STATE OF THE UNIVERSITY ADDRESS TO THE FALL FACULTY
MEETING TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1997, 3:30 P.M.
OPPERMAN MUSIC HALL

The University Constitution places on me the duty to report to you on the state of the 
university.  Given the present situation, it is a pleasure to do so.  This university was 
originally created in 1851 when our nation was only 75 years old.  

In 2001, we will celebrate our 150th anniversary, so we have now 
existed for almost two thirds of the history of this country and ours has been a marvelous 
history.

Sponsored by farsighted civic leaders and placed in a frontier settlement only twelve years 
after Florida became a state, we were nurtured by faculty and caring citizens through the 
difficult days of Civil War and Reconstruction and came into the early years of this century 
as a fine women's college noted for the excellence of its faculty and its high academic 
standards.

With the end of World War II, we returned to the coeducational status we had enjoyed before 
1905 and entered the dynamic world of post-war higher education.  The GI Bill of the 1940s 
and the post-Sputnik expansion of the 1950s left this campus larger, more comprehensive, and 
more energetic.
While I regret the scars left by the architects of the International School, we owe to this 
great period of growth much of the excellence which now characterizes the Florida State 
University.

We have learned about the stuff of which our predecessors were made through stories about the
steadfastness of Frances Eppes, the courage of Conradi, and the determination of faculty 
and students during Depression years when students' families brought produce to the university 
to pay tuition.  We have known of the great leadership of Doak Campbell and of his dreams 
when a marvelous women's college suddenly became a comprehensive research university.  

Today, faced with great growth in our state, we are reminded that, in 1953, President 
Campbell assessed our growth and boldly predicted that FSU would have ten thousand students 
by the year 2000.

We have watched the struggles which all universities underwent in the days of the Civil Rights
movement and the anti-war movement of the 1960s, and we shed the past of a segregated 
institution, transforming FSU so well that we have been recognized nationally for efforts to 
achieve a diverse workforce.  We have watched a chain of good, strong leaders build our 
academic programs into national prominence, and we have seen our athletic programs grow and 
prosper. 

In looking back and thinking about the accomplishments of the professors who have built and 
sustained FSU over the years, I find it particularly important to think about those who came 
here in the late 1940s and the early 1950s -- the legendary "49ers" and those who followed 
them -- the faculty who had the vision of building a great research university.  This has 
been the sustaining vision of Florida State University for the last fifty years.

In 1994, about three months after I became president, FSU received its designation as a 
Carnegie Foundation Research I university and thereby became one of only eighty-eight 
universities at that level in American higher education.  
A recent study of American research institutions published this year by Johns Hopkins Press 
ranks FSU 54th among all American research universities, ahead of many other institutions, 
including the University of Florida, which have had comprehensive university status much 
longer than FSU.

In a very clear and dramatic way, the Carnegie I designation signaled that FSU had achieved 
the goal which had been driving it since it was reorganized in 1947.  In a very real sense, 
the goal of the "49ers" has been achieved.  The coincidence of having the High Magnetic Field 
Laboratory dedicated a short time later only underscored this recognition.

In the three and one half years I have been President, I am happy that we have sustained and 
consolidated the achievements which FSU has made over the last fifty years.  Our Golden 
Anniversary celebration last year was a grand occasion to reflect on all that has been 
accomplished.

That celebration is behind us and we have but one more event to mark our coming of age as a 
major research university.  This Spring, we will recognize the success of our first capital 
campaign.

We can already talk about planning that event because our campaign, hobbled by a number of 
problems including changes in leadership of the University and the Foundation,  has succeeded.  
Our original goal of $200 million was surpassed well ahead of schedule and we added an 
additional $50 million to our goal during our 50th anniversary year.

Though the campaign will not end until December 31st, I am pleased to tell you that we have 
already passed the $250 million goal with $278 million in gifts and commitments reported to 
date.

Moreover, we have achieved an increase in our endowment which, though still modest for a 
university of our ambition, is substantially improved.

