I am excited to be here today to provide remarks regarding the state of the university, although with barely six weeks on the campus, such a task is daunting to say the least. My having said that might have given you all hope that my remarks will be brief, but it has been my experience that, regardless of the circumstances, it is difficult to restrain an academic's biological clock—you know, the one that aligns all remarks with the standard length of a class. The standard class of my past 31 years has been 50 minutes. I promise to do much better than that!
First, Valerie, Meriem, and I would like to thank everyone for an incredibly warm welcome to Miami and to Oxford. Although many are working hard to deepen my understanding of Miami (not the least of whom is my assistant, Debbie Mason, who worries that I can't seem to remember my phone number), many of my deepest impressions of Miami remain those shaped by the process of viewing Miami from the outside. I am encouraged that those views from the outside have largely been corroborated by what I have encountered on campus, and that should be no surprise. During the recruitment process, a scoping document for the position of President of Miami University (PDF) was prepared based on extensive input from the campus and beyond. Valerie and I came to Miami with a strong sense of the university that we developed through that document and the many conversations it generated. This is a place that we found irresistibly attractive—a university of great values, of tradition, of excellence, and a university eager to be better. It is a university that values community and attracts people who believe that they can make a difference in the lives of our students, our society, and the world beyond.
Today I will reflect briefly on the major issues presented in the presidential scoping document since it provides the foundation for the future of Miami University. Since time is limited, I will focus on those issues related to mission; issues that I believe will frame our thinking and decisions in the year and years ahead.
Without a doubt, our ability to clearly and succinctly define who we are and who we hope to be is the single most important element shaping our choices now and in the future. The scoping document, in my view, provides a wonderful description of what Miami is and aspires to be, and quite frankly, that is what attracted us here. A university that has existed for nearly 200 years must be doing something right! What we need to do, then, is to intensify those qualities that have made Miami both distinctive and distinguished, in other words to "make Miami more Miami," taking the best of Miami and making it better (a phrase that has been picked up about me along with my fondness for KFC, cats, fishing, and Star Trek).
The document begins with a simple declarative statement:
Founded in 1809, Miami University has a distinguished history as a prestigious public university recognized for outstanding undergraduate education and selective graduate and research programs. The University serves the state of Ohio, a regional and, increasingly over the past decade, a national audience.
Then, in describing the challenge of mission leadership, the document notes:
Miami University is a student-centered university, with a few carefully selected, excellent graduate programs that has built its success on liberal arts teaching to academically ambitious undergraduates. It builds great student and alumni loyalty, retains students beyond expectations, and teaches them to lead intellectually vigorous lives.
It has the virtues of a major university that offers the personalized attention to students found in the best small colleges. It values teaching and intense engagement of faculty with students, and its faculty are productive, nationally prominent researchers who invite their students into the excitement of discovery. It supports students in a highly involving residential experience on the Oxford campus and provides access to non-traditional students on its regional campuses. It provides a strong foundation in the traditional liberal arts for all students, and it offers nationally competitive professional programs in business, education, fine arts, and engineering. It supports students in attractive, state-of the-art facilities on campuses in southwest Ohio, and it pushes its students to explore the world in a variety of international programs.
Every time I read this statement, I get excited by the very "idea" of Miami University and the prospect of working together to realize this vision. Let me take a few moments, then, to highlight three dimensions related to Miami's mission that I see as being most important and relate them to what we are currently doing or might do in the future: the centrality of undergraduate education, our public university identity, and our commitment to excellence.
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