Now Ive returned--eight years later--to find a wonderful thriving
Remarks to the Charlotte Rotary Club
November 1, 2005
Good afternoon. I appreciate the invitation to be here.
As mentioned, I’ve been gone for eight years. While the return to Charlotte and
the university has brought many pleasant opportunities to reacquaint myself with old
friends, it has brought many new challenges. Just finding my way around University City
has been a challenge; a good part of it didn’t exist when I was here before.
Perhaps the most significant challenge has been in wondering how my brand of
leadership will be accepted, on and off campus.
Our campus has thrived for the past 16 years under the extraordinary leadership of
Jim Woodward.
And Jim was lucky enough to have built upon the work of our first two
chancellors who themselves took the vision of Ms. Bonnie Cone and built a university.
We would not be here today without Dean Colvard and E.K. Fretwell.
Each chancellor who has served UNC Charlotte wanted to put his own personal
imprint upon the place, and Dean, E.K., and Jim did that. An institution that doesn’t change will simply become irrelevant.
And yet, starting out, each chancellor is naturally a little bit nervous about
“rocking the boat” and possibly undermining the very support that is needed to
implement new ideas.
So over the next few months, I’m going to be on the lookout for those little signs
that my plans for change might not be going as expected.
With acknowledgment to the author of several of these, President Gordon Gee of
Vanderbilt University, and with apologies to David Letterman, these are the top ten signs
that your plans for change may not be going as well as expected:
No. 10: Your official residence gets paint-balled by your own daughter and her
friends.
No. 9: You get a parking citation when parked in your reserved space.
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No. 8: Faculty wave at you on campus but they don’t seem to be using all their
fingers.
No. 7: The Deans refer to you and your provost as “Dumb” and “Dumber”.
No. 6: When you schedule the Board room for a meeting with the faculty
leadership, you’re asked to post a damage deposit.
No. 5: Your assistant has a prozac dispenser installed in your restroom.
No. 4: The benefits office sends you information about early retirement that you
didn’t request
No. 3: The Board of Trustees schedules your annual physical with Dr. Kevorkian.
No. 2: Your latest quote in the Charlotte Observer is: “well, just bite me.”
And the No. 1 sign that your plan for change isn’t going as well as expected —
when you meet with the new President of the University to discuss your budget
and he looks up and says: Gee, I thought they fired your butt months ago!
Now this is all good fun, but one thing that needs to be said about UNC Charlotte
is that it is, in fact, all about change. Just in the eight years I have been gone, tremendous
things have happened--changes not only in the physical landscape of the campus but also
in the programmatic landscape. This community should be very proud of what has
happened here, recognizing that UNC Charlotte is celebrating this year only its fortieth
anniversary as a four-year institution.
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For the next six months or so, my primary concern is to listen and learn. There have been too many changes for me to presume that I understand the institution or its
place in the community well enough to speak just yet about future initiatives.
When I left, there were fewer than 15,000 students; this fall we have close to
20,800.
When I left, there were about 725 faculty members; this fall we have nearly 200
more than that. Indeed, many of the young whippersnappers who earned tenure during
my time here are now the grizzled senior faculty.
And, likewise, the number of staff has increased by more than 300.
When I left, the campus had 1.9 million square feet of buildings and classrooms;
today we have nearly 2.6 million square feet under roof.
When I left, the campus had completed a successful campaign of private
fundraising of $32 million; this fall we celebrated the completion of a $116 million
campaign. We’ve gone from raising under $4 million a year in private gifts to over $30 million this past year.
Competitively-awarded research has grown from just under $10 million per year to more than $22 million; our total research funding this past year reached nearly $27
million.
And although we are small compared to the larger established research universities, the Assn. of Technology Managers ranks us first in the country in patent
stndrdthapplications, 1 in start-up companies, 2 in inventions, 3 in patents issued, and 4 in
technology licenses for each $10M of funded research. We do a very good job of
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leveraging the external funding that we do receive into outcomes that positively influence
Charlotte’s economic development.
