Higher Education ‘As the Progress of the
Times May Require’:

A Creative Work Perpetually in Progress

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the opening of another academic year here at Winthrop. This is our 122nd 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. It’s simply part of our tradition – at Winthrop, we want newcomers – faculty, staff or students – to feel you are truly part of this special community from Day One.

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:

• Dr. Cheryl Fortner-Wood, faculty representative to the Board of Trustees, and
• Dustin Evatt, president of the Council of Student Leaders, and student representative to the Board of Trustees.

Welcome!

Let me also take this opportunity to thank Dr. Tim Daugherty for his thoughtful, insightful and productive service over the past two years as faculty representative to the Board, and for his work in helping Cheryl to transition to these new responsibilities. Let’s acknowledge Tim’s very fine service.

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 welcome our emeriti faculty.
Let me also acknowledge a few folks serving in new faculty leadership roles this year in the College of Visual and Performing Arts:

•  Alice Burmeister is serving as associate dean,
•  Tom Stanley as chair of the Department of Fine Arts, and
•  Chad Dresbach as chair of the Department of Design

Indeed, this is a time of year when the campus community re-forms itself 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 new faces will start to appear among us, too. There will be a lot of them, and to some of us, they will seem younger than ever.

In fact, Gale and I have marveled over the summer about how this entering class will mark a particular milestone in our own lives. Yes, most of this year’s entering class was born in 1989 – the very same year Gale and I came to Winthrop!

Think about that. Where were you in 1989? Listening to Fleetwood Mac? Watching “Rain Man” at the movies? Our entering class likely will think of those things as ‘oldies,’ if they know them at all.

They likewise will think of any historical reference to “the Cold War” in just about the same way they think of a reference to the Ottoman Empire… or rotary dial phones… or eight-track tapes…. All ancient history from the realm of “before I was born” – a time before Starbucks began to circle the globe.

The young people coming to us are the “Barney the purple dinosaur” generation of kids… who likely launched their first explorations in McDonald’s Play Spaces … then with high-tech games… and who were the first generation presented with The Simpsons as the TV idea of a modern nuclear family as an antidote to the sweetness of the Huxtables of Cosby fame.

Our students will bring to us all their best attributes… and, inevitably, some of their worst habits, just as students have been doing for decades.

And we will take them into the Winthrop circle of learners, and make them part of the constant conversation that we’ve long recognized is the heart of any great university.

So the Winthrop family is changing once again, as families always do with time– sometimes in happiness and sometimes in sadness.

As most of you know, since we last were together here on campus, the DiGiorgio family has dealt with a time of profound sadness, in the sudden passing of our elder daughter, Dina, at the end of May.

Please allow me to take just a moment to express the deep appreciation that Gale and I feel for the great warmth and caring that we felt from this community during those challenging days, and feel even today, in this room. To all of you, collectively: Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.

Let me tell you that we are moving forward, as all families must do in such circumstances. And we want you to know – because so many of you have asked -- that our granddaughter, Gabriella, is doing well, and looking forward to her 13th birthday in a couple of weeks.

This summer, during part of our family time at the beach, Gabriella was joined by a young friend, giving Gale and me the experience of having not one, but two 13-year-old girls in our midst – as well as our two pre-school grandsons.

I was reminded during that wonderful, sometimes rowdy, experience of the words of Mark Twain:

“If you hold a cat by the tail, you learn things you can not learn any other way.”

A wise man, that Twain… and I wonder if that bit of wisdom was coined in the presence of a couple of nascent teen girls, full of energy at midnight, but virtually un-wakable much before noon, making the time-honored transition from childhood to adolescence.

It occurred to me more than once during that time that the students who will be coming to us this week are teens, too. They are making a transition of another kind – into young adulthood, though still entitled to be teenagers for a while—and still more likely to be full of energy at midnight than most of us!

As they arrive among us, we have to keep in mind that we don’t always know how their lives have been shaped, in good times and sad times, over their tender years. What we do know is that they are entrusting themselves to us at this most important and defining time in their lives.

It will take all our energy and imagination and creativity – and yes, sometimes our patience -- to help them fulfill… and in some instances, to find… their dreams.

John Updike once observed that, "Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better than it has ever been done."

