I want to thank the members of the University Senate for the opportunity to come here today to offer my annual perspectives on the State of the University. Before I begin, I want to thank you for the important service you provide through your membership in the Senate. You give generously of your limited time – and of your unlimited talent – to the intricate and demanding work of this body in a number of key arenas, and all of us in the administration, on the university's governing boards, and throughout our community of scholarship join me in thanking you and acknowledging your good work.
I will begin my remarks with a concise summary of my view on the state of the University: As we enter a new century of our institutional existence, Rutgers is sound and strong. We are making great progress toward reaching important goals, and in each of the areas of our broad mission as a state university, we are doing great things together.
Last year I told this group that, on the cusp of the new millennium, I thought it was important that we maintain a historical perspective in our lives. I discussed the significance of having a sense of our own history as we pursue the work we do on behalf of the university. That sense was underscored for me in May when I attended graduation ceremonies for members of the Rutgers Class of 2000 here in New Brunswick, in Newark, and in Camden. I compared the stately ranks of the some 10,000 new Rutgers alumni I saw that day with the fact that one young man, by himself, comprised our very first graduating class back in 1774. At that time the student body of our ancestor institution, Queen's College, numbered about 20. They were taught by two tutors working in a converted tavern at the corner of Albany and Neilson streets in downtown New Brunswick and, as classes continued during the Revolutionary War, occasionally had to flee the city for safer ground when British military columns were in the vicinity.
In practical terms, it would take us just a few minutes to walk from this spot to the corner of Albany and Neilson, but the journey of our institution in covering the distance from that day to this is much longer. We have come a long way from our beginnings as a small college educating young men for the ministry to the point where today, as one of the nation's largest and most distinguished institutions, we are poised to stand with the best of this nation's public research universities.
Many markers have been left along the path we have followed to this point. I believe that one of the most important milestones in our history came in February of 1989, on an icy Friday afternoon, when word reached Old Queen's that Rutgers had been invited to join the Association of American Universities, a select group of the leading research universities in North America. I understand, from those who were here at the time, that, in spite of the cold February winds, the warm glow of "Rutgers Pride" permeated Old Queen's on that notable afternoon.
Rutgers Since 1989
AAU membership is an indicator of quality, and I believe that the state of the university, in its broadest sense, is a function of the quality and progress of the institution. If we use 1989 as a baseline, some useful insights are to be gained from looking at where we were when the AAU selected us for membership, and to compare that to the Rutgers of a decade later, and of today.
For the larger context, in 1989 – and continuing for the following few years – the state was in the midst of a devastating recession. It was a time of budget cuts and other financial constraints. For Rutgers, handling the financial crisis was a top priority, and it had to be done while protecting excellence. And in the midst of the recession, we initiated a strategic planning process that focused on the future, planning to improve Rutgers even in the face of the fiscal adversity of the time.
What was going on at Rutgers in 1989? Obviously, we were already developing an enviable national reputation as a first-class research university. State and federal monies during the flush 1980s had provided the funds to set up new institutes and hire outstanding researchers. As New Jersey's flagship institution of public higher education, Rutgers made good use of the opportunity to build outstanding centers for scientific investigation. But within the university there was a growing feeling that the balance between research and teaching had tipped too far in a single direction, and while the focus on research had brought fresh energy to campus, it was time to refocus some of that energy on undergraduate teaching.
Our November 1991 report on undergraduate education proposed a program of teaching enhancement and evaluation within a curriculum sensitive to the needs of society and promised to support teaching and learning with a first-rate faculty and state-of-the-art instructional facilities. Shortly after the report was published, we created two new high-level positions focused on undergraduates: the vice president for undergraduate education and vice president for student affairs.
At the same time, a university-wide Curriculum Review Committee crafted a report titled "Rutgers Dialogues" that proposed a curriculum emphasizing the critical awareness needed to meet the challenges of an increasingly interdependent world characterized by rapidly changing technology and deepening social diversity.
The concurrently developed strategic plan, A New Vision for Excellence, both reiterated and strengthened these goals. As a result, we began a process of creating learning and teaching excellence centers, actively recruited the best faculty members and students from around the state and nation, increased the interaction between students and faculty mentors, made innovative advances in instructional technology, and added programs needed to serve a diverse, multicultural society.
While markedly strengthening teaching and learning, we also moved ahead during those years in our other mission areas of research and discovery and public and community service and engagement. We continued to build upon our research successes of the 1980s under our strategic plan by identifying Rutgers' academic strengths, tying them to fiscal resources, and leveraging external support. A broad spectrum of Rutgers faculty members helped in formulating, soliciting, and ranking research proposals that advance our goals. In order to jump-start these proposals with internal grants, in 1995 we reallocated administrative monies to the academic budget to create a revolving annual fund to seed projects.
