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Dear Colleagues:

It’s been two weeks since we began to get specific information about how the national economic downturn will affect Oregon State University and other public agencies in this state, and in that brief period, some clarity has emerged. I offer it today in hopes that it will both provide reassurance for you as we approach this holiday season and insight as to what the next biennium may bring for our university.

First, the 1.095 percent budget cut for the current fiscal year that the Governor has mandated for all state agencies will be handled at OSU through an across-the-board reduction. Individual units will meet that target through reduced expenditures on services and supplies and by holding open vacant positions. Given the dire financial circumstances that so many public and private organizations face nationwide, including many here in Corvallis and elsewhere around Oregon, our situation this budget year might have been far worse. I’m grateful that a careful, conservative approach to managing our finances will make this mid-year cut manageable rather than the crisis it could have been.

Second, Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s recommended budget for the 2009-11 biennium, announced last week, includes good news for OSU and the rest of the Oregon University System, especially when compared to many other state-supported enterprises. The Governor has called for a budget increase for our campuses, including provisions that allow work to move forward on a number of capital construction and deferred maintenance projects from 2009 through 2013. Those projects include renovation of Education Hall and Strand Agriculture Hall, construction of the Hallie Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families and many more.

The Governor’s budget is a good starting point for deliberations in the 2009 state legislative session, but it still presents challenges for OSU. While there is a small increase in the overall recommended budget, it is not sufficient to cover projected operating costs, both for statewide public service programs and general revenue funds devoted to classroom education and core university operations. It also includes a possible $16 million reduction in funding to the University System unless the Legislature votes to release money from its reserve funds. Finally, it relies on passage of tax proposals that cannot simply be assumed. And all of this is proposed against an economic backdrop in which the effects on the Oregon economy are still unfolding. We’ll all know more when the next state revenue forecast is released in February, and there is much ground to be covered between now and then. Over the coming months, you can be assured that we will be working as hard as we can in Salem and Washington, D.C., on a number of the recovery issues under consideration in both venues.

There has been a great deal of discussion in the media about the seriousness of the financial challenges we face as a nation, and comparisons to the Depression have been common. Actions that have been taken by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank have been clumsy, but basically on the right track. The forthcoming stimulus package being discussed in Washington and actions proposed by Gov. Kulongoski for Oregon are of the right magnitude to move the economy forward, and they are focused in the right direction. Still, the economy will deteriorate further before it improves. Current estimates suggest that economic activity could decline between 1 and 2 percent in 2009 and that the national unemployment rate could rise to 8.5 to 10 percent by the early part of 2010, as unemployment always peaks at the end of an economic downturn. These are stark and troublesome possibilities, and the human hardship they would engender for some of our colleagues and for others around us is something we should all seek to reduce. But we should not succumb to fears about another depression.

It never ceases to amaze me, however, that in times both good and bad, the constant here at OSU is the amazingly productive and consistent work of our faculty and staff. Even as state and national economic conditions deteriorated earlier this fall, for instance, our faculty researchers were earning a record $34.5 million in contracts and grants for the month of October. More than 30 awards were received of $300,000 or more. This comes on the heels of yet another record year in sponsored research in which our programs were awarded $231 million — $25 million more than the previous year. Such success is the mark of an exceptionally creative and entrepreneurial faculty; those virtues not only will serve OSU well during the current economic downturn, along with our traditionally disciplined approach to financial management, they will ensure that we are able to make forward progress as a university despite the hard times.

Which brings me to my final point. As difficult as our current circumstances and future state-funding prospects may be, they pale in comparison to those of many other organizations here and around the nation. Some 2 million jobs have been lost across the country this year – more than 500,000 in the most recent quarter alone. Some of the most familiar names in American business have ceased operations, declared bankruptcy or stand on the brink of insolvency. It is timely that we are updating our strategic plan at a time when we will be challenged to manage our resources wisely without losing sight of our aspirations for this wonderful university. Friends and alumni continue to strongly support The Campaign for OSU, reflecting their belief in the importance of the work you do. And, we continue to make progress in building a genuinely diverse and inclusive community here at OSU.

I encourage you in these difficult times to reach out to those around you who are facing far greater challenges during this holiday season. May we all enjoy the best in friendship and fellowship that the season has to offer. The outstanding work and scholarship we do here has made OSU an important and positive part of the lives of those we serve for 150 years. I look forward to continuing to work with you in the new year to advance that important mission.

Edward J. Ray
President
Oregon State University

Oregon State University

October 9, 2008, 3:00pm

La Sells Stewart Center

Construction and Engineering Hall

I appreciate this opportunity to appear before the Faculty Senate to review the events of the last year and to propose actions for the current academic year. There is a lot for all of us at Oregon State University to celebrate from last year, but for the sake of brevity I will simply summarize some of my observations from our University Day celebration.

When I spoke to the Senate last year, I noted that we would soon launch the public phase of the university-wide fundraising Campaign for OSU and announce total fundraising for the campaign’s quiet phase in excess of $300 million. In fact, we launched the public phase of the campaign with a total of $350 million. That momentum continued, and last year we raised $126 million — exceeding OSU’s previous annual record by $50 million. Five years ago, our annual fundraising total was only $38.1 million.

Perhaps most impressive is the broad base of support reflected in our fundraising success. We have received more than 500 separate gifts of $100,000 or more and 78 gifts above $1 million. More than 45,000 families have contributed to this campaign. There have been more than 171,000 campaign gifts and pledges. A significant number of them have come from faculty and staff, both current and emeritus. These are wonderful indicators of support and greatly appreciated.

You and your colleagues have also realized extraordinary success in competitive research awards. Last year we raised $231 million in research grant and contract awards, a $25 million increase over the previous year and a $75 million increase in the last five years. Clearly, we are garnering significant increases in support of our research at the state and national level building upon our past successes under intensely competitive conditions.