By that criterion, I would submit to you, Winthrop University is, by definition, a truly creative community.
In fact, creativity is so much a part of the culture of Winthrop University that some might call it our instinct, while others know it is a habit we have worked hard to cultivate.

Whatever its derivation, creativity is the means by which Winthrop constantly keeps faith with a mandate unique among South Carolina’s public institutions of higher learning: to provide students with an education “as the progress of the times may require.”

This summer, reading through our Common Book for the year, The Creative Habit, I was taken by the similarities between what author-choreographer Twyla Tharp identifies as her creative process, and the creative processes we use here at Winthrop.

We have our rituals of preparation – all part of our Vision of Distinction process -- and we harness our memories as well as our aspirations as we shape this community and fine-tune it and constantly improve it “as the progress of the times may require.”

We seek and find inspiration for all that work in all kinds of places – in our history and traditions, in our sense of place, in our experiences, and in our own individual and collective aspirations. We have done it that way – many of us here together -- for almost 19 years. As a result:

• Winthrop is recognized now as an institution that values tradition, and finds ways to give those traditions meaningful, creative contemporary expression.
• Winthrop is recognized now as an institution that has used its creativity to develop a set of experiences for students that make Winthrop a lifelong touchstone in their lives – a reference point to where their own values have been developed and internalized, and where approaches to lifelong learning and intellectual inquiry have been honed.
• Winthrop is recognized as one of the best institutions of its kind in the nation – a place where quality and value work together to prepare students to live, learn and lead for a lifetime.
• Winthrop is recognized today as an institution that is constantly challenging its own personal best and inspiring students to do the same.

In that vein, during the recent Academic Retreat, Tom Moore and our faculty leadership spent some quality time talking about how we will be working in the year ahead to assess our “Touchstones” general education program, use that information to measure the program against the progress of the times, and ultimately, to make the Winthrop Experience even better.

That work will reflect our understanding and continuing commitment to keeping our students’ experience at the leading edge of best practices nationally, broadening and deepening their learning “as the progress of the times may require.”

For in these times, there is no finish line on higher learning for anyone. To state that in another way: If a degree affirms only the mastery of a single discipline as it is understood today, it will not serve our graduates in the world of tomorrow. In addition, higher learning today also must instill in graduates the habits of lifelong inquiry and the habits of lifelong creativity if our degrees are to fulfill the promise of meeting what “the progress of the times may require.”

Leading intellects continue to remind us of that essential 21st century truth.

As many of you will recall, author Tom Friedman is both a New York Times columnist and author of “The World is Flat,” the seminal play-by-play analysis of how the world moved from the industrial age to the information age to the digital age and all the implications of that for our future.
Last year, Friedman was addressing the subject of learning how to learn again, this time at a conference on “The Campus of the Future.” And he put forth a formula for 21st century learning that is startling in its simple truth:

CQ + PQ > IQ

In his formula, the C is Curiosity and the P is Passion.

In other words, taking the nature of these times into account, one’s tandem quotients of curiosity and passion for learning actually can be more important to individual success than basic intelligence.

Friedman isn’t alone in that analysis. Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, develops Friedman further, saying we’ve now moved even beyond the digital age and knowledge age and into “the conceptual age.”

And, somewhat refreshingly among those who write about higher education these days, Pink notes that this conceptual age is one in which America and Americans can benefit markedly from a liberal arts approach. Here is how he puts it:

“The left brain is useful. But when the world is flat, almost everything on the boring, functional, organized left side of the brain can be done by an overachiever from India or be automated. So it is developing and engaging that creative, innovative, passionate, right side of the brain that is more important.”

There’s that word again: “Creative.”

Friedman and Pink aren’t the only futurists to reach such conclusions.

The National Center on Education and the Economy did the same. With support from the Lumina Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the center last year looked at the skills needed by the American workforce.

What they found was presented in the Report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce:

“The best employers the world over will be looking for the most competent, most creative and most innovative people on the face of the earth --and will be willing to pay them top dollar for their services. This will be true not just for the top professionals and managers, but up and down the length and breadth of the workforce.