I will have more to say about the results of these efforts in a few minutes.
Research and Service
University-level research in the social sciences and humanities, as well as in the physical sciences, addresses complex societal problems that can have a profound impact on our lives. At Rutgers, research happens in classrooms and labs across all our campuses. From transportation to molecular biology, from virtual reality to health policy, from education to the arts, our wide-ranging research programs strengthen teaching and actively involve both undergraduate and graduate students in these efforts.
Consistent with our mission as a land-grant institution, we place strong emphasis on our service activities. Today, research universities are called upon to address a wide range of issues and problems confronting society at large, and the nature of our service activities has changed over time. As a land-grant institution for more than 130 years, Rutgers has a long and distinguished history of service to its constituencies through Cooperative Extension and related activities. But our service and outreach efforts have moved beyond being principally agricultural and are increasingly focused on the environment, health care, urban problems, training for citizenship, and on K-12 and other concerns that are as relevant around the world as they are around the corner.
I would like to turn now to a brief presentation that will put our growth in the past decade into focus in a number of key areas.
Highlights of Rutgers' Progress
Scholarly quality ratings of Rutgers faculty compiled by the National Research Council show that Rutgers has nearly doubled the number of its doctoral programs ranked among the top 30 nationally since 1982.
In the years 1989-99, Rutgers' total in sponsored research and contracts rose by 83 percent, from $90.7 million to $165.9 million. For FY2000 the university's external research and training grants and contracts totaled $185.8 million, with federal grant and contract support accounting for more than $107 million of that total.
The number of Rutgers memberships in the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine has increased by a third since 1989, rising from 19 to 26. In addition, faculty have garnered three National Medals of Science and three MacArthur awards in that period.
Between fall 1989 and fall 1999, the total number of applications for first-year undergraduate admission increased by nearly 25 percent (from 21,379 to 26,520), and today is at more than 28,500 applications, an all-time high. Reflecting the diversity of the state, first-year minority enrollment grew by 46 percent between fall 1989 and fall 1999 (from 1,797 to 2,615). The Newark campus has been considered the most diverse campus nationally by U.S. News and World Report in each of the four years since the magazine started measuring this attribute.
As a percentage of total degrees conferred, minority graduation rates at Rutgers have doubled, going from 17 percent of the total baccalaureates awarded in 1989 to 35 percent in 1999. Since the inception of the Outstanding Scholars program, there has been a 37 percent increase in the number of students with composite SAT scores above 1350 and a rank-in-class among the top 15 percent.
Federal, state and municipal grants and contracts, which together constituted less than 10 percent of Rutgers' revenues in FY1989, constituted more than 20 percent of the total in FY1999. This is a reflection of the ever-increasing competitiveness of the university's faculty. Last year 81 percent of faculty proposals submitted were funded.
The university's endowment has more than tripled, rising from $112 million in 1989 to $385 million today. Rutgers' annual fund raising has also more than tripled from 1989 to 2000, going from $24.7 million to more than $86.1 million in FY2000, an all-time high.
Nearly 2 million gross square feet of new university facilities has been added during the last decade. Some examples include the University Center at Easton Avenue, the Allison Road Classroom Building, and the new Center for Law and Justice in Newark. Major renovations have also been completed in many Rutgers libraries, the Zimmerli Museum and other facilities on every campus.
In the last five years, much of Rutgers' institutional progress has come about as a result of its strategic planning activities. Major highlights include the fact that the Strategic Resource and Opportunity Analysis program has resulted in more than $20 million in university funding supporting more than 100 different projects to further excellence on every campus. To date, this investment has leveraged external funding of nearly $180 million. Also, Rutgers has added 21 new academic programs and 36 new centers for research and policy analysis.
In the last two years, Rutgers has made great progress with RUNet 2000, its project to provide the university with a comprehensive, advanced infrastructure for data, video and voice communications. And this semester, students on the Busch and Livingston campuses became the first to have access to the new RU-TV Network in their residence halls. RU-TV includes a full lineup of 65 commercial and broadcast channels, and includes seven Rutgers channels that will open up new avenues of communication and education throughout the university.
Rutgers has begun a three-year project to replace its administrative computing systems, beginning with the financial systems. The project will affect general ledger, purchasing/accounts payable, grants management and project accounting, budgeting, human resources and payroll, and travel/expense reimbursement. This will reduce paper flow, time delays and red tape.
I could go on in a similar vein for a much longer time, but I believe it is clear that we have moved ahead dramatically since our invitation to join the AAU. Further, I believe that our progress has translated itself into a greatly enhanced self-image about what it means to be part of Rutgers, and that our various endeavors reflect a new, strong sense of goal-oriented optimism. It is, obviously, difficult to quantify optimism or pride on a pie chart or in a graph; those things show up best, I believe, in people. I have asked some of the people who stand behind the great statistics you have just seen to join us today.
