State of the University

Harvey Perlman, Chancellor

September 30, 2015

It has been my custom of inviting students from the School of Music to perform at these events to symbolize for us the privilege we share of working with such extraordinary young talent. Of course, talent extends beyond music and today I am pleased to introduce nine first-year students who enrolled at UNL this fall. All of these students earned perfect scores on the ACT or SAT.

• Alex Eitzman, a computer engineering major from Lake Elmo, Minnesota;

• Nicholas Leyden, a math major from Shawnee, Kansas;

• Ryder Mays, an English major from Hastings, Nebraska;

• Naomi Samuel, who is exploring her major selection, from Omaha;

• Zach Warneke, a math major from Omaha;

• Dylan Gray, an actuarial science major from Okemos, Michigan;

• Lambros Karkazis, a computer science major from Western Spring, Illinois;

• Cooper Knaak, a computer science from Plainview; and,

• Henry Harrison, a computer science major from Omaha, who in seventh grade was awarded the Regents Scholarship for earning a perfect score on the reading section of the ACT.

On behalf of all faculty and staff, I welcome you to campus and wish you the best in your academic endeavors.

I didn’t want to deprive you of music. So please welcome the University Chorale from the Glen Korff School of Music. This is a campus vocal ensemble that performs a varied repertoire. Students from throughout the university are encouraged to participate. They have been invited to sing for state, regional, and national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and the National Association of Music Education. The selection they will sing is “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” a freedom song from the civil rights movement.   I have entitled these remarks “Short Remarks from a Short-Timer” which sounded better than “stale remarks from a stale Chancellor.” When I announced last April 1 that this would be my last year as Chancellor, I was determined not to give a State of the University address. I concluded that it would be more appropriate, and in some ways more symbolic, if on April 1 of this coming year, I give a farewell address. I intend to do so on April 1.

However, my staff – that mysterious black box known as the Senior Administrative Team – urged me to give a State of the University speech. They argued it was traditional and there would be a serious void without it. They also correctly observed that we had to fill up the time between the employee service awards and the picnic.

It is difficult to know what to say. I am no longer in a position to set a long term agenda for the campus, and it would not be fair to my successor for me to attempt to do so. I plan to provide my final assessment on the state of the university next April before handing the reigns to a new chancellor. At that point I will have no political restraints on what I can say. That doesn’t leave much for this address. Of course, some might argue the lack of substance hasn’t stopped me before.

Many have asked me how I was able to serve as chancellor for such a long time. I reply that I followed that sage advice: Don’t retire until you’ve irritated enough people to make it worthwhile. I think I have satisfied that criteria.

One of the honors associated with being chancellor for the last 14 years has been that many of you cared about what I said in the State of the University. I am also quick to acknowledge that one of the strengths of this university, and one of the reasons for our success, has been that the campus has had the good sense to ignore some of my suggestions when they turned out to be impractical. The bureaucracy of any institution of shared governance can seemingly embrace an idea with open arms and then, in mysterious ways, made it all but disappear. I just wanted you to know I recognized it when you did it to me.

So without being too specific, I will report to you on the state of the university and give you an idea of the agenda I will try to pursue during this last year as your chancellor. I recognize that the focus of the campus will be on the search process for my successor, as it rightly should be. The university should be well positioned to attract good leadership and I am confident it will. As I said before, in leading the university I have tried to follow the advice in Jim Collins’ book “Good to Great,” which is to hire good people and get out of their way. I have been fortunate, more often than not, to find extraordinary talent, and if I have made any contribution it was to have the good sense to free them to lead. I am indebted to vice chancellors Ronnie Green, Prem Paul, Juan Franco, Chris Jackson, Mark Askren, and the others who have served on the senior administrative team during my tenure as chancellor.

We all recognize that the output of the university is generated by the faculty and staff — whether it is teaching, research, or engagement — and without their creativity and energy the university cannot be successful. At the same time, the deans and vice chancellors and others in administration make the critical decisions about when to invest and in what to invest so that the limited resources we have will maximize our collective success. We have all been blessed with very talented vice chancellors and deans who make a real difference in our trajectory. Now that I will soon transition back to the faculty, I can say this without being too self-serving.

I am particularly grateful to Ronnie Green. After the difficulties of attracting candidates for senior vice chancellor for academic affairs willing to sign on to work for a short-term chancellor, he agreed to bear the burden of holding two positions (and to being in two places at the same time). As the past several months have proven, he is up to the task.