“It is a world in which … candidates will have to be comfortable with ideas and abstractions, good at both analysis and synthesis, creative and innovative, self-disciplined and well organized, able to learn very quickly and work well as a member of a team and have the flexibility to adapt quickly …as the shifts in the economy become ever faster and more dramatic.”

It is a view of the world that prompted Tom Friedman to reiterate his own advice of last year, which he imparts to others’ children as well as his own:

“The ability to learn how to learn will be the only security you have.”

Important words, for our own families, our students and ourselves.

That is the world for which Winthrop is preparing our students, through our own creative work as educators.

In that respect, we are the very stewards of educational creativity…of a perpetual on-going process in which the goal is to continually press the envelope on how good – how right for the times – we can make the Winthrop Experience.

There are those – particularly in the public policy realm -- who would have colleges and universities be simple purveyors of pre-packaged, static educational products.

They view higher learning as if it were a commodity, interchangeable from institution to institution so that credit at a for-profit diploma mill that never changes is viewed the same as credit earned through a highly engaging, dynamic institution that is constantly focused on building its quality.

They want there to be a generic English 101 and Math 101 at every institution, right up the line, with each course as indistinguishable and transferable as McDonald’s hamburgers from coast to coast, and just as devoid of any potential for value added.

And that can certainly be done… just take all the people out of the process, and coursework can become just such a lifeless, stagnant commodity!

But higher education, done right, is not such a commodity, because higher education is about people – students, faculty and staff… learners all… interacting in ways that inspire and transform each other.

Higher education, done right, is the sum total of educators’ creativity and that “constant conversation” to which we remain dedicated at Winthrop – the “constant conversation” that former Yale President Bart Giamatti once wrote is part of every great university.

As most of you already know, Giamatti’s words on that subject have been inspirational to me for some time, so I share them with you now, as I have for the past few years. They say a great deal about Winthrop’s values, about how our growing distinctiveness has been shaped, and about the role and aspirations of higher education in general:

“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.”

Because of our values and our traditions, our nature and our character, we know intrinsically that education is a creative process that evolves – within a course from class meeting to class meeting, as well as from year to year – because it involves real people, living real and varied lives, teaching and learning from one another because they aspire to better themselves, their loved ones, their community and their nation.

By making our students part of a genuine community of learners, we engage and guide them in that constant conversation. We allow them to test their ideas, hear perspectives they have not considered, test theories, recognize gaps in knowledge, and seek to fill those gaps.

We challenge them to work individually and in teams, to inspire, provoke and challenge one another to do their very best, until doing so becomes second nature… until they absorb these approaches into their core existence, as their own habits of inquiry and habits of creativity.

It is these interactions of the learning community that are at the heart of true higher education.

And we do something more at Winthrop in that process. We do not shy away from imparting values as part of our core commitments as well. In fact, Winthrop over the years has made this calling so much a part of our creative habit that we have been chosen as a national leader in this regard.

The Association of American Colleges and Universities this year selected Winthrop as one of only 18 institutions in the nation to lead a national initiative focusing on educating students for personal and social responsibility across the curriculum. This work will focus on the following “core commitments”:

• Achieving excellence by doing one’s best in all aspects of college and life,
• Cultivating personal and academic integrity;
• Contributing to the larger community;
• Taking seriously the perspectives of others, and
• Developing competence in ethical and moral reasoning.

Only a campus community that works creatively, engages students in their own learning and makes constant conversation a part of its ethos, could undertake such an initiative.
That is yet another example of Winthrop meeting its obligations “as the progress of the times may require.”

I have to tell you that I enjoy pointing out to state leaders that in South Carolina law, Winthrop trustees alone are given a specific responsibility found nowhere else in the state code. Our trustees, alone, are charged with the responsibility to develop a “first class institution of higher education” for South Carolina.

Campus veterans have heard this before, but it is important for our newcomers to know it, too.

Go to a search engine for the entire South Carolina Code of Laws, which has the enabling legislation for every public college and university in it, and type in the search phrase “first class institution of higher education,” and hit enter. What comes up?

No Tiger Paws. No Gamecocks. No Cougars. No Chanticleers.

Just one institutional name is shown: Winthrop University.

That’s not all. Winthrop trustees have yet another special responsibility by law:

To “add, from time to time, such special features … and such new departments … as the progress of the times may require.”

