Remarks of University President William P. Leahy, SJ 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 ============================================================= Good afternoon and welcome to the University Convocation for the 1998-1999 academic year. As most of you know, this will be my third year in Boston, and Bill Neenan, another Iowa expatriate, has told me that having begun my third year, I am now entitled to call myself a Bostonian and to speed up when the traffic light turns yellow, especially if there are pedestrians in the crosswalk. Bostonian or not, I am thankful for this opportunity to talk with you about the state of Boston College from my perspective as president. My remarks this afternoon will be divided into three parts: first, I have several introductions and announcements to make. Second, I'd like to review the past year, which was extraordinary in so many ways. Finally, I want to focus on three broad themes that will receive special University attention in the coming year. There are two people with us today whose presence deserves acknowledgment. David Burgess, our new academic vice president and dean of faculties, comes to us with an impressive record as a scholar, teacher, and administrator at some of the best universities in the nation, most recently at the University of Pittsburgh, where he led the biology department into the top national rankings. He is committed to intellectual excellence and to enhancing the religious traditions and educational heritage of Boston College. I am confident he will be an effective academic leader and a powerful example for us. Also with us today is our new vice president for university mission and ministry, Father Joe Appleyard. This is a return engagement for him. A 1953 graduate of Boston College, he is known to many of you from his years as a faculty member in the English Department and as head of the Arts and Sciences Honors Program and also as the religious superior of Jesuit Community on campus. He is a person of wisdom and insight, and I am delighted that he will be leading efforts to enhance the Jesuit, Catholic mission and character of Boston College. You are all aware that Fr. J. Robert Barth has announced that he will step down next summer after eleven years as dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. As Dean, he has hired an extraordinarily talented cadre of junior as well as senior faculty, transformed Boston College's programs in the arts, and instituted a system of department reviews that has promoted both academic rigor and wise use of resources. After taking a sabbatical leave, Bob will join the English faculty where I believe his courses on Coleridge will be among the most popular in the department, and where he will continue to be an exemplary representative of Jesuit ideals and Jesuit education. Also, I would like you to know that Bob will be the inaugural holder of the McIntyre Chair, given in appreciation of Jim McIntyre, our senior vice President, by a major benefactor of Boston College. The search for a successor to Bob will begin immediately. I have asked David Burgess to chair the search committee, and I expect to be able to announce its membership within two weeks. My hope is that we will be bringing finalists for this position to campus for interviews early in the second semester. Shortly after Commencement, I appointed a committee, chaired by University Chaplain Father Richard Cleary, to review the place of religious art on campus and then to make recommendations for its enhancement. Certainly, a Catholic and Jesuit university ought to manifest its identity in part through public art and symbols, such as icons, paintings, statues, and of course, crucifixes. And it should do so with sensitivity for all members of its community, and without confusing symbol and symbolism with identity itself. I expect to receive the committee's report before this semester ends. I will be responding later this fall to a study on the state of the arts at Boston College, which I requested from the Council on the Arts founded by Bob Barth last year. The report is thorough and honest and full of excellent ideas for raising the status and prominence of the arts at BC. As the report points out, we cannot expect to recruit and enroll the kind of student we want at Boston College unless we provide signficant opportunities for artistic expression. And finally, this fall I will appoint a committee to plan University activities for the approaching Millennium. This group will be charged with developing an overall plan, including courses, lectures, presentations, and seminars to mark the end of one millenium and the start of another. These initiatives will, I hope, be challenging and rewarding for faculty, students, and members of the Boston community alike. My goal is that our celebration of the Millenium will encourage us to examine what we have been, what we have become, and what we might yet be as an institution, nation, and world. Two years ago at my first convocation, I talked about my need to learn about the University, but also of my conviction that Boston College was a place of strength and untapped potential. A year ago, I focused on our plans to make a major strategic investment--260 million dollars--to strengthen academic quality here. This year, I am able to talk about solid progress toward our goals. By any standard, 1997-1998 was a remarkable and exciting year for Boston College. Let me note some highlights: -- We added 25 new faculty positions and increased funding for such student programs as study abroad, religious retreats, and the Undergraduate Research Fellowships--all investments designed to enhance academics here and to help attract the best students in the nation to our classrooms. -- Faculty achieved new records in gaining grant support from outside agencies and won more awards and honors with national significance than in any year anyone can remember. For example, Alicia Munnell was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Father David Hollenbach was chosen to be the next president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. George Madaus received a million-dollar Ford Foundation grant, and Diane Vaughn won the Rachel Carson Prize for Social Studies of Science. Amir Hoveyda was named a Cope Scholar, John Fourkas was chosen as a Sloan Fellow, and their colleague Marc Snapper received a Sloan Fellowship, a Dreyfus Award, and a DuPont Young Investigator Award. Lisa Cuklanz was awarded a Harvard Law School Humanities Fellowship, and Jean Bartunek is the vice-president elect of the Academy of Management. My congratulations to these faculty and all of those who received awards this past year. -- This past year we also began a 78-million-dollar renovation and