As I was preparing these remarks, I fell to thinking about discussions I have had with other university presidents across the nation. Many must suffer a twinge of envy whenever they look toward IU. Consider the view from their vantage point. 
Related Link: http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/pres/
By Myles Brand,
President of Indiana University
Thank you for joining us today. There is a special satisfaction in being able to present my state of the university address at IUPUI. Doing so gives me the opportunity to talk with you about this fine campus and its place in the constellation that is Indiana University.
As I was preparing these remarks, I fell to thinking about discussions I have had with other university presidents across the nation. Many must suffer a twinge of envy whenever they look toward IU. Consider the view from their vantage point.
First, they see a gifted and innovative faculty that shines in the classroom and in the world of research and creative activity. Then, there are the dedicated staff members who keep this complex institution running so efficiently, and the committed alumni and friends who provide the support for our margin of excellence.
Next, they see our enthusiastic, hard-working students who stimulate us with their energy, and drive us with their unbridled curiosity.
On top of that, they see something that many university presidents yearn to have: namely, extraordinary leadership from our Board of Trustees. We also enjoy ongoing support from a state legislature that refrains from over-regulation and resists unfair criticism.
And finally they see our most precious asset: the unparalleled respect and confidence that we receive from the citizens of Indiana. Through the years -- through good times and bad -- Hoosiers have remained committed to higher education.
They know, as we know, that the quality of life of every man, woman and child in the nation depends on a well-educated population -- a population that knows how to think, a population that knows how to solve problems and a population that must find innovative answers to the profound challenges facing our planet.
We at Indiana University have always appreciated this delicate balance and we have joined together to create an atmosphere of learning, thinking and innovation. We know, and must always remember, that our strength lies in the productive interdependence of our campuses.
But the fabric of our tightly woven world could be torn apart by a number of factors -- factors such as such as rivalry over a decline in state and federal monies, growing calls for accountability, and increased competition for the best and brightest students and faculty.
We must overcome these pressures. We must think first of IU. Only if we all join forces for the common good, will IU realize its full potential.
Thus, today, I want to talk with you about the missions of IUPUI, IU Bloomington, and the regional campuses. I want to bury the notion of unproductive competition and replace it with the spirit of cooperation.
We are partners, not rivals; colleagues, not competitors.
Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it is a nasty nuisance when we are talking about the connections between IU's campuses. Previous efforts to capture the concept in a metaphor have occasionally met with criticism. Remember ``one university with eight front doors"?
And more recently, I raised the notion of Bloomington as a flagship. Faculty here at IUPUI, I am told, agreed -- but with a caveat and a Tee Shirt. ``If Bloomington is the flagship," the saying went, ``then IUPUI is the starship." Touche.
Obviously, the topic of mission differentiation and complementarity -- an appreciation of the individual strengths of each of our campuses and their critical interdependence -- warrants serious discussion. Let us begin with IUPUI.
As it enters its 26th year, IUPUI is emerging as a national model for urban universities. What -- precisely -- is that?
To start with the obvious, urban universities are in the city. But maybe it's not so obvious. Because urban universities are not just in the city; they are of the city. They are not merely oases of studied intellectual reflection; they are a vital life force contributing to change, growth and innovation. They are not isolated islands; they are partners in the search for ways to realize the promise of explosive social and economic evolution.
Here is a sample of what they face.
A rapidly changing marketplace requires a college-educated workforce that can turn on a dime.
Business and industry, under relentless global pressure, are looking to scholars and researchers for innovation and invention.
Primary and secondary schools, constantly in search of even better ways to teach students how to learn, are entering into thriving partnerships with higher education. And public agencies are joining with us to create and offer new and necessary services to our cities.
IUPUI is ready for all of them. It is the most comprehensive higher education institution in Indiana. It offers an array of two-year and four year degrees, a range of professional and graduate programs, and is home to the only medical school in the state.
If IUPUI did not exist, it would have to be created because neither IU Bloomington nor Purdue in West Lafayette can possibly provide our capital city with the wealth of opportunities that IUPUI and its many schools do.
Innovative.
Creative.
These special qualities not only contribute to a great urban university; they are a beacon for students who embrace all that is best about IUPUI.
Take, for example, John Travison, a 33-year-old senior, majoring in English education.