Last year, I also proposed that together we establish priorities for strategic investment over the next few years. Our pursuit of academic excellence and continuing growth in our research productivity require us to complete the prioritization process this year. I also indicated that part of the financing for those initiatives would have to come from re-engineering our business practices and that both of these activities — prioritization and re-engineering — are ongoing. Finally, I asked the Faculty Senate to assess our current core curriculum to determine if it meets contemporary educational needs and to analyze the effectiveness of our efforts to assess outcomes from the learning process. Those reviews continue to move forward.

As promised, we implemented a compensation package increase of 4% last year. This year we must do better and increase compensation by 6% effective January 2009. Frankly, we continue to struggle in providing our faculty with competitive compensation. We must persist because everything this great institution aspires to accomplish for our students, the people of Oregon and the world rests on our ability to recruit, support, and retain exceptional faculty.

In addition to our ongoing activities and our commitment to a 6% raise package for faculty, we are committed to achieving our Campaign for OSU goal of $100 million for scholarships and fellowships this year. We have already raised $69 million toward that goal.

Furthermore, we must extend our horizon for implementing the strategic plan we adopted in 2004, when we set specific targets for 2008. It is time to acknowledge areas of success and failure while defining continuing and new initiatives and setting numerical targets for 2013. On page 7 of the strategic plan we said that: “While the vision, values, themes, and goals in this plan will endure, the implementation initiatives will change along with circumstances and we continue to welcome suggestions on how best to accomplish our goals.” And, as the last sentence of the plan states: “Ultimately, success will depend upon our willingness to remain on course, adjusting our initiatives but not our aspirations.” We are staying the course.

I anticipate sharing a draft of the updated strategic plan with you and our colleagues by the end of the month. We will discuss the document here at a future Senate meeting and in other councils across campus to gather our collective best thinking regarding our course corrections. The goal is to complete the process in February 2009.

Since developing an updated strategic plan is a collaborative effort, I cannot anticipate all of the new material in it. I can, however, describe some issues that I believe we must address more effectively. First and foremost, we simply have not met our goals for first year retention rates and six year graduation rates for students overall. What’s more, we continue to perform even less well with respect to six year graduation rates for Native American, African American, and Latino/a, students. We must raise and equalize the six year graduation rates for each of the demographic groups I have identified in the next 5-10 years.

Furthermore, I challenge us to quickly implement the Bridge to Success program for all at risk students. We must build and staff programs to increase student engagement and success, including the Student Success Center. And, we must move forward with plans to fund the rebuilding of the four cultural centers and to accelerate the increasing diversity of our entering class of new students.

In this regard, our new partnership with INTO to double our international student enrollments on campus in the next five years will contribute significantly to diversity and to the educational experience we offer to our students.
I have said on many occasions that we can only achieve excellence through diversity and that success in recruiting, retaining, and graduating increasingly diverse entering classes of students will enrich all of our lives. Our graduates are our most important contribution to the future. They must be able to work in and contribute to increasingly diverse state, national, and global communities. It is equally true that we are moving too slowly with respect to diversity at every level of employment at the university. The longer we take to implement real change at every level of responsibility, the longer we undercut our ability to realize our potential for excellence as a university.

While we implemented elements of the strategic plan over the last five years, the world around us has changed. The Board of Higher Education has developed a Portland Initiative, and our strategic plan must define our initiatives in support of that OUS plan. We are now refining strategic, business, communications, and development plans for OSU-Cascades that must be integrated into our overall university plans. The university’s fundraising goals for the Campaign for OSU and beyond the current campaign must be elements of the strategic plan and the metrics we track annually.

In addition, we began preliminary work last year to develop an integrated marketing communications plan for the university. In simple terms this is an effort to develop a simple, clear, and consistent narrative to guide our conversations with key constituencies. We must complete this task.

Last year we also joined the Climate Commitment and developed measures of our carbon footprint. This year we will begin planning to eliminate our carbon footprint, an effort we must integrate into our strategic actions going forward.

Finally, while the focus on the five thematic areas has helped us make resource allocation decisions and bring our community together, I would now challenge us to draw from these five areas a few cross-cutting signature programs that will distinguish Oregon State University in the years ahead.

In effect, I have defined much of our agenda for this year with reference to the next step in strategic planning. That’s because the two items — the annual agenda and the strategic plan — are inextricably tied together. The agenda defines the path we must travel over the next year to get where the strategic plan is leading us. Strategic plans are not fixed blueprints but rather surface maps across time. We must adapt our plans to discover new possibilities and essential course corrections, while we keep our eye on the prize.
Nothing in my five years here dissuades me from a sense that we are all on an excellent adventure together. It is an honor and a privilege for me to travel with you and I am more certain than ever that we will realize the aspirations we first articulated in 2004.

President, Oregon State University

UNIVERSITY DAY

Thursday, September 18, 2008, 10:30 a.m.

LaSells Stewart Center

Thank you.

Welcome to University Day 2008.

As I look back over my last five University Days, two things stand out.

The first is the many remarkable people we have been privileged to recognize —and with whom we are privileged to work every day.

This year is no different. We will honor many deserving people today.

We’ve also had many faculty recognized during the year for their achievements. For instance, Jim Carrington, professor of botany and plant pathology, who was chosen Researcher of the Year by OSU’s scientific honor society, Sigma Xi; elected to the National Academy of Sciences; and awarded a prestigious MERIT Award from the NIH for his ”superior competence and outstanding productivity.”

Not many scientists anywhere can point to a triple play like this one!

Other noteworthy honors for faculty last year include:

• The National Science Foundation granted competitive CAREER Awards to two engineering professors, Vinod Narayanan, assistant professor of thermal and fluid science, and Alex Yokochi, assistant professor of chemical engineering.
• Soil scientists David Myrold and Peter Bottomley received the Soil Science Society of America Research Award;
• And three faculty members from the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences – Dudley Chelton, Robert Duncan and Anne Trehu – were named Fellows of the American Geophysical Union, the AGU. Since only one in 1,000 AGU members can ever be named a Fellow — it’s a rule of membership — having three scientists chosen from a single university in one year is remarkable.
• Jane Lubchenco, the Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology, won extraordinary international attention when she was named co-winner of the Zayed International Prize for the Environment for being “a world leader in environmental sciences.”