That’s quite an imperative, isn’t it? To evolve “… as the progress of the times may require.”

Clearly, we continue to rise to that call where designing a Winthrop education is concerned.

In addition to what’s been occurring in our Touchstones program, we are continuing to grow our residential learning emphasis by expanding the number of Academic Success Communities this year, and continuing our two-year residential experience for all new students.

In addition to continuing this importance emphasis on residential living and learning as part of the overall Winthrop Experience, we also this year will introduce the program that will expand and formalize as part of our students’ credentials our long-standing commitment to leadership development as part of their experience, too.

Learning to lead is really infused throughout life at Winthrop. It begins with encouraging our students to think about themselves in relationship to others from the moment they set foot on this campus as part of the Winthrop community.

But the times have been telling us that even more is needed in the area of leadership development for the 21st century. So a couple of years ago, we created a task force to define the characteristics and components of a Winthrop Leadership Studies Program and explore options for how completion of that program would be recognized.

Last year, Dr. Keith Benson took charge of that initiative and guided it through its approval process. As a result, beginning this year, Winthrop is offering its students, regardless of degree program, the opportunity to earn a “Distinction in Leadership.” Keith is continuing to meet with freshmen interested in pursuing the designation and design an individualized plan for each based on his or her interests and career choices. Students will take additional courses and have the opportunity to interact with alumni and high profile leaders from all segments of society. When each is ready to graduate, his or her degree will be awarded accordingly, for example, “a Bachelor of Science, with a Distinction in Leadership.”

We believe that credential over time will serve our students well as they enter the world of work or graduate study, as well as helping communicate a distinctive aspect about Winthrop in general.
As you can see, the imperative to act “… as the progress of the times may require” is taken seriously here.

Even if we weren’t aware of it academically, evidence of the progress of the times is much around us. Just try to drive through certain parts of campus, and you will find you can’t get there from here!

Yes, the look of the Winthrop campus is changing as the progress of the times requires as well.

Not only does our creative campus development plan support the overall Winthrop Experience for our students, it also is designed to help the community of Rock Hill grow stronger at its urban core – to show our students an example of how to be what Friedman calls a ‘sustainer’ – thinking green and building green and working smart and growing smart toward our future.

Right outside this door, the largest building to ever be built on Winthrop’s main campus is finally a reality!

And, it was worth waiting for… because quite a building it is!

Not only is it the largest academic building ever to be built here, it is a regional example in terms of environmentally conscious construction.

As you know, the Lois Rhame West Health, Physical Education and Wellness Center has been a dream on this campus for many years – part of the commitment we have to preparing students to realize a goal that dates back to the Greeks and Romans – a healthy and sound mind in a healthy and sound body.

Our focus right now is to ready instructional spaces for classes next week, with shared use spaces next and wellness facilities finished as soon as possible. Finalizing everything is taking a bit longer than any of us would have preferred, but the end result is worth it. There will be a formal open house for the entire community later in the Fall.

At the same time, another new feature has been added to campus as well, also reflecting the progress of the times. Owens Hall, named for trustee Glenda Pittman Owens and her husband, Jerry, opens for classes next week.

If anyone wants to see a stellar 21st century ‘meat and potatoes’ classroom building, this is it – right-size learning spaces, joinable into larger spaces as needed, and now being infused with the kind of smart technology that today’s learners require.

We will give that facility a shake down starting with 8 a.m. classes on the first day of the semester, undoubtedly with some fresh paint scenting the air, and additional technology being installed as it arrives.

Owens Hall is an example of Winthrop taking on its own shoulders the responsibility to provide academic spaces for its students “as the progress of the times may require.”

It is not the only example, however.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a little tougher to navigate in the Thurmond-Sims neighborhood these days. That’s because Walter Hardin’s digging up the campus again – this time to move utilities for the next new academic space to be added to Winthrop – an auditorium for the College of Business Administration.

The auditorium structure also will house related special academic spaces that will be used to prepare students for capital market trading – an essential part of financial management these days.

We envision that uses of this special feature will create opportunities to expand our outreach into this part of the business world, as well as expand our interaction with small businesses through outreach based in Winthrop’s Small Business Development Center. And it can also be used to build financial literacy among young people – a capacity often identified by the business community as lacking in this generation.

