Remarks of Academic Vice President and Dean of Faculties David R. Burgess Annual University Convocation Sept. 3, 1998 The Boston College Office of Public Affairs Boston College Chronicle Contact: smthsen@bc.edu Date Posted: 9-15-98 ============================================================= On the occasion of my first convocation address, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the university community and our President, Father Leahy, for allowing me the opportunity to serve as Academic Vice President. I am terrifically excited about this prospect and commit myself to working with all of you in all parts of this great university. I also want to thank Father Bill Neenan for moral support and for keeping me in his prayers. He has served the university well and has played a key role in bringing us to the position we are in today. It is also worth remembering another great former Academic Vice President, Father Donovan, who recently passed away. Before beginning my comments, first let me undertake the task customarily associated with Boston College's Convocations--introducing the 1998 cohort of faculty and students. Twenty-six new tenure-track faculty join us this fall -- 15 are men, 11 are women; ten are AHANA of whom 2 are African American one is Native American. Women among the full-time faculty has grown to 33 percent of whom 31 percent are tenured; women now constitute 21 percent of the full professors. During the past ten years the number of tenure track AHANA faculty has increased from 35 to 71. The number of Jesuits working on campus full-time or part time total 62. Importantly, since 1997 the number of Jesuits doing graduate work at the university has increased from 23 to 28. Dennis Shirley is the new Associate Dean in the School of Education. Dr. Shirley joins us from Rice University where he served in a very distinguished capacity. Our own Jim Rogers has accepted the position of Interim Dean for the Law School. John Staudenmaier, SJ from the University of Detroit-Mercy joins us as the Gasson Chair, Pier Beatrice from Universita Degli Studi di Padova (Padova, Italy) joins Boston College as the Joseph Chair and Nuala ni Dhomhnaill joins us from Ireland as the Burns Chair. To all the arrivals whom I have not mentioned by name I wish to extend a warm welcome. Like all universities, ours is dependent on the quality of its students. For the fourth straight year the undergraduate applicant pool has hovered at the historic high of 16,500, resulting in 2,247 freshmen. Enrollments in the School of Nursing are significantly up this year which attests to the outstanding collaboration between Nursing and Admission. The College of Advancing Studies continues a long legacy of serving the special populations of our community and does so very well. We owe much to the admission office as we take over the care of this class of students. Twenty-five percent of these hail from Massachusetts, and 15 percent are from New York. Evidence of our national presence is abundant in our admissions with California, Florida, and Illinois ranking in the top 8 states in admission. I know that faculty who have been here more than a year can hardly wait for the next statistic. The Iowa cohort is 4. In a new public statistic, 5 students from my home state of New Mexico will join us this year. The SAT averages for this freshman class are the highest ever. Continuing a strong commitment, over 18 percent are AHANA students. You have heard how successful we have been this year at recruiting African American students. The professional and graduate programs also posted strong recruiting seasons. The Law School has enrolled a first year class of 260 students drawn from an applicant pool of almost 4,500. Twenty -three percent of the class are AHANA students; 34 are graduates of Boston College, with (Holy Cross, Tufts and Harvard for 1998) following in that order as feeder schools. The Law school has accepted two Olympians this year--a volleyball player from the 1996 Summer Games and the United States flag bearer from the 1994 Winter Games (Luge). Three are from New Mexico. Both the MBA and the master's of science in finance programs in the Carroll School enjoyed significant improvements in the distinction of their incoming classes. Over the past three years, GMAT scores have risen very significantly which reflects not only the successful efforts at recruiting exceptional students but the strong reputation of the school. Enrollment in the Graduate School of Social Work continues at an historic high. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences programs are so diverse that it is difficult to offer a generalization relevant for all although it is clear the the quality of incoming students remains very strong with several programs really excelling. For instance, a significant number of students in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences have been awarded prestigious fellowships for the coming year (e.g., Fulbrights, Javits, and NSF). Of special note is that this fiscal year has been one of the most successful for corporate, foundation, and federal support of research in the history of Boston College. Faculty and staff of the Development Office and the Office of Research Administration are to be congratulated for the dramtaic rise in sponsored funding over the past year with awards growing from $19 m in 1997 to over $24 m in 1998. Over the past month I have had the opportunity to go back to school. My subject has been Boston College and I've had a real crash course. In this month I've tried to listen and learn as much as possible from faculty, administrators, staff, and students. I am no where near mastery of this complex subject, but possibly I am prepared for the first quiz. I have met and learned of remarkable faculty, staff, and administrators. We have many internationally recognized scholars on this campus. On the event of this convocation celebration, I want to talk with each of you about my observations and perhaps sketch out some of my thoughts on strategies to celebrate the very high calibre of our outstanding faculty and staff and further, to help plot the strategies to keep strengthening this institution. Very rarely are universities provided with an opportunity to change as has happened at Boston College. The development of a coherent plan for the future was a huge undertaking for this academic community. Resources