University of Illinois

Speeches and statements

Remarks to the Annual Meeting of UIUC Faculty

President B. Joseph White
The Levis Faculty Center
Monday, September 11, 2006, 2 p.m.

Thank you. You and your colleagues make the University of Illinois what it is. I am grateful for your wonderful work advancing your disciplines and educating our students.

We last spoke a year ago in the context of your annual faculty meeting and my inaugural address.

A year later, much has happened:

We have high aspiration strategic plans for the University and our campuses, colleges and major units.

• The Compact for financial support of the University has been enacted and our goal for Year One of the "5/500 plan" ($100 million/year for five years) was achieved.

• We developed and the Board of Trustees approved a plan and funding to fix our $800 million deferred maintenance problem in the next ten years.

• Important leadership appointments were made, including Provost Linda Katehi, Dean Ade Adesida, and other deans and directors.

In truth, only you and your colleagues can assess in detail the kind of year we've had at the level that really matters — the individual faculty and department and school and college level. Only you know what you've accomplished in your teaching, research, scholarship, books and articles, and other intellectual and professional efforts. I hope you've had an excellent year.

Looking ahead, what are the major challenges we face as a University? There are five I want to highlight. They come from the strategic plans and from the Chancellors and me.

• First, we must develop UIUC into the nation's pre-eminent public research university, as Chancellor Herman has challenged us to do.

• We must develop UIC into one of the nation's premier urban research universities. I think there is a golden era ahead for UIC, the convergence of a great city, a great neighborhood, a great campus of the University of Illinois.

• We must position the U of I Medical Center and health sciences colleges for the next quarter century.

• We must develop UIS into one of the nation's top five small, public liberal arts universities.

And, we must successfully launch the Global Campus to offer a high quality, highly affordable and accessible U of I education to thousands of Illinoisans and others who cannot spend an extended time on one of our campuses.

In addition, we must ensure we have the leadership, resources and the people required to achieve these goals.

Let me note that Job One for the University of Illinois is to pursue Chancellor Herman's articulated aspiration to make the UIUC the pre-eminent public research university in America . This is a very tall order but it is the proper aspiration, the only one worthy of our history and ourselves.

The reason it is Job One is that if we achieve our other four goals and allow UIUC to erode, in either absolute or competitive terms, we would be guilty of poor stewardship of a great campus carefully built by the citizens of Illinois and those who came before us over the last 140 years. This is not acceptable.

It will take a very strong partnership among individual faculty members, their departments, schools and colleges, and the campus and university leadership to achieve measurable progress in the years ahead toward making UIUC pre-eminent. Together, we will have to recruit and develop extraordinary faculty colleagues, encouraging and enabling them to do their best work. We will need to migrate intellectual work and education within and across disciplinary boundaries to ask and answer the most important questions in the arts and humanities, science and the professions. We will have to secure resources at every level — from the individual faculty member to the University as a whole — to fund achievement of our aspirations.

Each of you has to decide how you feel about this enormous challenge. For me, it is highly energizing because I love challenges, both institutional and personal.

Since this is a meeting of the Urbana faculty, I will not comment on the challenges facing our Chicago and Springfield campuses and the U of I Medical Center except to say that the success of each of our campuses will contribute to the success of the entire University, in terms of fulfilling our mission, enhancing our reputation, and building public trust and confidence in the University of Illinois.

Let me now say a word about the Global Campus. I think it is easy to overcomplicate this matter, so let me keep it simple.

There are thousands — tens of thousands — of people who want and need a quality university education who, because of personal circumstances, will never have the privilege or opportunity of spending an extended period of time on our campuses, earning an education in the traditional way. The fact that more than 85% of Americans graduate from high school and fewer than 30% of Americans have college degrees is a gap we can't ignore. So is the fact that two-thirds of high school graduates continue on in school today but only about half are likely to complete college.

This huge education gap in America — and in Illinois — between high school graduation and getting a college education is dashing individual dreams and hopes and threatening America 's international competitiveness.

I think that we at the University of Illinois need to do something about it. I think we should strive to be the national leader in developing and delivering high quality, highly affordable and accessible education from a distinguished university.

