Affirming Our Values—Serving
Our State
Inaugural Address of Richard L. McCormick
19th President of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
April 13, 2003
Governor McGreevey, members of the Board of Governors and Board of
Trustees, students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Rutgers, and citizens
of New Jersey — thank you for your presence this afternoon and for the
opportunity you have given me to return to Rutgers as its president.
I will repay your trust with leadership that befits our university
today. It's
good to be home!
I want to express very special thanks to my family — to my parents, who
have belonged to the Rutgers community for over half a century, and
to my wife
Suzanne and our children Betsy and Michael who, with me, are coming
back to New Jersey.
The pageantry of today's ceremony cannot disguise the troubles of our time.
The war in Iraq and the threat of terrorism at home have brought new levels
of anxiety to our country and the world. Our economy remains weak.
And yet, despite these realities, we have within our hands enduring
instruments of the highest and noblest human purposes. We have classrooms
in which to share knowledge and values. We have studios, libraries, and
laboratories where we add to the treasury of art, wisdom, and know-how that
humankind has accumulated over the centuries. We have communities and
people whom we are privileged to serve through learning, healing, and
helping. Together these and other instruments of human purpose form a
university, our university called Rutgers, and never was the work we do
more important than it is today. Fondly do we hope for better times, but
the challenges of today are before us, and Rutgers will meet them.
Universities like ours are ancient institutions. Originally centers of
learning, they have also become places of research and discovery. Where
first they taught the arts and sciences, they now also offer professional
education. For centuries cloistered in the ivory tower, today they help and
serve in the larger world beyond the campus.
Out of this mix of learning, discovery, and service, a new and dynamic
institution was forged: the modern American state university. Its peculiar,
multiple commitments made it unique: transmitting the knowledge of the ages
from generation to generation, creating brand new knowledge, and applying
that knowledge to the needs of the world. In these three missions lie
metaphors for much that gives meaning to human life: The old teach the
young who in turn repay the debt by transcending the inherited wisdom and
imparting new truths to another generation. All the participants share a
commitment to improving human life, by testing their competing truths in
the real world of experience and sorrow. All share the common joys of
learning, discovery, and service.
I am describing an ideal, of course, but great institutions rest upon
ideals that touch what's basic in human life. For historic reasons, the
ideal of the state university came belatedly to the northeastern United
States. Public universities in such states as Michigan, North Carolina, and
California have longer, different traditions from Rutgers. Only in recent
decades have the people of New Jersey shown signs of embracing their state
university. Not surprisingly the embrace has been tentative, and we at
Rutgers sometimes ran into trouble translating the ideal into the reality.
We did not explain it very well to the people of our state. Perhaps we did
not fully understand it ourselves.
But the tradition is worthy of our embrace, especially now in the early
years of the 21st century. It may be a troubled time, and New Jersey is
going to need a fully developed state university to meet the requirements
and expectations of its citizens. Rutgers accepts the challenge to be that
university.
We envision a place where learning, discovery, and service are nurtured and
entwined; a place where there is tolerance for the student who challenges
the professor's ideas, kudos for the researcher who demolishes old
theories, admiration for the faculty member who finds a new way to make
knowledge socially useful. It will be a place where the undergraduate whose
parents never attended college works alongside a member of the National
Academy of Sciences in her laboratory; a place where the kid from Cherry
Hill does community service in Camden; a place where reading a work of
classical literature lights a life-long fire in a human spirit. In New
Jersey, let that place be Rutgers!
But being a leading state university isn't easy, and doing so will require
us to bear a paradoxical burden. Are we part of the marketplace or are we
aloof from it? We are both. Are we basically about ideas or practice? We
are both. Is our highest responsibility at Rutgers to discover or to serve?
It is both. Should we focus on our state or should we be part of a
worldwide conversation about ideas and ideals? We simply must do both.
So let me say it directly: At Rutgers we create knowledge for its own sake.