are being amassed, and money is to be saved through re-engineering efforts, to accomplish enunciated goals and enhance the mission of the university. Sounds like it is all done, doesn't it? In fact most of the hard work, which is the exciting and critically important work, lies ahead. We must challenge ourselves now to address a series of questions. What is Boston College to look like in five to ten years? And I don't mean in its physical plant. Are we going to change Boston College in a constructive way? Will Boston College become less committed to undergraduate, graduate and professional students, their education, and the Catholic and Jesuit tradition and more committed to pure research, a fear some have? Will the changes in the business operations at the university truly enhance the education of our students and the scholarship and teaching of our faculty? These questions, while addressed generally in documents already prepared for this journey, must now be reckoned with in specific ways. My message to you is that it is you and the future faculty and staff who are largely responsible for implementing plan for changing Boston College in a positive way. Whatever changes we make must support enhanced education for all of our students, they must support and recognize the scholarly activities of our faculty, and they must enrich the Jesuit and Catholic character and mission of this University. A large challenge to you and an equally large responsibility. How should we face the challenges that change brings? The former President of Stanford, Donald Kennedy, has recently published a book entitled Academic Duty in which he talks about the life and responsibilities of faculty. He frames the book not about academic freedom but rather around the theme of academic duty; that is, our real obligation to remain scholarly active, to mentor, to teach, to serve, to advise. Goals of the UAPC Implementation plan such as attaining Carnegie Research II status while at the same time improving undergraduate and graduate education or adding faculty, while appropriate specific goals, do not really get to the heart of the matter. Such goals can only be achieved by us performing our academic duty and by performing it well. All of us, in every decision we make, must consider how what we propose to do will strengthen this institution. This institution is more than a business to be streamlined; it is an important national and increasingly international university whose every decision must result in enhancing our academic duty and mission. Faculty, staff, departments, and schools working together will lead to such benchmarks as attaining Carnegie Research II status or Association of Research Library membership on this journey. Our journey must not end there, however. Current faculty have a very large responsibility on our journey in exercising their academic duty. They must hire and then mentor the best new faculty whose faces and perspectives reflect the diversity of our society. Not only will new faculty be hired as a result of planned growth; but with the substantial numbers of retirements anticipated over the next five to ten years, many more hiring opportunities may also arise. Because of the abundance of qualified applicants in the marketplace, we have the good fortune to select from among numerous outstanding scholars. These new faculty must be scholars who will, with support and mentoring by their senior colleagues, establish national reputations in their fields and become exceptional teachers, but as importantly, these new faculty must be able to contribute to the Jesuit, Catholic tradition and mission of this university. Those that we hire must be more than just comfortable in working at a Jesuit, Catholic university; they must expect to contribute to the distinctive mission of the University. Search committees and Deans have the primary responsibility in this critical assessment before hiring. Secondly, we must make the right tenure decisions, based on sound judgements which assess scholarly stature at the national level, quality teaching, mentoring, and advising, and contribution to the mission of the University. What we do between hiring and tenuring new faculty is, however, critically important. Senior faculty have an essential duty to mentor and to provide regular, frank, and appropriate feedback to the tenure track faculty as to their progress on their own journey. We must be willing to guide and support, but we also must be willing to make difficult reappointment, tenure and promotion decisions. This is already a distinguished body of faculty. By recruiting, mentoring and retaining the best faculty, we have the opportunity to enhance our quality even more. The contributions by adjunct and part faculty are also as important. They must be full partners in our departments and schools; they too must receive and participate in mentoring and receive appropriate assessments and rewards. I also want to make comments about the state of our current faculty. Boston College is a marvelous place for faculty and for students. But, I have concerns that we are perhaps more complacent than we should be at this university because it is so supportive, so comfortable, possesses such an outstanding research library, and so blessed with such high quality undergraduate, professional, and graduate students. I am not sure that we all challenge ourselves or our students to the same degree as our colleagues do at peer institutions. We matriculate an exceptional group of freshmen each year. Are our expectations in this critically important first academic year high enough? Are we missing opportunities to engage our freshmen intellectually; are we exciting their imagination enough; are we setting the stage for them to become independent learners enough? I think that more of our outstanding freshmen should be engaged in scholarly work with faculty during this formative year. More of our outstanding senior faculty should be teaching freshmen. Certainly, a much higher percentage of our upper class students should be doing independent research or studies with our faculty than are at present or even as are proposed in the UAPC Implementation Plan. Our students should be obtaining the most important and prestigious national awards at a much higher rate than they do now. A friend, Freeman Hrabowski, President at the University of Maryland, College Park, has