I say all of this as context to my summary of the State of the University. Nebraska is not the university we were 15 years ago. Because of good fortune, extraordinary external support from friends and alumni, and a collective internal commitment to drive this university forward, we are now a far better university.

We are a member of the Big Ten, there are issues on which we are regarded as the premier source of talent and information in the world, we are engaged in cutting edge research that tries to solve some of the most intractable issues facing the human condition, we are actively engaged as a land-grant institution in improving the economy of our state, and, most significantly, we have an undergraduate program that is increasingly vibrant, exciting, broad and attractive to young people from Nebraska, the country and the world.

We are also at an inflection point. An institution like ours that is not moving forward is falling behind. We have achieved a plateau well above the valley we once inhabited, but well-below the peaks of our potential. As in any climb, the air becomes more rarified and the climbing becomes more difficult. We have achieved because we took calculated risks. There will always be those who seek the comfort of the present or who fear the expected reactions of those who resist change. We cannot let them fashion our future.

I remain content with the goals we set a few years ago to increase enrollment, increase research, increase faculty numbers and faculty recognition. We have made some progress, but we cannot rely alone on the units that have already demonstrated success. We must also stimulate and incentivize those units who have to this point not contributed as much as they could to our collective enterprise.

Over the course of last year I called out architecture as a college that was not reaching its full potential. Our efforts to merge the college were borne solely out of our assessment that they could do more to engage in the university’s momentum. Though the merger was not to be, I remain committed to the idea that there is potential to do something very special with that college and we will continue to engage with Interim Dean Scott Killinger and the faculty to assure they work toward that end.
Both the faculty and the discipline of architecture have very significant perspectives that can contribute well beyond the students in the professional architecture program. We need their help in achieving our objectives.

Our focus also has to be on the College of Engineering. That college has made real progress during the last three years and implementation of the strategic plan approved by the board of regents is critical not only for the university but for all of Nebraska. For the university, the college should contribute to our enrollment growth and should play an increasingly central role in sustaining our research momentum.

For Nebraska, the production of more engineering graduates is critical for its economic advancement and here we are in competition with every other state — all of whom face a critical shortage of STEM graduates.

Computer science, particularly in software applications, is another field where demand for graduates exceeds supply — and where we are in a unique position to keep Nebraska competitive. We are increasingly well-positioned to do so. Our computer science and engineering department is developing a new software engineering program to respond to industry demand. And we were fortunate to have attracted Steve Cooper from Stanford to build on the extraordinary success of the Raikes School. With active computer education programs both in Lincoln, and at UNO, and the unique capabilities of the Raikes School, we must find ways to respond to the workforce needs of Nebraska companies — needs I should add that are experienced by companies around the world.

We have also begun significant initiatives, led by Vice Chancellor Prem Paul and Dean Joe Francisco, to engage the humanities and the social sciences in our institutional efforts.

I am convinced that both humanities and the social sciences will be proven to be more and more critical to solving the problems that face the world, including food production, global climate change, early childhood education, the growing income disparity, cyber security and so many more. These disciplines must not be left out of our innovation initiatives, our economic development initiatives or our international engagements. Even in the age of science, human interactions and human understanding will have much to say about the acceptance and translation of scientific findings into public policy. I do not think it is heresy to explore how the humanities can contribute to economic development. Amazon and Google were, after all, initially built on the content of the humanities.

Our recent announcement of the Nebraska Early Childhood Research Academy, led by the College of Education and Human Sciences, illustrates how marshalling the social science and other expertise of the university has the potential to make an important difference.

We will continue to pursue our enrollment goals. We are at a record high enrollment in the history of the university, and I have full confidence we will reach our objective of 30,000 students. An important part of this increase will be the concurrent growth of graduate student enrollment and increased faculty capacity. Whether we will do so in the time frame I initially announced will remain to be seen. If we don’t, I know it will not be attributable to any lack of skill or energy on our admissions staff or the full commitment of the campus community. We have also restructured our enrollment management effort under the interim leadership of Amy Goodburn and have asked James Volkmer to fill the new position of director of enrollment management analytics. It remains critical that we meet our enrollment objectives. This state desperately needs an expanded, young, skilled workforce.

We should not underestimate the importance diversity has in not only achieving our tangible goals related to enrollment and research, but also our more general objective of enhancing the stature of this university. I am extraordinarily pleased that in the past five years the percentage of freshmen that are students of color has increased from 11 to 16 percent.