In January 1994, our endowment was $50 million dollars.  Thanks to George Langford, our 
Campaign Chair, to Gus Stavros and the leadership of the Foundation, to Jeff Robison, 
Paula Fortunas, and the Foundation staff, thanks to the volunteers, thanks to our donors 
and our deans, thanks to Cliff Hinkle and the Foundation Board members who redirected our 
investment strategy, we can now report that, today, our endowment stands at $130 million, 
an increase of 160% from January 1994.  By the end of the campaign, we should be able to 
report that we have tripled the endowment in four years.

Currently our endowment includes: 25 Eminent Scholar Chairs for a total of $30,046,993; 36 
Professorships for a total of $5,443,807; and 234 Endowed Scholarships of $10,000 or more 
for a total of $45,997,612.

To that enrichment, we will soon see the impact brought about by significant new resources -- 
the DeVoe Moore program in Public Choice, the Pat Winthrop-King program in Modern Languages, 
new initiatives in history, law, chemistry, and business.

This is not just money that has helped us paint in the lines on a campaign chart -- 
it means that we have the resources to bring eminent scholars in classics and music, that we 
have professorships in economics, and that we have scholarships to bring bright and needy 
students to our campus.

With a strong effort over the next four months, particularly by our professional schools -- 
business and law --  we could report a four-fold increase in four years.
                              
                                     * * *

	What lies ahead for Florida State University?

	We have maintained the high quality of our teaching and the academic standards which 
marked Florida State College for Women.  It is not acceptable for FSU faculty to do less 
than exceptional teaching.

	We have completed the long term goals of those who have brought us to the top ranks of 
research institutions and that idea is embedded in the culture of the Florida State University.  
We have an expectation of exceptional contract and grant activity by our faculty -- we will not
betray the hard work of the "49ers" by slacking in our research mission.

	We have now entered the private fundraising field, and it is not acceptable for the 
administration, the deans, or the alumni to neglect this source of support for our goals.  
These are all now established parts of our culture.

	Now that we have achieved so much in such a short time and have arrived at the high 
plateau of American higher education, what lies ahead?

                                          * * *

	It is apparent to all of us that any answer to that question must consider the impact 
of technology.  We cannot pick up a newspaper, turn on our television set, or listen to the 
radio without learning of new breakthroughs in technology.  Yet, when the search committee 
was considering the candidates for president of FSU four years ago, the words World Wide Web, 
Internet, and Information Superhighway were just breaking into our vocabulary.  Our world, 
which is so rooted in medieval traditions, is now offered new opportunities, threatened with 
new danger.

	A recent article in Atlantic Monthly by the author Hans Koning reflected on the 
Twentieth Century and he observed, "Our century is ending in an abundance of new technology, 
but it is largely about sending, storing, and retrieving information at lighting speed, not 
about creating."

	That is not true on this campus.  FSU is a creative place.  We owe much to the liberal 
arts traditions of Florida State College for Women and its predecessors, much to the young 
scientists who came to Tallahassee fifty years ago to build a great research university, 
and much to the way in which our schools of Visual Arts and Dance, Theatre, Film, and Music 
combine the best of the conservatory approach with a liberal arts education.

	Talking to other university presidents, I often realize that we are very near unique in 
our broad commitment to a creative environment.  That aspect of FSU makes it a more enjoyable 
place to work and this happy circumstance makes us better prepared to face the future.

	Today, I will not focus on the creation of the new technology although we have 
professors, students, and graduates who have contributed greatly. 
Instead, I want to talk about how we can continue our creative efforts on the work of 
discovery and dissemination of knowledge, and use technology where it can help us.

	Because we live in a creative community, we have an opportunity to use new technology in 
ways to expand our reach.  Because our faculty are creative, they have far less to fear from 
technology.  Because of this creativity, we can see that extraordinary things are already 
happening on this campus.  Let me name a few:

	  The College of Information Studies redeveloped its distance learning masters program 
and has offered that program at six locations in Florida.  All members of the Information 
Studies faculty taught in this program.  In the same year, the college opened its 
undergraduate program in Information Studies and it has doubled in size this year.

	  The College of Communications has opened the first graduate program in interactive 
communications in the country;  

	  Finance and Administration's continued development of technology such as the FSUCard, 
so clearly the best smart card on any campus, is being marketed by a new company organized to 
further develop smart card technology and located in Tallahassee.

