State of the University Address
Dr. Carol A. Cartwright, President
Kent State University
Oct. 14, 2004

Good afternoon, everyone! Thank you for joining me as I report on the state of our university. I do so, feeling privileged to be president; unparalleled pride in Kent State’s people and programs; and unwavering optimism about Kent State’s future. My outlook doesn’t obscure the serious challenges facing public higher education in general or Kent State in particular. Instead, I hold author Diana Schneider’s view of optimism as an “intellectual choice.” In my case, it’s a choice based on compelling evidence: nearly 14 years of watching Kent State faculty, staff, students, alumni and many other friends prove their willingness to meet new challenges head on – and to do so in a spirit of innovation, collaboration and commitment to the public good.

These Kent State characteristics are affirmed resoundingly in the university Strategic Plan that was developed last year through dedicated work by the 74 faculty, staff and student members of the Strategic Planning Steering Committee; more than 100 unit discussions; input from more than 1,400 individuals; and approval by the Faculty Senate and Board of Trustees. As you read the plan I hope you see clearly that: “We’re the Kent State community, and we approved this message.”

Putting the plan into action is the top priority for this year and for the five years of its intended lifespan. It’s so important that acting on our new plan is my primary message today.

My goal is to inspire you to think about ways you can help bring the plan to life. Let me stress that the contributions of every member of the Kent State community will be needed to fully realize the vision behind the plan. It is a vision of a university that:

• Encourages innovation in learning;
• Focuses on those we serve;
• Engages with the world beyond our campuses; and
• Builds and sustains relationships that foster success.

Before I describe the university-wide priorities that are essential to our long-term vitality, I will share examples that show we’re already taking the plan to the tactical and practical.

The strategic principle that directs us to encourage innovation in learning means paying even closer attention to students, curricula, course delivery and academic support services. A great example of this principle is the result of a congressionally directed, $2.5 million grant for the Department of Biological Sciences to add a 3-D Immersive Classroom to study the cellular basis of diseases such as cancer, diabetes and multiple sclerosis. The classroom is equipped with a projection system that produces six-foot by seven-foot three-dimensional images of cells and their components, and a computer-imaging lab in which students form and manipulate biological structures to see how they function. This incredible learning experience also reaches K-12 classrooms throughout Ohio through videoconferencing technology.

The second strategic principle reflects the fact that we serve many individual and institutional stakeholders. We must intensify our focus on those we serve -- by placing them at the center of every program, service and activity we offer; and by developing systematic ways of finding out what works and what could be more effective.

Applying this principle does not mean that we will bend to the wishes of multiple interest groups. It means we will really listen, measure our impact, engage in partnerships that are mutually beneficial and make choices informed by our data and our stakeholders’ input.

This principle was, in effect, a catalyst for creating our new Division of Regional Development, which aligns the College of Continuing Studies with the administrative operations of the Regional Campuses. This change is intended to take full advantage of Kent State’s unparalleled presence throughout Northeast Ohio, and it is an entirely new concept for our region.

Because it will greatly expand our ability to address the region’s educational and economic needs, high hopes for this market-driven division are in order as it leads the way in generating critically needed, new revenue streams. We are fortunate to have attracted Dr. Patricia Book, a proven leader, to spur and to coordinate our efforts across all eight campuses and other access points.

This example not only underscores Kent State’s commitment to focusing on those we serve, but also it affirms the strategic plan’s third guiding principle: “Engage with the world beyond our campuses.” The principle asks us to connect our rigorous academic programs with the rigors of life and work beyond our campuses and beyond graduation.

An existing effort that reflects this principle is Kent State’s Center for the Study and Development of Minority Businesses, which recently received more than $500,000 in grants from the Cleveland Foundation and the city of Cleveland’s Empowerment Zone. The funding will be used to create an Entrepreneurial Academy offering customized, 12-week training courses to residents of four Empowerment Zone communities who have dreams of starting or expanding businesses.