The reason is that doing so is completely consistent with our mission as a great, public, land grant, research university. Creation of the Global Campus is a logical next chapter in the U of I story that began with the Morrill Act and saw the building of this great campus, the development of our presence in Chicago through the medical campus, Navy Pier, the Circle Campus, and UIC, and most recently the addition of the Springfield campus to the U of I family.

The Global Campus is about mission — the mission that brought all of us into education as our life's work. It's not about revenue or profit, though they matter. It's about linking the knowledge and expertise possessed by our 7,000 faculty with the educational needs of thousands of people who need it, first in Illinois , then beyond.

I think the future of higher education for all students will be a rich mix of in-person and on-line learning. We already see this on our campuses. The purpose of the Global Campus initiative is simply to make the University of Illinois the leader in quality and scale in taking a distinguished university education to thousands of able and motivated people whose life circumstances won't allow them to earn it in the traditional way.

I received a letter from a U of I grad recently who seems to understand perfectly what I am trying to communicate to you. Let me share excerpts with you. Then, I look forward to hearing your comments and questions.

Dear President White:

I read the News-Gazette article about the proposed U of I Global Campus and I thought I'd give you a few ideas. The U of I has been good to me, and I don't want it to fail in anything, particularly the democratization of education.

I was born in Champaign. I went to University High School, Class of '75. I am a U of I alum, graduated Class of '79, Phi Beta Kappa, department honors, Bronze Tablet. I was dirt poor when I did it. Mom was a single mother with two kids, who worked as a clerk at the Admissions office.

My U of I transcript earned me a spot at the University of Michigan School of Law. I practiced law in Alaska for 14 years, and then returned to Michigan to start a new career in education. I now teach high school juniors and seniors economics in a rural area north of Bay City . Forty percent of our kids are on subsidized meal plans, none is rich, and all are trying to find a way to juggle holding a job, keeping food on the table and paying the skyrocketing cost of a college education. Many, if not most, are failing. The people of Standish have been good to me, and I don't want their kids to fail in anything, particularly education.

All this leads to a few observations that might benefit you and the Global Campus.

First, don't be deterred. There are always people who say "it can't be done." . The U of I pioneered computer technology at the same time it pioneered handicapped access. Now that's democratization.

Second, the most likely complaints can be ignored as baseless. All of the traditional classroom experience — lecture materials, assignments, student questions, classroom chats, quizzes and tests — can be handled without great difficulty online.

Academic rigor still is, as always, a function of the individual professor's determination to be rigorous. . The format changes nothing.

Third, there are the tremendous advantages to consider. Online classes could save millions of dollars in facilities. Professors and students can interact at individually convenient times - not mutually convenient times. This means that working students, parent-students, poor students and second-profession students can go to the U of I.

Online classes would give my kids — all kids — the chance to afford, and to earn, a degree offered by an educational institution of the first rank, an opportunity they will typically lack in their own state.

Now back to the students. They must be sure that the diploma they will receive will be one that commands an employer's respect, which means that online classes will have to be at least as demanding as traditional classes. You also need to keep costs down. Students aren't fools. They know that the Internet is a way to dramatically cut costs; they experience that every day in e-commerce.

At this time, few of my students can realistically afford four years at either MSU or the U of M, which is a tragedy. I am hoping they can still get Big Ten quality through this program.

Best of luck to you, for them.

And please hurry.

Shawn (Doc) Holliday
Teacher, Standish-Sterling Central High School
Attorney at law
Lieutenant, Plainfield Township F. D.

That's what the Global Campus is all about. Mission. Outreach. Bringing a quality education to people who really need it.

I believe deeply in the primacy of the faculty and the process of joint governance. I also believe in the power of innovation and the importance of action. On the Global Campus, as in all important matters, we must consult together intensively and constructively while forging ahead. In this regard, I am grateful the Senates Conference recent letter to me expressing their full support for the vision and the goals of the Global Campus, while wisely pointing out areas like governance and quality assurance that deserve further discussion.

In this spirit, I now welcome your comments and questions on this or any topic.

Again, thank you for your wonderful work. You and your colleagues are the heart and soul of the University.

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