Faculty Council Address - October 4, 2007

It Is About Time... and Change

On October 4, 2007, President Gee addressed the Faculty Council in Weigel Hall to celebrate Ohio State and outline his goals for the university.

I thank all of you for being here this afternoon.

It has been said that opportunities are never lost. Someone will take the ones you miss. Last July, Ohio State opened its arms to this prodigal son and offered me an opportunity—a treasure—beyond compare. I return to you with gratitude, with hope, with conviction, and with excitement about the days ahead.

As I look out on all your faces, I realize that it is my great good fortune to know many of you already. For those of you with whom I am not yet acquainted, I hope that this will be the beginning of a long, rich conversation that will take place over the coming years.

Many of those I do not know are new members of our faculty. May I ask those of you who are new to the university this year to please stand to be recognized?

Welcome. Your colleagues and I are delighted that you have chosen Ohio State as your professional home.


Ladies and gentlemen, I have much to say to you this afternoon. I am here with one goal: to celebrate this institution. Your accomplishments define it. They will continue to distinguish it. In the next few minutes, I want to talk to you about this university—about its time, and about its change. I want to acknowledge what you and this university have accomplished, and I want to propose what we can accomplish together.

As you know, I have taken a 10-year sabbatical from Ohio State. In that decade, I have learned a thing or two about being a university president. And in my absence, Ohio State has become a more interesting, more admired, more powerful institution. Naturally, I hope my absence is not the reason for those differences!

Here are just a few of the landmarks that suggest the university's spectacular upward trajectory of the last 10 years.

  • The new freshmen you have just welcomed into your classes are the best-prepared students in Ohio State history. Their average ACT score is 27, compared to 23.9 just 10 years ago.
  • This year also witnessed a spectacular increase in the number of students who graduated at the top of their high school classes. More than half of our new freshmen—52 percent to be exact—were in the top 10 percent of their graduating classes. Last year, that number was 43 percent. And ten years ago, it was 26 percent—exactly one-half of this year's total.
  • Our students of color are staying at Ohio State in record numbers. In fact, the retention rate among these students is virtually equal to our retention rate overall.
  • Our research expenditures have reached an all-time high of $720 million. Ten years ago, it was $289 million, or about a third of today's total. Even so, we have just started. $720 million is but the beginning.
  • Thanks to the Targeted Investments in Excellence program, Ohio State researchers are defining and driving the solutions to some of the most critical of today's scientific, social, and cultural issues.

And let me say something right here. This is an important program that has my full support. I am convinced that the reputation of this institution will be enhanced because of our Targeted Investments in Excellence initiatives.

  • In another measure of our reputation, Ohio State now boasts 127 faculty who have been honored as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, making ours one of the largest contingents of AAAS fellows in the country.
  • Our presence in the community is felt in myriad ways. As just one example, the expertise of Ohio State faculty and graduate students from the Knowlton School of Architecture is helping communities in coastal Mississippi to rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Closer to home, the African American and African Studies Community Extension Center is Ohio State in our city's Mount Vernon neighborhood.

For that matter, citizens in every Ohio county are helped by University Extension training programs that extend the resources of the university to our rural, suburban, and urban communities.

As you can see from even this partial list of accomplishments, Ohio State has an enduring commitment to quality.

That is why I was able to tell the Board of Trustees last July that the university has moved from good to excellent. That is also why we are ready for the next step: the stride from excellent to eminent, the leap from visible to visionary.

Colleagues, my resolve—and my commitment to you—is that together, we will propel our institution forward, faster, further. Much will happen over the next few years. This university will perforce accomplish and advance. It will create and contribute. With time comes change.

Since being honored with the responsibility of Ohio State's presidency, I have met with faculty leadership, all of our college deans, and many other faculty and staff across the campus. Together, we have talked about the direction we will give to Ohio State over the next several years. We have also talked about how we can achieve that direction and what impact we will expect from altering the status quo.