The Kent State community already has invested a great deal of hard work in the fourth strategic principle: “Build and sustain relationships that foster success.” This principle reflects the fact that students, faculty and staff who feel connected to the university are more likely to complete degrees and reach professional goals – all with greater productivity and satisfaction. It also underscores the fact that Kent State’s success is linked inextricably to the relationships we build – with individuals from alumni to legislators; with institutions from high schools to hospitals; and with private-sector partners from industrial giants to small start-ups.

One example of this principle occurs in the summer, when Kent State undergraduates are joined by peers from across the country in the Research Experiences for Chemistry Undergraduates Program. Students work alongside Kent State scientists on a variety of chemical, biomedical and liquid crystal research projects. In partnership with Central State University and the Ohio Science Engineering Alliance, this year’s program brought together students from diverse backgrounds including a Kent State student and an Ohio University student who will present their research on single-molecule magnetic materials and quantum computing at the 2005 meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Dozens of accomplishments last year illustrate the interplay among several of the principles. I’ll note several here and urge you to review the details in the new President’s Report.

• Students in our Fashion School designed a clothing line for JCPenney’s Arizona Jean Company brand. Company buyers selected 10 items to be sold nationwide starting next month – complete with price tags bearing the Kent State logo. I hope you’re all making a mental note to add this to your holiday gift lists!
• Kent State’s New Media Center received the 2004 New Media Center of Excellence Award for exemplary development of instructional resources – the highest honor bestowed by an international consortium of colleges, universities and museums. A recent project about the history of blimps is used with a PBS TV series that teaches math and science in public schools.
• The horticulture program at the Salem and Geauga campuses cultivates learning in campus greenhouses, vegetable fields and nature trails. A recent addition to these living laboratories makes the program one of the finest anywhere. The Draime Legacy Gardens, a gift from alumni Max and Cil Draime, allow students to work in a splendid array of specialty gardens, including what may be the only bamboo stand in the Mahoning Valley.
• In partnership with Continental Express, the aeronautics division launched the Pilot Training Bridge Program at the airline’s Houston training center. And the program’s success rate is already soaring: Continental Express just hired seven new graduates as first officers on jets serving domestic and international destinations.
• To help mark the 20^th anniversary of the School of Theatre and Dance, the Kent Campus became the educational equivalent of the Great White Way with the world premiere of a new work by theatre legend Ping Chong. After its Kent State debut, the multidisciplinary work, which explores the repercussions of 19^th-century colonialism in Africa, opened at New York’s famed La MaMa Theatre. Seventeen students were cast in both productions, gaining invaluable professional experience.
• The internationally acclaimed Miami String Quartet joined the Hugh A. Glauser School of Music as artists in residence, leading our chamber music program, giving private lessons, serving as the resident string quartet of Kent/Blossom Music and performing on the Kent Campus and at other venues.
• Students now can earn a high-demand master’s degree in library and information science without traveling to the Kent Campus – home of the state’s only graduate program in the field. In partnership with several state and public libraries, the School of Library and Information Science uses distance learning to deliver the program in every corner of Ohio.
• The Office of Corporate and Community Services at Kent State Stark is cultivating relationships with area firms providing customized education and training designed to help them succeed in a competitive business environment. They also partner with major corporations such as the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, the Gallup Organization, the Disney Company and Motorola University, making their exclusive training and consulting available to area professionals.
• College of Nursing faculty are working with Mercy Medical Center in Canton to help doctors, nurses and social workers learn how to recognize and respond effectively to the signs of domestic violence, and they are seeing significant improvements.
• In a unique partnership with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and funding from the Ohio Board of Regents, Kent State Ashtabula is building a state-of-the-art training center at the Geneva State Park Lodge and Conference Center. It will provide training and assessment services, increasing the region’s ability to attract, expand and retain businesses.
• The Applied Geography Laboratory uses a geographic-information system that takes growth-management policies and produces computer simulations of their likely effects. The computer program, which was developed in part by one of our graduate students, recently helped the Portage County Regional Planning Commission project the impact of urban sprawl on the county’s farmlands and environmentally critical areas.
• The newly established Wick Poetry Center promotes poetry and the arts through guest readings and workshops, scholarships and outreach in schools and senior centers. In a poetic conclusion to the program’s 20^th anniversary celebration, benefactors Robert and Walter Wick donated $2 million to expand its far-reaching cultural and outreach initiatives.
• A collaboration between the Tuscarawas Community-Improvement Corporation (CIC) and Kent State Tuscarawas promises to boost the Tuscarawas Valley economy. The project has raised $4.3 million, including $2.3 million from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, to construct a technology park and high-tech incubator. These regional resources – which will be located adjacent to the Tuscarawas Campus and its Science and Advanced Technology Center – are expected to provide about 600 jobs. This development has already been leveraged into a Wright Center of Excellence proposal coupling the Kent and Tuscarawas campuses as sites for capital equipment investments tied to technology transfer.
• The AlphaSmart Company donated 102 handheld computers to Kent State’s Research Center for Educational Technology. They will be used in a path-breaking study on learning in science classes, particularly by special-education students.
• Three years after its inception, our interdisciplinary Master of Science program in financial engineering – the first at an Ohio university – is ranked 13^th in North America by Global Derivatives.com, a Web site devoted to the field. The program features the only simulated trading floor at an academic institution that can function as a backup for real-world trading centers such as the New York Stock Exchange.
• Scientists from our Liquid Crystal Institute/Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program recently began five research projects in collaboration with the world’s largest producer of display technologies, Samsung Electronics Company. The collaboration also supports graduate student research through the Samsung Scholarship Program.
• Kent State also is home to one of the nation’s 75 academic centers for public health preparedness, giving us an important role in addressing the threat of bioterrorism. The Northeast Ohio Consortium for Biopreparedness combines research, education and workforce development to help detect biological-warfare agents and provide training in effective countermeasures. The consortium is funded by the U.S. Public Health Service Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In part, it provides a training facility for first responders, public health staff, and scientists.