Over the course of the last year, we implemented a restructuring of our diversity efforts. We refocused the Office of Equity and Compliance and were fortunate toward the end of the last academic year to attract Susan Foster from her law practice to join us as director. Her arrival coincided with increased attention nationally on the role of universities in implementing Title IX and she has been literally consumed with these issues. She is positioning us well to meet our responsibilities. As we build her office, she will have more of an opportunity to broaden her activities.

The restructuring also contemplated that academic affairs, student affairs, and human resources would identify a diversity officer in each unit to be responsible for activities and programs designed to improve our diversity efforts. We need to have our faculty and staff reflect, if not America, at least the diversity of our student body. During last year, Joy Castro from ethnic studies was asked by academic affairs to think through our diversity efforts and to make recommendations. She has provided a report with a broad, thoughtful set of recommendations that should be considered. Some we have already implemented. One of those recommendations seems a precursor to the others – an outside, independent diversity audit of our programs. I intend to implement that audit. And academic affairs will be moving forward to recruit a full-time assistant vice chancellor for diversity.

In cooperation with University of Nebraska President Hank Bounds, and the active involvement of our now vice chancellor Mark Askren, we are looking seriously at how the information technology staffs at UNL and Varner Hall can work more closely together. Three positions have been consolidated, saving resources to invest in higher priority activities and more may be forthcoming.

Through Mark’s leadership, earlier this year UNL joined the Unizin consortium as a founding member along with approximately a dozen other leading universities including many of our Big Ten colleagues. This community of institutions is working together to significantly improve teaching technologies that benefit both our faculty and our students. Specifically we will gain access to improved learning management systems, open digital repositories and next generation learning analytics tools which will help us produce collaborative learning outcomes well beyond what we could do on our own. In a joint initiative between academic affairs and ITS and with cooperation of the Faculty Senate Information Technologies and Services Committee, we are piloting use of the Canvas Learning Management System as part of our Unizin engagement.

This university will reach its potential only if it continues its efforts to engage on a global scale. Almost 10 percent of our student body now comes from abroad. We are engaged in programs to increase our efforts to convince our domestic students to study abroad. Since the 1950’s when we helped create an American style land-grant university in Turkey, we have continued to use our expertise to assist countries around the world. Some of our unique efforts include:

• An expanding engagement in India with the recent announcement of a collaboration with Jain Irrigation, a private sector company; a new partnership in water research with the Ministry of Science and Technology; engineering’s relationship with IIT Madras; education and human sciences’ work in early childhood and family studies with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences; and food science’s partnership with the National Institute of Food Technology.

• In China, we recently formulated a joint degree program in food science with Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, offering a course of study formulated by faculty from both institutions. About sixty students entered the program this year. These students will take their first two years in China from Chinese faculty, a third year in China from our faculty, and their last year here at UNL. This adds to a strong and developing relationship with Xi’an Jiaotong University in areas such as mathematics and our partnership with the Confucius Institute which is opening Chinese language and culture to Nebraskans statewide.

• In Brazil, expanding beyond growing relationships in agriculture, education and human sciences is working on innovative collaborations that will put our research enterprise to work on mutually beneficial action in the fields of early childhood development, social inequality, and adolescents at risk.

• With support from the U.S. Congress and other sources, we will be one of four universities partnering with the Harvard Kennedy School to create an American-style Fulbright University in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

• Our National Drought Mitigation Center and other faculty at IANR, with support from USAID, will be working to create a similar drought mitigation center for the Middle East and North Africa.

• Our physics department and the Holland Computing Center are deeply engaged in the Hadron Particle Collider Project at the Cern lab in Switzerland, one of the largest and most complex scientific experiments in history.

These are just a few of the many ways in which our flag is flying across the world.

David Wilson, who has served as senior international officer, has brought a real passion and energy to our international engagement activities. David has announced his intention to return to the faculty. We will initiate a national search for a senior international officer to be an associate vice chancellor for academic affairs.

Tom Farrell, associate to the chancellor for international activities, will serve in the interim. Tom brings an extraordinary resume including a career in the U.S. State Department, as director of the Fulbright program, and at the Institute for International Education. He has been instrumental in many of the international institutional engagements we currently enjoy. With our expanded global presence, it is important that we develop an administrative structure that can leverage and better support, in a strategic way, our international engagements.