John willingly commutes 45 miles to attend classes because here he is surrounded by peers who are all juggling families, jobs and an education. But something else keeps John coming back. This is how he puts it: ``We do a lot with the private sector here and that is thrilling. Just getting to know leaders in this community -- at this level -- helps me understand what I need to do to participate at that level, some day.''
John believes that IUPUI is in a unique position to serve Indianapolis. Again, in his own words: ``When I drive toward campus and see homeless people and other problems, I ask myself, what can we do to help? When I came to the university, I thought -- and still think -- that academia carries a torch for humanity.
``We have to be able to share the flame as well."
The campus that John is so proud of serves a diverse population of more than one point two million people in a city that is one of the 15 largest in the United States. And that brings to the fore a key characteristic of the urban university: The undergraduate curriculum and student support services must mirror the needs of non-traditional students.
Many -- though certainly not all -- of its undergraduates are returning to school after a lapse in their post-secondary education. Many have career and family obligations that compete with class schedules, and intrude on study time. Some students may need preparatory courses; others may require remedial help. The urban campus must offer such assistance, along with elastic hours and caring advisors who understand these special needs.
The urban campus must also provide appropriate support services, such as child care, and flexible admission criteria that are sensitive to the fact that site-bound students have few options.
Under the very able leadership of Chancellor Jerry Bepko and the campus team, IUPUI is destined to become the model urban university for the rest of the nation. I believe it will be recognized as such when it fully develops its learning-centered approach, and when its undergraduate general-education curriculum is further amplified to reflect the academic needs of students in the 21st century.
Indeed, IUPUI's appeal to undergraduate students is directly tied to its leadership in both curriculum and student services development.
So I challenge the campus to build on the excellent start made by faculty in defining general education. Now the task is to develop expectations for student learning -- along with courses and course sequences -- that will promote student achievement through the campus' principles of undergraduate learning. Particular emphasis must be placed on freshmen. The ultimate goal: to draft a blueprint for others to follow.
In addition to meeting the needs of a targeted undergraduate population, urban universities focus on the urban agenda. They use the city's cultural diversity and other assets as an integral part of the learning process, and the city itself as a laboratory.
For example, the IU Center on Philanthropy here at IUPUI fosters a comprehensive program of study, research, instruction and public service. It teaches by doing and, in the process, reinforces the American tradition of giving and volunteering.
IUPUI's fine law school emerged from the American tradition of offering legal education in capital cities near seats of government and centers of legal practice. And many other programs, such as museum studies, music technology, applied statistics, health services management and biomedical engineering, also grew out of the synergy that comes from collaboration and community connections.
This focus on the urban agenda has another consequence. In addition to the fields of study I just cited, increasing numbers of students are seeking post-baccalaureate professional degrees in such areas as law, social work, business and public administration. And there is a large contingent here for self-improvement and the pure love of learning. Many of these graduate students are apt to be part-timers who toil for years to earn their degrees. IUPUI must have an array of master's programs to meet this demand. We have a number of them now; we need several more.
IUPUI is also positioned to provide Ph.D programs in areas in which it has unique capabilities, such as medical research, and in emerging multi-disciplinary areas, such as bioengineering and neuroscience.
Doing so will enable the campus to take advantage of the shift in public and private support for research. Since the Cold War ended, the federal government and major industry have turned their attention from national defense to health and quality-of- life issues. Future programmatic Ph.D. development would best be centered in those areas.
Many of the most successful universities will be built around academic health centers -- as IUPUI was more than years ago. Here, our Indianapolis campus has a clear advantage: the IU School of Medicine and the other health sciences on the campus -- Nursing, Dentistry and Allied Health -- are truly outstanding.
We recently took steps to ensure the continuation of the school's tradition of excellence will the successful consolidation of the IU Hospitals and Methodist Hospital. The move -- a superb example of effective partnering between the public and private sectors -- was stimulated by the radical changes in health care. What was at risk, quite simply, was the future of our medical school, and I need not remind you how important that is to Indiana's future.
The dramatic rise in managed health care, coupled with the dramatic diminishment of invasive surgical practices, left us with fewer and fewer hospital patients. We need an average of 165,000 patient days per year to train our doctors, and this threshold was in jeopardy.
Our only solution was to reach out and partner with a stable, well known health-care provider. After nearly two years of intensive work by our faculty, administrators and Trustees, we chose Methodist, and the consolidation model we developed is now being actively considered by medical schools nationwide.
