Winthrop University Opening Address
Listen to the 2009 Opening Address
Academic Year 2009-2010
President Anthony J. DiGiorgio
For delivery August 19, 2009, 9:30 a.m.
Teaching and Learning:
From ‘Big History’ to the ‘Age of Twitter’
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the opening of another academic year here at Winthrop. This is our 124th academic year.
As returning faculty and staff members know, this is a time of year when we say “welcome home” to our veterans and to our newcomers alike.
So that we may begin that process, would all our new faculty and staff members stand, please, and let's give them all a warm Winthrop welcome?
We also have among us today some other special guests. Please hold your applause until they are introduced:
From the Winthrop University Board of Trustees:
Mrs. Kathy Bigham, board chair, from Rock Hill
Mr. Bob Thompson, from Rock Hill,
Dr. Jane LaRoche, from Camden
Ms. Frances Davenport, from Clinton,
Mr. Tim Sease, from Mt. Pleasant
Dr. Marsha Bollinger, Chair of Faculty Conference and Faculty Representative to the Board of Trustees, and
Ms. Sydney Evans, president of the Council of Student Leaders, and student representative to the Board of Trustees.
Welcome!
Also today, we have some emeriti faculty members in attendance. These individuals represent the very best of our past and have laid the foundation for our future. Let us acknowledge their faithful service to Winthrop, and ask any emeriti faculty in attendance to stand.
Let me also acknowledge a few members of the campus community who are serving in new roles this year. Please hold your applause until all are standing:
Dr. Alice Burmeister will be interim dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts this year, as Dean Libby Patenaude continues her medical treatment. Alice, thank you for your service, and please extend our best wishes to Libby.
Dr. John Bird, professor of English, is also the new director of the Teaching and Learning Center, which provides professional development opportunities for faculty and staff. John will continue teaching as well, of course.
Dr. Pat Graham – a familiar face to so many veterans here – is back with us, organizing our Southern Association of Colleges and Schools institutional reaccreditation work, in partnership with Karen Jones, Associate VP of Academic Affairs, Accreditation and Accountability.
Dr. Jonatha W. Vare this year will serve as Interim Chair, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Richard W. Riley College of Education, and
Let’s thank all of these folks for taking on new roles here at Winthrop.
Indeed, this is a time of year when the campus community forms itself anew for the academic year to come – when those who have embodied Winthrop University for a part of their professional lives enlarge the circle to welcome new faculty and staff, and yes, new students as well.
Come the end of this week, those newest of new faces will start to appear among us, too.
There will be a lot of them, and to some of us, they seem to be younger every year. Gale and I continue to marvel about how members of every entering class from last year forward will have all been on this earth less time than Gale and I have been at Winthrop.
This year, most members of this year’s entering class were born in… 1991… Ouch!
Think of it – most of the new students coming to us were born in the year America went to war in Iraq – the first time. That’s when Operation Desert Storm began. That particular war with Iraq ended only a few weeks later – or so we thought at the time.
Also that year: “Miss Saigon” opened on Broadway, Johnny Carson announced he would retire… and the USSR ceased to exist, sending map makers back to the drawing board.
Postage stamps were 25 cents back then… but would become 29 before the year was out. And the Newsletter of the American Historical Society that spring explained at length, in considerable detail, the startling observation that (quote) “E-mail is easier and faster to use than the regular postal system.” (close quote.)
Of course, that was still “last century,” and text messaging had not yet become an integral part of most teenagers’ core definition of happiness.
And “Twitter”? Back then, twittering was truly for the birds.
Twitter technology, for the uninitiated, challenges users to express themselves in a pithy 140 characters or less – tough duty for those of us conditioned to thinking of how to convey the content of our disciplines to others in segments of 50 or 75 minutes, not mere letters and numbers!
Of course, it’s always been higher education’s mission to go well beyond shallow bits of information, into the deeper kind of learning that provides context and builds capacities to make solid judgments.
That is how we at Winthrop keep faith with a mandate unique among South Carolina’s public institutions of higher learning: to provide students with a “first-class” higher education, adding features and programs “as the progress of the times may require.”
After all, we’ve come to understand that mastery of just one discipline isn’t enough for the world our students will inherit one day soon.