These issues are fundamental to the 21st-century character of this institution. And, as you see, they all have to do with time and change, the words at the heart of our alma mater, the notions at the very center of our university tradition.

Today, I will talk about making the coming years Ohio State's time, about ensuring that this university—over time and with change—will become not merely excellent but also eminent, not just visible but also visionary.

In the coming months, I invite you to debate me, and to disagree with me. I encourage you to do that. I expect you to do that. And after our discussion, we will work together on a common course of action.

Let me begin that conversation today by laying out my six strategic goals for making this institution the best Ohio State possible. Today, I will give you a 10,000-foot snapshot of these goals, with the promise that on-the-ground details will come in later conversations. I have thought about these goals a great deal. I truly believe these are the goals that will continue to spur the momentum of the university, so that it distinguishes itself beyond all measure in the years to come.


First, let us forge one Ohio State University. Let us begin to think of ourselves as the university, not a collection of colleges hitched to a heating plant, or a detachment of departments connected by corridors.

I have said in other settings that we are the most massive intellectual platform in America gathered on one campus.

We unite a stellar liberal arts tradition with professional schools that are second to none and health sciences on the frontiers of medical discovery.

Let us capitalize on that big platform, on that one platform, to make one big, bold statement about The Ohio State University: we are a single-minded institution with world-wide reach. As one Ohio State University, we can shine like a beacon across time and space, across time and change.

I want Ohio State to be the university equivalent of the Great Wall of China: visible to the naked eye from outer space. Like that wall, which stretches some 4,000 miles toward the horizon, I want us to conceive of ourselves horizontally. I want us to define ourselves not narrowly but comprehensively. And that calls for thinking that is no longer intramural but trans-institutional.

What do I mean by "trans-institutional"?

What I mean is a different model of organizing ourselves. We all know how universities are configured. Discipline-based departments are collected into the broader disciplinary units we call colleges.

A lot of well-intended lip service has for years been given to interdisciplinarity, and, frankly, Ohio State is ahead of many other institutions in valuing cross-cutting scholarship. Why, though, does Ohio State find it necessary to have so many centers and institutes—15 new ones in just the last 10 years? Is that to overcome the disciplinary barriers we have created? If so, that is unfortunate because I am a believer in centers and institutes. We need to be about removing barriers, not just overcoming them.

For that reason, I am announcing that we will be establishing the Ohio State Ventures Program. I will work with Provost Joe Alutto, Senior Vice President for Research Bob McGrath, our chief financial officer Bill Shkurti, and others to identify a substantial pool of money that will initiate a dramatic change in university-think. The Ohio State Ventures Program will allow us to inaugurate and sustain the university of the future, the trans-institutional Ohio State University.

I want to make it clear that when I talk about being "trans-institutional," I am not talking about spending endless hours restructuring the university. What I am talking about is creating incentives that encourage the emergence of free-standing new structures that cut across boundaries and make departmental and college borders more permeable.

This redefining of ourselves as a trans-institutional university will mean that scholars from different disciplines can work seamlessly—without worrying about overhead costs and which unit gets credit for what they do.

After 28 years as a university president, I have come to realize that universities must become more nimble and must not be restrained by traditional academic labels. Our future is in differentiation, not in someone else's classification.

You may agree or disagree, but I am telling you that if we have the will and the courage to take the lead, Ohio State can launch the university of the future. We can be either the architect of change ... or its victim. Ohio State can be the visionary that values the trans-institutional as the new norm.

We can start that transition by accelerating the integration of research, teaching, and service across the intellectual life of this university. We need to find ways to recognize faculty for their strengths. Not everyone is equally accomplished as a scholar, teacher, and academic servant; and not every faculty member's professional trajectory will follow traditional disciplinary paths. Thus, we cannot have a horizontal university and have a vertical rewards system.

By that I mean that we must value contributions of all kinds. We must ensure, for example, that the university recognizes the philosopher who joins with the engineer who joins with the physician to develop a medical procedure that saves lives—even if their departments struggle with how to acknowledge their contributions.

