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Remarks to Morgantown Rotary

Thursday, August 13, 2009
Madeleine’s Restaurant, Morgantown, WV

Thank You. It is great to be here with you today.

First, I would like to thank David Raese – Publisher of the Dominion Post – for inviting me here today. Dave and I had a great initial meeting in his office just after I started my job. Dave said something to me that day that I believe that stuck with me. He said that he felt the university has never been better positioned to move forward and I think he is right. We are setting big goals and building the right team. We will need your help to get there.

I would also like to thank your President – Rich Gutmann and the other officers for inviting me. I am pleased to see some WVU people actively involved – Mike and Janette. I’d like to recognize former WVU Journalism Dean Guy Stewart who has also reached out to me and as I understand it is doing great work in Jackson’s Mill.

I’ve been in Morgantown six weeks and I love it. My family arrived last week. We have been overwhelmed by the kindness of the people in Morgantown and WV. We heard of this when we lived in Maryland but we have experienced it first-hand. We felt immediately at home.

Bottom line, I am honored to be the President of this great university with a great future. As leaders in our community, you play a major role in making Morgantown such a wonderful place. I need your help.

I wasn’t smart enough to know the day I accepted the job I became full-time. I spent those four months from the day I was announced until the day I started as a full-time volunteer.

I talked with Peter Magrath this week to write an article on the perfect presidential transition. We have worked hand-in-hand. I am in the listening phase and trying to learn as much as I can.

During my transition into the WVU presidency, I traveled the state and region talking to as many people as possible about WVU, our community and our future. I’ve exchanged ideas with lots of people – business leaders in Charleston, the Faculty Senate, the Foundation, top Alums, government leaders, other university presidents, DC, Wheeling, Charleston, Boone County, Pittsburgh, and others. I’m still listening and learning. I still want lots of input from people like you, people who know and love this University and this region.

I’m working to add to our great team. We have some new hires that we’ve made or are close to making: Chancellor of Health Sciences, Provost, VP Legal, Registrar, Chief Information Officer, Associate Provost of International Programs….and more are coming.

In Higher Education it usually takes one year to build your team. We’ll have a lot in place in the first two months. I’m working hard to bring people together, break down silos and getting people to think big.

There are huge research opportunities here. We need to change our mind set and go after the big grants. We will intensify our research efforts and be a national leader, and indeed an international leader, in many disciplines. We will continue to build our prominence in the technology-driven fields of energy, biometrics, biomedical research and nanotechnology.

The University’s faculty conducts about $140 million annually in sponsored research.

Currently, we are ranked 81 among public universities for total research and development. We would need to bring in almost another $100 million to reach the top 50. We’ve doubled our research in the last 10 years. I believe we can double it again and do what’s necessary to support our faculty’s success.

Improving support for grant writing and tracking is one challenge we are tackling.

New Private/Public Partnerships are needed.

Building additional research space is another area we can improve to help our faculty.

Our researchers are talented and competitive. For example, since 2007, WVU cancer researchers have more than doubled the number of research dollars they are securing from the National Cancer Institute.

Two physics professors recently received more than $600,000 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to conduct space research.

Duncan Lorimer’s grant will fund his work using the Green Bank Telescope to study pulsars. Dr. Lorimer is preparing a statistical analysis of how many pulsars exist in the Milky Way galaxy.

Our peer institutions are making major investments in research, and we need to do more to support faculty in order to increase our stature.

We have a great opportunity before us to improve our research program and I feel confident that we can do so. Research can drive economic development. WVU’s research program creates jobs, attracts businesses, increases the tax base, and improves health care and education in our city and state.

We have some great students: two students received Perfect ACT scores, Emily Calandrelli was named a USA Today Academic All-Star and John Armour is a Truman Scholar. But we need to work on graduation and retention rates and to build better academic support structures, early warning systems, mentoring programs and better advising. Enrollment is 28,500, half of incoming freshman are out-of-state. We need to build more graduate/PhD Programs to spawn research.

We will work hard to recruit and retain top-notch faculty. We already have a lot of great ones – like journalism professor, Joel Beeson, who won a national award for Best Practices in Teaching of Diversity and Ruth Kershner, a national award-winning teacher and a health educator working on substance abuse issues. She has worked with more than 5,000 young people in the past four years.

We also contribute to communities state wide through service. WVU students contributed more than 72,000 hours volunteering in the community. That amount of service has a monetary value of more than $1.3 million.

We improve life in West Virginia in incalculable ways through the Extension Service and the academic and service programs of our 15 colleges and schools.

One in four West Virginia children is involved in 4-H programs, along with life-saving training for the state’s firefighters and emergency service workers.

The College of Business & Economics shares its expertise with entrepreneurs and small businesses, and its economists provide economic forecasts, research, statistics, and analysis on economic trends affecting our area, helping leaders in business and government make sound decisions about the future.

When I was an administrator at Towson University, facilitating relationships and partnerships between the University and the larger community was one of the most important parts of my job.

Much of WVU’s current success – and its potential for success in the future – results from the University’s powerful relationships and partnerships throughout the state and especially in this vibrant community.

There is not a university in the country that means more to its state than us.

The Health Sciences Center provides clinical trials for new treatments for strokes, heart disease, memory disorders, etc. WVU health care also generates thousands of well paying jobs, with WVU Hospitals employing about 4,500 people. Through our various locations in the state, we also provide $82 million annually in uncompensated health care to patients who cannot pay.

We must become a destination.

We were rated among the top 10 Party Schools – but along with WVU, Penn State, Wisconsin, Texas, Georgia were on the list. All of these institutions have successful academic, research, and athletic programs and are among our great list of peers. Actually, great comments were made about WVU in this publication.

There is lots of room for improvement; we must position ourselves on the leading edge of technology.

We need to have a global focus with more study abroad and international partnerships and we need to have a strategic vision.

We can’t just rely on state revenue and tuition. We need to build grants, contracts, entrepreneurial activities, fund raising, auxiliary services and new business partnerships.

This city was a very big factor in my move here because it was proclaimed “recession proof” and an “economic oasis” by news organization from CNN to the Wall Street Journal to MSNBC. Forbes.com ranked Morgantown as the number two college town in the nation for jobs. Careerbuilder.com ranked the city sixth on its list of best places to find a job. Inc.com named Morgantown one of the nation’s top 10 boomtowns. Bizjournals.com recognized it as one of the best small cities in the nation. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine called Morgantown one of the smartest places to live in the United States.

This national attention is a great source of pride for all of us. Morgantown has one of the nation’s lowest unemployment rates.

Protea Biosciences of Morgantown is a business based on WVU research, and the University’s business incubator helped to nurture it. They are developing new tests for heart disease, and Protea is doubling its local workforce. This is the power of a partnership.

We need to work hand-in-hand with the city of Morgantown on parking, transportation, housing, and crime. I think we have a great relationship and need to keep building it

We are helping the city in a variety of ways:

• approximately $1 million in funding to the Mountain Line Transit System
• New intermodal facility (a true partnership locally and federally)
• Disaster drills and planning
• Rain retention ponds at alumni center, a $7 million investment
• Sunnyside Up

There are countless examples like these.

I want your input. Give me your ideas and thoughts for 2020. What do we want to be? When people thinking of us what do they see? Where do you see WVU in 2020? Describe successes you’ve seen in WVU/community collaborations? What challenges and opportunities do you see ahead for town-gown relations? What are some ways the University has changed over the years for the better? What do you see for the future of our community and University? What problems should we be addressing together?

Thank you.

Let this be the first of many positive meetings between the community and University.