They must be prepared to draw on knowledge from multiple disciplines, so they can absorb information – be it from a Twitter tweet or a companion named
Kindle -- then supplement and analyze that information from multiple disciplinary perspectives.
Finally, they must the results into a plan of action appropriate to rapidly changing circumstances – while still preserving and creating options for the future of the endeavor at hand.
In other words, the Twitter generation will have to be prepared to do exactly what we in the Winthrop community have found ourselves having to do for almost a year now -- and expect to keep doing -- as we ride out the difficult and often rapidly changing circumstances that surround our shared enterprise in these particular times.
After all, key information these days comes in fast-changing bursts almost as short as Twitter messages, usually without context or cross-referencing.
For instance, a report about the vacancy rate versus occupancy rate in Myrtle Beach hotels this summer may seem of casual interest.
But put that factoid against estimates of state tax revenue for the same period last year, and state economic advisers can extrapolate whether state revenue estimates for the year are falling farther behind, or recovering.
With that information, plus the context of current events, and the importance of tourism revenue to state tax coffers, we can in turn extrapolate if Winthrop should prepare for yet another near-term reduction in our state appropriation. Or, will we be able to stay with our already conservative spending plan for a while longer… even after being told last week to prepare for yet another 4 to 5 percent reduction in our state appropriation?
And that’s just the state revenue part of our funding.
As I’ve often said over the years, Winthrop doesn’t count tuition dollars in our budget until we count suitcases in our residence halls.
Yet a look at the number of families who have come to campus for orientation sessions over the summer – which experience tells us is always a good indicator -- leads us to feel we are realistic in our projections for an new class enrollment on par with last year.
That is key, because enrollment is responsible for an ever-increasing portion of our operating revenue, and it means all of us have to contribute to our enrollment outreach. Every person in this room shares in that responsibility – no matter what your duties here at Winthrop.
So I hope as our enrollment staff calls on you from time to time to assist in that outreach, you will join in that initiative. I assure you that you will learn a great deal in the process, as well as teaching others about Winthrop.
We know from comments and questions from prospective students and families – yes, sometimes received via Twitter -- that they expect Winthrop quality and value to remain high, despite the challenges of these times, and they want to come to Winthrop because they do see potential for return on the educational dollars invested here.
When they get to campus, they see the many improvements taking place around them as confirmation that the content and value of the Winthrop Experience are solid and growing. To them, as we already know, that means the reputation and value of a Winthrop degree will continue to grow as well. They want to be a part of that.
In meeting with our Board of Trustees over recent months, a mantra of sorts has emerged to describe the approach we have been using to chart a course through these fiscally turbulent times:
We must continue to enable the growth and development of Winthrop University,
while also managing the demands of the present.
Not only are our current students depending on us to do that, so are students of the future – the children and grandchildren of everyone in this room, and those of our friends and neighbors, too.
Perhaps more than the general public realizes, those of us in this room know that South Carolina’s willingness to support public higher education through its appropriated tax dollars has diminished in recent years. South Carolina is not alone in that regard – it has been a troubling trend in America for over a generation.
But the impact in South Carolina has been greater because our best years of state support did not even quite reach the amount provided to institutions in other Southeastern states in their worst years.
That meant the sacrifices we shared last year are only now surfacing in many other states, at many other institutions – from next door in Georgia, all the way to the West Coast.
I can’t tell you what this year will bring in that regard for South Carolina. As I said often last year, the two things we all want most – certainty and predictability – are in short supply these days.
What I can tell you is that Winthrop this year built a buffer into our spending plan, because we did expect this upcoming reduction and wanted to insulate everyone from an immediate impact.
Let me say that I recognize that everyone in this room has taken on added responsibilities and added stresses over these past months.
In addition, we all dressed a little more warmly during the winter months, so we could roll back the thermostats just a bit and save on energy costs. Walter Hardin tells me that our shared sacrifice did, in fact, save Winthrop about half a million dollars on utilities last winter – just as predicted.
Our students learned a great deal from watching how Winthrop faculty and staff dealt with this situation. For many of them, it was their first appreciation of what the word “community” truly means.