These four guiding principles form a strategic springboard from which we can apply core Kent State values to new realities; show Kent State to be a university that has the maturity and the momentum to set ambitious-but-realistic goals; and take our longstanding commitment to public service to a new level.

Given the serious financial constraints that all of Ohio’s public universities will continue to face, why not simply direct our energies to preserving what we have? I believe the answer lies in the prevailing Kent State characteristic I described earlier – that “good” – even “very good” –is never good enough when “great” is a possibility.

I believe that if we follow through on our strategic plan we will be able to look back having seen Kent State evolve from all-around excellence to undisputed greatness. The university’s centennial in 2010 is just about five years away. What a great “Happy 100^th Birthday” gift that would be to our students and to every citizen of Ohio!

Those of us on the university’s executive team understand that our responsibilities include setting some broad, university-wide goals. Toward that end, Provost Paul Gaston, the vice presidents and I spent many hours discussing what makes the most sense in light of our new strategic plan and the broad commitment to its principles. Our wide-ranging and lively deliberations were informed in very helpful ways by suggestions from deans, directors and department chairs. For instance, an academic affairs retreat in August developed suggestions for long-term goals that helped us identify the following five university-wide priorities:

• Realize Kent State University’s full potential as one university with many access points;
• Provide all undergraduates with a launch pad for graduate study or a career that places them “one rung ahead” of their peers and becomes the hallmark of a Kent State education;
• Support a “24/7” learning environment for students, faculty, staff and the broader community;
• Serve the needs of our publics throughout the lifespan, becoming their university for life; and
• Determine our own financial future through the development of new revenue streams and operational models, and through the relentless pursuit of efficiencies.

To state the obvious, these university priorities cannot be achieved fully in a single year. They require a sequenced approach that spans several years.

I realize that it’s hard to plan for 2010 when so many challenges are competing for our immediate attention. As with all sound planning efforts, thetimeframes for addressing university priorities will include ample opportunities to take small steps toward more ambitious goals, and for assessment in accord with this timeless advice from Franklin Roosevelt: “Do something. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t, do something else.”