This is necessarily only a partial list of faculty achievements. I think it testifies to the impact you all have on the really pressing issues of our time.

For me, the second prominent theme of University Day is the continuing collective effort we have made to become excellent as a university.

The pursuit of excellence is never easy and success is rarely achieved.

What I want to say to you today is that Oregon State University has enjoyed a remarkable year as we pursue excellence!

Everyone here — and all your colleagues — should be proud of what has been accomplished by the OSU community working together.

As with faculty achievements, it is impossible to mention every highlight, because you have collectively produced a very long list of things worthy of mention! I will cite just a few:

One long-awaited accomplishment was the signing of the final Degree Partnership Program agreement last spring. OSU is now partnering with each and every one of Oregon’s 17 community colleges. We have been a pace setter nationally with this program, thanks to diligent work by people in the registrars office, enrollment management, and elsewhere.

We have also launched a concerted effort involving faculty, students and staff to make OSU a leader environmentally, matching our research and teaching prowess with “walk the talk” institutional behavior.

Therefore, you can be especially proud that not only were we an early signatory to the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, we have planned and are executing a strategy to meet ambitious goals. And we are being nationally recognized for our success;

• The Kaplan College Guide 2009 listed OSU among America’s top 25 “green colleges.”
• The U.S. EPA ranked OSU one of the nation’s top five higher education users of “green power” and the best in the Pac 10.
• And Sustainable Endowment Institute listed OSU as among the nation’s top 25 campuses in their College Sustainability Report Card.

We have had excellent leadership in this effort from OSU staff in many areas, and I want to recognize especially Brandon Trelstad, our sustainability coordinator, and the people who work with him.

Another important area where we continue to demonstrate excellence is the research performance of the OSU faculty. It is especially noteworthy, given the intense competition for external support, that last year OSU set another record for research funding, $231 million.

This is an increase of $25 million over the previous year, and an increase of $75 million in the last 5 years. It testifies to the quality and impact of the work of OSU researchers and their students.

We also continue to see the benefits of corporate partnerships. With help from the OSU Foundation, the Research Office has analyzed strategies for increasing our capabilities as an institution in this area, and as we enact these strategies this year we should begin to see some significant benefits.

Also noteworthy is the growing number of undergraduates involved in research, a significant boost to the quality of education we can offer, and to student retention.

We continue to attract and retain exceptional faculty, the heart of the university.

Let me especially note the arrival on campus of Lawrence Rodgers, the new dean of the College of Liberal Arts. We are pleased he is here. I also want to thank Larry Roper for his outstanding service as interim dean.

Another indication that we are making headway in pursuing excellence is student success in national competitions.

For example, we had a record number of students, six, selected as Fulbright Award winners last year.

And we had one student, Tari Tan, a senior last year in biochemistry-biophysics, selected as one of the top 40 undergraduate scholars in the nation by USA Today. What Tari said ought to make everyone here very proud: “I cannot envision a better undergraduate experience.”

And many of you probably followed the adventures of the OSU solar car, Rain Dancer, and the Robotics Team that won the 2008 University Rover Challenge at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.

Incidentally, the Mars Rover team had a public test run of their Rover a month or so before the competition, and it failed miserably. This made the team realize they needed more varied talents before the competition. I was really struck by what one of the team members said: “Anyone with enough motivation was welcome to help.”

I think we can agree this is a pretty good motto!

It’s not a surprise, when you see the success OSU students have at challenges like these, that our ability to attract students remains strong.

• Enrollment in OSU is up 41% in the last ten years!
• The test scores and GPA’s of incoming students are also rising. This year the average GPA is 3.46, highest in the OUS.

We continue to realize progress in our efforts to make OSU a more diverse community, and to expand the programs and venues where we can support diversity and make diversity part of an exceptional education for our students.

Last fall we welcomed the most diverse class in OSU’s history, this fall will be even better. We are also well on our way to beginning to address the physical needs of our cultural centers, and I hope to have good news in this regard later this fall. I am absolutely committed to the plan being developed to replace the cultural centers with new facilities in the coming years, beginning during the Campaign for OSU and continuing until the job is completed.

Beth and I had the privilege of representing Oregon State University at the 40th Jubilee celebration of our OUS exchange partnerships with 7 universities in Baden-Wurtemburg, Germany in June. At the closing ceremony the OSU Choir performed to a standing ovation in the 500 year old Betenhausen Monastery in Tubingen before an audience of hundreds of celebrants. The wife of the Rector observed to me that she had never heard a choir express such soul and passion and sheer joy for making music. The Chancellor was there along with Dave and Lynn Frohnmayer and others, all of whom expressed great pride in the performance by our students.

Finally, I believe all your accomplishments — and all the highlights of the recent past — are captured and reflected in the remarkable success of The Campaign for OSU.

This was by far the greatest fundraising year in OSU’s history. In partnership with the OSU Foundation, we came out of the campaign kick-off last October with tremendous momentum, and despite the economic climate we have continued to flourish. We recorded commitments of $126.8 million in the fiscal year that closed June 30th, about $50 million more than in any previous year.

At the end of August, The Campaign for OSU stood at nearly $442 million

There are a few key related points I’d like to make:

• We have benefited from a terrific collaboration among faculty and staff with remarkable leadership at the Foundation and the OSU Alumni Association, and I want to acknowledge the important role of each of those organizations here today. The cooperative culture we are building across the campus community will serve us well for years to come.
• Our donors are making thoughtful investments, evidence they clearly see the regional and global value of OSU’s programs and our potential for excellence in education, research, and service. We have had 533 gifts of over $100,000, and more than 45,000 OSU families — alumni, faculty and friends — have contributed.
• The 24 new endowed faculty positions already produced by the campaign are strong contributors to excellence.

The campaign’s success reflects the collective effort, achievements, and character that are at the heart of the OSU family.

We are all in this together. There is no expectation that we will receive special favors to help us accomplish what we can and should do ourselves.