Now, with the changes I am proposing, I am not advocating that we forsake altogether the traditions that have brought us to where we are today. No. We simply do not want to be stifled by them.

Fortunately, Ohio State's Academic Plan affirms the uncompromising core values of this university. It will therefore serve as our guidepost as we broaden the paths to intellectual cooperation. Since I have been here, many people have asked me if we will continue with the Academic Plan, or whether we will modify it, or maybe even abandon it altogether.

I will tell you today that we will not abandon our Academic Plan, although, in the coming months, we will develop fresh approaches for accomplishing its goals. Those goals are crowned by this overarching one: that Ohio State will be the premier land-grant research university in the nation. To reach that touchstone, we must all work with common purpose, however uncommon our ways of doing so. That is the reason we must act as one Ohio State.

I want to emphasize that a commitment to being one Ohio State University will never prohibit a commitment to diversity and pluralism. If the Great Wall—to resume that metaphor—was built to keep in and keep out, this institution glad heartedly disseminates its expertise, nurtures its accomplished faculty and staff, and eagerly welcomes all qualified students.

And I do mean all students, which brings me to the second strategic goal that I have as your president: put students first.

Teaching and learning are the most important activities that take place at any college or university. Institutions of higher learning are called that for a reason. So, being student-centered is a fundamental priority for Ohio State.

Some of you may remember that in the mid-1990s I chaired the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities. The heart of institutional concerns, according to the final reports of the commission, should be the student. Our students, when they leave us, must be prepared to negotiate successfully in a world that will bombard them with more information, more perspectives, more everything than anything we know today. With the instant availability of information on the Internet; with instant message and data management on your Blackberry; and with instant access to just about anybody anywhere anytime on your cell phone, the world is at once more knowable and more difficult to sort out.

To that picture, add all of today's new media like pod casts and YouTube and MySpace, and you have a world that is wired to demand instant assimilation, instant interpretation, and instant decision-making. It is a world that is more global, more interconnected, and more interdependent.

The best way to prepare students to be leaders in such a world is to ensure that our one Ohio State University is based on sharing a passion for learning and ideas, valuing a more civil and democratic future, understanding and respecting differences, recognizing and building on commonalities, and holding sacred the right to stand up for one's own beliefs—and the need to stand up for those of others.

Our one Ohio State University also includes the unequivocal obligation to provide access to a diverse population, including low-income and first-generation students who historically have not had an opportunity to experience the American dream. We will welcome students whose differences expand the intellectual vitality of our campus community, and we will provide them all—undergraduate, graduate, and professional student alike—with unique and compelling educational experiences.

Putting students first means making their learning experiences just as horizontal as the rest of the university. We—and they—must understand education as a continuum, not as K through 12, followed by college and perhaps advanced study, followed by the closing of the books forever. On the contrary! We must believe—and we must convince our students—that learning does not stop as soon as they are out of the classroom or out of school. It is a wonderful life-long love affair. Life-long learning ensures that we make ongoing contributions to our communities and enjoy enduring success in society. Learning is K through life.

The revitalized undergraduate curriculum launched this fall prepares students for life-long learning. But we must build on it. We must plan to align curricular structures institution-wide so as to draw to the fullest on the intellectual synergies inspired by our one Ohio State. And then, our undergraduate and graduate curricula must reinforce each other, irrespective of how they reinforce the budget model or individual faculty agendas.

Our intent—our only intent—must be that our curricula serve our students well. And as that happens, we will attract increasingly well prepared undergraduates and graduate students and the most accomplished faculty to teach them. These faculty, in turn, will help us recruit even more accomplished undergraduates and graduate students.

Our recruitment of exceptional graduate students will also be enhanced by the doctoral education review that is being led by Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Pat Osmer. Strengthening our doctoral programs is essential to our university's national and international reputation. It is also fundamental to the basic functioning of this university community. Graduate education and research inform the quality of our teaching and through that, of our undergraduate programs.

So, as you can see, I truly do believe that education is a continuum—and not just for the individual learner, but for the institution as well.