Our trustees – some of them directly impacted by the economic downturn, too – in June asked me to convey their recognition and appreciation for setting that example… and I do so now whole-heartedly.
Please know we will continue to keep you informed as any changes in circumstances warrant. Also know that I – just as much as each of you -- look forward to a time when an e-mail titled “Budget Update” might actually deliver good news!
Meanwhile, we will continue to be proactive about positioning Winthrop as needed to enable her future while dealing with current circumstances, because that is the best thing we can do for each other, and for our students.
The reality now is that the amount of Winthrop’s overall revenue that comes from state tax funds is less than 14 percent. That means 86 percent of our revenue comes from elsewhere – including, this year and next, stimulus funds from the federal government.
Almost 60 percent of our operating revenue, however, now comes from the academic and other fees paid by our students and their families.
This means Winthrop must operate in its traditional values-based way – the heart of who we are -- yet also be more market-wise than ever before. We must continue to work across disciplines to build capacities within our students. And, we must build capacities within ourselves as well – by creating academic programs that draw from several disciplines to meet the needs of today’s students.
Winthrop has grown really good at that kind of creative programming.
Our Integrated Marketing Communication degree some years ago became a pioneer in this concept by bringing together resources from two different colleges, and our Digital Information Design program is now drawing resources from five different departments.
We are developing options for five-year programs leading to attainment of a master’s degrees, such as our Master of Arts in Teaching and a combination Chemistry/MBA.
In fact, the College of Business Administration is working with other colleges to professionalize a number of degrees through addition of a business minor that can be converted to an MBA in the fifth year– all because students and employers tell us this is what they want.
At the same time, we are confident that Winthrop can and will continue to provide an education that meets not only the professional desires of our students, but overall society’s civic needs as well.
In fact, Winthrop is perhaps uniquely able to meet this imperative because of the type of community we are. As a community that has worked together in the past to define its nature and character, Winthrop can reach beyond normal disciplinary boundaries with confidence, knowing our core values and dedication to the liberal arts remains a common bond among all of us.
President John Adams once put it more simply, over 200 years ago: (Quote): "There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living, and the other how to live." (close quote)
At Winthrop, we are proving daily that it is possible to do both – and essential to do both.
Indeed, our continuing all-institutional emphasis on the core commitments of the Association of American Colleges and Universities is yet another culmination of that aspect of Winthrop’s nature and character.
Winthrop’s selection last year to be one of just 18 institutions nationally to participate in the Leadership Consortium of this on-going program is evidence that there’s something special about Winthrop that is worthy of national note.
Key to this milestone is the special relationship that has developed between Academic Affairs and Student Life at Winthrop – with University College as the link.
By recognizing that students who are given strong support on the personal development side can become more successful academically as well, Winthrop is developing strong evidence that our approach can do two very important things:
Consider this accomplishment:
And, this is the second year that a substantial difference has been noted.
In other words, students who live on the Winthrop campus and thus engage themselves in the full Winthrop Experience are more academically successful, dropping out notably less.
We believe that happens because they develop a stronger sense of purpose and a better set of life skills here. Students who live and learn at Winthrop live and learn more successfully.
We also believe residential students develop habits of service to others and a sense of responsibility to others that continues with them into the next phase of their lives.
Never have both goals been higher on our nation’s need list than at present, when sharing sacrifices and considering others has been so important to us as a campus community, and as a nation.
Reading Winthrop’s Common Book for this year, Russell Baker’s moving and often amusing memoir, “Growing Up,” affirms for all of us that both the Common Book selection and our continuing emphasis on the values encompassed in the Core Commitments are extraordinarily timely, given the events of the past year.
Challenging circumstances are so widespread these days that book clubs and individuals across Rock Hill felt Winthrop’s book choice was timely, too.
As a result, September will be declared “Common Book Month” in Rock Hill, with citizens encouraged to re-tell their own stories of sharing in hard times, and of learning hard lessons about honesty and integrity. It will be a reminder that all of us can learn, as Russell did from his family and their stories, by listening to each other.
Russell Baker’s story reflected a very different viewpoint on lifelong learning from another perspective that I spent some time exploring this summer: Dr. David Christian’s fascinating series of lectures, “Big History,” which chronicle the Earth and its environs from the Big Bang to the rise of humanity, including today’s innovations and tomorrow’s challenges.