We are about discovery and the rich treasury of the greatest human
creations, about ideals that have no bottom line except the enrichment of
our species through the arts, humanities, and the sciences. There are no
world-class universities without strength in English as well as
engineering, in classics as well as computer science, in musical theory as
well as molecular biology. Whatever the marketplace may say, we must ensure
the excellence of the humanities and the arts.
But our university also creates knowledge that is useful, especially to the
people of New Jersey. Examples abound. The John J. Heldrich Center for
Workforce Development does research to improve job training practices and
public policies so that Americans will be more productive and prosperous.
The Heldrich Center has projects and partners across the country, but
through its work with the pharmaceutical and medical technology industries
of our state and through its special relationship with the New Jersey
Department of Labor, it benefits New Jersey first.
The Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Cook College is an
international leader in oceanography, and because of that expertise it is
the center of education and research to preserve New Jersey's coastal
waterways and improve their shellfish products. The Center for Molecular
and Behavioral Neuroscience in Newark is recognized as a world leader in
addressing the needs of children with hearing and learning disabilities.
The first beneficiaries of the Center's research and outreach are the
children of New Jersey.
These endeavors, selected from among dozens I could have named, show that
Rutgers is part of the fabric of New Jersey and contributes deeply to the
betterment of our state. But there is a paradox here: We serve our state
best when our aspirations reach beyond its borders. It is the national and
international distinction of our faculty and our research that makes us
most valuable to the people here at home, especially to our 50,000
students.
While we recite these achievements, we must remember where we are — in
New Jersey, a state with extraordinary comparative advantages. In
location, wealth, climate, history, agriculture, industry, transportation,
and
demography, New Jersey is one of the best endowed locales on earth.
Would anyone trade away our colonial heritage, our beautiful shore
and northwest
highlands, our fast-paced way of life, our high-tech economy, the
exceptional diversity of our population, or even our Turnpike Exits?
This
is New Jersey. It's not Paris. It's not California. It is proud of
its proximity to Philadelphia and New York, but it's not them either.
This is
New Jersey and its state university is called Rutgers.
My family and I have lived the last decade of our lives in places
of mildness and gentleness — Chapel Hill and Seattle, two of the loveliest
towns on the planet. Now upon returning to New Jersey, I find a bit
less gentleness but so much passion, individualism, energy and sheer
brainpower. Our Rutgers students, to their credit, share these traits of grappling
and scrappling, of not thinking the world owes them success on a
silver
platter, of willingness to work hard for whatever they achieve.
These are powerful characteristics of our state's personality, but we don't
always realize the full benefit of them. How much more could we accomplish
by pulling together in the same direction? How can we align New Jersey's
exceptional energy, intelligence, and wealth to advance our collective
goals? It is time to do that, because the opportunities facing Rutgers are
very great, and we must work together to seize them.
Our most important goal is to move Rutgers to the top tier of America's
public research universities. We have made great strides in recent
years — in
research funding where we are gaining rapidly, in the stature of
our faculty whose memberships in the national academies and whose
appointments to prestigious fellowships are increasing annually,
and in the quality
of
our students. It is now time for Rutgers to undertake its most ambitious
effort ever to enter the first ranks of American universities. Our
goal is to move our whole university toward the level of our Department
of Philosophy, now ranked number one in the country!
Imagine a university where most undergraduates, as well as graduate and
professional students, are engaged in research or other forms of
experiential learning, where teaching and research are inherently
interdisciplinary, and where the boundaries between the institution and the
rest of society are blurred almost to the point of invisibility. Together
we can make this dream a reality. Together we can move Rutgers to the place
of distinction that should be occupied by The State University of New
Jersey.
Wherever the innovation economy is thriving, a research university
is the engine of that growth. This means collaboration between universities,
industry, and government — a goal that Governor McGreevey has articulated
so well. This means technology transfer from faculty laboratories
to the private sector. This means graduates who are prepared to occupy
demanding positions in the high-technology economy. If New Jersey is going
to reassume the position of economic leadership it had before the
current
downturn, then Rutgers must be strong enough to lead the way.
