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State of the University 2009: A Shared Vision

President James P. Clements
West Virginia University
State of the University Address
October 12, 2009

The words that you saw flashing up here as we began were gathered from your feedback in the ongoing “Share Your Vision” web survey.

LIFE-CHANGING. INNOVATIVE. VISIONARY. AFFORDABLE. RESILIENT. CAPABLE. COMMITTED. EMPOWERING.

These are your words, the ones you chose to describe our University. They tell me about your passion for WVU and its mission, and that you understand its remarkable momentum and promise.

You have an idea of what the future can look like. Together we can build this University’s future.

These past few months have been exciting, and I am extremely appreciative of the support from our campus governance system.

I’d like to thank Dr. Nigel Clark, Faculty Senate Chair and member of the Board of Governors; Dr. Bob Griffith, a faculty representative on the Board from Health Sciences; Jo Morrow, Staff Council Chair and member of the Board of Governors; Jason Zuccari, Student Body President and member of the Board of Governors; and Carolyn Long, our Board Chair who is incredibly dedicated to her alma mater.

I also want to thank our entire Board of Governors, the Alumni Association Board, the WVU Foundation Board, and the elected officials in the state and those representing us in Congress.

Thank you to Dr. Jane Martin and Dr. Fred Butcher, who have served so very well in interim vice president roles this past year.

A special thank you to Dr. Peter Magrath for his great leadership as interim president this past year and to Dr. Gene Budig who stepped up to serve WVU as chair of the presidential search committee.

I’d also like to thank Beth, my wife, for joining me today.

The list of thanks-yous could go on for a long time. This is a great organization, built on great people.

From everyone who has served on the search committees to the people I see every day on campus to the alumni and friends of WVU I have talked with, there are so many wonderful people associated with this University. I am grateful for the trust placed in me and very excited about the direction we are heading.

I stand before you today to give the “State of the University” address, and I am pleased to say the University is stable and poised for the next chapters in its long and proud history.

Financially the institution is solid, despite very challenging economic times around the country.

We anticipate closing Fiscal Year 2009 with the following indicators of our fiscal health: an increase in net assets of $9.4 million; a positive operating margin adjusted for investment losses and the unfunded liability of retiree health benefits; a clean opinion from our external auditors, with no management letter; and a very stable bond rating, combined with a recent increase in the State of West Virginia’s Standard and Poor’s bond rating.

While the equity markets have improved over the last six months, the future is filled with uncertainty and the recovery period could take several years.

The good news is the WVU Foundation has received $54.7 million in cash contributions and pledge payments – a slight increase from last year’s total.

However, for the twelve-month period ending June 30, 2009, the endowed investment pool returned negative 29.1%. As a result, the endowed investment assets declined approximately $100 million, with almost the entire loss being unrealized. The WVU Foundation has fared better than many around the country in this regard.

Like all of higher education, we must monitor how a sustained economic downtown, a declining equity market, and the banking crisis will impact student recruitment and retention. While enrollment was steady at record levels in 2009, we must not lose sight of the fact that the University is still very tuition dependent, accounting for more than 30% of our revenues.

Notably, nearly $1 million in new institutional funding was provided starting last spring to students whose families had been negatively impacted by the economic downturn.

Moreover, countless students found jobs this year with help from the new Student Employment Center. The Center is led by the Division of Human Resources, with the collaboration of Student Affairs.

Despite the economic context, the University’s other key indicators – enrollment, research, capital investments – all point to stability.

Enrollment is especially strong. All campuses combined, WVU’s total enrollment is nearly 32,000 students. Enrollment on the Morgantown campus is 28,900.

Potomac State’s enrollment reached record levels this year, exceeding 1,800 students. This is an increase of about 14.4% (230) over last year. Since becoming a division of WVU in 2005, enrollment at the Potomac State campus has increased 40%.

At WVU Tech, enrollment has grown to nearly 1,250 students this year, up 1.6% from last year and importantly up 25% in first-time freshmen. This year, the integration of BANNER and STAR enrollment management systems has been completed with WVU Tech, in addition to financial systems, facilities management, and a host of other administrative functions. An enormous amount of staff time and expertise have been needed to complete these integrations, and I want to thank everyone from both campuses involved in this significant progress.

We are seeing four important and strategic increases in enrollment on the Morgantown campus this year.

First, graduate and professional student enrollment has increased by about 270 students, or nearly 4% over last year.

Second, first-time freshmen Honors College enrollment is up 17% this fall. With the opening of the new Honors Hall this fall, we have a great opportunity to explore new ways to build upon our current Honors programming. Academic Affairs is exploring several exciting ideas that will be shared with the Faculty Senate in the coming months.