A Sense of Community
First, one of the most important things we have accomplished in the past decade is the fact that we have made enormous progress in building a sense of community and shared purpose at this university. We have fostered a climate of respect for all people, valued the contributions they make to our community, and taken steps to provide forums and facilities for groups of all kinds to share in the wealth of diversity that is, to my mind, this institution's most precious human endowment. To provide a special mechanism for recognizing the extraordinary people who make a positive difference in our sense of community, we have created the annual Human Dignity Awards to honor their commitment to affirming and promoting diversity both on and off campus.
I have invited this year's winners to join me here today. Two of them – Melanie S. Griffin, director of the University Harassment and Compliance office, and Olga Jimenez-Wagenheim, an associate professor in the Puerto Rican Studies Department – are unable to be with us. But I would now like to introduce the other winners to the University Senate, and ask them to please rise as I call their names. They are Allison A. Emery, assistant director of student activities in the Camden Campus Center; Angus K. Gillespie, associate professor in the Department of American Studies; and Ellen Zaltzberg of the SHADES Theater of Rutgers University Health Services, who is accompanied by Jonathan Santos, student co-director of SHADES.
Each year the university honors distinguished faculty members for outstanding contributions to teaching, research, and service. Over the years there have been many winners of such coveted recognitions as the Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching and our Board recognitions for research. This year we have established some new forms of recognition, including the Faculty Scholar-Teacher Award that honors faculty members who are both innovative and creative teachers, and make outstanding contributions to their disciplines. One of the first winners of this new recognition is with us today, and I would like to introduce him to the Senate and ask him to rise. He is Frank J. D'Astolfo, professor of art and design, Rutgers-Newark.
And I cannot discuss the changes at Rutgers between 1989 and the present without acknowledging one of our greatest success stories. Harnessing the energy of college students and bringing their skills and enthusiasm to bear on community issues has become an increasingly effective way for the university to serve its neighbors. Rutgers' Citizenship and Service Education Program, CASE, is a leader in this area, integrating community service into the academic curriculum with the goal of training students to be competent, participatory, democratic citizens. Between fall 1989 and summer 1999, students participating in CASE provided more than 500,000 hours of community service with an estimated value of $2.6 million based on the minimum wage. Michael Shafer, head of the CASE program, is in Trenton today at a program with Governor Whitman, but one of the great champions of CASE, our Vice President for Undergraduate Education, Dr. Susan Forman, is here and I would like to ask her to stand and be recognized on behalf of the CASE program.
In the past five years, two Rutgers professors have been chosen to stand among the very best of the best. In 1994, Francine Essien, professor of cell biology and neuroscience on the New Brunswick campus and a renowned expert on genetics and birth defects, was named the Carnegie Foundation's U.S. Professor of the Year for Research and Doctoral Universities. And just last year Clement Alexander Price, professor of history on the Newark campus, was named the New Jersey Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. Both awards honor the extraordinary commitment these faculty members have made to ensuring the success of their students.
Joining the ranks of these distinguished veteran Rutgers educators are many highly regarded faculty members who have built strong reputations at other institutions and who are now beginning their Rutgers careers. A notable example of our ability to attract outstanding faculty talent to Rutgers is provided by Dr. Karin Rabe of the department of physics and astronomy of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences here in New Brunswick. Dr. Rabe came to Rutgers from Yale University, where she was a professor of applied physics. She holds a Ph.D. from M.I.T and works in the area of computational materials theory. She is considered a leading expert in the theory of structural phase transition in solids. Dr. Rabe joined Rutgers in January of this year, and is an important addition to the growing cadre of outstanding Rutgers women faculty in the sciences.
Not to be outdone, our students make major contributions to the excellence of our university. For example, Theresa D. Napson-Williams, a doctoral student and fellow at the Rutgers Institute for Research on Women, won a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Grant in Women's Studies. And Lisa Victoria Ciresi a graduate student in art history, won a Fulbright Fellowship for study in Germany.
These honorees exemplify the finest traditions of Rutgers excellence, of Rutgers pride and Rutgers accomplishment. As I said a moment ago, it is difficult to quantify pride or measure confidence in a chart or graph. But it is possible to show you the results of the faith in Rutgers and its programs that motivates such people as Duncan MacMillan and his wife, Nancy.
Duncan graduated from Rutgers College in 1966 and went on to a successful career in business. He and Nancy know that university-generated research drives science, technology and economic development, and they know that, today, universities perform more than half of our nation's basic research. When they were looking for a way to support Rutgers, they wanted to recognize the fact that the creation of knowledge and its transmission to present and future generations are the very essence of a research university. In recognition of that, they donated two million dollars to endow a chair in genetics in our Division of Life Sciences.