Today, we can look to the IU-Methodist consolidation and be proud. In undertaking the largest single privatization effort in the history of our state, we will save an estimated fifty-million dollars annually, increase the quality of health care for Hoosiers and, importantly too, guarantee the long-term future of one of IU's crown jewels.
IUPUI has a very distinct calling indeed. But within the constellation of our eight-campus university, the question is: how do the stars align themselves? For example, how does IUPUI relate to IU Bloomington?
To begin with, I want to be very clear about one crucial point: quality is not a characteristic that separates these two campuses. Quality is what binds them indelibly -- quality and the vital links they forge in IU's common good.
The missions of the Indianapolis and Bloomington campuses are entirely complementary. Although some of its programs have global impact, IUPUI provides superior educational and professional services to the city of Indianapolis. It achieves its national standing as a model urban university on the basis of how well it succeeds in this regard. By serving the capital city, IUPUI permits Bloomington to take a perspective that reaches throughout the state -- and beyond.
Bloomington is the oldest of our campuses and the only one to focus fully on the resident student body. It is built upon a tradition of learning that goes back to ancient times. IU Bloomington is a distant descendent of Platos' Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum and, more recently, the German research university founded in the early nineteenth century by great scholars like Wilhelm von Humboldt.
When the research university was imported from Europe to this country, it took on an added dimension. American public universities became centers of opportunity for all, not just the privileged few. And it was not long before America's public universities were teaching not only traditional subjects, but the so-called practical arts and the professions.
Just as students from all over the world flocked to Germany in those early days, today's students and faculty seek out Bloomington. This year alone, we have students from all 50 states and 135 countries on campus.
Among them is Anne Freeman, one of this year's Wells Scholars. Anne was a National Merit Finalist, co-valedictorian at Bloomington High School South and an outstanding athlete. She has already determined a major -- elementary education -- and she is coming to IU Bloomington already steeped in a tradition of learning.
As she puts it: ``The reward of grades has detracted from curiosity and the desire for knowledge. A new focus needs to be put on thinking and knowledge, not on grading. It is ... learning that matters most."
Like Anne, students come to IU Bloomington for its 5,000 course offerings and its library with 5 million volumes. They come for our nationally renowned arts and sciences programs, and for our schools of music, business, journalism, SPEA and education, among others.
They come to learn from some of the nation's most gifted faculty.
They come for the natural beauty of our campus, which is unrivaled for its sheer elegance, its immense green spaces, its warmth and its vitality.
They come for our panorama of extra-curricular activities, and they come for Big Ten athletics.
However, if Indiana University consisted only of the Bloomington campus, the state would not be well served. And if the state is not well served -- or if the public believes it is not being well served -- it would have second thoughts about the support it gives to IU. And that kind of thinking does not bode well for the university.
But Indiana is well served by IU. There is IU Bloomington. There is IUPUI. And there are the six campuses in Gary, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Kokomo, Richmond, and New Albany. These six campuses, each richly different from their counterparts, help us best serve our state. What makes these six campuses so valuable is their iron-clad commitment to fulfill the educational needs of their home communities.
Thanks to them, Indiana University is not some far-off ivory tower. Rather, for most Hoosiers, IU is literally on their doorsteps.
Our regional campuses, and their extensions, are an integral part of Indiana. We are neighbors. We sit on local school boards; we volunteer for the United Way, the Boy Scouts and Little League; we attend the same houses of worship; our children play together.
In essence, these campuses serve the people who live in the community and have every intention of staying there. At IU Northwest, for example, 90 percent of the graduates live and work in the three counties surrounding the Gary campus.
The regionals could not stand alone without IU; part of what draws a student to, say, IU Kokomo or IU Northwest is knowing that the eventual reward is a diploma from Indiana University. The regionals give IU its diversity and its complexity. And, together with IUPUI, the regionals give IU the lion's share of its undergraduate student body: In 1995-96, out of a total enrollment of ninety-two thousand, there were twenty-seven thousand undergraduates enrolled at IU Bloomington compared to forty five thousand at the regionals and IUPUI.
In serving the needs of the community, the regionals look for ways to make people succeed.
People like Brenda Carey, who is pursuing a bachelor's degree in nursing at IU Kokomo. She's just two semesters away from her goal. She's also active in student government, is a library trustee in Madison County and president of the Student Nurse Association.