It has been said that research is the mind of the university and teaching its heart. I have also heard it said that research is to teaching as sin is to confession. Without the one, there is not much need for the other. Be that as it may, what do we intend by so rigorously categorizing research, on the one hand, and teaching, on the other? We talk about research opportunities and teaching loads. Think about that.

This kind of rhetoric suggests a university divided, not integrated. Research and teaching are not mutually exclusive; they are mutually inclusive.

To be true to our vision of one Ohio State, we must create a seamless atmosphere in which teaching is seen as a form of scholarship and in which scholarship is understood as a stimulus to teaching. This brings me to the third strategy I want Ohio State to pursue. I want this university to focus on faculty success as never before.

We must do everything we can to retain, attract, and reward world-class teachers and researchers. The previous strategy of putting students first makes it clear why this step is appropriate and necessary. Ohio State's investment in its students is vital to our progress. Just as vital is our investment in you.

There is no doubt that Ohio State is attracting and retaining the best faculty. But in the predatory world of the Academy—and believe me, as one of its chief predators, I know whereof I speak—we have to do still more. We must re-recruit our faculty every day, and then we have to continue to advance the institution by recruiting additional pre-eminent faculty.

I have a personal commitment to recruiting the very best minds. Please count on me to be a full partner in your recruiting efforts. Please call on me to do whatever it takes to help you get the best.

But let me be clear. If we are to be one Ohio State, we must understand that in many areas "best" is not defined by the amount of extramural funding that supports a scholar's work. And so, we have to have reward systems that ensure that we keep the best broadly defined, for we know that your eminence becomes our eminence. Your reputation becomes our reputation. Your success becomes our success.

And with your success comes responsibility. Thus, our focus on faculty success will require a new codicil in the compact between this university and you. Just as Ohio State will do all it can to maximize your professional success, today this institution is calling on you to maximize your contributions to the success of your students, the community, the state, and beyond. I ask this because I believe in you. That means I can ask big things of you—and know that you will far, far exceed expectation.

And let me be quick to acknowledge the considerable contributions of our staff members to the success of each and every one of us. Without their support, we could not accomplish our work. They are full partners in our efforts. Everyone who works here is engaged in our common academic endeavor. It is thanks to our nearly 20,000 staff members working in just as many ways that this university can perform its functions.

Ultimately, then, this university, this one Ohio State, is its people and its programs. In fact, that is why I decided to return to Ohio State—its people and its programs, and the promise they hold for so much more. My aspirations for Ohio State are endless because of my respect for our university family. My expectations of Ohio State are boundless because its programs are prominent in the national arena and on the global stage as well.

As just one example, let me cite the work of our colleagues in the Medical Center. This year, for the 15th consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report recognized Ohio State's Medical Center hospitals among our nation's very best. The magazine cited seven of our medical specialties, including a top-15 ranking for our cancer care and a top-10 ranking for the rehabilitation program. Clearly, Ohio State is poised to be a global leader in the health sciences.

That global aspiration leads me to the fourth strategic goal of my presidency. I want us to recast our research agenda by stimulating new discoveries on the frontiers of research and innovation. We must increase our return on investment in such discoveries. We must promote and sustain external partnerships that have the capacity to transform knowledge and innovation into new technologies and new companies and put them to work for Ohio and its citizens.

Our one Ohio State trans-institutional model in fact encourages partnerships with both public and private entities. And here, let me say that we have no reason to fear partnering with other institutions, for partnerships can lead to exciting new synergies and broader opportunities for all partners.

We must also look with new eyes at how such partnerships can extend our own capacity for innovation. I have already mentioned the Ohio State Ventures Program that will expand research beyond disciplinary tradition, beyond accustomed area and aspect. In addition, I will ask Vice President McGrath to identify still other ways to support projects that might be too daring for external funding.

Let me remind you that innovation takes many forms. Ohio State innovators include the extension faculty member who trains landowners in woodland management, the specialist in consumer behavior who helps businesses market more effectively, and the expert in literacy who helps prepare the next generation of school teachers.