The Duncan and Nancy MacMillan Chair in Genetics is held by Dr. Jay Tischfield, an internationally respected human geneticist and chairman of the university's new department of genetics. He is renowned for his research on the genetic origins of human disease, including cancer.
When he joined Rutgers, Dr. Tischfield brought with him frozen collections of human cells and DNA, along with research grants for kidney-stone disease and cancer. He also brought a $7.5 million, five-year contract to establish part of the National Institute of Mental Health's Center for Genetic Studies, which will house the world's largest cell repository from families affected with psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders.
Of course we have so many distinguished faculty members who have earned outstanding recognition in the form of grants and awards that we would be here all day and all night if I were to cite all of them, one by one. Let me simply say that Dr. Tischfield's distinction is emblematic of the high excellence of our Rutgers faculty.
I have talked today about progress and indicators of excellence, about statistics and pride, about the generosity of our alumni and other donors, and about our commitment to excellence. Many threads came together here today when I introduced the people whom you have welcomed so warmly with your applause.
In just the last example we see how we have acted on our commitment to hire the best faculty members to teach, conduct research, and engage in service activities here at Rutgers. We have seen that, through the generosity of our donors, we have been able to bring this excellence to a new level, and to further enhance our standing in the national and world communities of science. That is the type of progress we are making together, and that exemplifies the state of the university today. Rutgers is about excellence and about accomplishment. It is about pride in our past, commitment to our present work, and the promise of a bright future.
I want to conclude my comments today with a few words about that future. Clearly we have come a long way in the five years since the Board of Governors endorsed our planning process and set us on the course through which we have accomplished together what I report to you today. We are now five years into a 15-year process, and we have much to celebrate. But as we look toward the point on the horizon – the vision for the university that represents our goal – let me share with you a few brief thoughts on what we might see on the way to that goal.
We have invested wisely both in academic programs and the means to deliver them to our students, both on the campuses and off. In the process we have learned a great deal about the meaning of true service to our community, about true engagement with the people who rely on our resources and who hold the key to the future of our society. And we have learned about the importance of making further investments in both our academic programs and their delivery, as a way of capitalizing on those we have already made.
We must focus on developing our academic programs that respond to the new economy, and to the role in it for which our students must prepare. More than anything else, that is an argument for building new strength in the core arts and sciences programs whose values define an educated person in the 21st century. There is no substitute for that strength, and I believe there never will be.
At the same time, those academic programs must respond to the new scientific world and the new research environment that surrounds it, and to the ever-expanding demands of workforce development. Our teaching must reflect that, and our research must focus on new areas that will be relevant to the society we serve. Such areas as informatics and global studies must continue to prosper.
Other fields related to the global economy must continue to flourish and develop. Our core values will continue to be of central importance to us, but the teaching and research we do are being done in a world different from the one in which most of us had our formal education. The importance of our graduate and professional areas will continue to grow in the new economy, based on knowledge we will need to prepare our students not just for jobs and careers, but for lifetimes of learning. In a century that holds both great promise and great expectations in new applications of the life sciences, areas such as biomaterials and bioinformatics will command our attention.
As we look to the future of our academic programs, the multidisciplinary approach will continue to be crucial to our success. We all know the advantages of it, and the importance of it to our teaching and our research. But the best way for us to capitalize on the success we have had by crossing traditional academic boundaries is to find new ways of doing so – new ways that make us better teachers, better learners, more effective as a learning community.
Finally, we must capitalize on the investments we have made in learning technology. None of us doubt any longer that a true revolution is at hand in the tools we use to teach and to create new knowledge. You know as well as I that technology has transformed academia, and that we have only begun to see its impact on our lives as educators and as students.
We must use this revolution to our benefit as a university. As we move toward the completion of RUNet 2000, the possibilities for links between our institution and enormous resources elsewhere are simply staggering. Our challenge will be to stay at the leading edge of this pedagogical revolution and use it to our advantage – to bring the three-dimensional art works in from Rome, or the primary school classroom in from Puerto Rico – in the interest of creating an environment in which the potential for active, fully engaged education is virtually endless. We must continue to explore the potential of technologically enriched learning, and to redefine and expand the meaning of community engagement through continuing education, further advancing the seamless educational environment that will serve our students throughout their lives.
Today, as we review the state of the university, it is clear that we have the potential to reach new heights of national stature through excellence in what we do and innovation in how we do it. We have the potential to realize our vision of creating knowledge and ideas for the improvement of the human condition; of preparing students to meet the needs of a changing society and encouraging their personal and professional growth; and of advancing the well-being of our communities, state and nation. I look forward to working with you to realize that potential.