But she is not your typical undergrad. Brenda Carey is also the mother of six -- five still live at home -- and she commutes 33 miles to class. And Brenda is 44.
Brenda says: ``A lot of people are afraid of going back to school. But IUK offers so much to the student who doesn't want to deal with a big campus; who maybe is afraid of a big campus. Yet IU Kokomo has faculty who have traveled the world and are renowned in their fields for their expertise and their research. It is a jewel."
As Brenda's words illustrate, we must banish the notion that research is the purview of just one campus and teaching the only mission of another. It is, rather, a matter of emphasis. IU Bloomington is a research center of Indiana University, but all faculty must be engaged in discovery, scholarship or creative work. And all faculty must communicate to their students not only what they have discovered, but the excitement and joy of the discovery. Simply put: Excellent teaching is inseparable from excellent research.
We must also drum out any notion of unproductive competition among our campuses. The constellation that is Indiana University glitters all the brighter precisely because we are a large, multi-campus, comprehensive university. But we negate our advantages of size and scope when we fail to unify our efforts or complement each other's endeavors.
This is especially true at the campus and school levels.
I would go so far as to say that we are in greater danger of suffering self-inflicted wounds than of being bloodied by external forces when we lose sight of our mutual goals.
Indiana University cannot realize its full potential unless, and until, there is an indefeasible commitment to that common good.
There are, of course, already many excellent activities undertaken across the campuses on behalf of the common good.
One fine example is FACET, in which our best teaching faculty comes together to share their expertise for the benefit of student learning. Nonetheless, there is more that we can, and should, do. We will succeed only to the extent that we fully appreciate the compelling sense of the common good.
Although I am focusing on the campuses, I can easily extend the argument to all schools. The School of Music in Bloomington adds luster to all other programs. But the School of Music cannot educate students by itself. It is not a conservatory, but a school within a university. Its students receive an excellent well-rounded education only when other schools and campuses -- especially the College of Arts and Sciences -- are thriving.
The success of the College, in turn, depends on student access to the School of Music. It is, after all, one of IU's principle drawing cards and principle strengths. But the same point can be made for the School of Business, the School of Education, and so on. Whether they are located In Indianapolis, Bloomington or on the regional campuses, a School reaches a higher level of success when other Schools do well.
Overall, then, the missions of each campus complement one another. Overall, each campus benefits from what the others accomplish. Conversely, no one campus can be fully successful without all the others. We are, in the words of Alexander Pope, parts of one stupendous whole.
This, then, is Indiana University.
Bloomington, the traditional, residential campus that draws students from around the globe; IUPUI, the model urban campus that sits at the hub of our capitol city, and the six regionals, the hearts and souls of their thriving communities.
But there is more: This is America's New Public University.
We are one university whose strength derives from the common good. One university that serves the common good.
In IUPUI, Bloomington and the regional campuses, we have an institution that is not only totally committed to the ideals of higher education, but one that is uniquely situated to carry them out effectively in this time of great change and challenge.
One of the reasons we are in this advantageous position today is the Strategic Directions Charter. I want to tell you about the progress we made this spring and summer on implementing the SDC, our road map into the 21st Century.
The Charter represents IU's best collective thinking on how to meet the challenges we face. And collective thinking is one of its cardinal strengths: It rests on broad-based participation. While administrative leadership initiated and motivated the process, faculty leadership, combined with staff and student input, developed the specific future directions and ensured commitment to IU's values and traditions. Together, we have created a framework for enhancing the quality of IU.
But the Charter is not an algorithm of all the detailed steps that must be taken. Rather, it articulates our long-range goals, but leaves to good judgment and experience the best way to achieve them.
The Strategic Directions Charter is the rudder, not the engine.
As a philosopher, there's nothing I enjoy more than a lengthy, thought-provoking debate of various paradigms and multiple options. But as president, I am interested in getting things done. The conceptual structure is crucial. But all concepts and no action comes up short in this equation. We can only be successful when we act to achieve our goals.
We took one of our most significant steps when we invested some of our reserves and committed start-up money to the first-year projects -- money made available thanks to typical good Hoosier budgetary management.
In the first round, we allocated more than 4.3 million dollars in incentive money to 53 projects that cover a vast array of activities outlined in the charter.
These incentive monies are intended to seed projects, not grow the whole forest.
When these programs mature into their promise, they will be included in the normal budgeting process.
