Setting the Stage for a Bright Future

Faculty/Staff Convocation
August 17, 2004

Address from Dr. Gary A. Ransdell, President of Western Kentucky University

Good morning. Welcome back to all whose duties or personal agenda took you away for the summer. To those who were here, my compliments on a productive summer.

To those who are new, welcome to Western. We are glad you are now part of this University family. Will all new faculty, staff or administrators please stand? I look forward to getting to know each of you.

I want to share with you this morning where we have come since our meeting last August and where I think we can go before we gather again next August and a few Augusts after that. A reflection on the recent past is pertinent because I believe much of what we did in recent months has set the stage for what we will be doing in the coming months and years.

Some highlights of the '03-'04 academic year include: a record enrollment of 18,391 followed by record graduating classes in December and May. We are now graduating annually the second largest number of baccalaureate-degree earners among Kentucky's colleges and universities. This means about 3,000 handshakes each year in December and May - a tradition I want to continue as we debate the options for our lengthy commencement ceremonies in the future. I'm not sure who enjoys that moment more- the students who like the tradition and symbolism or me because of the reaffirmation I get that we are indeed graduating bright, happy, confident and optimistic adults. I'll come back to enrollment in a few minutes when I look ahead.

Since last August, our SACS reaffirmation team has been hard at work preparing for our self-study, which begins this year. What a massive undertaking in the life of a university, but what a great opportunity to engage the campus in a thorough self-assessment. I am proud that we are using this process not as a required and dreaded exercise, but rather as an opportunity to take stock, to plan, to improve, and to ensure relevancy in the entire Western experience. My compliments to Dennis George and Retta Poe for their leadership; my appreciation to Jim Flynn for his dedication to our strategic planning process over the last six years, which has put us in such a strong position going into our self study and peer review; and my praise to Barbara Burch, her staff in Academic Affairs, our deans, and you, our faculty and staff, who are playing such an important role in this improvement process.

As you recall, last winter we cut $5.6 million from our budget. I must tell you again how proud I was of the manner in which we handled this situation. As soon as we learned the final number, we went straight to work. We identified our priorities - what we pledged not to cut - and we identified programs and services- mostly administrative- that we could reduce or do without. No one lost their job. No academic program was harmed. Not one penny of tuition revenue was used to meet our cut. And, for the most part, no one whined about our plight or complained too much about the decisions. We dealt with it forthrightly and expeditiously. The Board took action, and we moved on. It was painful - especially since it was our third cut in four years. I was determined, however, to avoid the prolonged debate and controversies which surrounded similar cuts in the 70s, 80s, and 90s - all of which were followed by massive enrollment declines. Declines, I am convinced, because students read too much about our issues and too little about our progress and just didn't want to come here. This spring, however, we stayed positive and we focused on finding other ways to get things done. Consequently, our applicant pool stayed strong and our enrollment is stable. Most importantly, we remained a pleasant, collegial place for all of us to be. Well done my friends!

After cutting our budget, we quickly turned our attention to building a new budget for this year. In June, the Board passed a $242 million budget, which allows our major themes of progress to continue. This budget is 14 percent greater than last year's and nearly double the budget this campus struggled under when we began our strategic planning process in 1998. It does indeed, however, include less state money than recent years. Less than 25 percent of our budget comes from state appropriations. Our new budgetary growth margins are private support, sponsored research and public service, federal support, and auxiliary revenue.

Perhaps the most progressive move our Board made this spring was that of setting a tuition schedule for the next four years. Yes, it is aggressive this year and next year since we do not expect appreciable growth in state funding when a state budget is approved. Tuition increases in '04-'05 and '05-'06 will, however, generate sufficient revenue to allow us to make significant progress in strengthening the value of a Western degree. Yet, we will stay priced well within our statewide market and well below the median of our benchmarks.