In this spirit, I want especially to thank the many faculty, active and emeritus, who have contributed to the campaign. Your support is very meaningful.

As part of The Campaign for OSU, this fall we are launching a special campaign focused on scholarships and fellowships.

• We have made good progress in this area already, raising a little more than $69 million toward our $100 million goal.
• As a result, 333 new scholarship and fellowship funds have been created.

However, OSU has always offered the best financial aid program in the OUS system, and our new Bridge to Success program will use government and private funds to provide full tuition to 2,400 Oregonians, so the need for scholarship funds remains significant.

The scholarship initiative, of course, is just one of the challenges we face this year. There are others, including the updating of our strategic plan, and I will address these in my Faculty Senate remarks.

Nevertheless, I am confident we will succeed at the scholarship initiative, as we will with all our other initiatives, because wherever you look at OSU, you find the same pattern — people rolling up their sleeves and getting the job done.

And this is why it is possible for OSU to not only compete, but to pursue and achieve excellence.

Thank you for all you do for OSU, and have a great year.

Dear OSU Community:

A story on today’s Chronicle of Higher Education Web site, prompted by the “black out” incident last fall at the Stadium, examines the climate at OSU with regard to issues of race and diversity. As the story acknowledges, OSU is not the only campus in America to have experienced such an incident and is moving ahead in a thoughtful manner, through ongoing dialogue, surveys, and other means to assess where we stand and what we must do to make real progress.

In the midst of the initial campus reaction to the incident, one student was reported to have said that the criticisms being expressed at that time would not result in any lasting change. As I said then, it is unacceptable for students to have the expectation that troubling circumstances will not create meaningful change at this university. In the months since then, many students, faculty, and staff have joined together to work for change, to discuss an agenda for ensuring progress in building the diverse community we all seek, and continue to do so.

There is yet another opportunity for each of us to join those efforts today at 2:00 p.m. in the MU Journey Room, Vice Provost Larry Roper will lead a Campus Climate Forum titled “Achieving Our Vision of Community.”

This interactive session will allow participants to collectively chart the important steps and essential actions necessary to create the community toward which we aspire. Hosted by the Office of Community and Diversity, this forum is open to everyone. I invite you to join Dr. Roper for this important forum and to lend your energies toward creating a better OSU for us all.

Sincerely,

Edward J. Ray
President

The following statement from Oregon State University President Ed Ray pertains to the Feb. 14 shootings at Northern Illinois University:

“The tragedy that played out yesterday on the campus of Northern Illinois University reminds us once again that safety is a paramount matter every day for all of us in higher education. Our deepest sympathies, thoughts and prayers go out to the family, friends and loved ones of those who were affected by this unspeakable attack.

“Like many other universities around the country, we at Oregon State University are continually assessing our policies and practices in an effort to keep our campus community as safe as possible. Since last year’s tragedy at Virginia Tech, we have revisited those procedures to ensure rapid response and effective communications around any such event at OSU. Our work in this regard continues, with the understanding that there are always opportunities to improve. Our partners in law enforcement, public safety, mental health and related areas are part of that ongoing effort.

“Incidents such as this can cause stress and anxiety. OSU students, faculty and staff who are experiencing difficulties may access assistance through University Counseling and Psychological Services at (541) 737-2131 or the Employee Assistance Program at 1-800-433-2320.”

President Ed Ray
Oregon State University
Friday, Feb. 15, 2008

In recent weeks, The Oregonian and other media have carried coverage focusing on the campus climate at OSU regarding race, recent incidents regarding racial symbols and steps the university is taking to address these matters. We have long recognized the need to address such matters here at OSU.

Increasing diversity at OSU and a sense of community is a cornerstone of our values and aspirations and a critical element of our strategic plan.

I am personally committed to creating an inclusive, nurturing environment at OSU, as is my administrative leadership team and many colleagues across campus. We are addressing campus climate in a deliberate and focused way:

• We have hired directors for two important campus efforts, the Office of Community and Diversity and the Office of Women and Gender Equity.
• We are focusing recruitment efforts to attract a larger number of students of color, an effort that paid off this fall with a percentage increase in U.S. minority student enrollment three times that of our overall student body.
• We have created a Faculty Diversity Initiative to attract individuals from diverse backgrounds to senior positions.
• We have developed a university-level Diversity Action Plan that defines a broad action agenda to develop a more inclusive community, and each division of the university has created its own plan for actions specific to its operations.

The Campaign for OSU is raising funds to attract the best and brightest students from diverse backgrounds and to enhance our student cultural centers. We have a development director for diversity and student-centered initiatives.

I recognize that changing attitudes and behaviors is complex. I also recognize that the educational and social experiences are not the same for all of our students. While it will take time to reach our campus community and diversity goals, listening to the campus community and to our external friends and partners is vital.

Along those lines, multiple actions will be taken in the next few weeks, including:

• A facilitated dialogue between black students and The Daily Barometer staff.
• Announcement of the OSU Campus Climate Initiative.
• A second meeting between black students, me, and my administrative team as a follow-up to our recent discussion at OSU’s Black Cultural Center.

The Office of Community and Diversity is scheduling a meeting for a mock trial for winter term to critically examine recent campus issues related to race.

We are first, last, and always an educational institution. So I am concerned about the effectiveness of our educational environment in helping students, staff and faculty to understand, appreciate and celebrate our differences and to be sensitive to symbols of racism and oppression. I am also concerned about the effectiveness of our community activities to bring different people together to listen to each other and to understand each other’s history, experiences, and concerns. Clearly there is more listening to be done.

I do not want us to engage in a cyclical pattern of negative events, meaningful dialogues, and then business as usual. We have committed to look at the issues students raised and to make progress. The notion that nothing changes is simply not acceptable. At the end of our recent meeting at the Black Cultural Center, I told students that I am genuinely sorry that we are not in a better place as a community and that I am committed to meaningful changes.