The Report of the Commission on Health Science, Education, and Training
provides a vision that is now receiving the serious attention it deserves.
The potential benefits of the Commission's proposals are considerable. They
include collaboration in teaching and research across the disciplines,
particularly in the health sciences; opportunities for Rutgers students to
study and conduct research in fields to which they would not otherwise have
access; increased research funding from the federal government and the
private sector; and the growth and development of our state's
knowledge-based economy.
And yet right now, higher education in New Jersey is failing to fulfill
its single most important responsibility, and that is educating the young
men
and women of our state. New Jersey leads the nation by far in the
loss of high school graduates who go to college in other states. This is a
brain
drain of teenagers, most of whom never return to live and work in
New Jersey. Right now, as increasing numbers of children of the baby boom
generation complete high school and head for college, New Jersey
stands to fall further and further behind in providing higher education for
its own
sons and daughters. We need to confront this problem by increasing
the enrollment capacity of our state's colleges and universities—not
only by putting more seats in the classrooms but also by assuring the quality
of
education our students receive. Generations before us met comparable
challenges. We must do the same.
In the decades following World War II, my parents' generation of
Americans invested in education and opportunity. Beginning with the
GI bill, they
granted financial aid to college students who needed it. They expanded
access to higher education beyond the traditional collegiate ranks
of advantaged white men — to women as well as men, to people of color,
and to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. That post-war generation
of Americans used many means to achieve their goals. They greatly
enlarged traditional universities like this one, they invented
a whole new kind of
institution called community colleges, they built buildings, appointed
faculty, invested in scientific research and technology, found new
ways to serve the nation and the world — and they were not afraid to
make the investments and sacrifices required to do these things.
Imagine if Americans of the '50s, '60s, and '70s had not invested in
education and opportunity. What a poorer and less egalitarian society we
would have today. Now it is our responsibility to ensure that the next
generation enjoys the same opportunities we did to obtain a college degree
and enter a prosperous society. Our children deserve outstanding higher
education, right here in New Jersey!
The painful truth is that state support is currently inadequate to
maintain either the quality or the capacity of our state's colleges
and universities. By whatever measure you choose — the percentage of
state revenue that is allocated to higher education, or state-appropriated
dollars per student — Rutgers and New Jersey rank near the bottom of
the country. I take no pleasure in reciting this fact, and I will
not belabor it. But together we must confront and remedy the shortage
of resources for
Rutgers and for all of higher education in our state.
There are only two strategies for doing this, and we must utilize them
both. The first is to connect our university much more deeply to the needs
and aspirations of the people of New Jersey and persuade them to invest in
what we do. If we have been aloof and apart, we must become more engaged.
If we have taken state support for granted or if we have regarded it as our
just due, then we must acknowledge that this support is not automatically
owed to us. It must be earned afresh by every generation at Rutgers. If we
have failed to communicate fully the benefits of a state university, then
we must tell our story better. If we do our part, the people of New Jersey
will do theirs.
Second we must rely ever more heavily on other sources of support
than the state — tuition, federal and corporate research support, self-supporting
educational programs, technology transfer, private gifts and grants.
Every one of these revenue sources is already rising at Rutgers,
but there are
cautions associated with each.
As tuition rises, to sustain our educational quality, we must protect the
breadth of access and opportunity at Rutgers by ensuring that financial aid
is available to students who need it. As support from the federal
government and the private sector increases, we must guard against
conflicts of interest and sustain the academic quality of disciplines that
have little access to outside sources of support. As private philanthropy
grows, we must guard jealously our independence and affirm our
responsibility for the university's intellectual and educational
directions.
None of this is new. Universities have always been influenced by
their sources of support and are always challenged to maintain an
independent set
of values — autonomy, integrity, accessibility, openness, freedom of
thought and expression, civility, and equality. These values are
never entirely secure. They must be reaffirmed and defended and held in trust
for
future generations who will, in turn, be required to restate them
and defend
them
again. As we secure the resources Rutgers needs, we must also secure
its values.