	  Thanks to the initiative of Dean Foss and a graduate student, Eddie Zaremba, and the 
support of the Provost, we have developed a highly successful on-line student advising system.

	  Students have been provided access to e-mail, the internet, and to several databases.  
Ask yourself this question:  What other institutions offer their students so much access to 
technology without charge?  And, for a more startling answer, ask this question:  As of today, 
is there any university in the world which offers all its students more access to database 
research than does Florida State University?

	  This fall, there is a newly developed template which provides all faculty the use of 
the Web for all courses, facilitating the distribution of educational materials, 
communications with students, and, in time, distance learning.  

	  Faculty have used new technology to produce exceptional new courseware.  I hope you 
have a chance to see the CD-ROM for middle school students which helps them learn ecology and 
scientific method in fields as diverse as geography and music.

	  Incredible faculty initiative has gone into developing Web-based courses.  I have 
collected only a few and there are many others under development.

	  Even our alumni have used technology for innovation and the recently organized 
Seminole Internet Club appears to be the first alumni club in the country organized around 
the internet.

	  The FSU-British Open University Resource and Production Center will open tomorrow.  
When this Center is fully operational, it will provide the Open University materials and 
the technical assistance for faculty who want to work in courseware development with teams 
drawn from OU, FSU, and other institutions.

	  Another first is the appointment of Dr. David Hawkridge, the director of graduate 
programs for the Open University, as the first eminent scholar in distance learning in the 
United States.  (David is with us today and I hope you have an opportunity to meet him.)

	Our faculty have not been frightened by technology.  They have seized the creative 
potential and have helped advance the frontiers of technology application.  It remains for 
us to develop a coherent university strategy to use emerging technology for the benefit of 
our students and society.

                                        * * *

	In these most interesting times, it is easy to be mesmerized by technology and, although 
I am proud of the leadership which FSU faculty and staff have shown in this area, I am also 
proud to report that we have not been so enchanted by the vast blue sky of cyberspace that we 
neglect the basic principles which have sustained universities over the centuries.

	We understand that there are real values to maintain as a community of scholars and much 
of our attention has gone to revitalizing our campus and the programs it offers -- and, in 
this, we have done much in an old fashioned way.

	  Our graduation rate remains the best, by far, in the university system.

	  Our faculty have continued to focus on our teaching mission.  Class size has not 
grown at FSU and senior faculty are designing small class seminars for lower division students 
to be introduced in the fall.

	  We have reopened historic Bryan Hall as a living/learning center.  Based on my contact 
with students, it appears to be a great success.  We are building on this success as we plan 
to renovate all our historic dorms to provide additional living/learning opportunities for our 
students.

	  We continue to care about diversity.  Over twenty percent of our students are from 
minority populations.  And, in faculty and staff hiring, we see more minorities in positions 
of 
authority at FSU.

	  Our Director of Athletics is diligently building a comprehensive athletic program 
which will include increased opportunities for women to compete in intercollegiate athletics 
and has instituted new programs for leadership and life skills.

	  Recognizing that this generation of students will be impacted by the global economy 
in more profound ways than their predecessors, we continue to expand our international 
programs.  It is now difficult to remember all the places where we operate and have year-round 
and summer programs in the Americas and in Europe -- there are fourteen including year around 
programs in Panama, London, Florence, and Spain.  Over the next few years, I expect to see 
that list expanded because we have learned that study abroad can be a transforming experience.

	  We are building new student intramural fields and, in the process, changing the face 
of our community.

	  With support from Mayor Maddox and the City of Tallahassee, we are embarking on a 
major program of  beautification and safety for the campus and its surrounding areas.

	  As we watch the Pepper Building under construction and the renovation of the Hecht 
House and Sandels near completion, we are reminded that these all house vigorous programs in 
Gerontology, Human Sciences, and Criminology -- strong programs which will only be stronger
 with their new facilities.

	  Our office of Student Affairs continues to facilitate community service.  The Center 
for Civic Education is operational.  The Service Transcript idea is catching on with our 
students.  In cooperation with the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Jon Dalton's office led an 
innovative program called College Leadership Florida for student leaders here and at other 
universities.

	  Our faculty research efforts continue and faculty are now expending in excess of $100 
million annually in contracts and grants.  The average faculty member is responsible for 
$97,705 in contracts and grant activity each year, a sum much greater than the average faculty 
salary.