The first priority points to Kent State’s unique status as the largest university system in Ohio – one university that serves all of Northeast Ohio. The remarkable range of centers, academic programs, workforce development initiatives and research endeavors in which our eight campuses are engaged give us a stronger regional presence than any other institution in the state.

It’s time to mine the golden opportunities inherent in that presence – one that touches thousands of lives every day. Many of our students tell us that their first access point to advanced education is a Kent State campus, and we need to ensure that each campus is a gateway to the full resources of our quality university.

Access points for other members of the communities we serve may be a campus lecture or cultural event, a helpful Web site or a customized training program at their place of employment. That’s in addition to the strong likelihood of encountering Kent State faculty, staff, students and alumni in interactions with the region’s hospitals, public service agencies, public schools, arts organizations and businesses.

Our stakeholder-based strategic plan compels us to update what we know about the students and the communities we serve and, in turn, to rethink our roles in each of them. Put another way, this priority is about changing lives and changing mindsets.

How will we know we’re succeeding? We must begin with a fundamental building block: a strategic enrollment plan. I have asked Dr. Pete Goldsmith, vice president for enrollment management and student affairs, to lead our broad-based Enrollment Planning Steering Committee in developing such a plan by the end of this academic year. The planning process will look closely at how our campuses relate with each other and with other institutions - especially community colleges – with a focus on articulation and transfer issues.

We must commit to a clear understanding of changing demographics. That means asking: What are the data telling us? Where is the potential for growth? What should our student base look like? What is the optimum balance between undergraduate and graduate students, and between traditional and nontraditional students? What should be the mix of in-state, out-of-state and international students? In short, we need to project how all the pieces fit together. Once we have this big picture, Provost Gaston will work with deans to ensure that a strategic array of academic programs is available to meet forecasted enrollments.

In addition to serving existing markets, we must seek new markets with a commitment to meeting students wherever they are. Our Division of Regional Development will play a major role as a new delivery system, addressing the question, “Can we find and respond to unserved and underserved groups if we think differently about the unique network of resources at our disposal?”

In my judgment, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” In fact, targeting and tapping these markets may be Kent State’s best opportunity to offset the reality of diminishing state support – even as our enrollment grows – and the fact that tuition may have reached the point at which students who want a Kent State education cannot afford it. We can’t afford that. Neither can Ohio.

Three priorities that warrant university-wide attention all speak to the broad spectrum of connected experiences that result in learning.  As many of you know, Kent State has earned national respect as a university that values and promotes innovation in teaching and learning. Just attend a few sessions of our annual University Teaching Council Conference for proof that our faculty members embrace the concept of learning as a connected experience. Everyday we see it translated into new classroom interactions, undergraduate and graduate research teams and collaborative technology applications.

A logical outcome of our holistic approach to learning is the expansion of career-building experiences for our students – experiences that connect classroom experiences to the worlds of work and advanced study. In fact, proposals for departments to offer such experiences for every undergraduate major emerged several times during the strategic planning process.

So, clearly, the idea is not new. What is new is the proposal to pursue it to such a high degree and broad scope. I imagine a commitment, perhaps even a guarantee, so that this becomes a hallmark of a Kent State education. Let’s find ways to offer every Kent State student a chance to work on the first stages of their careers – through research projects, field experiences, clinical placements, service learning or internships; with traditional public- and private-sector partners or with internal partners.

Earlier I mentioned many examples of external partnerships providing students with real-world experiences. Internally, we have partnerships like Flash Communications linking public relations and advertising majors in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Office of University Communications and Marketing. I’m proud to report that after its first year, the program was recognized nationally with a 2004 silver medal from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education in the Individual Student Involvement Projects category.

I ask every unit in the university to think about making this commitment a reality for every student. For academic units it means defining what performance outcomes will ensure that graduates are one step ahead of their peers and then tapping university and external partners to provide the experiences necessary to get there. For all units – academic and administrative – it means identifying in-house opportunities to involve students. A true university-wide commitment such as this will give our graduates a significant competitive edge.