As part of that overall plan, the computer labs of the former Academic Computing Center have been moved to Dacus Library, since the auditorium project will be bid this fall, and we expect construction to commence late this calendar year.

So construction zones and hard hat areas will be part of our landscape there, as well as in the heart of campus.

For now that the West Center is open, the preparation for demolition of the dear old Peabody Gym is just a few weeks away. Once that site is clear and prepared – about four to five months from now -- the footings for the new Campus Center will be poured. As a focal point for programs that emphasize the engagement of Winthrop students with one another and engagement of this university with its public, the Campus Center will be devoted to that ideal of “constant conversation.”

New spaces aren’t the only changes on campus this year. As you know from presentations made last Spring, Winthrop continues to adapt itself to the progress of the times organizationally as well, always focusing on approaching everything we do as efficiently and effectively as possible.

That means some Winthrop hands are taking on new work, and some offices are relocating as well, simply to get people and functions where they can best serve current needs.

So, as part of the on-going upgrades in Tillman Hall, the offices of the new Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations will be on the third floor of Tillman, close to the Alumni Office. Acting VP Brien Lewis has moved from his former role as Dean of University College to take on this new role. This summer, Brien moved from his Bancroft office to turn that space over to University College’s new acting dean, Dr. Jennifer Solomon.

Brien spent part of the summer in a holding pattern on the first floor of Tillman… until an air conditioning leak set in, and next thing I heard, he was holding forth in a Canadian cabin without internet or cell phone service… or at least that’s what I was told! But I see he’s back now, and has already taken on his new responsibilities of leading the team that works with our donors and our foundations, as well as our alumni relations.

Likewise, taking on important new responsibilities as the progress of the times requires is Kathryn Holten. The advancement division she heads as vice president in March took on the key functions of student recruitment, admissions and enrollment and their closely related marketing activities, as well as continuing to guide the work of the Office of University Relations and Printing Services.

This advancement work is key to the next phase in Winthrop’s fulfillment of its vision as a national caliber institution. Sharing with prospective students and families on a national basis all the wonderful distinctive aspects of The Winthrop Experience that make this such a special community is of pivotal importance to our growth strategies for the future. I can think of no one better suited to work with the recruitment staff on this important initiative than Kathryn Holten.

Given these changing responsibilities, it’s also a good time to match functions and the people who carry them out with spaces that better meet both their needs and student needs. So some other changes are occurring as well:

• The Office of Development and Winthrop Foundation offices have moved to Sykes House, clearing the way for Records and Registration to move to more appropriate quarters in the former Development Office space in Tillman.
• Records and Registration’s former space will be used to unify the Comptroller’s space with Finance and Business.
• Visual and Performing Arts will inherit that McLaurin space, as well as some student studio space at The Lodge.
• With so many concurrent projects underway, Facilities Design and Development will move back closer to the center of action, in Sellers House, with Telephone Services moving to The Lodge space being vacated by Manning Gibson and his staff.
• This means that for this academic year, faculty and staff lunch options previously offered at Sellers House will be focused in Thomson Café, which is getting a major top to bottom re-fitting with new menu options and serving areas. But stay tuned – there are some new plans for colleague dining and gathering opportunities under review, and we’ll update you on those as they take shape.

Gathering spaces – indoors and outdoors – are an important part of the Winthrop campus. One of the things that sets a true campus atmosphere apart from most other enterprises is the inclusion of an array of places where people can spend time – together or in solitude – to think, reflect, and commune with each other and with the outdoors.

This year, enhancements to three such areas are in place, and we are grateful to donors, including alumni, who have helped make this possible.

Last year, the bust of founder David Bancroft Johnson was moved to the Little Chapel. This year, the space where that bust used to reside now hosts a new art installation.

Nationally recognized artist Brian Rust of Augusta, Ga., designed a centrifugally oriented arrangement of stones and cast concrete benches to create a new area for study, reflection and contemplation. The work involved the Department of Fine Arts and Winthrop Galleries, with recent graduate Todd Stewart assisting in the construction.

Nearby, at the Leitner Wall, which has become such a campus favorite in a short period of time, a water feature is being added, providing both an artistic and an inspirational quality to that space and to the Kinard Lawn.