expansion of Biology and Physics facilities in Higgins Hall--a major commitment to excellence in science and both graduate and undergraduate education. -- We developed pilot Cornerstone Programs for introducing our freshmen to the full range of intellectual and developmental opportunities that life at Boston College offers. -- Last year a record number--19--of our students won prestigious awards, including Fulbrights, Mellon, Goldwater Truman, and Pfizer fellowships. -- The average SAT score of the 16,000 plus students applying for the class of 2002 was ten points higher than the previous year. AHANA applications rose three percent, in part due to a record number of applications from African-Americans, and we have enrolled 115 African American freshmen, a record for us. -- We opened the Center for Ignatian Spirituality to provide faculty and staff with new ways to learn about the Ignatian charism and heritage and to reflect on their own personal and spiritual development. -- And finally, 1997-98 was a year in which we set new records in fund-raising--28.7 million dollars in cash and 62.6 million dollars in pledges. The last figure, of course, reflects that we are in the initial stages of a very ambitious capital campaign. The campaign is a challenge, but it's a challenge we have accepted because these funds are crucial for BC's academic development. For these and other achievements too numerous to list, you, as a faculty and administrative staff, are to be congratulated. This has been in so many ways a banner year for Boston College, and I am grateful to each of you for your work and contributions. You may be asking yourself: how do we proceed from here. I say, with great hope and confidence. In all the ways that I have mentioned, and many others I have not, we are a different university today than we were a year ago--a stronger university. In fact, Boston College's growth and evolution over the last several decades have been continuous and remarkable. I know this from my experience here, but also from my involvement in Catholic higher education in America. And I know it as well from last year's reaccreditation study by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, in which our progress since the early 1970s was a central theme. In 25 years, the report's authors said, Boston College has been transformed from a struggling regional institution into a select national university with high ambition, healthy endowment, enviable physical plant, well-paid faculty, rising academic reputation, and emerging centers of excellence. I know it also from alumni, who with great pride tell me, We hardly recognize the place. And they are not simply speaking of the physical campus, of square feet and library holdings. They are referring to faculty whose names they have seen in that morning's Wall Street Journal. They are speaking of a student body ranked as among the most selective in the country. They are speaking from their belief that Boston College is an institution that remains unsatisfied with itself, that continues to demand more of itself, to move with the times and with our world's needs. We are such an institution. And we must continue to be even more that kind of school. Movement must be continuous--from challenge to greater challenge--if we are to continue to be worthy of our mission and heritage and to serve our students and society. And to do this successfully, we need to pay constant attention to the changing landscape. Which brings me to three areas which I want to give special attention to this year. -- University bylaws and statutes; -- our relations with minority communities; -- student formation. I intend in the next few weeks to appoint a small committee of faculty and staff to examine our University Bylaws and Statutes. In view of the increased distinction of BC's faculty, and the University's newest goals for academic excellence, I am seeking recommendations on what revisions are advisable so that our bylaws and statutes may best serve the contemporary Boston College. I am firmly convinced that the vast majority of our bylaws and statutes should not be changed. They were well conceived, well drafted, well amended, and have served Boston College well. They have protected and sustained our progress. But this is 1998; and the quality, aspirations, and complexity of Boston College have increased since 1980 when our bylaws and statutes were fully revised. I am concerned that some requirements and regulations in our governing documents do not fulfill what we need today. I want to be sure, for example, that our internal review processes and expectations, whether for promotion and tenure or otherwise, fit with our commitment to excellence and responsible decision-making. We must have evaluations at all levels that are fair, timely, consistent, and rigorous. I also want to make sure that proper and authoritative responsibility is vested with those in leadership positions, especially our academic vice president and deans. So that when they need to make critical leadership decisions, they are supported, and not unfairly burdened, by our governing regulations. I would like to have a report from the committee by spring and bring recommended changes for consideration by the Board of Trustees at the annual meeting next September. The second area for attention concerns our relations with minority communities. Boston College must do better in building and strengthening ties with people of color, particularly in Boston. Many do not know BC has an active and successful minority recruitment program in undergraduate admission, do not know of the success of the Law School or School of Social Work in African-American recruitment, or of BC's commitments to Options Through Education, to College Bound, to the Donovan Scholars Program in the Graduate School of Education. We need to do a better job in communicating, both on-campus and off-campus, what we are doing to assist members of minority communities, especially in Boston. One wonderful opportunity to do so will occur later this year when the Options Through Education Transitional Summer Program celebrates its 20th anniversary. OTE, as some of you know, brings about 40 at-risk students, mainly minorities, to Boston College as freshmen each year and provides them with special tutoring and guidance. And thanks to those support systems, these students are extremely successful. According to the most recent data provided by the AHANA Office, of the 249 OTE students who entered BC over the past six years, 91 percent have graduated or remain in the University--a number consistent with the BC average for all students and far above the national average for minority or majority students. I have asked AHANA Director Don Brown and Learning to Learn Director