In addition to reminding us what a small part of history and the cosmos is populated by humanity and our own egocentric story, “Big History” also reminds us that “collective learning is the source of all innovation in human history.”
In fact, it took the addition of humanity to our solar system’s “Big History” for teaching and learning to begin… by communicating… crudely at first, but eventually by sharing stories and experiences, not unlike Russell Baker and his family in “Growing Up” … and not unlike we have done here at Winthrop for 124 years.
Next year, we will mark this institution’s 125th anniversary. It will be a time to focus on Winthrop’s small but important role in the “Big History” of this part of the world – a time to share stories of teaching and learning from one another over the years, of encouraging innovation and progress, and of never forgetting Winthrop values along the way.
I elaborate on this because I want to empower all of us, individually and collectively, to address our current-day challenges from a position of strength rooted in Winthrop’s history. We demonstrate that strength when we cope with difficult times with the knowledge we are doing so as a community that shares the mission of guiding the next generation to make the world a better place for their having been a part of it.
We see all around us increasing evidence that we do some of our best work together in times when external realities remind us of how important Winthrop values and spirit of innovation are to the world.
On the academic side, consider the wonderful experiences our science students are having by working with talented faculty with the support of significant federal research funding sent to Winthrop with a single purpose in mind. That is having our undergraduate students serve as co-investigators with talented, national caliber faculty doing research in some of the most vexing medical concerns of our time – cancer, obesity and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Imagine what that could mean for humankind someday!
In all, Winthrop faculty members in recent years have been awarded five major science grants totaling more than $1 million in funding for Winthrop undergraduate research. The most recent awards will help fund work by Dr. Takita Sumter and Dr. Robin Lammi. Will the two of you please stand, and will all members of Winthrop’s INBRE bio-medical research team join them, so we can applaud the national support and attention you are bringing to Winthrop?
Also with the assistance of federal funds, many of our education students have received special support in preparing themselves to teach students for whom English is a second language. Fall 2009 will begin Year 3 for this program, even as we continue to develop a new University-School Partnership network involving our region’s K-12 districts – a project that is also a candidate for federal support. If Winthrop’s grant application is selected for funding, it could bring to Winthrop and its K-12 partners a total of 13 million dollars over the next five years.
That would be a key investment in Winthrop’s students of today, and also potential students a decade from now. We wish Dean Jennie Rakestraw and her team well on this initiative.
As you can see, federal funding is taking on an increasing importance for public higher education – a most worthy allocation of resources, and a source of support we will elevate in our priorities, just as we elevate our enrollment outreach and retention activities.
In keeping with this trend, I am pleased to share some wonderful news with you today: Just a few days ago, Winthrop University received word it has just been selected to participate in the prestigious federal Ronald McNair Post-baccalaureate Degree Program, and will be receiving $880,000 in federal funds over the next four years to support that work.
This highly selective program is named for the late astronaut Ronald McNair, who lived and learned in South Carolina, then went on to explore the cosmos as a scientist and NASA astronaut. The grant that bears his name will provide institutional support – including scholarship resources – to encourage and support students who are first-generation, disadvantaged or under-represented in their pursuit of graduate education.
Winthrop will identify such students with strong academic potential, work closely with them as they complete their undergraduate requirements, and support their enrollment in graduate programs, with the ultimate goal being to increase the attainment of Ph.D. degrees by students from the designated segments of society.
Winthrop’s selection to help develop McNair Scholars for graduate education will follow naturally from the exceptional Student Support Services work Winthrop has been doing for a number of years to boost bachelor’s degree attainment in the same groups, also under the federal TRiO program.
Bringing educational opportunity to the previously under-served --- yes, there are those Winthrop values coming to the fore again – and now leading to Winthrop increasingly being recognized on a national level! What a wonderful chapter in Winthrop’s own “Big History.”
All together, these student support initiatives have brought and will bring a total of two million dollars to Winthrop, and have the potential to bring more.