And finally, walkways and seating have been added at the foot of the Winthrop Eagle, a wonderful sculpture commissioned and donated by Charlotte businessman Irwin Belk. The eagle landed on campus last Fall, and quickly became a favorite site for commencement and other photos… now we’ve facilitated that a bit with the walkway and seating.

The exceptional beauty of Winthrop’s outdoor spaces is an important part of what makes our campus such a special one.

That’s why this year, work will proceed on Scholar’s Walk, connecting Little Chapel and a new sculpture garden that will be the green space for the heart of campus, bounded by McLaurin, Roddey and the West Center. This is a project that will be created incrementally, as we have often done here at Winthrop.

Also this year, we will develop a plan for long-term replenishment of our tree stock and planted areas, emphasizing native varieties and sustainability. We want to ensure the green canopy of Winthrop continues to be a part of this campus’s identity for future generations of students as well.

Likewise, we’ll give special attention to planning for the landscaping of the campus approach to the new Library that we will build at the corner of Alumni Drive and Founders Lane.

The juncture of the Library, Little Chapel and the amphitheater as it extends toward what will be the northern face of the Campus Center has always been a topographically challenging spot to contemplate, yet contemplate it we must. It will be the foreground of the campus vista as it will be seen from inside the new Library. And as such, it will be an extension to and from that key venue.

While the state of South Carolina has not yet answered the key questions about the library – from where and when will the capital funds to build it be made available – our planning for that project will continue unabated this year. Indeed, programming that space will be an especially energizing activity, in that it will require all of us to think long-term – what does the progress of the times portend for library users of the future? Dean Mark Herring and his staff will spend some additional time engaging the campus community on that question this year – again, part of that wonderful constant conversation that is the heart of life in a community of learners.

This time last year, legislative leaders were indicating a bond bill was a possibility. Well, it was a possibility that never became a reality, as legislators devoted their primary attention to three top priorities: tax cuts, tax cuts, and tax cuts.

The year ahead in the General Assembly will be an election year – and Governor Sanford already has said he intends to be aggressive in pointing out to the public those legislators he believes to still be too pro-spending.

That approach has done little to create smooth relations between the governor, the House and the Senate over the past five years – even though they are all of the same partisan affiliation -- so there’s little reason to believe harmony on overall spending levels is about to break out in Columbia.

But at the same time, spending priorities show little improvement where higher education is concerned. Our state operating appropriation is actually about the same as it was in 1998-99 – despite our larger enrollment and considerable inflation over the decade.

But that’s only part of the problem. Just as a Washington-like approach to tax policy now characterizes state policy discussions, so does a Washington approach to spending – with earmarks for special pleadings finding favor over usual funding formulas for operations when the results finally were revealed, weeks later than usual.

Then, like a scene from the movie Casablanca, policy makers began to hear that institutions not receiving special operating earmarks were having to raise tuition more than those who did, and responded as if they were Capt. Louie Renaud, the Casablanca police official who was so “shocked, shocked” to find out such things as gambling were going on in his jurisdiction.

South Carolina isn’t the only state where cutbacks in higher education are occurring at a time of fiscal prosperity.

If you have colleagues in Florida, talk to them about life in institutions where budget rollbacks are prompting freezes in enrollment and cuts in classroom air conditioning, in a state where neither is a sustainable strategy. The trend is evident in a few other states as well, though in North Carolina and in Georgia, per capita investment in higher education is solid and moving ahead – leaving South Carolina at a competitive disadvantage.

This is a situation that cannot continue if South Carolina is to progress as a state.

So you may read and hear that I am more outspoken than ever on these issues in the year ahead. Now, more than ever, is a time when I believe South Carolina must put in place a strategic plan for higher education that focuses on the ends that must be achieved for the betterment of its citizens, not the means that might be the most closely aligned with a particular philosophy of government.

Winthrop over the years has worked as if such a plan were in place, emphasizing creative approaches fostering academic success, inclusiveness and service beyond self.