developed a program for African American students in the sciences which has resulted in remarkable and unprecedented successes in graduating minority students, at the top of their classes, who then go on to professional and graduate schools in science at a stunningly high rate. How has he succeeded with black students in the sciences while many institutions so often struggle in this area? Of course, we also have had remarkable success with minority student graduation rates with our Options through Education Program showing outstanding success as it is in its 20th year. The lessons, published in Freeman's recent book entitled Beating the Odds and from our own program appear simple but of course involve hard work. These lessons for us in the university community will help us with all of our students, not just with our AHANA students. I emphasize that I believe these lessons apply to all of our students at all levels. What are these lessons we can apply for all Boston College students? Select and enroll the best students (we do that very well), involve their parents (we do that), promote group learning (do we do this enough?), challenge the students (do we do this enough?), mentor and advise these students (do we do this enough?), have high expectations (do we do this enough?), emphasize their responsibility to serve (do we do this enough?), recognize their achievements publicly in a way that performing well is celebrated by their peers (do we do this enough?), and praise the highest achievements by these students (do we do this enough?). Challenge and celebrate and involve. Can we do more of this? We must ask more, expect more, and celebrate more from our academic high achievers. We enroll high achievers. We must graduate high achievers who not only can solve problems, integrate information, conduct research independently, and communicate well but who will be future leaders in government, industry, serving others, and education. Likewise, we have the same duty to challenge, mentor, and celebrate our graduate and professional students and postdoctoral fellows who are coming to Boston College in increasing numbers. Similarly, are enough of us challenging ourselves in our scholarship or in our service as much as we should? It is indeed our academic duty to do so. We do possess some truly exceptional faculty, departments, centers and schools. However, those seeking UAPC augmentation cannot be complacent just because they might have been identified in a planning document prepared several years ago. Strengths in areas unanticipated in the planning documents may come forth just as other new areas may emerge; we must be flexible in responding to such new opportunities. Priorities will shift and change. Strengthening the university intellectual environment will be a result of more of our faculty publishing monographs, books, involving students at all levels in our scholarship, presenting lectures at symposia, mentoring the next generation of scholars, writing and receiving grants, and performing professional and community service. I firmly believe that new strengths will emerge as faculty and students work together and cross traditional disciplinary bounds. With your insight and input, we must invest wisely in those programs which are central, those which are uniquely our own, or those which already are or can be of outstanding quality. How can we better support, recognize, and indeed celebrate teaching, mentoring , and research by our faculty? I see this annual convocation as the time for celebrating the achievements of our faculty and university community. We have already heard of outstanding achievements by some of our faculty in scholarship, service and teaching. How might we better celebrate and recognize achievements such as these? I propose one way. This coming year we will establish distinguished faculty awards in three categories: 1) research; 2) teaching, mentoring , or advising; and 3) service. Two awards will be presented in each category, one to a senior faculty member and one to a junior faculty member. In addition to the award of $4,000 to the recipient, $2,000 will be provided to each in support of a specific project in the area of the recipient's award. We will announce and celebrate the awards at our next convocation. One responsibility of the recipients will be to make, for Faculty Day in the Spring, public presentations in their area of award. These competitions are open to all of our faculty. However, no promises are made to those individuals we have heard about as to their standing in this award process. The competition will be tough. How else can we support and encourage scholarship and teaching or mentoring by our faculty? At the outset, we will enhance our already existing faculty research awards by now providing an amount ranging from equal to one month's summer salary up to $15,000 for up to 25 awards in research. What is to be included in this term research? I believe that curriculum development or other forms of scholarship in teaching or mentoring are indeed forms of research just as important as basic scholarship in a discipline and therefore are worthy of research awards. These awards will be open to all of our faculty. What about the duty of the administration? It is our academic duty in the administration to serve you: to support, assist in, and celebrate your teaching, service and scholarly activities. It is our duty to make difficult decisions in a timely way. It is our duty to make sure that all of our activities support the mission of the university. It is our duty to provide the resources and moral support necessary to aid you on this journey. It is our duty to help you, to encourage you, to facilitate your scholarship, and to encourage interdisciplinary activities in your scholarly work. This institution is blessed in many ways including resources and quality faculty, students, and staff. Whether you have been here for one month, like myself, or for thirty years, you have something special to contribute to one of our missions. I am committed to working with all of you in fulfilling our academic duty to make sure that this institution continues to flourish and mature as one of the preeminent national universities. I look forward to joining you on this journey we enthusiastically undertake together as a community. Let us look forward without forgetting our past. Let our celebration begin. Thank you.