The Staff

Some of you who read my last post might have wondered about one subject that was not addressed – the staff. That is because I wanted to comment separately about the terrific staff of the University of Rhode Island. From the day Lynn and I arrived, we have been tremendously impressed by the individuals who give so much to URI, who contribute so much to the community here, and who work so hard for the benefit of the faculty, students, and programs of the university. Whether classified or professional, union or non-union, the URI staff are exceptionally dedicated to the university. Certainly I could not be successful without the outstanding support of the staff here – folks in dining services, administration, advancement, the Foundation, and facilities have been unfailingly helpful, effective, and genuinely fun to work with. I want to especially thank Michelle and Cathy; I cannot imagine a better team for the President’s Office. Lynn and I want to thank all the staff and we hope to see you at our open house tomorrow or next week.

Semester One is Done (Almost)

It doesn't seem possible but my first semester at URI is nearly over. Although the schedule has been extremely hectic, and the challenges all they were advertised to be, Lynn and I have thoroughly enjoyed our time in Rhode Island. The natural beauty of the state, the warmth and hospitality of the people, the vibrancy of life here -- all of these contribute to our feeling that URI and Rhode Island are the right places for us. There is a lot more, however, to our assessment -- factors that are even more important.

The students. I have met with a lot of students in a lot of settings since arriving in July. Lynn and I have hosted several students groups at our home. I have been very impressed by their abilities, leadership, dedication, enthusiasm, and aspirations. Indeed, I think the students at URI, both in Kingston and Providence, are as good as those anywhere I have been. I was especially proud of the way our students responded to the incidents involving hateful speech that occurred. They are endeavoring to make URI a community where everyone can succeed. I am glad that they choose to attend URI.

The faculty. Based on my own assessment, and comments from across the state and elsewhere, the faculty at URI are dedicated to excellence in teaching and scholarship, engaged, productive, and devoted to the success of our students. Public higher education and URI face multiple, difficult challenges, both external and internal. At the same time, URI is being asked to take a leadership position in expanding research, in revitalizing the state's economy, in assisting with the improvement of K-12 education, and in helping expand opportunities and improve the quality of life for all Rhode Islanders. Our faculty, together with the deans and other leaders, are ready to take on these challenges and make the changes needed to succeed.

The alumni. I am convinced that the best measure of the quality of a university is the achievements of its graduates. By this criterion, URI is an outstanding institution. Across the world our alumni are making a difference, accomplishing extraordinary things, and building a legacy of leadership. They are increasingly engaged with the university to help meet the challenges ahead. All of us at URI can be proud of our alumni and proud of the education that contributed so much to their achievements.

Our community. Across the campus I am heartened by the widespread commitment to building an inclusive, mutually supportive, and diverse community. Shared governance is strong and we are working to make it even better. There was wide and thoughtful participation in the development of a new academic plan, and soon we will be instituting a new budget process that will further link planning and budgeting in an open and inclusive way involving faculty, staff, and students.

The nation, Rhode Island, and URI certainly must deal with substantial and difficult challenges. We must not lose sight of the fact that significant opportunities accompany these challenges. As a community, URI can seize its opportunities and overcome the challenges we face, and Lynn and I are delighted to be a part of that shared future.

Demystifying India in India

As many of you know, this fall has featured an extraordinary series of events at the University of Rhode Island examining the history, politics, sociology, culture, and future of India. As I write this, it is my privilege to actually be in India, where I am participating in a regional scientific conference at the TIFR (Tata Institute for Fundamental Research) in Mumbai. I have already written about the importance and impact of scientific conferences with international participation, and those observations are relevant to this conference as well. However, in this case the participants overwhelmingly come from India and their contributions and the setting provide a rich context for me to learn firsthand about the talents, accomplishments, opportunities, and challenges of this amazing and diverse country. One conclusion is already apparent: it would be desirable and beneficial for URI to increase its engagement with India. I think our students could benefit in multiple ways from studying here. I believe that URI would benefit greatly from the presence of scholars and students from India on our campus. We could learn a lot from the perspectives, vision, and experiences of the people of the Indian sub-continent.

Included in this post are some images and video clips of Mumbai: these include pictures and a short clip taken in some of the caves on Elephanta Island (a World Heritage site owing to the shrines dating from the 4th century CE); a clip of arriving back in Mumbai on a local ferry with views of the “Gates of India” and the famous Taj Mahal hotel; and pictures of TIFR (including one of my colleague and host, Dr. Shyamalava Mazumdar), the coast at the Institute, and part of the Mumbai skyline from the TIFR.