Setting a four-year tuition schedule allows three things to be achieved. First, it allows us, and the parents of our students, to plan. We can be confident of our revenue streams and parents can be confident of cost expectations. In fact, for the first time in the state's history, a parent or a student can pay one price, $21,141 for an in-state student, up front and lock in four years of pricing at Western. Second, it allows us to chart significant progressive strategies without further delay - most notably, a second round of academic quality funding and at least four heretofore-unfunded capital projects in a campus-rebuilding plan. Third, it allows us to take charge of our own destiny. We will be innovative with our business practices and aggressive in philanthropic, sponsored and federal support. Tuition revenue has now become our primary and largest revenue variable. A fair, yet competitive, long-term tuition schedule affords us a degree of independence. It allows us, not others, to determine our significance as an institution. We will control our own destiny. We will rely on our own judgment. We will set our own goals. With the help of Governor Fletcher's administration and the General Assembly, when incremental state funding is resumed - and it will be - we will further fund, measure and proclaim our progress.

With regard to state funding, we have issued a commitment and a challenge to the state. We set our tuition increases in '06-'07 and '07-'08 at five percent - a tuition increase level of modesty last achieved in 1994. If the state resumes incremental funding in the '06-'08 biennium, we will keep our increase at five percent. If not, the Board may be forced to revisit the matter in 2006.

The last academic year also saw us sustain a level of private gift deposits exceeding the $12.5 million we achieved a year ago as we completed a successful capital campaign. We generated $28,187,489 in sponsored research and public service. We exceeded $10 million in support from direct federal appropriations. We achieved a second straight sweep of all of the national forensic championships and extended our streak of international championships. We achieved our sixth straight top-five finish in the national ranking of schools of journalism and broadcasting. And, we won Sun Belt Conference titles in men and women's cross country, volleyball, women's swimming, track and field, and baseball.

One thing which did not happen last spring was the passing of a state budget. But, as I suggested earlier, we will welcome it when it comes. I'm such an optimist that I expect the economy to be better when that happens and, because of that, higher education may get more in the second year of this biennium than we would have received had they passed a budget last spring in the normal sequence. This is a half-full cup if there ever was one! In the meantime, we shall march on with vigor toward our goals and ambitions, and we intend to achieve some of our goals and ambitions in this academic year.

When a state budget passes, we expect $27 million in renovation funds for Science and Technology Hall and Thompson Complex. We expect money to get started on a renovation of Schneider Hall, which is to become the Kentucky Academy of Math and Science. And, we expect the authority to issue bonds of our own to improve the South Campus, further improve the Downing University Center, and build a new Health Center. We'll get started on all of these projects as soon as a state budget is final.

I am pleased that our '04-'05 campus budget includes for the second year in a row the largest faculty and staff raise of all of the campuses in Kentucky, and it included handsome boosts to several benefits programs. It also addressed a number of academic priorities, and it boosted funding for utilities, deferred maintenance, construction oversight, and salaries for our police officers. It is a good budget.

A growing enrollment, particularly in a climate of reduced state funding, has been critical in giving us self-generated revenue capacity. Our dramatic growth of nearly 4,000 students in seven years has both served us well and compromised us. It has given us the tuition revenue to do some things other campuses have been unable to do, but it has created immense pressure on existing faculty and staff to accommodate that growth without reinforcement of added human and operating enhancements.

Two enrollment-related outcomes can be expected, however. First, our dramatic enrollment growth curve has run its course. The Tennessee Lottery, regional demographics, retention limits, and higher admission standards at Western will all cause a more consistent applicant pool and a conscious effort on all of our parts to achieve stability in the size of our freshmen class.

Stability, however, is now critical, given the importance of tuition revenue in our budget profile. Which leads me to reinforce the importance of a conscious effort on the part of all faculty, staff and administrators to support the gracious attention we devote to campus visitors, especially the prospective students who are making critical enrollment decisions. They pick us. We achieve our goals. They don't. We don't. It really is that simple.

I also want to remind everyone that students and parents who attend the numerous OAR sessions in the spring and early summer have not yet matriculated. They can and some do change their minds based on the impression they glean when they come to register. Be helpful. Be gracious. Extend a welcome, and then carry that over when they begin arriving in a few days. Let's don't let the perception among many high schools that college is different because in college they don't care. Disinterest may characterize other campuses, but not this one.