	  Our recently formed FSU Research Foundation has greatly benefited from the income from 
licensing, particularly from the revenue from Taxol,  an invention by Dr. Robert Holton.  
We now rank seventh in the country in the receipt of income from intellectual property, and we 
have begun an aggressive program of technology transfer for the first time in our history.

	  The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory's large increase in federal funding and 
its cooperation in the start up of the new company EURUS, has, in turn, helped us attract 
other significant economic development activity to Innovation Park.

	These accomplishments and many I have not mentioned should not be news to you or to our 
alumni and supporters.  We have developed new means of communicating with our various 
constituencies and these include FSUTimes, a regular news feature on public radio, a new 
cable television channel, and substantial time each week on the state's leading cable network, 
Sunshine Network.  The Communications Group have still had time to take the leadership in 
helping roll out a new LEXIS~NEXIS product, UNIVerse, which was Beta tested on this campus 
and is now available to all students, faculty, and staff.

	Technology has been embraced by our faculty and administration and its innovative uses 
are all around us and yet we have not been distracted from our established agenda.

                                      * * *

	I have been asked frequently to state a grand vision for FSU, and I have always 
declined.  It is not that I have no personal thoughts, but I have a real sense that any 
goals set by a single person in a university cannot endure and a process driven by the 
ideas of only a single person will mean that the university will lurch from program to 
program as the university leadership changes.

	Instead of an individual plan, our creative community must have a consensus for us to 
build upon, as we address the mundane daily questions.  We need to be able to say to political 
leaders and to donors what it is that we want to become.

	We need to develop the idea, the plan which allows us, as a community, to test our 
decisions.  We are in a very turbulent time for higher education.  If there were no external 
pressures for planning, we would be wise to assess our place in the changing environment, 
but, of course, there are external pressures.  

	The Board of Regents is conducting a ten year master plan this year, and, if we are 
going to participate in that process in any meaningful way, we need to have a plan.  The 
City of Tallahassee is conducting a planning activity, and, if we want to work productively 
with our local government, we must cooperate in that process.

	Finally, though we are not yet through with our first capital campaign, we know that 
we must start our planning for the next campaign and that will require that we prepare our 
case statement -- our articulation of what we will do with increased private support.

	For all of these reasons, I have been spending time with the Faculty Senate Steering 
Committee and the Council of Deans and others in an attempt to fashion a planning process, 
and I would like to conclude my remarks with an outline of that process as I see it developing.

	Late last month, I asked Dr. Carl Moore, a respected facilitator, to visit campus and 
talk to faculty, deans, staff and administrators.  He has given us advice on ways that we can 
run an open planning process and I will visit with the Council of Deans, the Faculty Senate 
Steering Committee, and the Council for Research and Creativity to talk about the plan.

	It is complicated to think through because a university has multiple constituencies -- 
all must be involved in our planning.  We want to have business leaders and major donors to 
help us with our next capital campaign and this plan will form the base for that campaign.  
We want to have political leaders who will help us achieve our plan.  We will want to 
coordinate with the City of Tallahassee and Leon County and make certain that our views of 
the future can work together.  We must work with the Board of Regents as they complete their 
ten year master plan.

	Most of all, we will want to know that our faculty and staff have the full opportunity 
to be heard in any planning process.  

	Our goal is to achieve the consensus which can drive this university in a most critical 
time of its history.

	With the right planning, with the wisdom of our senior faculty, and the energy and 
ambitions of our newest assistant professors, I have no doubt that the culture of creativity 
and the great traditions of this university will allow us to create a design for our future.

	I am also confident that our alumni and donors, those legislators who value quality in 
education, will join with Chancellor Reed, Chairman Uhlfelder, and the Board of Regents in 
support of our efforts.

	Each of these constituencies is critical to the future and each must be involved in the 
planning process.

	Moreover, we must make certain that our planning process is invigorated through 
participation by knowledgeable people from outside the FSU community.  To that end, we will 
invite distinguished educators, civic, and business leaders to participate in our conversation. 

	Our first distinguished academic visitor will be Dr. Frank Rhodes, the former President 
of Cornell, who will be on campus September 29 - October 1.