Third, international student undergraduate enrollment increased 7.3% this year, despite the global reach of the economic crisis. This fall, WVU opened the International HomeStart Closet, coordinated by the Office of Social Justice, to provide international students with furniture and supplies to make their Morgantown apartments a home away from home. I was able to attend the opening, and this initiative literally brought tears to my eyes.

Fourth, we saw almost a 10% increase in online and extended learning registrations. This is vital to the continued growth of the University and to reaching new sectors of West Virginians seeking increased educational attainment such as adult learners, dislocated workers, and returning veterans. A June 2009 report from the Chronicle of Higher Education on the College of 2020, states that, “Nothing is as likely to change the face of higher education over the next decade as the switch to more online learning.”

These enrollment gains, especially in the strategic areas of graduate education and online programming, are not the only indicators of our current stability.

Total sponsored funding for research increased 8%, from $140.7 million in Fiscal Year 2008 to $152.3 million in Fiscal Year 2009. Federal funding for sponsored programs has increased 34%, from $66.0 million to $88.2 million.

The Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac recently reported that WVU is among the “Biggest Gainers in Federal Funds for Academic Research and Development” from 2000 to 2007, with an increase of 135%. This ranked WVU 12th in research growth for the time period.

The number of new competitive federal grant awards increased from 103 in Fiscal Year 2008 to 128 in Fiscal Year 2009. The amount of these awards increased 33%, or from $24.8 million to $32.9 million. New competing awards for the first three months of this fiscal year already have reached $25 million. We have already reached the entire year’s funding level in competitive federal grants from two years ago.

These grant awards have been augmented by the Research Trust Fund, which combines private donations and state matching funds. Overall, efforts in private fund-raising for the first year will translate to approximately $6.5 million of investment in the four research focus areas. Raising funds for the Research Trust remains the Foundation’s number-one priority.

The predecessor to the Research Trust Fund was the Eminent Scholars Recruitment and Enhancement Program. Under this program, WVU has successfully matched the available $5-million commitment from the State for a total investment of $10 million. This money has, among other things, established two endowed positions for pre-eminent cancer physicians and allowed the Health Sciences Center to initiate a comprehensive stroke research program.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (commonly known as the “stimulus fund”) has brought new opportunities for research funding and results, as well.
Since the program began this past spring, WVU has already secured 43 awards totaling $11.2 million, with the news of an additional $4 million in awards on its way.

We are also seeing progress in technology transfer. It was recently announced that WVU’s patent-pending process that turns coal into heavy oil – a process known as direct coal liquefaction – has been licensed exclusively to a company called Quantex Energy, which plans to build a commercial demonstration unit in Port Arthur, Texas. This is an example of how we can translate funded research into real-world applications, as well as revenue from our intellectual property.

Since I arrived in June, we have celebrated the openings of the Honors Residence Hall, the Child Learning Center, the WVU Nursery School, and the renovated Summit Hall dining facility.

And, a week from today, we will dedicate the Mountaineer Station, our intermodal facility designed to reduce traffic in the downtown area by providing a central gateway to the community.

In total, we have brought to completion more than $50 million in capital improvements in the past few months. This progress will continue with another $68 million of capital investments already approved for this year, including our priority project: the renovation of White Hall for our nationally acclaimed Physics Department.

We had several key vacancies to fill when I arrived at WVU just a few months ago. Doing so has been a priority, adding great new leaders to the team of well-qualified and dedicated professionals already here.

It is a testament to the University’s vitality and character that we had our pick of some of the most energetic and dynamic leaders in higher education in this country.

First, we selected our new chancellor of health sciences, Dr. Chris Colenda.

He is a visionary leader who will help our health sciences enterprise achieve a new level of national competitiveness and success.

We were then fortunate to hire Dr. Michele Wheatly as our provost. She brings with her three decades of research and scholarship, and experience in strategic planning and budgeting.

They both have impressive records of securing research investments and increasing graduate enrollment. I believe they will create a tangible impact in these areas.

Our new chief information officer, Rehan Kahn, has a proven track record that shows he can help us enhance our technology infrastructure and plan for the future – a future in which technology advances exponentially.

We’ve also hired a new university registrar, Dr. Steven Robinson, and selected Dr. Mike Lastinger as our associate provost for international programs. We will soon fill the position of general counsel/vice president for legal affairs.