Coming Home

Lynn and I recently celebrated our first homecoming at URI. Practically every moment, except for the disappointing outcome of the football game, was engaging and fun. The weekend culminated in the presentation of the Distinguished Achievement Awards, one of the most enjoyable and inspiring events that I have participated in since coming to Rhode Island. The night celebrated the achievements of many alumni from all across the university, and I could not help but be amazed at their commitment to excellence, their dedication to making a difference in our world and what they had accomplished. At the heart of their terrific work (and for some the foundation of their families) was an education at URI - an education that had prepared them for a lifetime of achievement. Their stories - their testimonies - are, by far, the most compelling evidence to the quality of the University of Rhode Island and the great value of an education here.

Over the course of the weekend, we met many alumni, spanning several decades of URI's educational mission, all of whom were enthusiastic about the university, what it meant to them, and its future. A common element in all their testimonies was the lasting value of the relationships they had built here and the sense of community that existed during their years at URI. I have been thinking about that: how important it is for education to be centered in a community, and the value of the relationships within that community to learning and growth.

I also attended my first Faculty Senate meeting last week, and that meeting reinforced an early assessment of mine about some of the internal issues we must face at URI. Those issues also involve community - it appears to me that our sense of community has been fractured at times and that there is a lack of trust, and a lack of confidence in the institution and among ourselves. Some of the underlying events occurred years ago, and we need to let go of those. Members of a vital and supportive community must be willing to forgive and be willing to allow members of the community to make mistakes, to fail - and to learn from those mistakes and failures. The flip side is mutual accountability - we must be willing to be accountable to members of our community, willing to admit our missteps and to be corrected, regardless of our position. I see very encouraging indications that URI is moving in that direction.

If we succeed in strengthening our community, our trust in one another, and our confidence that we can resolve whatever problems and difficulties that we face by working together, the University of Rhode Island will be even more successful, and the value of an education here will be even higher.

Visiting URI - West (Montana State University)

As I wrote this a few weeks ago, Lynn and I were flying to Minneapolis, on our way back to Rhode Island from Montana. It was a great visit to a great place and a great university, but we were happy to be headed home. As some of you know, I’ll be making regular visits to Montana State University because my research group is still located there and working hard on the continuing projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. My group was very supportive of the move to URI and continues to be very productive. I’ve included some pictures of them and my laboratory at MSU. Working with my research group is always energizing, frequently exhilarating, and invariably rewarding. I continue to learn a lot from them. Those pictured are (starting top left) are: Fumi Ijima; Koyu Fujita; Doreen Brown; Kim Hilmer; and Dalia Rokhsana and Alta Howells. Not pictured: John Bollinger

Teaching and research have been an important part of my life since I was an undergraduate at UCSD. In fact, the initial attraction for me to become a professor began at UCSD when I was engaged in both undergraduate research and served as a teaching assistant for a first-year laboratory in chemistry. I learned more in those settings than I did in many of my formal courses – even though those courses were taught so well and were superb learning experiences in their own right. But working on problems, or investigating phenomena, for which no one has the answer or an explanation, and developing strategies for teaching others what you think you understand, provide opportunities for learning that simply cannot be attained any other way. In brief, my undergraduate research and teaching experiences gave me the motivation and momentum for an academic career that ultimately led to my appointment as the 11th President of the University of Rhode Island. Who would have thought? Not me, certainly, but the value and impact of those experiences remain real to me every day. That is one reason why I am so passionate about expanding or creating such opportunities for our students here at URI.

I was also fortunate to attend graduate school at Caltech – one of the nation’s premier research universities. Of course, Caltech has a highly distinguished faculty and first-rate facilities. More than that, Caltech has a very student-centered culture – as a graduate student in chemistry, it was abundantly evident that the faculty regarded students as colleagues and cared deeply about our success. Caltech also had low, or nonexistent, barriers to interdisciplinary research and collaboration. As a consequence Caltech earned a very well-deserved reputation for innovative research. These are some of the reasons why I am interested in expanding interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary graduate education and research at URI, and building a strong, student-centered culture for both undergraduate and graduate education.

The economic climate creates many difficulties and challenges for URI, as it does for the great majority of universities and colleges across the country. But we can still succeed at building a culture centered on the success of our students, at creating more opportunities for undergraduates to be engaged in research and creative work, and in facilitating interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary scholarship and learning.

