State of the University Address

(Watch the address online at Arizona Public Media.)

Thank you, Sarah, and thank you all for joining us this afternoon.

As I look out at this ballroom, I can’t help but think how lucky we are to have so many people who are so dedicated and passionate about this University. To have you here today to celebrate the accomplishments of the year just past and to dream for just a moment about the extraordinary future we can build together, is an inspiration to me and I hope it will prove to be the same for each of you.

I want to say one word about Sarah Smallhouse. It is impossible – completely, totally impossible – to succeed as a university president if there aren’t key people in the community who are willing to step up and commit their heart and soul to help bring your vision to life. Sarah Smallhouse has been one of those key people for me. In particular, her support of Arizona Assurance, which has been one of my highest priorities, has helped give that program life. As a result we are now serving 2,000 students who would never otherwise have had the chance to pursue a college degree.

Sarah, I just can’t thank you enough for helping Arizona Assurance, but also for all the things you do on a daily basis to promote the University of Arizona and help make it a great institution.

As I look at where the University sits in the fall of 2010, I am reminded of Dickens’ line about these being the best of times and the worst of times.

The "worst of times" element is pretty much known to everyone. This is my fourth State of the University address, and I sometimes feel like I’m in the movie "Groundhog Day" because I can’t talk about what is going on at the U of A without addressing the budget, and what I am going to say this year about the budget is pretty much what I said last year, and the year before that, and I think the year before that.

The budget challenge we face is no secret. Over the past four years our nation and particularly our state have endured the deepest, most protracted economic downturn since the Great Depression.

During this period, we have seen our state appropriation cut by nearly one-quarter, going from approximately $440 million to $340 million. The impact of these cuts has been amplified because they have come at a time when we have been asked to grow our enrollment substantially, and indeed we have done just that, setting records for enrollment in each of the past four years.

So the sound bite for this year is that we are being asked by the state to do much, much more, while being given much, much less.

But when it comes to politics, we live in a strange time. We are a deeply divided country and state, where people seem to occupy alternate universes of reality when it comes to dealing with facts. Like so many of you, I was raised as a scientist, and learned early in my career to have a healthy appreciation for data. That’s why I have always loved Daniel Moynihan’s line about people being entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. The facts on our budget are clear and unambiguous, yet we have key legislators who have stated publicly – with straight faces, I might add – that we have been untouched and spared any significant cuts and that this year they are really going to have to slash us.

When you listen to those guys, it’s like "Groundhog Day" meets "A Nightmare on Elm Street"! – Bill Murray meets Freddie Krueger. (And please understand, I’m playing the Bill Murray character – I keep repeating myself, and they keep slashing people with knives!)

As Will Rogers said, I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

The sad thing, though, with some of these legislators is that they have no idea how much they risk our state’s future (and the quality of life for people who live here) when they try to lay waste to the single greatest engine of economic mobility that has ever been created. Because that’s what public higher education in this country is.

When malevolent people talk about wanting to dismantle and destroy great universities, all they achieve is dire consequences for the human condition.

On Tuesday we had an election. The people of Arizona have indicated who they want to lead them, and I have already sent a letter of congratulations to Governor Brewer on her victory. We look forward to continuing what has been an excellent relationship with her and her staff. The voters also expressed their feelings on a range of issues, from hunting and fishing to early childhood education to affirmative action.

Whether your candidate or measure won or lost on Tuesday, I think everyone is feeling a sense of unease and a certain frustration with the way many campaigns were waged and the totally dysfunctional nature of the political process.

At the risk of offending some who may have voted for it – and I sincerely mean no personal disrespect – I want to take just a moment to comment on one of the measures from this election, Proposition 107, because it is symbolic of a bigger challenge that we face at the University in this difficult political age. We have been anticipating its passage for some time, and have been working to address a range of issues it will impact. We will certainly honor the letter of the new law in all we do, but we have nevertheless been frustrated by many misconceptions around it.