Therefore, I’d like to acknowledge the Winthrop TRiO team members who have worked on these grants at various times. Both founding University College Dean Brien Lewis, now vice president for development and alumni relations, and current University College Dean Gloria Jones have shepherded these efforts over the years, with the real yeoman work done by three individuals: Dr. Cheryl Fortner-Wood, Rose Gray and Kim Wilson. Will the three of you please stand, and let us applaud this latest national recognition of your work?
Other examples of good team work abound at Winthrop, including on the facilities front, and they, too, reflect our values-based, market-wise approach.
This Fall, we are opening a wonderful new academic space: Vivian M. Carroll Hall, named for a Winthrop alumna and donor. This building will provide a variety of specialized academic space for the College of Business Administration, as well as an auditorium of its own where the college can come together as needed, including members of the region’s business community on occasion as well, to discuss important economic issues of the day.
In addition, a signature component of the new building will be the Carroll Capital Markets Training and Trading Center, a facility dedicated to producing future business leaders who have, in addition to their foundational Winthrop Experience, a 21st century blend of strong fundamentals in wealth management, specialized technical trading skills and a global perspective on ever-changing world financial markets.
Yet because this facility will be part of Winthrop, we know discussions about the importance of business ethics, consideration of others, and service to the community will also be part of the conversations there.
While classes will begin in its spaces in a few days, Carroll Hall will be dedicated formally in late September, with a number of special events planned there over the course of the coming year.
Likewise, the adjacent Macfeat House will take on some new roles before long as well. Not only will it be a reception center for Carroll Hall events, its facilities can also double as a faculty-staff dining venue. Details about that are still being worked out with our food service provider, ARAMARK, so stay tuned for future news on that front.
Also over the summer, a new segment of Winthrop’s signature Scholars Walk has been completed. As soon as it is deemed safe to do so, construction fences for the Campus Center project will be reset closer to that building’s perimeter, allowing the new segment of Scholar’s Walk to be opened more fully.
As you may recall, this is the centerpiece of the new heart of campus that has been in incremental development for several years – a pedestrian thoroughfare for crossing campus, a place to see other members of the community and perhaps continue conversations that began in more formal classroom settings.
It will be a place for academic achievements and special honors for members of our community of learners to be recognized and celebrated as well, so stay tuned for further information on that front in the near future.
Also this summer, you have seen improvements to the previous “rear” facades of McLaurin and Roddey, which will face a park-like area of gardens that will be the culminating space of Scholar’s Walk. Donor support that is making the gardens possible will be announced later in the year, along with more about the still-evolving concept.
As quiet and reflective a place as the gardens are going to be, work also continues nearby on a different venue – one expected to be filled with activity, purposeful interactions, and all the vitality and joy of an active, engaged student body.
Adjacent to the West Center, the new Campus Center is taking shape, and our student leaders are especially excited about the opportunities and facilities that it will provide for their organizations, and for students in general.
We envision a soft opening for those facilities next Summer, with the staff from Student Life, the post office and the Bookworm moving into spaces as they become available, and ARAMARK bringing the various food service options on line in time for Fall 2010.
I will share one aspect with you today, however, because I know it’s been the topic of some buzz already – the new Campus Center will include a Winthrop full-service Starbucks coffee shop!
There will be student organization spaces galore – and more, including a movie theater for the campus community. In addition, the Center will have a multi-purpose meeting space capable of hosting functions involving up to 500 participants, in addition to a variety of smaller meeting venues.
As virtually everyone has seen or heard by now, the Dinkins Building, once vacated, will be used for needed academic space expansion, in keeping with Winthrop’s tradition of adaptive re-use.
It is important that both veterans and newcomers, Rock Hill residents and visitors alike, understand that these major brick and mortar investments are coming from funds long ago created, designated and dedicated by our trustees to those purposes – not from the operating budget that funds Winthrop’s day-to-day work.
That speaks to the long-term planning that occurs around trustee retreats in February of each year, when being good stewards of the University centers on how to design a quality Winthrop Experience that carries over from the hard work of the classroom to a campus environment that encourages deeper learning and reflection.
As always, Walter Hardin, Dave Rentschler, Ben Roach, Keith Williams, Manning Gibson and the Facilities team are doing a wonderful job. They are juggling several large facilities projects at once – each symbolizing our long time rubric that a good university is a pervasively good university – as well as preparing our campus for the opening of a new academic year.