Dan Bunch to make sure that our OTE anniversary event not only celebrates our success but also provides a public forum for other college and universities to learn from our experience and to teach us as well. And I have promised them University support for this endeavor. In a similar vein, I have asked Black Studies Director Frank Taylor to makes appropriate plans to reconvene the bi-annual Blacks in Boston Conference that the Black Studies Program founded some years ago. Boston is a city rich in African- American history. And Boston College, with a similarly rich local history, can and should be an important venue for exploring the African-American experience and its supporting culture in our area. Finally, I believe we need to develop a better mechanism for communicating and coordinating on campus about various programs and activities intended to foster racial understanding and diversity. It seems to me that the existing University Intercultural Council, chaired by David Burgess and David Burgess, could help fill that need. Therefore, I am requesting that it take on the function of serving as a clearinghouse for information about diversity efforts and that groups inform it about their plans for programs and speakers. My hope is that the Council can help publicize our many efforts and also reduce scheduling conflicts. Certainly, these initiatives are not all we might do. But they are a necessary beginning. Finally, a word about student formation. Last spring, at the request of the Development Office, the Office of Publications and Print Marketing and the Carroll School's Marketing Department jointly sponsored four focus groups of students regarding their attitudes toward Boston College. I was able to sit behind the one-way glass for one of the focus groups, and I read transcripts of the others. In viewing and in reading, I was struck by our students expressed need for community, their wish to be part of Boston College--to be known and valued by this institution. It was so strong in their comments that it seemed an absolute hunger, and a hunger that was not always satisfied by classes and student programming and UVIEW screens. I recall one senior who declared, I don't want to be a customer. I want to feel part of this place. Over the last several decades, at Boston College and elsewhere, much of the responsibility for making a student feel part of this place has devolved from faculty to professionals in student affairs divisions. Given the increased complexity of higher education as well as the growing desire of students and their families for new services and support programs, this devolution was to a large degree necessary and good--but not entirely so. For no matter how exemplary the student affairs staff member, no matter how rich the experience of writing for The Heights or participating in extra-curricular activities, the central aim of college students and their parents remains a connection with the heart of the university, with faculty. When I hear of BC seniors who do not know a faculty member well enough to ask for a letter of recommendation for law school, I am embarrassed and. When I ask students what faculty members they have gotten close to in their time here and they stumble over names, I wonder whether we are delivering on our promises to those students and their parents. I firmly believe that many faculty want to be more accessible, want to make better connections. But these relationships take time; and time, understandably, is not easy to come by in the press of daily work, the demands that we do research, and publish, and teach well, and attend committee meetings, and nurture our families and our interior lives. But we, as a university, need to find ways to overcome these obstacles, ways to reestablish more firmly that connection between teacher and student that is the foundation of education, and without which everything becomes distance learning. I have, therefore, asked Vice President for Student Affairs Kevin Duffy and Father Appleyard to found and co- chair the Council on Student Formation--a body whose creation was recommended as part the University's plans to implement its strategic plan, "Advancing the Legacy." This Council will be composed of faculty, administrators, and students; and its task will be to determine ways to foster meaningful connections between students and faculty and administrators. It especially will strive to enable all students to build strong relationships with members of this community who are most capable of providing leadership, mentoring, and challenge for the life of the mind and for life itself. This will be an extraordinarily busy year. The programs and studies and reports I have outlined, the searches for new faculty and top administrators, NCAA certification process, the ongoing UAPC implementation, Delta changes--all of these will create great demands--on time, resources, patience, intelligence, energy, and imagination. I have, however, tremendous faith and confidence in you and in Boston College. I take pride in Boston College, in its achievements and ambitions, and I am grateful that I am here, and grateful as well to each of you for your presence, for the gifts you bring to the University. I have seen how those gifts are diverse and unique, just as you are diverse and unique in your experiences, training, knowledge and viewpoints. And together this makes a whole. Together this wide range of experiences, training, knowledge, commitments, and views so enriches Boston College and helps to be a special place committed to intellectual excellence and our Jesuit, Catholic mission and heritage. Our 1997-98 annual report, to be published later this month, has intellectual vitality as its theme. In the introduction to that report, I note that it is a central task of a university to foster encounters between diverse ideas and to do so in a way that insures a productive outcome. That is, of course, a high standard for our world, where conflict between ideas often leads to unjust behavior. The special promise that a university community makes to society, however, is that here we may join in intellectual struggle, may generate strong feelings, and yet remain respectful of each other-- understanding that however we are informed by culture, learning and history, we are all pilgrims on the same sometimes steep and uncertain path. Seen this way, university life not only exemplifies virtues of wonder, reverence, companionship, and trust; but, as I note in the Annual Report, it also reflects a sure comprehension of God's loving and most challenging gift to each of us--the gift of freedom. And the call to be part of a caring, challenging community. I wish each of you a year of success, God's blessings and much fulfillment. Thank you.