Proponents argued that it would eliminate "quotas," but of course quotas have been illegal in the United States since 1978 and the Bakke decision. There were no quotas to eliminate. Indeed, we have never used race or gender as a criterion for admission to the U of A. Instead, what will likely be affected by it are things like programs that are designed to attract more women into engineering (something that business leaders and the scientific community have identified as one of higher education’s most critical priorities), or how to deal with private scholarships, where the donor designated their gift to support a female student or Hispanic scholar or someone from any other group you can imagine.

These are hardly the kind of things that anyone should fear.

This proposition was just one example of a greater challenge that was on display in almost every race in this year’s election, where we saw campaign after campaign designed to divide people, rather than unite them; to play on their fears, rather than inspire their hope. This is a tragic and ultimately futile trend that mires virtually every public policy issue that affects the University. Whether the conversation is around our state funding, tuition, research, enrollment growth, diversity, financial aid or anything else you can imagine, we see this tendency for people to accept a sound bite or bumper sticker solution to what are often extremely complex and highly nuanced issues.

As I look at this most recent election, I can’t help but conclude that what this state needs more than ever is an honest conversation about its future, one that is free from demagoguery and hysteria.

Ultimately, we must find a way to stop the petty and divisive bickering that passes for politics in Arizona.

I believe we need, more than ever in this state’s history, to rally together – as Republicans and Democrats, Tea Party and Libertarians, Independents and Greens – to create opportunity for the citizens of this state, to open doors to social mobility, and to improve the quality of life for the people who live here.

If that has a familiar ring to anyone, it is because that is exactly what land-grant universities were designed to do. During the Civil War – the most divided time in our nation’s history – politicians were still able to come together to pass legislation that spoke loudly to the value of research and outreach and giving students and their families access to great public universities.

While the world may have changed dramatically since Lincoln signed the Morrill Act back in 1862, our underlying mission remains vital, and I believe that this tumultuous and polarized time we live in provides us a rare opportunity – one might even suggest a solemn responsibility – to reinvent the modern land-grant university so that the University of Arizona can serve as a catalyst for uniting our state around the undeniable good that comes through sharing knowledge and discovery.

Everyone knows that Arizona has a lot of problems. I believe the University of Arizona can provide the solutions.

The challenge is now for each of you to make that known to elected officials, community leaders, the business community, parents and potential students. You all touch different segments of our community. Whether you are faculty, staff, appointed professional, student, alum, parent, business owner or concerned community member, you are listening to my words today because you care about this University. Those of us who know what a great university can do for this state can no longer sit quietly and assume that everyone gets it. We all have to speak up with a loud and clear voice to make it known that this state is not going to succeed without a quality research university to drive it forward, and the University of Arizona is that institution.

We are not a "cost" to the state, we are an investment in its future. We currently bring into the state over $600 million in competitively won external research funding, and I hope that each of you will make a pledge to yourself right now to speak loudly and firmly at every opportunity you can as to why that investment matters.

That’s your homework today – to speak up!

Now I want to return briefly to the subject of affirmative action that I brought up earlier (before I got off on my tangent about elections!). I want to be clear on two things as it relates to this subject. First, we will comply with the law, as we always have. Secondly, and I want this understood by everyone: Nothing is going to deter us from our commitment to honor diversity within the University of Arizona. We will vigorously work to ensure that those whose voices are too often ignored or who have been historically underserved by our state will be welcomed at the U of A.

Being able to function in a diverse community – one that features diversity in background, culture, religion, politics, ethnicity – is critical to success in the world we live in. Thus, it is critical to the education we provide. We do not live in a homogenous world, and providing a diverse campus experience for our students will help us ensure the greatness that is expected of the University of Arizona.

Our University has survived tough challenges over the years and been through tough times. We persevered then and will persevere now, whether it’s overcoming budget cuts or anything else that impacts how we run the institution.

This year we have been celebrating the 125th anniversary of the U of A. Many of you know the story of the saloon keeper and the two gamblers who had the foresight to put up a chunk of barren desert land (which at the time was pretty much in the middle of nowhere) so that this great University could come to life. Once the land was secured, it took a number of years to get Old Main built, because money was tight and construction was delayed (I will tell you, some things never change in Arizona!). It wasn’t until 1891, six years after our initial founding, that a 14-year-old girl named Clara Fish signed the registration book in Old Main to become our very first student.

