Good afternoon everyone and welcome to what I hope will become an annual event. The intent of this gathering is to talk about the state of the campus and to present the Annual Agenda, which outlines our campus goals for the year. We shall also use this occasion to welcome new faculty and staff. This effort to summarize our progress and to state our future plans is reflected in the two documents you can pick up at the reception. They are the President's Annual Report and the Campus Annual Agenda for 2001-2002. However, before getting into these matters, I should like to note a number of appointments made over the summer.
1. Dr. Mark McColloch is named Vice President for
Academic Affairs;
2. Dr. Wes Jamison is named Assistant Vice President
for Academic Affairs;
3. Carol Calloway has been made a member of the
President's Cabinet;
4. Dr. Mary Beth Spore is named Assistant to the
President;
5. Dr. William Pamerleau is named Director of the
Humanities Village;
6. Dr. Laurene Baker is named Assistant Director
of the Humanities Village;
7. Dr. Anthony Boldurian is named Director of the
Behavior Sciences Village;
8. Dr. Norman Scanlon is named Chair of the Behavior
Sciences Division; and,
9. Ms. Kathleen Murray is named Coordinator of UPG
Study Abroad Programs.
10. Mr. Bryan Valentine is named Coordinator of
Residence Life.
11. Ms. Jody Bergstrom is named Director of Conferencing
and Housing.
I thank all of these individuals for taking on these new responsibilities. Please join me in saluting them.
As my annual report indicates, UPG took giant strides in expanding faculty, staff, operating budget, and academic programs. We broke all enrollment records and significantly increased the quality of the entering freshman class. We launched a major fundraising drive and raised $3 million dollars. We began implementing our new exchange agreement with the University of Guanajuato and sent students to London, Spain, and Trinidad-Tobago, as well as Mexico. New national honors societies came to campus, and we launched another new Academic Village, the Natural Sciences and New Technologies Village. We hosted many important visitors including a vice presidential candidate, an astronaut, and a Pulitzer prize-winning author. We started a Families Association to help parents relate to UPG. And we began a UPG Neighbors newsletter to encourage nearby residents to attend functions on the campus. Our athletic program added three new sports, and several of our teams distinguished themselves in AMCC conference competitions. Last year was the inauguration of the St. Clair Lectureship which is housed at UPG but supported by the Westmoreland Historical Society, Southwest Bank, the Greensburg Community Foundation, and Mr. John Robertshaw. The lectureship supports research into Westmoreland County history. This was the first year we asked faculty and staff to make personal gifts to the UPG Foundation. An amazing 76% responded positively.
There were just some of the new things that happened this past year. But many past initiatives also flourished. Our Academic Villages attracted more students and organized more programs than ever before. Our Children's Literature Conference continued to grow in stature as did the Millstein Library's Cultural Series. Our basic device to communicate with the community, the Blue & Gold, was redesigned and expanded. Over 5,000 people receive it monthly.
It must also be said that our fine faculty not only took on new duties associated with the Academic Villages, but continued to publish important contributions to knowledge while winning awards and recognition as scholars and teachers. Our talented staff expanded their role on campus through the UPG Staff Association. They undertook several projects to benefit the campus including assuming responsibility for planting and tending a new formal garden. Our alumni association raised scholarship money and created both a teaching award and a distinguished alumnus award. I must apologize for failing to mention many other achievements of importance, but I must move on.
In past years we have had the luxury of using the summer to prepare plans for the coming year. We certainly did that this past summer. The Campus Agenda document for 2001-2002 is one product of that planning. However, the pace of activity at UPG has so accelerated and intensified that the summer has become nearly as busy a time as the regular academic year. Besides summer school, UPG is now into conferencing and camps in a major way.
This past summer UPG was the scene of a major press conference to announce formation of the Smart Growth Partnership of Westmoreland County, an organization that seeks to balance economic growth and quality of life issues. Over 150 county leaders came to hear the details and meet Alex Graziani, the Executive Director. Smart Growth is housed at UPG and Alex is a UPG staff member. His salary is supplied by area foundations and businesses.