Let’s give all of the folks in Facilities Management a special round of applause for the good job they do all year round!
Indeed, students arriving this year will find a Winthrop that has been the focus of continuous quality enhancement over their entire lives – in order to be ready for them when they decided they were ready for us.
A prime example of how Winthrop is constantly improving and enhancing itself is the new academic schedule that is being introduced this semester.
By purposefully incorporating common meeting times into the schedule, Winthrop is ensuring the entire community of learners has built-in opportunities to schedule and attend academic presentations, meetings, and professional development opportunities without conflicting with class meeting times. Student organizations can make use of the common meeting times to widen engagement opportunities for residential and non-residential students alike.
Such commitment to continuous improvement has benefited every aspect of Winthrop, from the quality of our academic programs, to the atmosphere of the physical campus environs, to the services that are extended to the community beyond the curb line of the campus.
That work, I am convinced, will hold Winthrop in good stead as we prepare to meet another all-institutional responsibility that is on our horizon: a regional re-affirmation of accreditation site visit by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, known as SACS for short.
Mark your calendars: That all-important visit will be April 4-7, 2011.
Work toward that visit is well underway, with consultative meetings already going on to develop options for a new aspect of SACS accreditation: The Quality Enhancement Plan.
A Quality Enhancement Plan is, quite simply, a program that any university seeking reaffirmation of accreditation must have in place to enhance student learning.
My first reaction on hearing that having such a plan was going to be a new SACS requirement was kind of akin to that old Br’er Rabbit fairy tale line: “please, please don't throw us into the briar patch!"
After all, quality enhancement of student learning is exactly what Winthrop has been all about for a very long time.
So, I both invite and encourage all of us to participate in a series of meetings that already have begun to develop options for what will be Winthrop’s first SACS-reviewed and SACS-approved Quality Enhancement Plan, but certainly not Winthrop’s first quality enhancement initiative by any measure!
Dr. Marilyn Sarow and the Quality Enhancement Plan Committee have held a variety of faculty and staff focus groups to gather ideas already, and will continue outreach, including to students and alumni, in the weeks ahead. A questionnaire will be sent to all employees in September, so please take advantage of one of these opportunities to be involved.
All of this affirms what we’ve known for years at Winthrop: that the lifeblood of higher learning and democracy itself is that “constant conversation” that characterizes the best university campuses, including ours.
For those who are new to campus, let me share with you a quote about that “constant conversation” that I have annually referenced here for a number of years.
It is so reflective of Winthrop’s nature and character that it now appears on our freshmen ‘Blue Line’ T-shirts:
It is from A. Bartlett Giamatti, the 20th century Renaissance man who was at various times president of Yale University, as well as Commissioner of Major League baseball:
“The university today is very different from the one 25 years ago, or 50 or 100 or 250 years ago, and yet it is not different.
“It is still a constant conversation between young and old, between students, among faculty; between faculty and students; a conversation between past and present, a conversation the culture has with itself, on behalf of the country….
“Perhaps it is the sound of all those voices, over centuries overlapping, giving and taking, that is finally the music of civilization … making the world, for its pain, work. It is a good place that continues to want to make her children better.”
Those words are a good reminder of what America has always wanted to be: “a good place that continues to want to make her children better.”
Yet too often, when choices are to be made these days, the key question becomes “is it good for my personal wallet?” – not “is it good for the children?”
I would submit to you that when we ask the right question – is it good for the children? – many choices that seem difficult become much easier.
At Winthrop, our version of that question is, is it good for the students? And asking that question helps us make many choices.
That’s why having our campus be as safe as possible remained a priority part of Winthrop’s work, even in tight economic times – and we are continuing our program of upgrades in that regard.
In 2007-2008, Winthrop added both a cell-phone text-messaging alert system and 50 ALERTUS emergency beacons to our other notification systems.
In 2008-2009, Winthrop installed a second wave of ALERTUS beacons, giving us 94 in all at present, with units being installed in new buildings as they come on line.
Signage advising where building shelters are in case of a tornado alert or similar emergency are being installed next to each ALERTUS beacon as we speak.