In the years that followed, there were times when it was questionable whether or not this University could continue, times when it didn’t appear there’d be enough cash to pay the faculty or keep the buildings open. During World War II, virtually all the men on campus left for war. During Vietnam, protests rocked the campus. And there was a period when our enrollments declined and the future looked grim.

Much as it does to some people today.

But the University of Arizona has never been about quitting. We didn’t quit back then and we aren’t going to quit now.  When we say "Bear Down," we mean it.

As I said at the beginning, while it may seem like these are the worst of times, it is also the best of times. Just look at where we have come and what we are doing.

In my address last year, I talked about the fundamental underpinning of our mission – that we are ultimately about three things: access, quality and discovery. We want the children of Arizona families to have access to a quality education that is infused with the wonder of discovery. And we want the discoveries that come from our labs to improve the human condition for all the people of this state.

It is a great mission, and one we should all be proud of. And despite the enormous economic challenges that we have faced, we made significant progress on all of those fronts over the past year.

With respect to access, our freshman class this year, at more than 7,000 students, is the largest and most diverse in our history. Our overall enrollment now stands at just about 39,000, and we have committed, through the new Enterprise Plan approved by ABOR, to grow that number over the coming decade to 50,000.

Given the footprint of this campus, we do not have the physical infrastructure to grow much beyond 40,000 here in Tucson. So the growth will occur at off-campus centers and online. Our Transformation Plan began the process of developing these alternative options more than a year ago, and we are making great progress at bringing that to life.

What many people don’t realize is that over the past decade, undergraduate enrollment in Arizona grew by a greater margin than any other state. Between 1998 and 2008, undergraduate enrollment in our state grew by 121 percent. To put that in perspective, California’s undergraduate enrollment grew over that period by 33 percent; Texas by 33 percent; Nevada by 39 percent; Florida by 39 percent. The state that was closest to us was Iowa, which was up by 59 percent – less than half the undergraduate enrollment growth rate of Arizona.

Much of the enormous growth in undergraduate enrollment in Arizona has come from lower-income students, which has made financial aid ever more important in our state.

Sadly, Arizona is one of a very small handful of states that do not have a state-supported financial aid program. That means that the universities must find a way on their own to create aid for worthy students. At the U of A, we have taken 17 percent from our tuition increases each year and put that toward aid.

But there is only so far that we can go with that, making philanthropy ever more important. My top philanthropic objective as president is to fully endow the Arizona Assurance scholarship program.

You heard me speak about it earlier. Those of you who know me know that I speak about it everywhere I go. In its first year, we were able to admit 600 Arizona Assurance scholars, who were able to attend the UA at no cost, with their tuition, room and board and books all covered by the Arizona Assurance program.

The second year we added 700 more students, and this year the number of Arizona Assurance scholars rose by 1,100, bringing the three-year total to more than 2,000 students, who are able to earn the benefits of a U of A degree at no cost to their families.

The Arizona Assurance scholarship program is not targeted ethnically and does not include any breaks in enrollment standards. Arizona is high in poverty and low in educational attainment. The Arizona Assurance program is designed expressly to address those current facts.

Almost all of these students are the first in their family to attend college. Many have succeeded in high school despite growing up in crime-ridden neighborhoods that were overwhelmed with poverty. And these students have succeeded at the UA in extraordinary ways, in large part because of faculty and staff mentors, who have volunteered their time to advise and counsel the Arizona Assurance scholars. This program is focused on the outcomes of academic success and completion of a high-quality university degree – a University of Arizona degree.

This program is opening a door of hope for many who never dared to imagine that they would have a real chance to make something of themselves – to be a college graduate.

But this is a program that desperately needs private support. To those of you who can, I take this opportunity to ask you to think about how much good you could do for this state, and for the lives of young people, by contributing to the Arizona Assurance program. There is a huge need. We have proven that the program works. Now we just need more people to step forward and make a difference.

