Remarks at New Faculty Orientation

James P. Clements
Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009

Welcome to WVU! I’m going to keep this very informal, so ask me any questions you like.

First of all, I’d like to thank Interim Provost Jane Martin and C.B. Wilson – associate provost for academic personnel – and his staff for planning this event. I’d also like to thank the deans and chairs for their roles in recruiting an excellent class of new faculty.

Like you, I am a newcomer to WVU. I began my career in higher education as a faculty member in 1989 and spent 20 years in the System of Maryland, at Towson University, as a faculty member in Computer and Information Science. Later, I served as the department chair, the vice president for economic development and community outreach and provost.

When I started college – my very first class – I decided I wanted to be a professor. I love teaching, doing research and working with students.

I wasn’t looking to leave Maryland, but I got a call and I considered this to be a dream job. I came to WVU because this is one of America’s great land-grant institutions.

I’ve followed WVU for years – WVU has many alums and fans in Maryland – and I admired the passion that people have for WVU and for the state of West Virginia.

I want you to know that I am here for the long haul. This is a great place to live and a great place to raise a family. It already feels like home.

A lot has happened since I accepted this position in March. I met with Peter Magrath, budget officers, the faculty senate, staff council, student government, the Foundation Board and donors. I’ve attended Alumni and Mountaineer Parents Club events. I’ve talked to individual faculty, the congressional delegation, state legislators and the state’s Higher Education Policy Commission. I went on a retreat with our Board of Governors. The list goes on! And all of my meetings confirmed what I already knew – that this is a great place with incredible students, faculty, staff and alumni.

I know the pressures on a faculty member – class preparation, scholarship, advising, grant proposals, thesis committees, annual files, committee service. I also know how incredible it is to see students do well, learn and graduate with great opportunities.

Our faculty have an amazing commitment to the University’s land-grant mission. WVU provides the best education in this region, and produces the most outstanding graduates in this region, because we have the very best faculty in this region.

We are West Virginia’s flagship, land-grant University. No other state’s land-grant means as much to its state as WVU does to West Virginia. We enroll about 28,500 students and we offer 188 degree programs, many of which are nationally ranked.

We also attract outstanding students, and we help them accomplish great things. Some examples:

• Andrew Higgins, a 2009 Goldwater Scholar, has spent the past two years studying spintronics at WVU with the help of his research advisor.

• Emily Kayser took a research trip to Africa to study poverty that formalized her career goals and helped her win a Boren Scholarship for further study abroad.

• John Armour, a nontraditional student who overcame adversity, received a Truman Scholarship this year and built houses for those in need as president of WVU’s Habitat for Humanity chapter.

• Emily Calandrelli has won both the Goldwater and the Truman scholarships and appeared on USA Today’s academic first team.

All of these students have said how important their faculty mentors have been to their intellectual growth.

Our faculty members are also talented and competitive researchers. We receive about $140 million annually in sponsored research. We’ve doubled sponsored research in past ten years, and we will increase it again dramatically by doing what’s necessary to support our faculty’s success. Reaching the top 50 will take almost $100 million.

We are a major, major workforce engine in this state. We give our state an approximate 20-to-1 return on its investment in the University. And, we have numerous partnerships and research projects that are making a major impact in the region. For example, one in four West Virginia children are involved in 4-H. We provide life-saving training for the state’s firefighters and emergency service workers. And our health care operations across the state provide $82 million annually in uncompensated health care to patients who cannot pay.

You are joining a very impressive group of more than 2,000 faculty members, a group which is nationally, and internationally, recognized for outstanding work. I can promise you that you will not find a more caring, more dedicated or more talented group of faculty anywhere.

Let me give you a few examples of our outstanding faculty members:

• In the Department of Physics in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, we have a research team that discovered a new astronomical phenomenon – a powerful, short-lived burst of radio waves from the distant universe.

• In the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, we have a faculty member elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering, the highest honor that an engineer can achieve in the United States.

• In the Eberly College’s History Department, we have a professor who received a lifetime achievement award for his scholarship on Kenya.

• In the School of Journalism, we have a professor who recently won a national award for the teaching of diversity, and whose documentary on African American World War II veterans was honored by the Congressional Black Caucus.

• In the School of Medicine, we have a professor who has won a national award for health education.

• In the College of Education and Human Resources, we have a professor who is well known for developing a class popularly called “jock talk” – a public speaking class for WVU student-athletes. Students write and deliver a five-minute motivational speech that they give in local middle schools.

• In the College of Business and Economics, we have a professor who won a national Innovations in Accounting Education Award for developing a forensic accounting program at WVU.

I still remember my new faculty orientation at Towson, when I joined the faculty there 20 years ago, and I still remember the three pieces of advice the speaker offered:

1. Be a great teacher and remember that students are at the heart of what we do.
2. Do your research and scholarship. Build your research portfolio. We have very big goals in this area.
3. Serve the University – develop courses, serve on committees, help your department and your college, your university and your community, and be a great colleague.

We want you to be successful! We want you to have a great career right here at WVU. Organizations are built on great people and we have GREAT people at WVU.

Remember, this is our university. We can make it as great as we want it to be, so let’s build it together. Let’s decide where we want to be in 2020 and beyond and get to work getting there.

As we interview provost candidates soon, as we fill deanships, as we talk about growing our research agenda, as we seek to build on our service tradition, as we improve our technology systems, as we put programs in place to support student success, international/diversity, give me input – I will listen.