Over the summer, a siren alert from Tillman Tower was tested. While its reach will always be dependent on variations in daily weather conditions, we believe its use as a supplementary warning for members of the community who are outdoors during various parts of the day will be worthwhile. We will investigate other locations for possible supplementary speakers.
For those new to Winthrop, please know that each building on campus now has individuals who are designated Critical Incident monitors, who will assist our Critical Incident Management Team in spreading instructions and taking other building security steps when a threat exists, be it severe weather or something more extreme.
Emergency Fact Sheets are being placed in each classroom, and special university web pages have been created to provide general information, as well as real-time updates if circumstances warrant. Those pages can be accessed via: www.winthrop.edu/emergency.
Winthrop continues to emphasize a multi-layer, multi-media approach to campus communications should such a critical incident arise – to me, that’s a key aspect of being proactive about safety. Testing of various aspects of our system will continue to be conducted from time to time, as recommended for dependability and public awareness, so I ask all of you to give timely attention to these matters when you are asked to participate in any way.
A threat we all need to build awareness about as we move into Fall and Winter is the H1-N1 Virus, often referred to as “swine flu.” Campus planning is already underway to help us deal with any outbreaks that occur, and you will be hearing more about that later in the semester. This is a far more complicated planning issue than you might imagine, given our residential nature and the range of activities that occur here, so bear that in mind as flu season approaches.
My thanks go to Vice President for Student Life Frank Ardaiolo, Police Chief Frank Zebedis, and other cross-campus members of Winthrop’s Critical Incident Management Team for their continuing work in all these safety-related areas.
Also on the safety front, we continue to press the City of Rock Hill to work on the Cherry Road corridor immediately across from campus – indeed, corridors on all sides of campus -- to give them a safer, more pedestrian friendly feel, as well as create a “college town” atmosphere of the kind that prospective students and families find welcoming.
Because capitalizing on the campus community as a market for the private sector is key to the City of Rock Hill’s economic development strategy, Winthrop over the coming year will be working with the city to develop a “College Town Action Plan” that identifies mutually acceptable strategies for pursuing these respective goals.
The future of the deteriorating Bleachery property is a key part of those needs, of course. The economic downturn obviously has made redevelopment unlikely for the very near future. Meanwhile, those of you who were away over the summer may not know that there were two major fires on that property in July. Since then, two young men have been arrested by City Police and charged with arson in connection with the blazes.
While neither fire was a direct threat to the campus -- thanks to the difficult and dangerous work of dedicated firefighters and other emergency responders – the events did spotlight the need for improvement in the situation. Some neighborhood residential areas had to be evacuated, and off-campus students as well as families with young children were among those affected.
Since then, we’ve been told City officials and private sector owners continue already protracted negotiation about the Bleachery’s near-term future. Improvement in that situation obviously will be a major goal for any College Town Action Plan that emerges from work with the City, from both neighborhood and Winthrop perspectives.
Also important to any 360-degree College Town Action Plan is the timing of any state capital funding for the development of a new Winthrop Library.
There has not been a bond bill for the capital needs of institutions like Winthrop since 2000. That is not only impairing South Carolina higher education’s ability to prepare students for the 21st century compared to other states, it also is contributing to tuition and fee increases on virtually every campus, where projects have had to be self-funded if they were to meet the needs of students at all.
There is a huge cost to waiting on such projects – and taxpayers get nothing additional in return for those additional costs.
Our library is a case in point. The design envisioned for 21st century learning and research doesn’t require a significantly bigger library – just a differently configured and more technologically empowering one.
Yet the building that could have been built five or six years ago for 35 million dollars is now estimated to cost about 50 million if we broke ground today.
There is little predictability about whether the General Assembly considers a bond bill likely in the near term. But providing some kind of predictable capital revenue stream is a major recommendation that a statewide Higher Education Study Committee sent to the General Assembly this spring, and efforts are underway among all university presidents to continue emphasis on that need.
I’ll have more to say about that later in the Fall, but did want you to know that this is the kind of thing that keeps folks in Tillman busy over the summer!
And speaking of a busy community of learners, let me give those of you who were away for the summer a hint:
If someone who didn’t get away tells you they had a “Banner Summer,” they aren’t bragging about their vacation!