There must be no misunderstanding on one point: Implementation of the Strategic Directions Charter does more than seed new programs. It requires a reorientation of academic and budgetary priorities. It will influence our legislative requests, our curricular and research efforts and the manner in which we interact with our publics. It will affect how others think of us and how we, ourselves, think of Indiana University.
The projects approved in the First Round run the gamut, but they share a common thread: to make IU more accessible, more accountable and more effective -- all while enhancing our excellence.
Today, I want to conclude by telling you about just two strategic directions initiatives.
IU South Bend has launched a project called ``Success by Degrees" for working adults who dropped out of college after completing their first two years. Success by Degrees is a concentrated 24-month program that relies upon three components: traditional course work, internships and self-assessment and individualized study. Students who complete the requirements will earn a bachelor's degree in general studies. The goal of the program is to encourage students who have completed IUSB associate degree programs to go on and earn a BA.
Staff members at IUSB say they were late getting things started and they didn't expect much at first. But in early August, they ran some radio ads over a weekend. Monday morning the phones rang off the hook and 150 inquiries later, they knew they had tapped a wellspring of interest.
The program's flexibility is one of its most attractive features.
Many students struggle -- really struggle -- to finish their degrees. Many give up in the face of overwhelming work and family responsibilities. Success by Degrees offers a new start through academic support and educational alternatives. It is a project distinctly suited to a regional campus whose mission is to fulfill the educational needs of its home community.
Hoosiers do want to complete their educations, but they need programs that are designed with them in mind. As America's New Public University, we can respond to that desire because we are accessible and we are accountable.
We are here to open the doors to success, not close the doors to opportunity.
A second Strategic Directions initiative speaks directly to instructional innovation. This is a major curriculum reform effort to make math instruction relate more closely to a student's career. The directors are Professors Daniel Maki on the Bloomington campus and Bart Ng at IUPUI.
Everybody needs math, whether they are in engineering, history, biology or criminal justice. But how many students understand that?
To underscore the relationship of mathematics and life, Dan and Bart will oversee the creation of roughly 10 courses a year for three years. These courses will be developed in different majors with exercises and projects aimed at specific professional fields. That way, students will see that math is something they will need and they will learn it in a setting they will use.
This initiative will give students the opportunity to stretch their intellectual abilities as they master the subject matter. It gives faculty from many schools and disciplines the opportunity to work together. And it puts Indiana University at the forefront of a national effort to reform the teaching of mathematics. Significantly, it marks a new partnership with the National Science Foundation, which has funded the effort at 2.8 million dollars over four years.
Round Two of Strategic Directions funding will involve about 10 million dollars in incentive money. We've made some changes in the process, based on the experience of the first round and on faculty input. The deadline for submission has been pushed back to Dec. 3. We will also divide the panels and the funding into broad categories in order to elicit proposals in key areas not fully covered in the first round -- especially for investments in academic excellence.
Round Two is described on the Strategic Directions Home Page and you will be hearing more details shortly from the office of George Walker, Vice President for Research and the University Graduate School.
I am excited about the progress we are making on the Strategic Directions Charter. It is a forceful, farsighted framework for the University's future development, and my major focus this year will be to work toward implementing the full range of recommendations.
Armed with the Charter, and working together, I believe we can overcome the challenges that face us.
We must maintain the best values of the Academy, including the central role of academic freedom, despite short-sighted attacks.
We must serve our publics well, despite internal pressures that tend to narrow our focus to disciplinary matters.
We must continue to promote diversity within all sectors of our academic community, despite a court-led retreat from affirmative action.
We must focus on the academic needs of our students, despite their growing emphasis on vocationalism.
We must answer to our students, their families, and the public through its elected officials, without forsaking our traditions and values.
We must embrace the revolution in communications technology, without losing sight of the crucial importance of personal human interaction in the learning process.
We must remain a collegial academic community, one in which the common good is the dominant value, despite growing pressure to act out of self-interest.
We must put the common good first. We must move the well-being of the entire IU community to the forefront.
We are a great, great university. We did not reach this point overnight or by accident. Rather, we have spent 176 years cultivating an atmosphere of innovation, discovery and creativity -- and we must not let anything threaten this position.
We must do everything in our power to protect our proud legacy of excellence in higher education.
At Indiana University, good enough is not good enough. It never has been and it never will be.
Nothing less than excellence is acceptable.
Thank you.
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