In my meetings with them, Staff Council has raised supervisory training as one of the most significant issues for us to address. I am pleased to announce that our Department of Human Resources will expand and enhance its outreach for supervisory training and performance management for supervisors.

New programs will begin in January as a complement to the Mountaineer Leadership Academy (MLA) Program that provides in-depth and longer-term leadership development opportunities.

Recognizing the value of growing our own leaders among our staff, the Mountaineer Leadership Academy enables participants from across the University to engage in learning relationships and cultivate leadership skills. Because I believe so strongly in this effort, I am a mentor in the second MLA cohort, launched last month.

Perhaps the strongest indicators of the strength of this University are the success stories of people behind these various numbers I have shared today. Every time I speak about the University, I talk about these successes because they tell the story of who we are.

This year, we celebrated Truman Scholars, Goldwater Scholars, and Boren Scholars among our students. From the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers to grantees of the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, our faculty have been honored by their peers.

Our staff have led great initiatives such as the sustainability program that recently earned WVU an improved assessment on the College Sustainability Report Card.

From academics to athletics, from student organizations to public service, and from faculty awards to staff achievements, we absolutely have a lot to be proud of at West Virginia University.

I arrived on campus prepared to listen, because I believe that is the best way for any institution to build a collective vision for its future. To begin, I offered a single premise:

This is our University, and we can make it what we want it.

I listened to countless people who care deeply about WVU’s future.

Indeed, over the past several weeks, I have invited all of you to share your vision for West Virginia University with me. So far, about 600 of you have responded – people from across the country, and around the world. Faculty, staff, students, alumni, and parents have all shared their ideas.

The response reinforced the fact that people truly love this University and care deeply about its future. Gathering this feedback is still a work in progress, and the survey is only one piece of information we will be considering. We look forward to sharing the results as we get strategic planning under way in a few months.

Einstein once said: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” We know that many of the intangibles that make WVU distinctive are not captured in national rankings. But we also understand that these national rankings matter. We can derive important guideposts from them. We see the areas in which the best universities organize their goals. We can differentiate the areas of our University that have exceeded national expectations from those areas that need our attention.

As I have thought about the themes that consistently arise, I was struck by how closely they matched the themes used by the Association of American Universities: academic and faculty quality; funded research; the undergraduate experience and education; and graduate education. To this framework, I’d like us to consider WVU’s impact on the state, health care, and multiculturalism and globalization. These areas are all critical to our mission as a land-grant university.

In these seven areas we can begin to organize a review of the achievements, opportunities, and challenges that need our attention as we work to make this a better institution.

Academic and Faculty Quality

We have incredible scholars who are doing work every day on campus to push back the frontiers of knowledge and cultivate our presence in literature, the arts, and the humanities. But we must do more than just congratulate our faculty on such accomplishments and scholarship.

We must work to retain and reward them. We must expand our faculty support system, improve faculty development, and continue to improve the salary and benefits we offer. WVU has almost 1,800 full-time faculty – but this is several hundred faculty less than our peer average. As a result, our student-faculty ratio is the highest among our peers.

The ratio is to some degree driven by definitions, but it is a kind of proxy for our ability to effectively fulfill our mission. The fewer faculty we have, the more stressed our academic system. The more stressed our system is, the more challenging it is to progress in undergraduate education, research, advising, public service, graduate education, and interdisciplinary program innovation.

On the health sciences side, this workload challenge manifests in a tension among educational, research, and patient-care missions.

These facts present us with some daunting challenges and concerns that we must address. At the same time, we will need to ask ourselves: what programs do we need to offer for the future? This is a difficult question. Some of the top-ten, in-demand jobs today didn’t exist six years ago.

I know we are up for the challenge. Ten years ago, WVU took national leadership in the area of forensic identification and biometrics. This has proven to be enormously successful. In fact, the FBI has recently awarded the University nearly $1 million to continue developing important evidence collection technologies. What are the next programs in which we can be a leader? What are our signature programs?

Research

We value all academic scholarship and creativity, in its many different forms across all of the disciplines. Since almost every index of a university’s national standing includes significant attention to its sponsored research portfolio, we need to focus on funded research as a specific strategic area for development. Over the past decade, we doubled sponsored research and programs. We will need to double it again to be on average with our mission peers.

I have met with some of our best researchers and discussed our challenges with the University’s academic and research leaders. The time for action is upon us.

First, WVU will roll out an Electronic Research Administration (ERA) system beginning with a proposal/budget development component in 2010. This will include the simplification of “blue sheets” and the ability for faculty to file them electronically, rather than the current, cumbersome paper forms, by March 2010. The implementation of this paperless process will involve cooperation at all levels, from individual researchers to the vice president for research.