I left in 1997 after having developed our first four doctoral programs, but I wasn’t
able to see even a single doctoral degree awarded. We now have 14 programs enrolling
more than 450 students and we produced 41 doctorates last year.
To be considered by the UNC system to be among the ranks of the research
universities like Chapel Hill and NC State, we need to have 15 doctoral programs with 50
or more annual doctoral degrees produced. We’re close, and we have four new doctoral
programs awaiting final approval—in business administration, organizational science,
geography and urban regional analysis, and nanoscale science.
In short, across the Board, UNC Charlotte has had an impressive record of growth
and accomplishment. And I look forward to working with our new President, Erskine
Bowles, to help us along this path.
The President has announced that he plans to spend the first several months
listening and learning—and that’s just the advice I would give him because I’m going through the same process myself. In fact, we had a very productive day with the
President yesterday on campus as he met with Trustees, members of my administrative
team, faculty and staff leaders, and students.
Our new President will work through his own process of learning about the
University and he will reach his own conclusions. But I think that, very quickly, several
things will become very apparent to him:
1. First, we are a human capital organization, and we must place greater
urgency upon our ability to compete for the very best people in the country.
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We cannot be the best if we don’t hire the best. Our benefits structure, in
particular, which provides no funding for the health insurance of the
dependents of our faculty and staff, ties one hand behind our back as we
compete for talent. And our salaries, whether for faculty, staff, or
administrators, are woefully behind the marketplace.
2. Secondly, the University of North Carolina system is one of the most
respected in the country—the system has value and it needs to be
strengthened. It was formed for a reason—to serve the people of the state
of North Carolina and not the particularistic interests of the campuses.
3. Third, in that regard, we need clear and concise priorities stated in our
legislative requests for support. And we need the legislature to respect
those priorities as stated by the Board of Governors and to act upon them
as fiscal circumstances allow. The legislature created a Board of
Governors so that the interests of the various campuses would be weighed
and sorted in a careful and deliberative process and not have the legislature
try to deal with the separate requests of 16 campuses. That system will
only work if the legislature wants it to work and has confidence in the
recommendations coming from the Board of Governors. I see this as one
of the President’s greatest challenges.
4. Fourth, the President will quickly find that each institution functions
within its own community context. His challenge is to understand that
context and reach some judgment about what is needed to help each
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institution reach its full potential for the greater good of the state. What do
I mean by that?
I’m sure that most people in Charlotte are aware that this region has spent a lot of
time and money analyzing its future for economic growth. Regardless of the study, all of
them point to one inescapable fact—
UNC Charlotte’s success as an institution is critical to the economic, social, and
cultural vitality of the greater Charlotte region.
UNC Charlotte’s development as a research institution is not, as some might
characterize it, part of the “academic arms race” or some selfish need for UNC Charlotte
to feel like it has to move up the academic pecking order. It is, rather, a recognition that
the University is a critical component of any successful strategy of regional economic
development.
And so while I can easily agree that the health of our premier research institutions
is essential to the health of North Carolina, that does not mean that I can subscribe to the
view that the world must remain as it was when UNC Charlotte entered the University
system in 1965. New realities and a new economy demand more.
Each of you in this room is part of a business organization. I’m betting that if I
polled the room, I would find a strong consensus about the number 1 priority you have
for being successful—motivated and well educated employees, capable of adapting to new conditions, and able to learn new things over the course of their careers in your
organizations.
No manufacturing organization that depends upon others for component parts can
be unconcerned about the quality of its suppliers. For that same reason, the organizations
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represented here need to be concerned about the quality of the primary public university
that serves this region:
We should be one of your primary suppliers for new employees.
We should be the place you turn to for student interns.
We should be a primary resource when you need research completed that would
help your business thrive.
