have you noticed that we are attracting many more money to support our research enterprise?

Faculty research funding has increased from $5 million to more than $17 million, making UMass Dartmouth the fastest growing research enterprise in the UMass system. We are a regional economic catalyst and an institution of national prominence in areas critical to our economy and culture. For instance:

• Dr. Bal Ram Singh recently partnered with Tufts University to secure a $17 million grant to establish a National Center for Botulinum Research. Dr. Singh's work, recognized around the country, will have important practical biotechnology applications.
  
  And when we met recently with our partners from Tufts around the table were the students from Bal Ram's group-two post docs, 8 masters' students and 10 undergraduates. They were wonderfully articulate and engaged. I realized then that going to do more than make a groundbreaking scientific contribution through this National Center; we are going to model new ways that the research enterprise can inform and enrich the learning lives of undergraduate students. I was very proud of the students that day and I can tell you Tufts was very impressed.

• The UMass Dartmouth textile sciences team is making a major contribution to the National Textile Science Center. Dr. Paul Calvert who just joined us as the chair is a nationally recognized expert in bio-mimicry and we are excited about the directions that are emerging. He has been invited to talk in Strausburg at a symposium organized in recognition of Nobel Laureate chemist Jean-Marie Lehn.

• The work of our Marine Science Center in New Bedford has saved much of the New Bedford fishing fleet from bankruptcy, and that has saved families from economic despair.

• Dr. Jim Kaput, and Maria Blantin, and Stephen Hegedus, national leaders in math education methods, received more than $2.1 million to support their cutting edge research. We were the only non-Research I University to receive funding.

• Dr. Robert Waxler uses literature to transform the lives of people who have been incarcerated. His ideas, which were first tried in New Bedford, are now being practiced from the liberal bastion of Cambridge to the nation's heartland of Kansas to the death penalty state of Texas, thanks to significant support from the National Endowment For the Humanities. Later this month, the New England Board of Higher Education will honor Dr. Waxler and his program for his outstanding achievement.

We are sharing ideas and engaging in diverse partnership projects that are transforming our region and making us a model of this type of meaningful engagement for other public institutions.

• The College of Visual and Performing Arts in downtown New Bedford has dramatically enhanced the cultural life of that city. This year alone thousands of people passed through the galleries, exhibits, classrooms and studios of the center.

• The continuing education center in downtown Fall River has opened the doors of educational opportunity in that city and is an anchor for further development in a key business district. It is a model partnership with Bristol Community College, Bridgewater State College, as well as numerous private companies that need professional development programs for their employees.

• And the Advanced Technology Manufacturing Center in Fall River has established a foothold for the innovation economy in this region. Within the past year, eight new companies have set up shop at the ATMC focusing on an exciting mix of new products and technologies.

• Our partnerships with the state and community colleges in our region, as well as our leadership of K-16 partnerships, are being recognized as models for other regions of the state.

None of this is done without student involvement. Our students - the center of so much of our intellectual work-- are also increasing their engagement in surrounding communities.

• Last year 60 of our students provided 600 hours of literacy tutoring to elementary school students.

• 18 students were certified by the IRS to volunteer as tax preparers for local residents in need of assistance.

• Our University formed its first Habitat for Humanity chapter and joined with our solar decathlon project to work on a solar home project that will be displayed on the National Mall in Washington in 2005.

• 40 students have provided 960 hours of friendship to adults and young people suffering with mental illness.

• Carolina Marcalo, our student trustee, was chosen South Coast Youth of the year!

A recent headline in the Standard-Times said, and I quote, "as UMass Dartmouth goes, so goes the region." Clearly, our faculty, staff, and students are fully engaged in the life of the region. But I also know and appreciate every day that this campus is sustained by the energy and leadership of many friends beyond our campus.

The mayors of Fall River and New Bedford, the selectmen of our host community of Dartmouth, our legislative delegation...our trustees and our president...and leaders of the business community have rallied around this university.

In recent months, such support has played a significant part in helping us achieve success on Beacon Hill. We are grateful to all of our friends and look forward to continuing to work with them to keep up the momentum.

***

So we have reason to be proud of our University and the region it serves. But is being proud of our achievements enough? No, it isn't.

We must constantly innovate in order to sustain excellence and intellectual strength on this campus, as well as economy and social vitality across the region.

Richard Florida, the author of the, "The Rise of the Creative Class,'' once wrote in the New York Times, "It's not surprising that the most successful metropolitan areas are places that attract a range of creative workers - not just technical and business types but the artists, writers, performers, designers, and others who make up the creative class.''

Florida was talking at the time about New York City but he could have just as easily been talking about our university or the South Coast.