Only a few weeks ago UPG was prominently mentioned as a founding member of Westmoreland Heritage, a county-wide organization dedicated to raising public appreciation of our rich historical assets and encouraging historical tourism. We are joined by the County Historical Society, Southwest Bank, the Tribune Review, and the Greensburg/Hempfield Library.
On August 29, on relatively short notice, we hosted a town meeting at the request of Senator Arlen Specter. A group of UPG students attended and had the opportunity to meet the Senator. Senator Lieberman had been on the campus last fall.
As we completed work on the Campus Agenda for 2000-2001, we realized that this was a very special time for UPG. We have the largest enrollment in our history, up 17% since 1997. We have the largest number of resident students in history numbering nearly 600. The entering freshman class is the best prepared in our history. Over 60% of them graduated in the top 40% of their high school classes. And their average SAT scores have gone up a remarkable 35 points since 1998. I can also add that UPG this fall has more faculty and staff than ever before and a larger budget. Less tangible, but no less significant, is UPG's growing reputation not only as a quality institution noted for innovative programs, but as a good citizen in the community it serves. The continuing flow of very positive news stories about the campus has helped our standing considerably as have presentations on the Village system made at national conferences.
Having noted all this, I must add that our journey towards excellence is not complete. We have much yet to do to reach our ambitious institutional goals. We must build on our success.
The Campus Agenda for 2000-2001 will soon be in your hands. It lays out an extensive program of specific actions designed to carry us towards our strategic goals. The agenda notes a fundamental fact -- that UPG has reached the limits of enrollment growth under present conditions. We have this fall, once more, set an enrollment record with 1,725 students, a figure somewhat larger than we had expected. In fact, we reached our enrollment cap two years ahead of schedule. The end of growth has profound implications for budget, programs, and student recruiting. In general it is a good thing. It allows us to concentrate on qualitative improvements.
The Campus Agenda is filled with items reflecting our need to assess our future under conditions of steady-state enrollments. We need a facilities plan. We need to study seriously the educational experience of commuter students, who make up 2/3 of the student body. We need to perfect our plans to send all of our students abroad, and we need plans to do better at increasing the number of minority and foreign students at UPG. We have to build on our fundraising success and find ways of attracting additional gifts. We have to gain a better understanding of our public image so that we can formulate improved student recruitment strategies that attract and hold more top notch students. And we must continue to perfect the Academic Village System, to establish ways of assessing educational outcomes, and to study how best to utilize all this wonderful technology in teaching.
I invite you to study the Annual Agenda and to do what you can to help us reach these goals.
The past is but prologue, but it is also a foundation upon which we
can build. Something important is happening at UPG. The institution
is being rapidly transformed. We know where we want to go -- we seek
recognition as one of the best public liberal arts and sciences institutions
in the nation. Fueled by faculty and staff enthusiasm, community
support, and encouragement from the larger University of Pittsburgh, we
have come a long way. Our Villages, the ResCom system, new academic
programs, more buildings, outstanding additions to an already strong faculty,
and growing appreciation of our role in the community are all evidence
of undeniable
progress.
This coming year will see even more dramatic action. Everyone needs to become a regular reader of our electronic calendar to keep up with the hundreds of special lectures, theater productions, dance and arts shows, films, and athletic events now scheduled. Our community initiatives such as Smart Growth and Westmoreland Heritage will develop much further in the coming months, and our study abroad programs will expand to include Paris and Havana.
I do want to specially mention La Cultura, a comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of Leonardo DaVinci and Italy in the Renaissance. The brainchild of Vice President McColloch, La Cultura will bring to campus experts on many aspects of DaVinci's genius. A gala fundraising dinner using the Italian Renaissance as its theme will be one of the events.
In sum, the state of UPG in the fall of 2001 is excellent. There are, of course, problems. Faculty and staff salaries remain low although some progress has been made thanks to the Provost's office. We lack key facilities to house properly our programs. And despite expansion, we have less faculty and staff than we should to educate the number of students enrolled. But for the moment I think we can take great pride on what we have achieved together.