	We hope that all parts of the University will be involved in those conversations.  
Moreover, I hope that all our colleges and departments will consider their own planning 
exercises so that we can be ready for the submissions to the Board of Regents and so that we 
can make the case for support to our potential donors and the legislative leadership.

	We are at a point in our history and in the history of higher education when we 
desperately need the best thinking of this faculty on how this University can continue to 
achieve excellence in a dynamic and rapidly changing environment.  If we do our job, the 
dreams we dream and the plans we make will not comfort us but, instead, will challenge us.

	Recently, I read the Stephen Ambrose book, Undaunted Courage, about the Lewis and Clark 
Expedition which was commissioned and carefully instructed by Thomas Jefferson.  I was 
particularly drawn to the beginning of that story.

	On May 11, 1792, Captain Robert Gray's ship was anchored at the mouth of a river when 
he took out her sextant and took readings.  These measurements led to a calculation of 
latitude and longitude at the mouth of a river on the Pacific Coast of what we now call the 
United States.  Captain Gray named the river after his ship, Columbia.

	To many people who learned of this news and made the calculation, the implications were 
startling.  The United States, largely nestled on the Eastern Seaboard, but with claims 
extending 1,000 miles west from the Atlantic, was having a great deal of difficulty in holding 
together this fragile new country and the very principles of rebellion which led to the 
American Revolution -- no taxation without representation and local autonomy -- would make it 
difficult to establish a government which reached from ocean to ocean.  The Whiskey Rebellion 
of 1794 illustrated how difficult such governance would be.

	Anyone familiar with the difficulties of communication and with the lessons of history 
would know that it was unlikely that a single country could span a vast continent and any 
thinking person had to be skeptical whether a democratic society could be held together over 
that vast space.

	This distance was, after all, 3,000 miles.  And that distance was extraordinary in an 
age when no one could envision transportation any faster than by horse.

	Jefferson was not discouraged.  He saw the incredible opportunities of spreading the new 
system of democracy all the way to the Pacific, and he commissioned the Lewis and Clark 
Expedition.

	Merriwether Lewis and Thomas Jefferson carefully planned this great adventure -- 
collecting maps and reading books and journals.  They did not know fully what to expect, and 
they were guided by the simplest of objectives.  They sought to discover a route of commerce 
that would allow the new nation to develop westward and span the continent.  And they sought 
to learn as much as they could along the way.
	In all the voyages of great discovery--Columbus, James Cook--the explorers prepared 
themselves as best they could from what they knew.  They attempted to plan to equip themselves 
properly and to carry the most modern instruments of navigation so that they could locate 
their place on the globe during their exploration.

	As I think about these "voyages of discovery," it seems to me that higher education is 
about to undertake a similar voyage of discovery, and the institutions which are most likely 
to prosper during this period of time will probably be those which do the most careful 
planning and provisioning and yet are the most adventurous -- those which boldly try to 
explore the uncharted territory.

	Those institutions with some claim to distinction but without the will to prosecute that 
claim will sit, as did France and Spain and Britain, when Jefferson launched Lewis and Clark 
on their historic mission.

	It is true that Jefferson had a great advantage in the exploration and opening of the 
West, in part because the United States had a greater population on this continent, but that 
advantage was no greater than this University holds today on the eve of the Information Age.  
No other school in the Southeast has all our assets -- Information Studies, the Supercomputer, 
Interactive Communications, an under-utilized Educational Services operation, traditions of 
education reform in Learning Systems Institute, many programs in creative areas -- writing, 
film making, theatre, music, dance, visual arts -- which can be exceptionally important in 
this new era if only we will plan and work collegially.

	As I think about the colleges and universities which are equipped to embark on a great 
journey in this era of new technology, I can think of very few so well situated as our 
University.  The disciplines assembled at Florida State University may not have been that 
critical in the Age of Agriculture or even during the Industrial Age, for we have but lately 
added a vigorous Engineering School.  

	But, in the Information Age, we have notable advantages, if only we will use them, and 
the most important advantage is our culture of creativity.

                                      * * *

	This concludes my report.  Please join us in the Moore Lounge for refreshments and 
entertainment by Wen Zeng, a doctoral candidate in piano performance.