Second, a “grants budget office” will be established through the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) by December 1, 2009, to help principal investigators develop budgets for large, interdisciplinary and complex proposals. Junior faculty also will be provided assistance on basic budget development very early in their careers at WVU.

Third, the WVU Research Office will offer a mentoring program series each semester, beginning spring 2010, which will focus on identifying grant opportunities, proposal development, budget preparation, compliance, and technology transfer.

With these three steps, we should have some of the primary structures in place to better support our faculty researchers, freeing them to focus on the actual scholarship of their work instead of administrative tasks.

The WVU Research Corporation also is preparing to add a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) where important Departments of Defense and Homeland Security research and information can be stored, discussed, and processed. This limited access facility would position WVU to compete for additional federal research dollars. The SCIF would contain separate security protocols, physical spaces, and services to perform sensitive research.

All of that being said, we must ensure that our systems and reward structures embrace interdisciplinary work and community partnerships. In the “Share Your Vision” survey the issues most cited as the state’s, nation’s, and world’s greatest challenges were the economy, technology, education, health care, energy, and the environment. All of these cross traditional academic departmental boundaries—and so must we if we wish to leverage WVU’s strengths in these areas.

Remember that while funded research is a key tenet of national evaluations, it is in no way an exclusive metric. As we look toward the Carnegie Very High Research Activity classification, doctoral degrees in humanities and other non-STEM fields are also essential in the evaluation. We must recognize that the value of a higher education lies in the diversity of the curriculum. A strong foundation in critical thinking, arts, humanities, and the social, physical, and natural sciences is the hallmark of any great American university.

Undergraduate Experience and Education

It is, in part, a strong and diverse curriculum that has made the WVU undergraduate experience so exceptional. It has allowed us to attract some of the brightest and most hard-working students in West Virginia and throughout the region. It isn’t enough that we attract these students to our University. We must keep them here, and ensure that they graduate.

We must make a serious effort to put in place the support systems and structures to help improve retention through the sophomore, junior, and senior years. We have room for improvement in our retention and graduation rates.

As part of our institutional planning, I will ask Dr. Wheatly and the leaders of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs to work together to create a new blueprint to increase retention and graduation rates. This includes examining the role of admissions, advising, and assessment, among other systems.

Over the past decade, a coordinated effort to grow enrollment has been successful. Over the next decade, we will put that same kind of concerted effort to retention and graduation rates.

A key tenet to our efforts will be an ongoing priority on health and wellness. As I talk with students, this is among the most significant areas of interest and a factor they correlate strongly with retention and recruitment at WVU. I applaud Jason Zuccari and Whitney Peters for their leadership on this topic in student government.

When we look back years from now, I want WVU to be seen as one of the best campuses in the country for health and wellness programming. This includes mental health support, counseling, nutrition, wellness programming, recreational activities, and student health.

In the next few months, we will have a specific plan for a new student health and wellness facility. This is not a question of if we will do this. We will do this, and we will be ready to implement the plan by the end of the academic year.

I am also happy to announce today that we have dedicated $1.5 million of our capital funds to improve and expand recreational field space in support of intramurals, club sports, and recreational programming. We will also explore partnerships, grants, and private donations to maximize our efforts. We will end the academic year with an outline of how we will turn this commitment into a reality. In addition, at the suggestion of the students and alumni of the sports clubs, a fund is being established at the WVU Foundation to raise private support for club sports. I’m happy to report that even though the fund is just being established, we’ve already got donors ready to contribute to this effort.

Graduate Education

We must also work to improve and expand graduate education. In terms of degrees granted, WVU has traditionally been weighted to undergraduates. At the graduate level, we have exceeded the peer average in master’s degrees but lagged in doctorate degrees. While our graduate education enterprise is growing, we still need to increase the number of doctoral degrees awarded in order to increase our standing among the nation’s research universities. To do this will involve dedicating resources to doctoral stipends.

Over the past year, expanded space and staff have been dedicated to the graduate office in Academic Affairs. This was a recommendation of the 2010 plan and has positioned us to improve recruiting, support, and program development for graduate students.

State Impact

It has been said: no state depends more on its land-grant university than West Virginia.

WVU provides at least a 20-to-1 return on every State dollar invested in the University.

Consider these other examples of our impact:

• 80% of the state’s practicing dentists are WVU graduates.

• 70% of the state’s pharmacists are WVU graduates.

• Last year WVU and its affiliates spent more than $77 million to provide health services for people who could not pay for their care.