Indeed, they are talking about hours and hours of extra duty, study, practice and probably more than a few expletives, as they have engaged - some of them even voluntarily! - with learning Winthrop’s new Banner administrative computing system.
Having to replace Winthrop’s entire system during this already challenging timeframe was not a choice, but a necessity because our previous system is being phased out by the provider.
So, if we want to be able to maintain student records, academic schedules, financial aid, write payroll checks, pay bills, and all those other essential functions that are too often taken for granted, it was time to phase in a new model as we prepare to phase out the old.
If only we could get one of those “Cash for Clunkers” payments for each part of the old system! Maybe there’s still time….
Seriously, this has been – and continues to be – a monumental undertaking, so will all members of Winthrop’s TALONS work group please stand, as I tell your colleagues what’s been involved in the work you have coordinated all across campus?
Migrating all parts of all systems is a four-plus-year task, eventually involving some level of training for virtually everyone on campus. This is the group that has gone first, and figured how to get it all done in good time and good spirit.
So let’s applaud this on-going “Banner” accomplishment!
I imagine our founder, David Bancroft Johnson, would marvel at how the ledgers and onionskin of his day have become the digitized computer code of this century, even as the question of how to do more with less continues to be an ever-present challenge.
We – like Dr. Johnson -- simply know that we have to chart our course toward the future one decision at a time, hoping history will record we did the right things – that we enabled our future, while still dealing with the circumstances of the given moment.
Those decisions are never easy, but the well-being of our future generations makes all the effort worth it.
The 124 year history of Winthrop is evidence of that, as are the growing children we see in our own families.
As Gale and I were able to spend some extended time with our grandchildren over the summer, the importance of that that work – and the rapid passage of time -- was all around us, at the beach, and here in Rock Hill.
Gabriella, soon to be 15, is spirited and typical for her age and gender in all the predictable ways: she loves shopping in general, clothes in particular and manages to talk her grandparents into underwriting her attendance at concerts of pop stars who likely will never be on our own I-pod playlists.
Gabriella can also do more with a cell phone than I can with a whole computer. Text-messaging doesn’t begin to cover it all, and I realized recently that her cell phone is in just about every picture of Gabriella taken over summer vacation!
The boys, Beckett and Jack, are both still high-energy blurs at times, though different in how they use quieter times… rare as those are!
Beckett, the elder at age eight, is tall, dark and exhibits his senior status by turning inquisitive and introspective from time to time. More than once, I’ve been told he provides onlookers a glimpse of what they think I might have been like at that age. Jack is our five-year-old, a free-spirited Californian with sun-streaked curls, an inclination toward mischief, and a current fascination with a toothbrush that plays music, so his smile is always sparkling.
In fact, it becomes clearer to me every time I am with them that the role technology plays in this generation of young people is very different from what is was in my generation’s youth –when a ballpoint pen was a marvel!
And as close as technology can bring us at times when we are across the country from one another, it can isolate us, too. I looked around at one point after everyone had come in from an afternoon at the beach, and every one of us – myself included – was individually absorbed with some form of technology. I’m sure that happens in your families, too.
But in the end, those of us who have given our lives to education know that our enterprise at the end of the day is always about bringing people together, and that technology has become a global tool for doing that.
That is why public policy must be about people, for it is people who are the ultimate source of progress for both our families and our nation, and it is people who are our reason for being.
Because despite all the changes in the world, one touchstone remains true: The genius and beauty of the American experience has been universal acceptance of the fundamental premise that members of each generation should be able to advance the quality and ease of their own lives, make choices that guide their own futures, and broaden the opportunities available to their children to do the same over time.
It is the way in which this nation … generation after generation…has asked itself a key question at critical times – is it good for the children – and has then found the path to progress easier to travel.
We hold fast to that guiding principle at Winthrop, as we continue together to write this venerable institution’s “Big History.” As always, that is our tradition, that is the inspiration for our collective work, and it is our privilege to take up that work again in the year to come.
Thank you for being part of this plan for success for Winthrop University and its students, and thank you for making this a better place for your being here.
Now, let us prepare to move to the Tuttle Dining Room for some refreshment, and best wishes for a great academic year!