We should be an asset that helps the Charlotte Regional Partnership and the city
and county chambers that exist in this region recruit new businesses to our region—and
we know that the quality of the educational system in a region does matter to CEOs
considering relocation of their businesses. If UNC Charlotte does not represent the very
best in higher education, then Charlotte will not be able to compete at a high level.
We should be an asset that helps the Charlotte region deal with the challenges that
come with regional growth, including effective transportation systems, accessible
housing and health care, quality urban design, and strong and trusting relationships
among groups within a diverse community.
In a word, we are your university and we need your help to be all that you need us
to be.
One of the areas where we can use help is in your advocacy on our behalf with folks on the Board of Governors and in the General Assembly regarding the funding
required to build a research university. One of the things that this state has done right is to invest in UNC Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. Tremendous
advances, including the amazing story of Research Triangle Park, could not have
occurred without first flight research institutions.
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The same will be true for Charlotte and UNC Charlotte. We were very fortunate this past year that, with the leadership and support of Speaker Jim Black and other
members of the Mecklenburg County delegation, we were able to secure the first $5
million on a long-requested $10 million adjustment to our budget that recognizes our
emergence as a doctoral-granting institution. The other $5 million will come in July,
2006.
However, without sounding greedy (I hope), let me give you an idea of how far we have to go. I don’t yet have the figures for the current year, but at the end of the
2004-05 fiscal year, our per student funding (including the revenues we receive through
tuition) ranked us in the bottom half of the 16 institutions in the UNC system, more than
$6,700 per student less than an unnamed UNC institution up the road that happens to
have a national champion basketball team. Our state appropriation ranked us fourteenth
of sixteen institutions, nearly $3,200 per student behind the funding provided our flagship
institution. Our recent new funding will adjust that number upward by, at most, $600 per
student.
I do not wish my message to be misunderstood. This is not about our research institutions being overfunded. There are some good and substantial reasons for an
established research institution to be funded at a higher level than an emerging one. But
the current funding of UNC Charlotte simply retards our rapid development as a research
institution. Indeed, if we had in our budget just half of the difference in state funding and
tuition revenues available to the flagship, we would have more than $55M more dollars
in our budget. That, my friends, would buy a lot of basketballs!
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Now, I have a rule with my staff and it’s the same one Jim Woodward had. We
will do the very best with what we have. And I should say, with some institutional
modesty, that what we have done is nothing short of amazing. But we will also let
anyone who will listen know that building a major research university requires funding
up to the task.
Finally, I think the new President has a major role to play in helping our higher education system—and indeed our entire state—break free of the shackles of state
overregulation and control. In its desire to make sure that public dollars are well spent,
our state has often confused control for accountability.
Let me give you just one small example. Recently, our staff had to renegotiate some space that we use here in Charlotte for the UNC Charlotte Community Design
Studio located in the South End. The current authority for state agency heads to spend
money on lease arrangements is $5,000 per year, or approximately 300 square feet. If I
want to lease more than that, approval is required by the Director of the State Property
Office. And if my lease requires more than $25,000 (just about 1,500 square feet), I need
approval of the Council of State which, as many of you know, includes several statewide
elected officials and agency commissioners. That kind of control is simply not required
for effective management of our governmental institutions.
Of course, the key to earning the freedom we need to operate in a cost effective and efficient manner depends upon building the trust and confidence of state decision-
makers that every dollar spent by the University is spent prudently. I think our new
President understands the challenge that this represents.
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Let me close with one final observation. I have been in office now precisely 110 days. And if anything has jumped out and bitten me in the face, it is the need to draw the
community and the University more closely together. For that reason, I have accelerated
planning on the design and construction of the new UNC Charlotte classroom building to
thbe located at 9 and Brevard. And I indicated to President-elect Bowles just yesterday that we continue to see this as our highest priority for new capital construction at the
university. Where it might fall in the overall priorities of the University remain to be
seen, but know that we will continue to advocate for its funding at the earlier possible
opportunity.
I appreciate your attention, and thanks for inviting me to speak with you today.
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