When it comes to quality at our University – the second critical component of our mission – it is easy to think first and foremost of people like Roger Angel winning the Kavli Prize, which only goes to the finest scientists in the world; or Alfred McEwen designing a new camera to go to Mars; or Joyce Schroeder being awarded a patent for a first-in-class treatment for breast cancer; or for the ARRA funding from NIH to continue the Tohono O’odham Vision Screening Program of Dr. Erin Harvey.

We have, at this University, some of the most distinguished and highly regarded faculty in the world. They are the ones who are unlocking the secrets of our universe and cultivating new levels of understanding to share with students.

Access without quality is an empty promise. I had an interesting experience this summer that reminded me that quality isn’t only the purview of star faculty, and that it percolates through every aspect of our University.

From this past summer and into the fall, as I traveled around the state promoting the University, I was truly amazed by the number of people who went out of their way to offer compliments regarding our staff, faculty and students. From parents who had concerns about their incoming freshman children, I heard praise for the accessibility and supportive manner of our admissions and residence life staff. From students who needed some additional academic guidance, I heard about faculty that went out of their way to give tours, discuss career paths, or who worked diligently to ensure that students got necessary class assistance.  From community members who found themselves on campus for summer events, I heard over and over how beautiful they thought the campus was, and how helpful students and staff were in welcoming them to events. And from everyone exposed to orientation, I got nothing but rave reviews about content, tone and the personal touch they felt.

There was also a letter from one of our students in the Wildcat this semester that praised our janitorial staff, for the amazing way they are able to transform the mess that often accumulates after large events like football games, so that the campus is pristine and welcoming the next day.

My point in mentioning all this is that our people, whatever their role at the UA, present a marvelous “face” to the public, and their doing so has a huge impact on how we are perceived and ultimately supported. At every level of this organization, we see quality on display. That is what makes the U of A great – quality in everything we do.

To all of you who put in the effort to ensure that quality, my sincere thanks for this determined effort to make the UA experience unique and meaningful to our students and everyone else whom we serve.

This year we are involved in our accreditation review by NCA. It is headed up by Beth Mitchneck and Randy Richardson, and they have done a superb job of chronicling all the quality measures that make UA great. I hope that all of you will take the time to go to the UA website and read the accreditation self-study, because it really underscores the quality of what we do at this University.

On the third part of our mission – discovery – time hardly permits an adequate listing of all the things that occur at this campus. There is only one word that describes what goes on at the U of A: Amazing.

How does a researcher ever imagine that a household spice like turmeric can treat symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis? Or figure out that algae can be used to produce biofuel? Or create an entirely new strain of rice that can withstand drought and produce higher yields?

The faculty (and I should point out the students and research staff) at the University of Arizona are endlessly curious – about topics and ideas that some have never heard of, much less examined in depth. The range of topics our researchers study is vast but they share the same goal – to leave the world a little better than they found it.

Right now on this campus, UA researchers are:

• Using holographic images to detect ovarian cancer sooner.
• Learning how to grow plants on the moon.
• Growing cartilage to replace deteriorating joints.
• Finding better ways to turn sunlight into usable energy.
• Learning how to manage water resources around the world.
• Developing a vaccine to prevent recurrence of a deadly childhood cancer.
• Designing the world’s largest telescope.
• Figuring out how to make hybrid cars more efficient.
• Developing technology that can identify explosives and IEDs at great distances, which can have a huge impact on airline travel and the safety of our troops.

Research universities like this one play a vital role in creating new knowledge to solve real-world problems. Being top-ranked in research (and remember that NSF ranks us #1 in the physical sciences) helps ensure that good ideas become thriving enterprises.  Because of the research we do, this University attracts the brightest scientists, engineers and students to our state, builds a tech-smart work force and creates rich opportunities for commercial partners.

Importantly at the University of Arizona, our scholarly activity is not limited to science and technology, as critical and visible as that is. We are guardians of the premier collection in the world of Southwestern artifacts; the finest modern poetry center in the world; the best dance program outside of Juilliard; and our faculty are working with the Hopi Tribe and others in documenting and helping to preserve endangered languages.