And then there are our colleagues in the liberal arts: the historian who provides us with new understandings of Philip the Second of Spain, the choreographer who devises a new system of dance notation, the political scientist who studies democratization, the poet who causes us to look at familiar phenomena with new eyes.

All of these colleagues play a leading role in keeping Ohio State's crucible of creation bubbling on the front burner of the world. And so, let us celebrate the achievements of our faculty in the languages, fine arts, philosophy, social sciences, and cultural studies. For, in the end, the liberal arts are the defining elements of a university. And their excellence—I would remind you—is not measured by the extramural funding that supports them.

Ohio State is already doing much to encourage discovery and innovation in the laboratory, on our farms and fields, in the economies of the world, and—of course—in the library. I am watching day by day the progress on the renovation of the Thompson Library. This jewel that crowns our Oval will be a model information age facility when it reopens in 2009. It is only fitting that a leading research university like ours have such a library as its geographical and spiritual center.

In today's knowledge society, university-based research has never been more crucial. The public research university has emerged as the nation's primary engine for the production of knowledge. New knowledge enhances economic competitiveness, increases the resources available for addressing the needs of the less-advantaged, and allows for productive careers that support joyous lives. Indeed, the future quality of life in this nation depends on the ability of the research university to remain in the vanguard of development and discovery.

Today, our mission, our imperative to create new knowledge is considered by many to be a sacred social compact. Ohio State must not fail to keep that compact. We must capture the hearts and minds of our fellow Ohioans and demonstrate to them that this university will make a difference in their lives. And then, we must do so. We must not fail to keep our compact with our fellow citizens because all of us have an all-important stake in the future of the state of Ohio and our nation. By the same token, the state cannot be vital and progressive without the leadership of a great university.

That means we must commit to our communities and revitalize our covenants with them. This is the fifth strategic goal I want to talk about today.

We are the nation's largest campus, but we are not a world unto ourselves. We are located in Columbus, in Ohio, in the United States. We are in the service of these larger communities. For that matter, we are in the world's service. Starting today, we must recommit ourselves to those larger constituencies.

Understanding our responsibilities to Ohio taxpayers who want their assets to be used wisely and with a strong sense of stewardship, we must begin to examine our conscience every day and ask ourselves: Are we making a difference in the state and in the world? Are we fulfilling our obligations to the communities that support us? Are we keeping that sacred compact?

Our great land-grant institutions were founded in the finest tradition of American optimism and altruism. An inherent principle of the land-grant institution was that students would return home after receiving their degrees and make their hometowns better places. That is still the idea, only hometowns are now all over the globe. As a land-grant institution, Ohio State must train students not simply to go home, but to go wherever their calling takes them and be leaders, blazing paths that take them beyond the routine, the expected, and the easy.

Through the students it prepares, and through its faculty whose research takes us from middle earth to outer space, the sun never sets on Ohio State, for Ohio State is a truly global university. That means we must act like a global university. We must use our teaching and scholarship to make a difference in the lives of others. That calls on us as never before to internationalize our curriculum; to broaden opportunities for Ohio State students to learn outside our borders; to open our doors still wider to international students and scholars; and to accelerate our efforts to build relationships with institutions throughout the world.

All the goals I have discussed thus far depend on our ability to be agile in action and urgent of purpose. And that brings me to the sixth and final strategic goal I want to discuss today. We must simplify university systems and structures so that they promote our progress.

Let us examine and modify our administrative practices so that The Ohio State University makes the public proud and allows our faculty, staff, and students to thrive. We have to earn their and your trust through an uncompromising focus on performance, through transparency and accountability.

It is just my fourth official day as your president, but I have already heard from many of you that our internal regulations often make it harder for you to do your work. Now, I fully understand that we have the obligation to protect public dollars and that we have to meet fiduciary requirements to do so. But I am convinced that we can meet all of those requirements and still eliminate impediments to our progress.