We have responded to the problems of the day in numerous ways:

•  In the Richard W. Riley College of Education alone, we have extended our outreach to support school leadership development in the Interstate 95 area called ‘the Corridor of Shame,’ worked locally to develop a science-technology magnet school at the elementary level, and developed a prototype health and fitness program called Zest Quest, suitable for replication in every school district in the state, and even brought donor support to that cause.
• This Fall, we’ve just learned, Winthrop will receive almost $700,000 in federal funds to support its work to assist public school educators who teach students with limited English capacity.
• Our College of Visual and Performing Arts harnessed the creativity of artists far and wide and brought them to campus with noted writer-director Charles Randolph-Wright for the first “Create Carolina” arts workshop, as well as presenting numerous public performances and exhibits of excellence.
• We are working with South Carolina ETV on a series of public polls keying on issues and candidates in the realm of public policy.
• We have created a master’s program in Social Work, to boost South Carolina’s capacity to deal with its most vexing social issues and improve troubled lives in myriad ways.
• We continue our collaborations and partnerships with the city of Rock Hill and private investors to create a “college town” environment around the campus, connecting us to a re-emerging downtown with a vibrant active-adult community.
• And we will create value-added to that community through both the proximity of campus life in general and the creative way in which we will design a Lifelong Learning Institute where residents can join with like-minded faculty, staff and students to demonstrate that everyone has something to teach and everyone has some something to learn in an environment dedicated to that purpose.

Over the weeks and months ahead, we will describe all these far-reaching activities and then we will remind our state’s public policy makers that providing creative answers to the changing needs presented by the times is what public higher education is all about, and Winthrop is serving the State of South Carolina exceptionally well in that regard.

And we will continue to take the Winthrop story to legislative leaders, in every venue possible, and we will expect our regional legislators to do the same, until operating dollars allocated to higher education better reflect the level of dedication to South Carolina demonstrated by Winthrop and its peer public institutions.

And we will do that because Winthrop takes seriously its legislative mandate to keep up with the progress of the times, and we expect our legislators to take that state mandate equally to heart when making their appropriations decisions regarding Winthrop.

We can expect nothing less if we are to keep faith with both the future that arrives next year and the year after that, and the future that arrives a generation from now as well.

That’s why this year you also will see a good deal of work dedicated to identifying what capacities, staffing and resources will be necessary to meet academic, facilities and support service needs to accommodate incremental growth in enrollment while maintaining and building upon Winthrop University’s nationally recognized quality and value.

We already know that the success of our residential approach to learning requires that we seek additional housing capacity, and avenues toward that end are being explored.

But we also need to assess what Winthrop students who have not yet been born will need to have in place when they are ready for their Winthrop Experience.
Because we know that to keep the special nature and character of Winthrop, growth must be managed carefully, with all aspects of the University ready to deliver on our quality and value to all our students as they arrive among us.

We will prepare for the future as we have for the present, answering the questions of how we grow in the right way, with the right kind of education for our times.

We will continue to do so creatively – drawing on the greatest resource of a learning community: its people -- in what is a work perpetually in progress when it is done right.

In sum, all of this on-going transformation – academically, conceptually, and physically – is Winthrop’s signature response to the core question around which our “constant conversation” about the Winthrop Experience revolves: Just how good can we make it?

The answer to that is emerging all around us through your collaborative caring, commitment, and yes, creativity.

When did Winthrop reach a point of being recognized in all the major “best” listings now?

I can’t tell you precisely when, but I can tell you exactly how:

It has come through an accumulation of creative accomplishments, each emanating from some segment of the university, and contributing to a greater whole.

It comes from each of you – and from the person sitting next to you, and the two people behind you, and that row over to the left of you and to the right of you.

It is the sum total of the work of the creative campus community, doing what we do best, day after day.

In that way, it’s like the academic and personal development of each young person – it happens day by day, with each accomplishment building on a foundation that is a lifelong work, perpetually in progress – a job never quite done because the world keeps changing and the progress of the times keeps changing what is expected of us. And because we keep changing each other through the very act of working creatively together … to teach… and to learn.

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.

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.

America put that unity of purpose in work clothes by creating a public education system meant to be a pathway for each generation to fulfill America’s promise – where individuals of different backgrounds and perspectives could learn together and create a better world together. We hold fast to that promise at Winthrop.

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. Best wishes for a great academic year.
 

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