In fact, the arts, humanities and social sciences are critical to our overall success as a world-class university. As part of our Transformation Plan, we have committed new resources to create a new Center for Creative Inquiry, which is designed to address the grand challenges of human existence. Over the last year, the Provost’s Strategic Advisory Council has awarded over $200,000 in competitive grant money for eight collaborative and interdisciplinary projects. This is the beginning of what we believe will be a vital new area of intellectual activity on campus.

Our Transformation Plan has brought other exciting changes at the UA. Two specific areas that are taking shape this year are in Translational Medicine and Environmental Sustainability. Creating new knowledge in these important fields will allow us to expand and improve the work we do to improve the human condition for the people of this state.

In the area of medicine, this year saw the historic reuniting of UPH and UMC. Over the summer, the boards of directors of University Medical Center and University Physicians Healthcare approved integration of the two organizations into a single, new corporation that will oversee the patient-care enterprise affiliated with the University of Arizona College of Medicine. This integration will greatly enhance our ability to serve patients, train new physicians and health care professionals and support the advancement of clinical science to diagnose and treat human disease.

A comprehensive market research and branding effort is under way to develop the brand of the new enterprise and to position the new company among the very top academic health care organizations in the Southwest.

Amid all the conversations about health care in our nation this year, one element that often has been overlooked is the critical role academic health centers play in treating the most difficult cases and developing cures for the most challenging diseases. For the residents of Arizona, the presence of a nationally ranked academic health center is an important quality-of-life asset.

The clinical enterprise is also important for our educational success. In addition to exposing our medical students to the best physicians and the newest techniques, last year UMC put over $30 million into the College of Medicine. And our Kino facility, with support from the county, is now operating in the black.

As we move forward with changes in our health-related services in Tucson, we also are making great strides in expanding the UA’s medical presence in Phoenix. This year we will graduate our first class of medical students from the UA College of Medicine – Phoenix. In addition, we have begun construction on a new Health Sciences Education Building that will allow major expansion in the number of students we educate in Phoenix. And we have taken major steps to expand our clinical presence in greater Phoenix with the announcement of an affiliation agreement with Phoenix Children’s Hospital. We expect to announce sooon several other critical new clinical affiliations, and we are moving forward with the development of a much-needed cancer center at the Phoenix Biomedical Campus.

Closer to home, we are about to open the new BIO5 Oro Valley Drug Development Institute, which is taking shape in a state-of-the-art lab that we were able to acquire from Sanofi-Aventis. Among many components, the institute will have a tech-commercialization accelerator. It represents our first extension into Oro Valley, where we hope to broaden and deepen our interaction with the major pharmaceutical firms that are located there.

So, to return to my and Dickens’ opening comments: "the best of times and the worst of times."  The worst – the budget challenges and the political intractability – gets all the attention. But please don’t let that distract you from the much bigger, far more important accomplishments that make us the best at what we do, and make this a time of unparalleled opportunity at our University.

I do worry about the stress that many of our faculty, staff and appointed professionals feel because of the budget dilemma. People have been forced to do far more with much less. The vituperative tone of comments from some legislators certainly doesn’t help. But despite the political divisiveness that can at times make us weary, I believe in my heart that there is more that unites us across this state than divides us. And I believe that the University of Arizona can be that force that brings our state together.

Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman who I think is one of the great statesmen – as opposed to politicians – in our country, recently quoted Lincoln’s famous Civil War speech asking whether a divided nation "can long endure."

Said Hamilton: “That was the question at Gettysburg and it’s the operative question today. It’s not written in the stars that we’ll always be No. 1 and we’ll always prevail. Our responsibility is to make the country work.”

I believe it is our responsibility at the University of Arizona to make this state work. We have the people. We have the will. It is up to us to seize the opportunity. Let’s not let this opportunity get away.  We have an expression for what we need to do. You all know it: "Bear Down."

Thank you very much.