Another priority aligned with learning as connected experience is supporting a “24/7” learning environment for students, faculty, staff and the broader community, the third university-wide priority I introduce today. This priority recognizes that learning takes many forms and occurs in many settings and situations, that every member of the university community is a learner in some sense and that learning in a “wired” (and increasingly wireless) world is not limited by class schedules and library hours.

Imagine Kent State journalism student David Holmes’ experiences as he competes on ESPN’s Dream Job. From one of 35,000 auditioned, to his place in the final six, he’s certainly having a high-stakes learning experience!

Learning has always occurred outside classrooms, labs and libraries – and that’s certainly true of our campuses where design studio lights are always on, student reporters and editors don’t hit the sack before putting the morning paper to bed and the Student Recreation and Wellness Center offers classes for early risers and night owls alike.

Our seven Faculty and Professional Learning Communities bring this idea to life every day. Under the auspices of the Faculty Professional Development Center, these multidisciplinary communities offer colleagues opportunities to focus on a topic and test ways to improve teaching and learning. For example, one of these learning communities explores student learning in large classes by sharing experiences, studying research and working with students in a variety of disciplines.

The Kent Campus also is home to learning communities in which students with the same major or interests live in the same residence halls, take classes together and participate in specialized programming. Our experience with these communities validates research findings that student success is enhanced through active engagement and shared learning beyond the classroom.

Student success also is cultivated through participation in extracurricular activities. For example, after earning a bid to the national championship tournament – quite an accomplishment in itself – student members of the mock trial team held their own against competitors from Harvard, Yale, Brown and Duke universities. The team placed 64^th out of 500 teams.

The hard-working students who produce Kent State’s campus newspaper, student magazine and television programming all came up winners in the 2004 Society of Professional Journalists Region 4 competition. The Daily Kent Stater was named Best All-Around Daily Newspaper; The Burr was named Best Magazine and its online counterpart, The CyBurr, won Best Online Magazine; and TV-2 was named Best General Television News Program.

While some win accolades, others quietly work toward spectacular achievements. I am thinking of highly motivated students like Jason Waller, an Honors College student who just graduated in August with a triple major in English, philosophy and classics. Jason completed a senior honors thesis in each of these majors – the first student to have completed more than one senior thesis.

Jason and all our students come with the assumption that learning resources will be available anywhere, anytime, through technology. To ensure that we’re doing that as effectively as possible, Vice President Ed Mahon is launching an inclusive assessment and planning process that will yield a comprehensive technology plan. It will focus on four broad areas: determine the cost-effectiveness and relevance of existing baseline services; assess potential areas of improvement regarding a more coordinated model for educational technology; assess research infrastructure components; and simplify administrative processes and enhance access to information.

As you imagine the initiatives that your unit could undertake, I also ask each of you to consider how Kent State can respond more effectively to the reality that learning is a lifelong endeavor; that, in the words of futurist Alvin Toffler, “The illiterate of the 21^st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” If we make every learning experience so positive that students turn to us every time they want to expand their knowledge – for personal or professional development – we truly become their university for life.

This can take many forms as individuals seek to maintain currency in their fields – given the half-life of knowledge – to keep their certifications up to date or pursue new ones. Others will need to transition or retool due to structural changes in the economy. We can offer programs across the lifespan, beginning with outreach programs for youth, programs for adult part-time learners and offerings appealing to seniors as well as our traditional students. I trust you see that developing Kent State as lifestyle choice greatly expands our opportunities from being a university primarily for 18- to 22- year-olds to a university for life.

We also seek to apply university scholarship to advance learning at all ages. Just one example of how faculty scholarship reaches people through the lifespan: a book by accounting professor Mark Altieri, titled Financial Guidance for Every American is the cornerstone of a nationwide initiative to improve the competency with which average citizens make major financial decisions from buying a home to planning for retirement. It was chosen as the curriculum for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ “360 Degrees of Financial Literacy” project.