The second enrollment-related prediction I will make is that the state budget for the '06-'08 biennium will be better and our enrollment growth will finally cause a payoff in improved state funding. I just testified before the House and Senate subcommittee on postsecondary education about an effort under way right now to modify the higher education funding formula. My relentless drive is to ensure that the principle funding criteria be that of addressing the inequities which have formed in recent years because of unfunded enrollment growth. We have watched our state funding per full-time student drop since 2000, while campuses which have not experienced such growth have sustained stable funding per FTE. This matter has my full attention until a revised model is final. Again, I am the eternal optimist, but I anticipate better state funding going into the fall '06 semester.

Much will happen, however, between now and the passage of a state budget for the fall of 2006. It is our duty to ensure that what happens here is good for Western, good for our students, good for our faculty and staff, good for our alumni, and good for our community and region. After the second of what eventually became a series of state budget cuts, I made the decision that we must determine our own destiny, that we must ensure a standard of quality in our classrooms and laboratories, in our residence halls and campus restaurants, and elsewhere across our campus.

I promised you seven years ago that I would work hard to change Western for the better yet nurture those things that make it distinctive. Well, the main thing that makes us distinctive is our spirit. That's an attitude of hope we all feel and exhibit. The other two things that make us distinctive are the quality of what we do here and the character of this campus.

We have taken steps since we met last August to ensure high academic quality and a physical rebuilding of our campus. A mid-year tuition variable last January put the first phase of academic quality in motion. The four-year tuition schedule puts a second phase in motion beginning next January. I won't go into detail of what these investments entail. You're familiar with them and if you're not, they are outlined on your **handout. What is most important here this morning is a reaffirmation of our commitment to quality. I can make sure we invest money into our academic experience, that we have a fair and competitive pricing structure to sustain it, and that it is being spent in ways that raise our academic stature. I cannot, however, deliver the quality to our students. That's up to you.

Our students choose Western for more - I hope - than geographic proximity or price. I hope they choose Western because they choose a campus with character and personality that compliments their own—kind of like choosing a friend or a spouse. We have to provide the environment where our students actually want to learn, where they feel fortunate enough to meet professors who electrify their interest in a subject, and where they meet staff who enjoy their presence and create bonds that matter.

I want it all at Western. I want rigor and high expectations. I want concern and compassion and the personal interest we brag about. I want a campus that wows one who visits for the first time and inspires those of us who live here all the time. These are what these consecutive mid-year tuition investments are intended to do. Anyone who wants less will likely be unhappy here.

My point is best articulated by Howard D. Schultz, the founder and CEO of Starbucks. He had to convince 80,000 employees that they "are not just selling a commodity, they are selling an experience." And he had to convince investors that people would "pay a fair price for a good hot drink in nice surroundings." Comparing a cup of coffee to a college education may be a stretch, but the philosophical commitments are congruous. The depth of our commitment to a rich full experience here is equal to the depth of our continuing effort to make it so. The quality of our work will determine the quality of our life at Western.

The information on the handout you have has been well circulated in recent months, and I welcome your thoughts about any of these initiatives. Considerable thought from academic leadership and physical plant staff has gone into these plans. I know that these investments do not do everything we would like - or perhaps even need. These investments, however, do address significant needs throughout our campus. Most of us will not likely agree with everything on both sides of the page, but everyone will likely agree with the focus of most things on both sides of the page. My job is to consider the whole, move toward the ideal, and measure overall progress.

I believe our priorities are in order and our investments are properly balanced. I believe what you see on this handout makes our experience here better and adds value to the degrees being pursued here. These investments, when combined with our spirit and our personal commitments, will enrich the lives of every member of this campus family.