Our future as both an economy and a civilization will largely depend on our ability, right hear on this campus, to connect the creative with the technical; to sustain innovation, and to foster community.

Too often, we allow artificial communication barriers to rise up between academic disciplines, between colleges...between the campus and the community...between the sexes...between faculty and student...between the administration and the faculty...between staff and students. The velocity of ideas is too often inhibited by talk of territory, process, or power.

Today, in asking you to take pride in our collective achievements, I am also calling with some urgency for a new intellectual paradigm on and around this campus that promotes the unrestricted -- but always respectful and reasoned -- flow of ideas.

I am asking for us to nurture and encourage a climate that sustains and stimulates the creative spirit in us all. I believe it is what so many came of us here to experience, and I know that it takes conscious effort and careful encouragement to ensure.

I, therefore, have asked Dr. Louis Esposito, our distinguished provost, to lead an effort to build a new campus-wide, inter-disciplinary exchange of ideas. He has gotten input from many of you and suggests that the centerpiece of this effort should be three annual colloquia series. I agree.

One annual series will be a Chancellor's Colloquia intended to highlight the intellectual and creative achievements of our own faculty. Each year four faculty members will be invited to present their intellectual or creative work.

A second will be a University Colloquium Series that will bring to campus four intellectuals and artists with national and international reputations from both inside and outside the academy.

The third will be a Teaching and Learning Colloquium Series to bring to campus four outstanding faculty who have demonstrated innovative and effective approaches to teaching and learning.

The resources to support these colloquia have been identified. Committees composed of faculty, staff and students will be appointed soon to recommend presenters and a process to be used for the various colloquium series.

Also, to enhance the intellectual climate within departments and among departments, the Provost will provide financial support to individual departments (or two or more departments working together) that establish seminar series for their faculty and students. The types of seminar presentations envisioned are: faculty presentations of current research, student presentations of current research, outside presenters, pedagogy seminars, curriculum development seminars, etc.

We discovered that only five departments have their own regular seminar or colloquium series and want to see more such activity.

Further, as we invite great thinkers to our campus and create new opportunities for own students, faculty and staff to converse and debate with each other; we need to dispatch our own great thinkers to other intellectual communities - to learn, to teach, and then to return.

That is why this semester we are going to provide 100 faculty grants to encourage this important form of intellectual ambassadorship. Last semester, we were able to send 75 faculty members to present their ideas.

I also think we need to celebrate our faculty achievement more. We, therefore, will enhance two important awards that we give each year for Distinguished Teaching and Scholarship, Research and Creative activity by increasing the monetary award to $2500. This award will also include a course release and a $1000 travel grant to allow the winners time to share their work in formal and informal ways with their colleagues and the community. We will announce and recognize the awardees at Commencement. And we will continue the annual dinner celebration where the winners get a chance to speak to us and be celebrated in the family.

There is one faculty award missing, however, so we are creating a new annual award - the Chancellor's Public Service Leadership Award. This award will be presented to the faculty member who is a shining example of the University's mission to serve the community through teaching and research/creative activity. We will ask a faculty group to help draw up the guidelines, nomination and selection process and much like the other awards to conduct the selection process. The award will also be $2500, a course release, and travel grant. After working out some details, I hope we can make the first award in this category along with the others at commencement.

And because so many of you are engaged in important intellectual work, in late spring, We will hold a celebration to unveil what I will call our Scholarship Wall in Group I where all the book jackets of our faculty and staff publications over the years will be framed and displayed. You will soon hear from my office about how your work can be included.

***

It's also time to recognize that our staff provides the crucial infrastructure that enables us to be all that we can be. They find creative ways to provide better student services, to manage the human, fiscal and physical infrastructure, and to tell our story in exciting and novel ways. They are active participants in the intellectual life of our community, both as teachers and learners. They are often leaders of campus initiatives, leaders in their professional associations, and leaders in their communities. They are the unheralded heroes of a university

We want to engage the staff in our dialogues as much as possible because their dedication to this university and its ideals is strong and they are often a source and sustaining power in making innovative ideas work.

You are members of our community. You are citizens of the region, state and nation, and your ideas matter. As important as the recent collective bargaining settlement was to our ability to retain and recruit faculty, it was just as critical to sustaining this vital part of our community.

In fact, during those difficult days when we were making the case for fair contract funding, the legitimate economic interests of our staff were central to any conversation among university leaders, faculty unions, and legislators.

Your contribution to this University is well known, highly respected, and very much appreciated.

I, therefore, want to provide the staff the rich kind of professional development that allows you to continue to develop the innovations in service that we count on when we talk about doing business differently.