Ed Ray
President, Oregon State University

Edward J. Ray, President
Oregon State University
Faculty Senate
October 11, 2007

Introduction

I thank the Faculty Senate for inviting me to speak to you this afternoon regarding the state of the university and our agenda for the coming year.

Each year I ask my direct reports to tell me what their three or four highest priorities are for the coming year. We further define their priorities and then review the extent to which they have been successful at the end of the year. In that same spirit, each autumn for the last four years I have addressed the university community to review the current state of affairs and to suggest several areas of focus for the coming year.

Collectively these speeches reveal that we have addressed our annual priorities and realized substantial success. True, some of our action agenda items took longer to achieve than I had hoped. I also realize, looking back, that my speeches were probably too long.

Therefore, the title of my talk today is “Walking the Talk”, which suggests a shorter speech and a call to action.

Before looking ahead, let me note some major accomplishments of the last year:

• Together we provided the Board of Higher Education, the Governor and the Legislature with compelling arguments for increased state funding for higher education in Oregon.
• We crafted a new set of guidelines for the tenure and promotion process.
• We worked with alumni and friends to make the case for investing their own resources in this great university, and redirected $10 million in continuing funding to support key academic programs and offer more competitive compensation for faculty and staff.
• And our faculty generated $206 million in research grant and contract awards.

Realizing these achievements required the leadership of this great body and colleagues throughout the university. In looking ahead, it is encouraging to know that we have a team that gets things done.

In my first university address in 2003, I indicated that there were four broad areas that we needed to address if we intended to realize our aspirations for this wonderful institution and community. They were:

• Complete the university strategic plan;
• Lay the foundation for our first university-wide fundraising campaign;
• Manage our resources wisely, and;
• Achieve excellence through diversity.

We adopted the strategic plan in February 2004 and set a number of goals to be achieved by 2008. The provost will report later this month on our progress to date in implementing the plan. Next year we must assess our total progress, and chart new targets for the following five years.

Our success in establishing a solid foundation for the university-wide fundraising campaign is particularly notable. We launch the public phase of the campaign on October 26th – I hope you are all planning to attend the celebration – and we will be able to announce a total well in excess of our $300 million dollar target for the quiet phase of the campaign. Let me note in passing that 80% of the support generated during the fundraising campaign will benefit academic programs and 20% will benefit intercollegiate athletic activities.

We have also managed our resources extremely well over the last four years. In keeping with the strategic plan, we implemented faculty salary increases to achieve modest gains in compensation relative to our aspirational peers. This was done, despite insufficient funding from the legislature last biennium, by making difficult choices to trim some activities and redirect $10 million in continuing funds within the university. Again reflecting the strategic plan, we cut more heavily from business and academic support services than from academic programs. I am very proud of the collaborative efforts of administrators and colleagues that made those changes possible.

For the first time since my arrival here, the financial support from the Governor, the Legislature, and the Board of Higher Education during the last legislative session will permit us to implement competitive salary increases this biennium. We can also target modest increases in activities that support the strategic plan during the second year of the biennium. Nevertheless, it will take accelerated improvements in our state funding position over a number of biennia to meet the needs of Oregonians for quality higher education. Similarly, it will require continued growth in our other sources of revenue and effective management of our operating costs to realize our goals for this wonderful university.

As I said in my first university address we cannot simply put the burden of advancing this university on the backs of our students and their families through tuition and resource fee increases. Instead we had to do several things simultaneously:

• Increase our effectiveness in competing for research grants and contracts;
• Expand our business and government and inter-institutional partnerships to grow our technology transfer and licensing revenues;
• Rally our friends and alumni to provide funding for scholarships, fellowships, chaired faculty positions, academic program support, equipment and facilities that are pivotal to realizing our ambitions for learning, scholarship and engagement and;
• Manage our resources as intelligently and efficiently as possible.

Tuition and resource fee increases must be our last resort in garnering the funding needed to implement the strategic plan.

As I have said repeatedly, we have done these things well. To achieve our strategic plan aspirations, we must continue to establish priorities, leverage existing resources, and make strategic investments in targeted areas. This leads me to my recommendations for the coming year.

Setting Investment Priorities

Our first challenge this year is to work together to develop a detailed set of prioritized and significant investments consistent with advancing academic program excellence, enhancing the quality of the student experience, and strengthening our financial position, the primary goals in the university strategic plan. Our focus must be on academic program excellence and the impact of our programs in the five thematic areas. Accordingly, the provost will work with colleagues to direct a process to identify a prioritized list of activities for the university that we will consider for investment.

We will not compromise the spirit of shared governance for the sake of expediency. It is critical that the Faculty Senate and our student government leaders fully participate in the deliberations regarding priority areas for investment. The existing university strategic plan, the strategic plans of the colleges and support units, and the prioritization process conducted a year ago should represent an excellent starting point for this discussion. I am certain we will move quickly this year to develop an agenda for priority investments in the university.

We will then face the issue of funding these investments.

Surely some investment priorities will match our case statements to donors and resonate with their philanthropic wishes. Other priorities will benefit from research grants and contracts, and technology transfer and licensing revenues. And our modest gains in real state funding may help to fund additional priority investments.

Inevitably there will be important investments that simply cannot secure timely funding from these sources. We will face a hard decision. Will the lack of funding cause us to forego priority investments that we believe are essential to the future of this university, or will we act to redirect current funding back to important academic programs and academic support service initiatives?

I believe we must redirect funding to our critical investments. Even if our list of priority investment targets is short – as it should be –the individual investments necessarily must be significant if they are to make a difference in our academic performance and delivery of academic support services. Unfortunately, the recent increase in state funding will not sustain significant investments. This biennium, state funding for OUS increased almost 19% from $733 million to $870 million. The state’s own resource allocation model shows that funding student credit hours in OUS at the average rate of our peer institutions would require an increase in state funding of almost 38% to $1.2 billion. We simply do not have sufficient resources at hand to make continuing significant investments in key areas.