Another key variable in our commitment to quality is the emerging theme of engagement. I believe you join me in wanting the term "public" to have meaning at this public university. We must prepare our students to not only think and reason and be skilled in one or more disciplines, but we must also prepare them to be productive citizens in a global society. To be informed. To care. To serve. To lead. And guess what. Those values start with us.

Our motto, The Spirit Makes the Master, (which, by the way, you'll be seeing more of in the future) is the best way to state our promise. If you come here as a student or as a member of this faculty or staff, you will be exposed to and, hopefully, catch this spirit - and live it while you are here and long thereafter. We believe in this identifying character of Western. It is among those things that make us distinctive. We do engage our students in a learning environment which inspires academic excellence and social responsibility. A Western education is not an end or an outcome, rather it is the means to address and advance a broad range of economic, civic and social priorities. Our evolving mission at Western is to engage our faculty, staff, and students in applied ways throughout our region, to identify and solve problems, to serve our community in meaningful ways, and to lead.

Some may argue that we each have a specific job to do, which, of course, we do, and that should be enough. Simply teaching our students or administering a program or service will not, however, make us distinctive, or create the value addedness which will compliment our financial investments. Let's commit to the intangibles and the tangibles. Let's make this campus and this region sing with energy and achievement.

It is not enough to call for such engagement in our SACS Quality Enhancement Plan. We have to embrace it and live it. Then we will enjoy it and our students will thrive in it.

At the risk of being too specific in what is meant to be an overall state of our campus address, let me be a bit specific. What do I mean by an engaged Western experience? I believe it means imaginative, personalized ways of teaching the humanities and the physical sciences, education and business, and the health and life sciences in ways that connect the content of these courses to important questions in the larger world. It means an emphasis on internships, service learning, and other practical experiences that help students connect their academic learning with life. It means offering a wealth of programs, both curricular and co-curricular, which foster civic responsibility, appreciation of diversity, global tolerance, confidence, and a hunger to serve. It means a growing emphasis in identifying and solving problems in our community and region, and applied and relevant research which, whenever possible, is done collaboratively.

These are all things that are fostered by the spirit and the will. Investments in added faculty positions and building renovations help create capacity, but true engagement only occurs among the willing and the motivated.

Our graduates will get jobs. They always have and they will do so in the future. It is our job, however, to give them what "higher" education is especially suited to do. That is to give them full access to their heretofore undeveloped powers of imagination, rationality, moral and ethical reasoning, physical capacity, aesthetic responsiveness, social responsibility, and personal self-confidence. If we do that, they will become bright, engaged citizens who will be wildly successful in whatever jobs they land.

I do want to spend a few minutes this morning on one other emerging part of our strategic evolution as a campus. Dr. Don Swoboda began his term on July 1 as our first dean of Extended Learning and Outreach. With his leadership, we will compete with the litany of virtual institutions. I will not give them the compliment of calling them colleges or universities. Those terms have much more noble definitions in my mind. We will compete with the emerging on-line industry in postsecondary education. See, there I go again. I'm not even giving them the term "higher" as in higher education. It is our great faculty who will provide the talented innovation to go head to head in interactive asynchronous learning.

The Division of Extended Learning and Outreach will coordinate our on-line capacity. Unlike the American auto industry, which let Asian automakers almost put them out of business before they changed and decided to beat them at their own game, we will have it both ways. We will provide one of the best on-campus environments to be found at any comprehensive university in America, and we will provide one of the most diverse extended campus portfolios to be found at any comprehensive university in America.

We are already bridging well the development of content with the development of delivery and bringing both to the consumer who seeks it. Columnist Michael Schroge described this blend when he said "the digital technologies restructuring entrepreneurial enterprise and the academy are far less about the creation and arrangement of new information than they are about the creation and management of new relationships."

We must avoid the mistake of using new technology just as a delivery system for contract; rather, let's use it as a means to alter and improve the ability and appetite of people to learn - whether it be in Thompson Complex or Tate Page Hall or at one's terminal in Owensboro or Moscow, Russia or Idaho!