By the fall, we need to have in place a resource center for staff professional development, which will offer ongoing programs that create the opportunity for learning about best practices and enhancing individual skills. We hope that several of you will respond to an invitation to move a plan from the conceptual to the implementation phase.

We also want to support other ideas that you might have to change or enhance services on the campus. We will provide Service Improvement Grants to individual staff or groups of staff who have a good idea that needs to be supported through planning, testing, piloting and implementation. We have identified the resources and will invite people to help us establish the criteria and selection process.

To compliment the distinguished service award given to an individual professional staff member each year, we are establishing the Chancellor's Innovative Service Award to be given to a team of three or more individuals who introduce a new or enhanced or redesigned service that makes a difference for faculty, staff or students.

Although we have to work out the details, develop the criteria and establish a selection committee, each individual will receive a monetary award, have their project highlighted in campus and media publications, and be able to share lessons learned from their experience with others on the campus. I plan to recognize these individuals at an annual Service Appreciation celebration.

***

Over the next few months you will also begin to see the physical footprint of our intellectual community begin to evolve. Form follows function. The Charlton Building is underway and will open in Fall 2004. This will allow some realignment of space in their existing areas.

We will soon be releasing a facilities master plan that many of you have helped shape. The plan is meant to link in very practical ways our strategic goals with our physical and technological infrastructure.

Included in the plan you will see renovation needs, maintenance issues, plans for new facilities and options for improving the overall pattern of activity on the campus. There are proposals to add residence halls with 1,200 new beds, new common areas. These facilities will be designed in recognition that some of the most important teaching and learning occurs in the interaction between student and student.

By fall, 2006, we expect to have 4,400 students living on campus; compared to 2,500 in 1991.We are using every innovative means at our disposal to bring 400 beds on line by this September. We will be using a public-private partnership strategy to build these dorms just as we did to make the College of Visual and Performing Arts center in New Bedford, the Advanced Technology Manufacturing Center, and the Fall River Continuing Education Center become reality.

I hope that you will be active participants in helping us set priorities and stage activity as we share more of the Master plan recommendations.

***

Achieving our goals will also require a new emphasis on external relations.

While we have been encouraged by recent financial support from the Commonwealth, our margin of excellence will be determined by our ability to attract non-state support - private support and federal support that finances growth of the intellectual climate.

Our university has matured to the point where it can be a magnet for such support and we intend to modernize our fundraising and friend raising efforts.

This will require a reorganization of our advancement and external relation's teams and an investment in new staff. A search for a new vice chancellor of advancement will commence within the next month.

The outcome of these efforts will be a dramatic net financial gain for the university.

***

Make no mistake; while I see us in a good place, there is urgency to our current tasks.

We have an obligation as an institution and as individuals to use our physical and intellectual resources to further serve our University, our community, our nation and the globe now, rather than wait until later.

So many complex issues confront us. Economic justice, war, terrorism, health care, the environment, and we all need to be active and credible participants in these confrontations.

We live in a world where the noise of talk radio and tabloid television is mistaken for idea sharing and dialogue...where 10-second sound bites and slogans are accepted as political debate...and where heartfelt, reasoned opinions on the great issues of our day are shouted down by media and political mobs.

Universities are the last havens for true idea sharing...where freedom of speech does not equal permission to shock, but something more noble, something more responsible - the freedom to express a minority opinion without fear of punishment.

Consider the words of the philosopher and theologian John Henry Newman, writing in his work, "The Idea of the University." His definition still fits today.

A University, he wrote, "is the place to which a thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge."

We must set a new example of discourse by creating and adopting new and innovative ways to teach, learn, discover, serve and live at this university and in this community.

***

These have been very challenging times for our university our commonwealth and nation. But there is also an air of optimism.

I am reminded of an ever-young and ever optimistic John F. Kennedy, elected during a period of great international and domestic challenge.

Here are his words from a 1962 address at the University of California Berkley.

"Every great age is marked by innovation and daring--by the ability to meet unprecedented problems with intelligent solutions. In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power; for only by true understanding and steadfast judgment are we able to master the challenge of history.''

This will be marked as great age by historians and we are fortunate to be here, in a place where innovation and knowledge is so highly valued.

Our task is really a fundamental one- as a university - to advance true understanding and steadfast judgment. I know that our future will be intellectually and economically prosperous if we are not distracted from this essential activity.

Let us take pride in our achievements. Let us be determined to make them generative. Let us commit to the necessary work to ensure that we remain an intellectual powerhouse for our region, our commonwealth and our world.

 Last Updated On: 3/22/06