I know that over the last 15 years this community has suffered great harm as the result of the decline in state funding and the unrelenting rise in costs we do not control. I was asked recently how we could provide a quality education when our financial support, including tuition and resource fees, is well below many other public universities. I said one reason for our success is that all of you have shown great inventiveness in creating and nurturing extraordinary programs. Many here made significant financial, health, and other personal sacrifices because of their passion for learning, scholarship and engagement at OSU.

I think you are heroes. I thank you, and I have great affection for you and what you stand for as reflected by your good works and sacrifices. Ours is a spiritual as well as an intellectual calling and there are genuine heroes among us.

I also said that there exists a spirit of inventiveness, a can do attitude, and a deep regard for collaboration here at Oregon State University. The presence of those qualities at OSU far surpasses any university with which I am familiar. There are countless academic programs, research initiatives and outreach and service activities associated with OSU that exist only because faculty reached across college, department, and division boundaries to work with kindred spirits.

When I first came here from a much larger university I raised questions – and probably a little concern among some faculty – about whether or not we had the critical mass of talent we needed to maintain this program or that program. If one thinks only along traditional disciplinary lines, there are academic and research efforts we pursue here that simply are not sustainable. Yet there they are and there they stay because of the astonishing collaboration among colleagues who work to get things done.

Reviewing Our Business Practices

Our second challenge, therefore, is finding the resources to fund the priority investments we identify and to sustain the spirit of inventiveness and collaboration that is so crucial to OSU. We must continue making meaningful progress in achieving the goals of the strategic plan.

To meet this second challenge I firmly believe we must re-examine how we manage the business activities of the university, with a goal of identifying perhaps $5-10 million in continuing funding that can be brought to bear on those priority academic investments for which other sources of near-term revenue, described earlier, are unavailable.

This approach will also create an opportunity to strengthen the university’s culture of service by ensuring that our academic support activities and business practices are successful and responsive as well as cost effective.

Given the hardships we have endured over the last 15 years, I understand the skepticism that will meet a call to redirect an additional $5-10 million from business expenses to academic programs and services. Nonetheless, I believe there is a real opportunity to achieve these savings, because I have seen the world-class programs you have created by ignoring traditional academic boundaries. The depth of passion for academic pursuits and creativity, and the determination to get things done, is extraordinary here. I believe we can profitably apply these same qualities to our business enterprises.

First and foremost we are an educational community. As such, we have appropriately applied our imagination and talents to academic matters. But there are business aspects to everything we do. With much of our business activity distributed among colleges, departments, and divisions, we need to evaluate providing business services to academic programs and academic support services by centralizing business services or creating regional service centers that support multiple units.

I would not claim to know what is ultimately possible through re-organization and re-engineering, but I challenge us to bring the same intelligence we apply to our academic pursuits to the analysis of our business activities. I do know there will be no savings unless we are willing to ignore traditional business unit boundaries, and unless we clearly understand that the savings we generate – whether $5 million or $10 million – will permit us to make essential investments on the academic side.

The outcome is worth the effort.

Provost Randhawa and Vice President McCambridge, in consultation with others, will define a process to systematically explore re-engineering our business practices to redirect resources to academic programs and academic support services. Our faculty, staff, and students must participate fully in the deliberations regarding business re-engineering in the university.

I would hope these two processes, academic prioritization and re-engineering planning, could begin this quarter. If possible, investment priorities should be identified over the next six months in order to be considered for next year’s budget. Similarly, I expect us to implement a pilot project for re-engineering business activities before the end of this academic year.

Provost Randhawa will speak to the Faculty Senate next month and provide details regarding the process and timeline for investment decisions and the related assessment of our business activities.

There are three points I want to make strongly at the outset.

• First, the process of identifying a prioritized list of new strategic plan investments should be completed in the next six months or so.
• Second, the effort to re-engineer our business practices should result in a pilot project this year, and the university-wide effort should be completed within three years.

Third, and this is very important, our goal is to redirect resources to support the strategic plan, not to reduce our operating budget. We are not adjusting how much we spend; we are adjusting where we spend it. Our personnel costs average approximately 80% of our operating costs. Consequently, our available options entail moving some business activities and personnel to central and/or regional centers from departments and colleges to increase efficiency, and moving some personnel positions from business activities to academic positions and academic support positions to augment the educational mission. Training opportunities for staff must be part of the process. Some positions will be eliminated and some staff-people will not find a good match in newly created positions, but with annual turnover of 300 or more in faculty and staff positions across the university due to retirements and job changes, phasing in new business practices over three years should help us to minimize the impact on current employees.

Assessing the Baccalaureate Core

Before concluding, let me offer a final observation related to the investment in academic priorities and the strategic plan. The strategic plan outlines five thematic areas in which we will concentrate our teaching, research and service efforts over the coming decades in order to become one of the top ten land-grant universities in America.

The first thematic area listed is the Arts and Sciences. We aspire to be a great university. There are no great universities that are not strong in the arts and sciences. Through the rebasing process we have begun systematically investing in both the College of Science and the College of Liberal Arts, and arts and sciences remain critical to the implementation of the strategic plan and the realization of our aspirations.

This is the last issue I want to address today. I have been involved in a number of discussions regarding the structure of the state university system and the role of each university within that system. I have held firmly to the position there must be a solid arts and sciences core for every university graduate in Oregon, regardless of which university he or she attends. This has led me to examine my own sense of what should constitute this core, and how it reflects and differs from the core curriculum I took as a college student.

While I enjoyed my baccalaureate core, I am certain it would serve graduates poorly today. I do not have a complete sense of how satisfied you and other colleagues are with the current university baccalaureate core, but most discussions I have heard here and elsewhere tend to be about credit hours rather than content.

As I think about how the arts and sciences core might look today compared to when I was a student, I have come to a number of conclusions:

• First the core curriculum should contain more studies of the life sciences and earth system sciences.
• Second, the core should offer a wealth of courses that prepare all of our graduates to be culturally competent.

These beliefs reflect my conviction that our graduates must be able to work in multicultural environments, and to compete and serve in a world that is globally competitive – and also a very small and delicate planet.