I really don't like the term "edubusiness," but the term is here to stay and we shall find and develop those relationships necessary for relevant success. We will create the "products" and measure the "profile." As crass as that sounds, it is educational reality. Without diluting our distinctive campus experience, which I've spent considerable time this morning describing, we, through DELO, will compete. I heard Barry Munitz, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust and former chancellor of California State University describe it this way in a meeting I attended this summer. "New competitors for the market historically served by traditionally decentralized, nonprofit colleges and universities have risen with impressive speed and force. They have been driven by the same digital innovations and consumer tastes that are reshaping so much else in our society. Coexistence with our new competition is inevitable. Those institutions which understand our underlying core values and which exercise ingenuity and skill - and some courage- to break down traditional patterns and boundaries will design and ultimately control their institutional future."

This is not your parents' university.

We have changed. I've gone some 40 minutes now and not used the "transformation" word. I've focused on the things we're doing to drive a transformation and you the people who are driving it and achieving it. If anyone thinks we are not transforming an institution, just compare most any measurable from seven years ago. The demographics of our faculty - in 1997, 40 percent of our faculty had more than 25 years of service to Western. Now, just five percent have that length of tenure, and 40 percent have less than five years. Our budget capacity has nearly doubled from $130 million in 1997 to $242 million today, and our budget dependencies have changed from state support to tuition and sponsored and private support. Our enrollment has seen a swing of 4,000 students. The physical transformation of our campus is well under way. Our enhanced academic quality is taking root. Our emerging mission of engagement and applied research is the underpinning of our new commitment to drive the economy of our broader community. And most importantly, our attitude of success is boosting our confidence in achievement. In a few short years, we have gone from being content to being regionally important to absolutely certain that we can be nationally prominent. We are now surrounded by academic, student life, and athletic success at the national level.

The Board of Regents and I talked about this just two weeks ago. Board members reiterated their transformation charge to me and I reiterated my commitment to them. I said seven years ago that it might take a generation. But now, in 2004, I look around and think perhaps sooner. A few more investments in academic quality, another capital campaign, and the completion of this rebuilding plan will carry us a long way toward achieving a true transformation. In a few years, people will be able to see and feel and measure profound change. More importantly, the adrenaline of progressive change will further fuel the energy and drive in every classroom, lab, distance learning portal, faculty office, residence hall, campus restaurant, student success center, and gathering of alumni - who, by the way, are also engaging and benefiting from this transformation as well.

Our centennial is coming at a perfect time. In 2006, we draw on the recognition of our history, the appreciation of our uniqueness, and a deeper realization of the Spirit that has defined and driven us for 100 years. We will feed off of that history and pride and, in a few years from now, be able to document a true transformation, a changed institution in all of the right ways for all of the right reasons. We will have nurtured our distinctiveness and used it to build the confidence and capacity to be one of America's great comprehensive universities. Our spirit is making and will continue to make the master.

I leave you this morning with four words spoken by a freshman in an e-mail message sent to her parents on February 7, just hours before she was tragically killed in an auto accident with two of her friends while driving north on I-65. I use these words not to dampen our spirit, rather to ignite the spirit within us. Katie Jeter, a 4.0 student from Franklin, Tenn., told her mom and dad how everything important to her intellectually and socially had come together for her at Western. She said "I love my life." I love my life. What a compliment to everyone in this hall this morning and everyone else in this university family. Is there a better thing for a Western student to say? Those words have echoed within me since Katie's mother shared them with me.

I, too, love my life. I have dedicated myself to doing whatever I can to cause every Western student and everyone of you, our faculty and staff, to be able to make that same claim. I am inspired by Katie's last message to her family. I love my life. I love what lies ahead for us at Western. Join me in this pursuit. Let's make this year one of great consequence in this transformation from good to great. Let's have a fantastic year. Thank you.

Recurring Investments in Academic Quality

Academic Quality (Phase I): $5,996,000 beginning January 2004

Faculty Staffing, Recruitment, and Retention

Academic Quality (Phase II) (Proposed): $5,045,000 effective January 2005