I am challenging all of us to find ways to simplify our practices, infuse them with common sense, and thereby enhance our ability to be productive. One way we will do that is by reviewing our current budget system. What kinds of incentives, disincentives, and distortions ensue from that system? I ask this question because I do not know the answers. But we will find them.

Provost Alutto and Senior Vice President for Business and Finance Bill Shkurti have already appointed a special faculty-staff committee to review the university's budget process. The committee will study all aspects of our budget. But for me, the fundamental question is how well the budget model supports and facilitates our academic mission. In other words, is our budgetary process aligned with our aspirations so that—as I said a moment ago—Ohio State can be agile in action and urgent of purpose?

Being agile and urgent means thinking more creatively and sharing services and resources where appropriate. I am calling on our deans and vice presidents to do so.

State officials have said publicly and have told me privately they want to support higher education in Ohio. They have also said that they expect us to streamline services and work collaboratively. As the state's acknowledged flagship institution, we have the resources and the ability and the responsibility to lead our sister institutions in this effort. And we will do that.

Still other new budget and administrative models may well be required in order to provide you with the laboratories, the libraries, the studios, and the research support you need to succeed. These models will include increasing revenues through new partnerships with industry and agriculture; new entrepreneurial initiatives, including the commercialization of some research; and new efforts to reduce costs and focus our investments.

We will also dramatically accelerate our private fund-raising efforts. Our upcoming Capital Campaign of $2.5 billion—or maybe more—will provide the margin of excellence as we pursue the strategic goals I have outlined today.

I am already confident of its success because we are a superb investment—with the promise of powerful returns on that investment as we prepare future leaders for our nation and our world; as we create new knowledge that addresses today's most crucial issues; as we serve society's needs by changing lives around the world.


I hope you have had the opportunity to see Ohio State's new public service announcement that is airing on television. It is being shown, for instance, during every Big Ten football game this fall. You will see it, of course, assuming the cable companies and the Big Ten Network can work out their differences!

The theme of the public service announcement is that Ohio State is the university that changes lives. It shows images of people in locations around the world forming our traditional and beloved O-H-I-O. It serves as a reminder that, as I said earlier, the sun truly never sets on Ohio State. This institution is everywhere in the world all the time. And with that kind of global presence comes an enormous responsibility because what Ohio State is about, finally, is doing the world's good.

How do we know if we are succeeding in that noble enterprise? How, you may be asking, will our efforts be affected by all the rhetoric of change you have heard from me this afternoon? What will come of the goals I have proposed to forge one Ohio State University, to put students first, to focus on faculty success, to recast our research agenda, to commit to our communities, and to simplify systems and structures?

My answer to your unspoken questions is that I do not believe that this is rhetoric. I do believe in the power of this magnificent place. I do believe that if we accomplish the goals I have outlined, we will harness our assets in an unprecedented way.

And what are our primary assets? First and foremost, there is you—our faculty, our massive intellectual platform. Then, there is our resource base, already considerable and set to grow. There is our configuration, which we will maximize as one Ohio State University. Finally, there is the unparalleled support of those who love this institution. To that, I add the good will of our public officials and the leadership of our own Board of Trustees.

Ladies and gentlemen, with assets like these, we have every reason to be the nation's leading public research university. Indeed, I cannot think of one reason why we should not be that leader.

With that in mind, I invite you to think with me for just a moment. Together, let us imagine a public university that is a community of learning and unencumbered thought, a crucible of basic and applied research and creative expression, an independent source of moral authority, an institution committed to the public good, and an agent of opportunity. Ohio State will be all that and more, if we trust and value ourselves as an institution—and if we tirelessly show the public why we exist, for we belong to the people.

With time comes change. It is Ohio State's time to be the university of the American dream, an institution worthy of public trust, and the front door to Ohio's future.

This is my thinking on my fourth day, but I will return to you later this year and many times in the future to seek your counsel about implementing the six goals I have presented to you. I look forward to starting that conversation today.

I thank you for your presence and your patience. And I thank you for the honor of serving Ohio State.