I hope you see that through the new strategic plan and the aforementioned priorities we are continuing our evolution from a postsecondary institution to a 24/7 learning organization for life. As we make this transformation, we will succeed in determining our own financial future, which is the fifth university priority I want to introduce today.

America is seeing a shift in public policy from higher education as a public good to higher education as a private benefit. Ohioans, on average, are paying more of the costs of a four-year higher education than students in all but four other states.

We have never sat back and watched as the lion’s share of college costs have been shrugged from the state’s shoulders to those of our students. Many of you have made and are making the kinds of contributions that will allow Kent State to build on its remarkable momentum of recent years. You’ve helped expand research grants and contracts, increase technology transfer, re-imagine administrative models, gather and analyze data, use technology effectively and share services. As a result, Kent State has several significant successes to report:

• We’ve become national leaders in cultivating start-up companies based on faculty research.
• We’ve maximized faculty and physical resources in joint degree programs with neighboring universities.
• We’re exploring the feasibility of sharing an administrative computing platform with Cleveland State and the University of Akron.
• We’ve created a formal alliance with the four Northeast Ohio public universities, the Cleveland Clinic and NASA Glenn to strengthen research and graduate education.
• We’ve stepped up our efforts to make the case to legislators and the public that higher education is vital to Ohio’s future.
• We’ve elected to participate in national, state and regional initiatives that promote continuous improvement.
• We assumed leadership with the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education and the Economy and have begun looking at how we might support the commission’s recommendations.

These are just a few ways in which we are proving that we are good stewards of public funds and doing everything in our power to be more resourceful and productive. The time has come when every member of our community is needed to create windows of opportunities where we now face a financial brick wall – opportunities that will allow us to invest in our educational mission and public service priorities.

I ask every unit to develop goals and action plans that imagine new revenue streams, delivery systems and operational models and to continue to be relentless in the pursuit of efficiencies. That being said, we need to be equally relentless in our pursuit of excellence in scholarship, educational outreach and service that exceeds the expectations of our students and stakeholders as quality must be a cornerstone of our financial future.

I have already charged members of our leadership team to guide our efforts. I’ll cite two who are crucial to this fifth priority: Dr. John West, vice president for research and dean of graduate studies, is developing a plan and a timetable for doubling the externally funded research that counts toward state matching dollars, and Dr. Kathy Stafford, vice president for university relations and development, has begun the planning process for a new private fund-raising campaign that would culminate in our centennial year. The deans are identifying priorities for funding and working with us to develop the infrastructure that will be necessary to support the most ambitious campaign in our history.

I have great confidence in our ability to be successful in a new campaign. Our capacity is strong as evidenced by two national recognitions in the past year. The Association of Fundraising Professionals awarded Kent State its 2004 AFP/Campbell & Company Award of Excellence in Fundraising, the highest award the association bestows on nonprofit organizations. And recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Kent State was one of just 75 institutions nationwide whose endowments increased by 10 percent or more in fiscal year 2003.

As you can see, the five priorities I have shared today point to a path that won’t always be smooth, straight or secure. But it’s a path that this community clearly has both the capacity and the courage to travel.

Our first steps are clear: Every department, division and campus should gather together, pass the coffeepot and organize action plans and projects based on the strategic plan principles and the university priorities I’ve outlined today.

Brazilian novelist Paulo Coehlo wrote that, “The magic moment is that in which a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ may change the whole of our existence. ... In daring to say “yes” to a new strategic plan with a new perspective on public higher education, the Kent State community has made a commitment to transforming our institutional existence.

We’ve said “yes” to putting the needs of those we serve at the center of every program we create and service we provide; “yes” to meeting significant external challenges with significant internal changes; and “yes” to doing so in ways that uphold our most deeply held values: protecting academic freedom, ensuring educational access, nurturing student success, celebrating diversity, demonstrating integrity and generating and sharing knowledge that truly changes lives for the better.

And so I say to each of you – with as much optimism as ever: Yes! Kent State is ready to harness the creativity that abounds on our campuses, set our strategic plan in motion and take our place among the great public universities of our time.

Thank you.