And among these values, none are greater than diversity and civility.
Our campus in Newark is justly proud of being the most diverse university
campus in America — a distinction it has held for many years. But our
Camden and New Brunswick campuses are not far behind. The student
body of Rutgers
looks like the population of our state! This healthy mix of heritages
and colors did not happen by accident. Virtually non-existent forty
years ago,
the diversity of our students was achieved through the hard work
and commitment of successive generations of Rutgers men and women.
Why did they do it? First, because a college education is essential
to opportunity in America, and it was not right — it is not right — for
anyone to be held back because of their ethnicity, background, or
heritage. Simple
social justice demanded — and demands — the diversity of our university.
Let us remember with pride the Rutgers students of African American
heritage who
taught us that in protest in the spring of 1969.
The second reason for diversity at Rutgers is that everyone gets a better
education in a diverse environment. When you go to school with people who
are different from you, who have unfamiliar backgrounds and divergent
perspectives, you become better educated and more fully prepared for life
and work than you would be if your classmates and teachers all looked
alike. The quality of a Rutgers education depends directly on the diversity
of our university.
Social justice and academic excellence are the two imperishable motivations
for our diversity. For these reasons, no matter what the United States
Supreme Court decides in the Michigan cases, we will, consistent with the
law, maintain the hard-won diversity of Rutgers.
We must also maintain the civility of our campuses and encourage dialogue
with dignity among divergent groups. Now more than ever, our society needs
its young men and women to spend nurturing time in a place where
differences of opinion are respected and incivility is unacceptable. In New
Jersey, let that place be Rutgers!
And so, as I prepare to close these remarks, let me return to the subject
of the relationship between a true state university and the state of which
it is a part. The relationship between Rutgers and New Jersey must become
far deeper and more extensive than it is today, and we at Rutgers must bear
the largest share of responsibility for making it so.
This means forging stronger connections with the K-12 schools and the
community colleges, many of whose teachers and students we educate. It
means strengthening our special ties to Camden, Newark, and New
Brunswick/Piscataway, our hometowns, for whose revitalization and
well-being we are working with our many partners in these communities. It
also means deepening our ties to the entire state of New Jersey, whose
public research university we are. Whatever challenges New Jerseyans are
facing, whether in education, economic development, workforce training,
transportation, health care, or environmental protection, there will be
Rutgers men and women working alongside them to help meet their needs.
To Governor McGreevey and all our elected officials, to the tens of
thousands of Rutgers alumni, to the parents of our students and our future
students, to my colleagues throughout our state's schools, colleges, and
universities, to the leaders in our state's business community and civic
life, to all the people of New Jersey, we make this pledge: Rutgers will be
your state university. We will work with you to meet the needs of the
people of our state, to provide an outstanding education to our students,
to discover and apply new knowledge, and to serve. And we, in turn, will
expect you to help us and to support us with adequate funding. Rutgers and
New Jersey are not going anywhere, except with each other. Neither of us
can let the other down.
Varied as we are, different as are the routes that brought us to Rutgers,
we share some deep convictions. We know that learning feeds the human
spirit and advances human progress. We know that knowledge and
understanding are the highest gifts we can offer the young. We know that
broadening access to learning strengthens our common civic and economic
life. And we know that putting knowledge to work in the world lets us serve
needs and solve problems that matter to everyone.
This university still lives out those fundamental values and convictions.
They run like veins of gold through everything we do. They underlie our
claim to serve the public good. And they must also sustain our spirits. For
even amid difficulties and frustrations, doing work that affirms one's
deepest values is a privilege.
So guided both by our hearts and our heads, with our historic missions and
values intact, our pride in New Jersey strong, and our commitment to the
next generation as deep as our parents' commitment was to us, it's our turn
to take care of this place called Rutgers. And together we will.
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