Transparency and teapots

On Wednesday night I met with the Student Senate of URI for the first time. I was very impressed; they are a dedicated, thoughtful, and articulate group of student leaders, who clearly care about the University and what’s best for students. We met to talk about some of the issues, opportunities, and challenges that we might face, or will likely have to deal with, in the near future. Our conversation was candid – most importantly we talked openly, with other students and a reporter from the Good 5¢ Cigar in the Senate chamber. And we talked about some difficult issues around the ongoing state budget problems and their possible consequences for higher education. I believe that this is how we want to work together as a community here at URI – openly, transparently, and inclusively. I believe that faculty, staff, and students should be involved in deciding how we can take advantage of our opportunities and meet our challenges. To facilitate that we have to be willing to share information, possibilities, and ideas prior to a decision being reached, and that’s exactly what transpired at the Senate meeting. I had previously discussed these budget issues with the Faculty Senate Executive Committee and look forward to opportunities to discuss these with representatives of our staff.

In several ways, the Wednesday Student Senate meeting and the resulting flurry of interest from the media illustrate some likely consequences of the new planning and budgeting process that is now in development for implementation this spring. A new, representative planning and budget council will hold open meetings, where anyone would be welcome to attend, including, I am sure, a reporter from the Good 5¢ Cigar, and perhaps other media. The council, composed of senior university leadership, deans, faculty, staff, and students will discuss and consider strategic priorities, possibilities, opportunities, and challenges for URI. The Council will develop the budget recommendations for my review and approval. We should anticipate that some meetings will generate debate and discussion across the campus. Honestly, I think it would be a great outcome to see students, faculty, and staff discussing the council’s meetings, sharing ideas, and providing feedback. To be sure, at times this kind of open and transparent process will generate external attention, even concern, and occasionally surprise and confusion. I think that’s ok – it can be considered the price we pay for participation and transparency. As we grow accustomed to our new approach to planning and budgeting the instances of surprise and confusion will diminish. The outcomes – the URI community will have the opportunity to share in creating our future, people at URI and across the state will know what we are doing (and planning) and, also importantly, why – will certainly be more than worth the cost.

Listening to Rhode Island

As everyone seems to be aware, I have been interviewed a lot recently; check out www.uri.edu/president/media.html. It’s been fun! And the people involved, ranging from Heidi Watney to Dan Yorke, have invariably been friendly and engaging. Some of the questions have been challenging, but all of them (so far) have been fair and certainly of interest to Rhode Islanders. But to me the best part has been what the questions themselves, as well as sideline conversations, reveal about what folks here think about URI, education more generally, the state, their communities, and the challenges and opportunities that they face. Outside of the formal interviews, there have been many other conversations that have taught me a lot. Here are some initial observations; I expect that I’ll return to this theme in subsequent posts, following even more conversations and additional time for reflection.

First, folks here seem to love Rhode Island, even though they appear to think that the state is much bigger than it truly is, and have no idea how to provide directions to someone who isn’t already intimately familiar with the history of the place. Despite their affection for Rhode Island, many Rhode Islanders seem to project what strikes me (as a newcomer) as an exaggerated sense of the state’s shortcomings. People seem to underestimate just how great a place Rhode Island is. Interestingly, this attitude seems to carry over to the University of Rhode Island. I heard on several occasions, from long-time Rhode Island residents, that they had been recently surprised to discover the degree of excellence that exists at URI. The quality of specific academic programs, the achievements of students and faculty, the prominence of URI’s reputation in particular areas, the overall value of an education here – all of these were a source of some surprise. On one hand, I enjoyed hearing such very positive comments. On the other, I was a little surprised myself by the fact that people in Rhode Island were unfamiliar with the quality of the state’s research university. During move-in weekend, Lynn and I met many parents and students from outside the state who were attracted by the quality and value of a URI education. In many disciplines, URI has a national reputation for excellence and faculty who are renowned among their peers. URI has a strong reputation for a high-quality intercollegiate athletics program – our teams compete hard and our student athletes perform well both in their classes and their sports. I could go on.

So where’s the disconnect? Let me be candid: our success and quality are not uniform - there are certainly areas in which URI should, and will, improve. As a university we should aim for excellence in everything we do. That is one reason why we should not do everything, and perhaps why we should stop doing some things. We also need to be more effective in getting our messages out. The recent efforts in branding and marketing are very positive steps, but we need to do more. If you are an alumnus or supporter of URI, well, we need your suggestions and your help with that. Most importantly, though, we need to re-emphasize our focus on what matters most – the success of our students. Their enthusiasm, their achievements, their commitment to make a difference in our world – that will be the greatest testimony, and the most remembered, to the quality and value of URI.