Finally, a contemporary core curriculum needs to be much more focused than mine was on the international aspects of the arts and sciences.

The written, analytical and other skill objectives of the current baccalaureate core seem excellent to me, although one colleague suggested students need to be better prepared to accumulate, authenticate, assimilate and protect information. My concern is with the scope of studies experienced by our graduates, for these have a temporal dimension that merits periodic review. I therefore ask the Senate to lead a broad-based discussion across the university regarding the content of the baccalaureate core, and the explicit learning outcomes that students should achieve. And, we must be able to document outcomes. I am certain that the Senate will make any changes it deems appropriate.

While we must remain focused on strategic planning and financial resource management, I hope we will also reflect on that part of the curriculum, the baccalaureate core, that defines the soul of every one of our graduates. We must make certain that the core remains vibrant and contemporary and fully prepares our graduates to be our most important contribution to the future – and an extraordinary contribution at that.

Conclusion

I am impressed by the improvements that have been made in so many areas of the university in the last few years and feel privileged to work with all of you as colleagues. There is no doubt in my mind that we can address the challenges I have outlined here and that we will be successful.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you today. I look forward to the interesting and important work we will do together this year. I remain more certain than ever that the best is yet to come for this amazing place.

It is a pleasure to welcome you to University Day, a time when we celebrate OSU’s remarkable faculty and staff.

Today I want to talk briefly about attaining excellence.

In one form or another, this has been my topic at previous University Days. Of course, it is also the theme of this entire day.

In my time as president, I have come to realize that the OSU community is blessed with many extraordinary people who are successful at the highest possible level because they have the drive, resilience, character and talent to succeed where others would not even attempt to compete.

I tell audiences that our graduates are the most important contribution we make to the future and that we prepare them to compete with anyone, anywhere. We also strive to encourage a spirit of serving others when and where it is most dearly needed.

As I shared stories about our students’ and our graduates’ outstanding accomplishments, I have tried to convey that you – and your colleagues who cannot be with us here today – are the driving force behind this success.

We have had another very public demonstration of success this year, OSU’s second consecutive NCAA Baseball Championship.

Last year, our baseball team won the PAC -10, then battled through six elimination games to capture the NCAA College Baseball World Series. Some called it a miracle season.

At the start of this season, the Oregonian and others speculated the baseball team would be challenged to do well after losing its two top starting pitchers and star closer. And although the season opener in Hawaii saw the first no hitter for the Beavers in more than forty years, the team struggled to a 10-14 record and a sixth place finish in the Pac-10. They barely made it to the 64 team play-off.

Then they won 10 games in a row to claim a second consecutive NCAA title.

I talk to audiences about our two champion baseball teams because their achievements have brought great renown and acclaim to Oregon State, drawn us thousands of new fans, and made our alumni and friends – and our state – very proud.

I talk about the baseball teams for another, even more important reason – because I believe they are an exemplar of the character, determination, resilience and talent that is the essence of OSU.

I tell people that these teams – like so many of our athletic teams, and so many of our programs – may be a distillation of these qualities, but they are not an aberration.

The evidence for this claim is not only in the two championships.

It is also evident in other extraordinary OSU teams, our faculty and staff.

And, as it turns out, our alumni and friends.

Despite our challenges as an institution, it is irrefutably true that your excellence is being noticed and applauded.

The values that make you and others here so exceptional are being instilled in our students, and these students are carrying these values into the workplace and society.

Our graduates are not simply our most important contribution to the future, they are an extraordinary contribution to the future.

Everyone we celebrate today is a champion and an example for the rest of us.

Let me touch very briefly on three important indicators that others are beginning to understand how amazing OSU is, and how many extraordinary individuals make up this community.

The first is the past legislative session.

I am not going to tell you we are out of the woods.

I can tell you that the state, and more importantly the state’s citizens, finally recognized that state support for higher education was heading in the wrong direction.

The legislature took several key steps, for which we are very grateful.

• There was an 18.2% increase in overall OUS funding, the first increase in many years. We owe a great debt of gratitude to Governor Kulongoski for his leadership on this, and to the many legislators and supporters who worked hard to begin a process of reinvestment in higher education.
• Funds were made available to increase faculty salaries and expand enrollment.
• We received almost the entire budget request for ETIC and new funding for the statewide service programs, and additional funds earmarked for the Cascades Campus in Bend.

Most noteworthy, I believe, is the growing recognition – articulated by citizens, leaders, legislators, and the media – that higher education is critical to this state’s future.

I think this recognition remains particularly invaluable for OSU as a powerful research and educational engine for economic development and social progress.

We heard a lot less this past year about higher education as an expense and a lot more about its value as an investment in our collective future.

This is a huge change. We need to appreciate it; we need to nurture it; and most of all we need to meet its expectations as fully as we can.

Second is our continued ability to attract and retain excellent teachers and scholars – the people in this room, and your colleagues.

Faculty and staff are not coming here or staying here because of OUS’ pay scales; or to hear me talk; or even because we have back-to-back national baseball championships.

Nor does the National Science Board fly to OSU for their one ”outside the beltway” meeting a year because they want a trans-continental flight experience.

They come to OSU in order to work and partner with you and your colleagues, because they see excellence in learning, scholarship and outreach and engagement on every level throughout this university.

We say our goal is to make a difference for Oregon, for the nation, and for the world.

It is irrefutably true we are doing this. Just look at the impact of our programs and the discoveries we have reported in the past few months.

If you examine the media tracking we do, you will see this impact is being recognized widely.

Through your efforts, you have doubled the number of citations OSU is getting in the national media over the last few years.

And the prominence of the outlets carrying OSU news has also increased significantly.

The long-term benefits will be substantial.

Last but hardly least is the progress of our capital campaign, which we will kick off publicly on October 26th at 4 p.m. in LaSells Stewart Center.

Without stealing thunder from what will be a great event, I will tell you we are over $300 million dollars, we have more than 50 commitments of a million dollars or more, we are reaching critical targets in terms of infrastructure, and we are seeing great support.