Finally, let me make a few comments on Innovation Campus. In a week we will have its “grand opening”. It seems like we’ve been talking about it for a long time, but the reality is that land development and building construction are far from quick processes. In studying other such developments, we know that success is best assured if there is a strong, initial university presence on the property. The Centennial Campus at North Carolina State, one of the models we tried to follow, became successful only after it moved selected academic units to the development. We have imitated that approach with food science and technology — focusing on an area that is one of our comparative advantages and with a department that has a long history of engagement with the private sector. I hope you will all have an opportunity to tour the Food Innovation Center. It is a state-of-the-art facility unmatched anywhere in the world. We have benefited in its design and construction from the full engagement of the food science faculty, the invaluable assistance from ConAgra Foods, and the willingness of IANR to make critical investments. It has enhanced the work environment for our food science faculty and, accordingly, has significantly increased our expectations for their achievements.

Our challenge now is to fully exploit this facility as well as the opportunities it creates for the entire university. Food science is broad enough to include a wide segment of disciplines at the university. Providing food for consumption is a major industry. It is an industry, in part life-sustaining, and in part entertainment. It is both art and science. It depends on the physical sciences for production and the human sciences for consumption. It is difficult to think of a discipline that could not participate if we set out to claim “food science” as a best of class feature of this university. Indeed, I might even consider teaching “food law” when I return to the law college!

Accordingly, vice chancellor Green and I, working with the deans, intend to create an interdisciplinary task force, with members from all colleges, to explore how the various disciplines do, or could, impact the production and consumption of food. We will be reaching out to local as well as national expertise for assistance. There is significant potential here to collaborate with the medical center and to engage President Bounds’ system-wide initiative on food security and health. My hope is that the task force could not only describe existing opportunities but also to think creatively about how we might create a campuswide national center of innovation for the food industries. And when the food task force completes its task, I promise I will buy them dinner, if, of course, they report while I’m still chancellor.

More significantly, the world seems to be moving in our direction. There is increased recognition that feeding a growing world population is a global problem of enormous dimensions, not only with the obvious impact on human life but also in terms of world stability. And, the nexus between food, water and energy is rising as part of the nation’s research agenda. In its fiscal year 2016 budget request, the NSF seeks to initiate the INFEWS program: Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems. With our investments in food on Innovation Campus, the Daugherty Water for Food Institute, and the Nebraska Energy Center funded by NPPD, no university is better positioned to take advantage of this initiative.

But Innovation Campus should be more than just a set of new buildings on the former state fair grounds. It should energize and infect the entire campus with the spirit of innovation, risk-taking, and entrepreneurship. I again salute the faculty advisory committee that is pushing us to exploit this potential. The “maker space”, now Innovation Studio, has captured the imagination of our student body and the larger community.
We are exploring, again at the faculty’s suggestion, an “innovation curriculum” that could prepare students in all disciplines to approach life with a better understanding of how innovation occurs and how they might contribute to that process.

I believe the next 15 years mark an opportunity for us to build some areas where we are the acknowledged leader in the world. I believe Innovation Campus has the potential to invigorate the economy of Nebraska. More importantly, however, I believe it has the potential to refashion the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

I want to express my gratitude to all of you who have allowed me to serve as your chancellor for the last 14 years. I will have more to say and perhaps a tear or two on April 1 when I address you all again. For now, it is enough to say that the most important work to be accomplished this year for all of us is to help attract the next chancellor for this great university. Of course the best selling point we have are the accomplishments you have accumulated over the last decade or more. But we shouldn’t leave the choice to chance. I hope all of you will actively engage in the search process.

So, announcing your retirement has certain consequences. I won’t bore you with more than one story at this point. A faculty member, who for now will remain nameless, came to my office and told my assistant, Kim Rauscher, that it was critical that the chancellor speak at a banquet to be held next October and wanted to get it on my calendar. Kim told him I had announced my retirement and would not be chancellor in October. The faculty member went away but came back 15 minutes later and in even stronger terms insisted that I must speak at the banquet in October. Kim again politely said I was retiring and would not be chancellor in October.
The faculty member left but came back for the third time, slammed his fist on the desk, and shouted at Kim “Look, I want Chancellor Perlman at that banquet in October.” Kim, always unflappable, said “Look, Harvey Perlman has resigned and won’t be chancellor in October.” At that, the faculty member smiled and said, “Great, I just wanted to hear it one more time”

Enjoy the picnic.