People – friends, alumni, corporations and foundations – want to be a part of the OSU team.

And they want, literally, to help push us to the “national championship” level in all we do.

I realize, as I always have, that for many of you this sounds like a stretch, given what we have been facing.

In response, and in closing, I would remind you that northern teams do not win college baseball national championships. All the experts are certain of this.

And, given the parity in talent across the nation, it is nearly impossible for any team to win back-to-back baseball championships these days.

And certainly no team is going to so thoroughly dominate the World Series that they go undefeated, trailing for only one inning throughout the entire event.

It should not be possible, but it was done.

Extraordinary things happen when good people commit, and count on each other, and focus on the goal.

We have a model for excellence in the baseball teams that were shaped by this special community.

We have hundreds of other models for excellence across the university in our faculty and staff and our programs.

We honor some of our heroes today.

The most important thing to remember, as we honor these worthy colleagues, is that you are all on a great team, and we are at the beginning of a great run. As I have said on other occasions, I truly believe that the very best is yet to come for this wonderful university and this amazing place.

Thank you for all you do to promote excellence and success at Oregon State University.

Welcome to Oregon State University and this important summit.

Let me start by thanking Rob Bole and One Economy for co-sponsoring this event with OSU.

Special thanks are also due Rey Ramsey, CEO of One Economy, both for his leadership of this important organization, and for the fact that One Economy selected OSU for this event, the first of its type they have sponsored in the nation.

Curt Pederson, OSU’s Vice Provost for Information Services, also deserves recognition for his help with this conference, and indeed for all the contributions he makes here and around the state.

There is a reason this university is a technological leader in fields like open source software, and Curt is behind a lot of what we are accomplishing.

Recognition is also due Scott Reed, head of the OSU Extension and Jon Dolan, Associate Director of Network Services, who helped organize this summit.

*   *   *

Not a lot of people know – or would necessarily believe, I suppose – that at one point in my career I was the first CIO at Ohio State. I was told that CIO stood for Career Interrupting Opportunity

This was back in the early 1990s.

Under orders to consolidate academic computing and administrative computing from the president of the university, the vice presidents decided after a year of meeting twice a month that the university needed a CIO but they did not trust anyone of their group to manage the consolidated enterprise fairly.

So they told the president to appoint me, figuring that I would be fair and do the least amount of harm to their separate interests.

It was a great learning experience for me.  I was smart enough to talk with every information technology person on campus and to know that the central staff and the distributed staff had to get past the us and them mentality and work together. I found the best people I could to help me put a plan together and hired someone who actually knew what to do next. I guess it worked out, the first three new leaders I hired are now the CIOs at UCLA, USC and Ohio State.

This experience gave me a deeper understanding of how powerful information technology could be in transforming the way we communicated within the academy and throughout society. Young people today have no idea what the term “telephone tag” means.

That experience and my background as an economist who studied international trade, development, and finance alerted me to the real possibility that the information technology divide could widen the gap between the have and have nots within our nation and among nations around the world.

And where some institutions would have access, and others would not.

And to a significant extent, this is what happened.

As One Economy notes, while most sectors of our society are now reaping the benefits of technology, many low-income people and communities have not enjoyed the access, convenience and efficiency the digital age provides the more fortunate among us.

One of the wonderful things about One Economy, today’s sponsor, is that it is not simply making social commentary on this divide but systematically undoing this pattern.

One Economy is making the power of wireless technology, and the access to information it supplies, available to many more of our citizens.

This is critical to our democracy, and it is critical to engaging all our citizens in the opportunities offered in America.

Making wireless information technology available to low-income communities will help secure economic prosperity and social well being for these communities, and for Oregon and the nation.

We face critical challenges globally, and we need everyone’s participation and everyone’s talents.

This is one reason why One Economy’s Digital Connectors program is so noteworthy.

By identifying talented young people, immersing them in technology training, and helping them build their leadership and workplace skills, they are leveraging their programs profoundly.

It’s a great model for all of us.

This summit provides a means to accelerate this process in Oregon, a goal that is important to all of us.

I’d like to make one other point, and it has to do with OSU’s role.

One Economy describes their mission as “maximizing the potential of technology to help low-income people improve their lives and enter the economic mainstream.”

As Oregon’s land grant university, OSU recognizes this as part of our mission – and our responsibility – as well.

It is one reason why we were created.

It explains why when President Lincoln signed the Morrill Act into law in 1862 establishing the land grant system, he called us “the people’s colleges.”

What we are coming to understand more and more – and OSU is a national leader in this among all American universities – is that information technology can be a remarkably powerful tool, on a worldwide basis, for helping people improve their lives.

This explains why our faculty and students have built the OSU open source lab into the largest academic open source program in the nation.

On average, 4 million pieces of open source software are downloaded from the Open Source Lab every day, so this is a very substantial operation

The opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives through the dissemination of new information technology is a 21st century adaptation of the principle that land grant universities are created to make a positive difference in the lives of those they serve and it is why we are involved with One Economy, and why you are here today.

And why we are one of the two academic institutions in the country formally involved in the One Laptop Per Child project, which will deliver 100 million laptops at a cost of about $100 each to impoverished children in eight countries next year.

Incidentally, the other university working on this project with us is MIT.

It is the reason we are partnering with the Mayo Clinic and others on open source health information systems.

And why we have developed – and use here – numerous open source software tools that save us, and the other educational and governmental institutions that use them, millions of dollars in technology costs.

These include tools like “Maintain” a free open source network management program developed at Oregon State University and used by institutions nationwide.  This tool has the capabilities of its proprietary counterparts.

It also has the capacity to grow and expand in new ways with minimal effort and cost, through the shared efforts of users on an international basis.

In the same way, One Economy is now moving internationally, bringing the multiple benefits of wireless technology to people around the globe.

This is essential work.  It is very exciting.

And it has an enormous potential to make really significant differences in people’s lives.

So, you are engaged in a very meaningful process for Oregon, and really for the world.  I hope your time today is rewarding, and I wish the best in your work.