• Nearly 654,000 visits to WVU medical clinics and hospitals took place in 2008.

• This year, 336,000 West Virginians were served by the WVU Extension Service.

• 1 in 4 youth in West Virginia participated in 4-H activities led through WVU.

• Last year, more than 660 high school students enrolled in WVU extended learning courses through a program called ACCESS (Attaining College Credits and Experiences while in Secondary School). This is a 10% increase from the previous year.

• WVU is helping underrepresented students in ninth through twelfth grade throughout the state prepare for health care careers through the Health Sciences and Technology Academy, which has a near-perfect college-going rate of participants.

• The Davis College hosted over 900 high school students as part of the 86th State Agriculture Career Development Event. I had the pleasure of participating in this event.

• Energy Express, a nationally acclaimed six-week literacy program that reverses typical summertime losses in reading and comprehension skills, serves more than 3,000 children in rural and low-income communities each year.

• Through its Rural Health Education Partnership, students from the School of Dentistry performed more than 10,000 clinical procedures in rural communities across the state during the past year.

• WVU is also taking a leadership role in rebuilding the West Virginia Campus Compact, a statewide coalition dedicated to promoting community service, civic engagement and service-learning in higher education.

WVU will apply for the voluntary Carnegie Classification in Engagement to demonstrate our commitment to the principles of public service and organize our efforts around the highest national standards.

Health Care

One of the ways WVU has been able to fulfill its land-grant mission is with its enormously successful health care enterprise. It has experienced unprecedented growth in size, complexity, and specialization.

Our faculty, staff, and students have improved the quality of life for West Virginians in very tangible and measurable ways. From free community health clinics to a sophisticated nuclear medicine imaging device that can give a 3-D look at otherwise undetectable breast tumors. From the engineering and dentistry researchers who are working together to develop a better tool for the early detection of periodontal disease to a $9-million dollar expansion of the WVU Stroke Center. From the School of Medicine’s 100% pass rate on medical exams to the creation of a groundbreaking and unprecedented partnership that could lead to a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

Like most organizations with such growth, our health sciences structure is in need of review and possibly revision. The task is large, and the appointment of Dr. Chris Colenda as the Chancellor for Health Sciences brings great experience.

Provost Wheatly, Dr. Colenda, and I share a strong commitment to successfully building cooperation and partnership among all of our campuses.

Multiculturalism, Diversity and Globalization

According to the American Council on Education (ACE), few institutions have effectively bridged the gap between multicultural education and internationalization efforts on campus. Indeed, the two areas have much in common, both predicated on preparing students to effectively operate with the cultural competency required in a flat world.

I am pleased to report that leaders in Academic Affairs and Student Affairs have begun discussions on collaborations and programming to maximize WVU’s integration of international experiences at home and abroad and to strengthen the appreciation of the diversity that defines our campus culture.

Within our colleges, there are many ways we are addressing globalization. For example, the College of Human Resources and Education just held the grand opening of its new Office of Diversity and Global Initiatives in recognition of the importance of preparing graduates for the diverse and global communities they will serve as teachers, counselors, speech pathologists, and audiologists.

Our Department of History is creating a dual-degree master’s program in Central and Eastern European studies with the partnership of universities in Poland and Estonia.

Challenges

While we are driven by optimism, we must remember that like any university, we have some challenges.

The first major challenge is the economy. While Morgantown has fared better than most cities in this recession, we are not immune to the financial burdens that have devastated many parts of this country. The impact on our donors, potential partners, students, and families extends to us. We must find ways to be more efficient and ensure that the quality of all we do earns the trust of those who support us. I am fully committed to working with Mayor Bill Byrne and Morgantown officials to help keep our community moving forward.

Another large challenge is staff and faculty salaries. Within the next four years, 48% of our tenured faculty and 42% of our classified staff will be eligible for retirement. Our salaries and benefits must be competitive enough to retain our current employees and strong enough to fill vacancies with the highest-caliber faculty and staff. Every goal we set and every effort we make to keep pace with our peers requires great faculty and staff. We must pay faculty and staff fairly and competitively. We are looking into the salary situation this year and will act to make improvements if at all possible.

We are also challenged by, in some cases, lagging technology systems and infrastructure. Technology is expensive and growing exponentially, but the trade-off can be equally costly in faculty and staff time spent on tasks that could be more efficiently handled electronically. Under the direction of a new CIO, we will undertake a comprehensive review of our infrastructure and systems to determine how we will become more current and responsive with our technology investments.

Like all universities, our facilities pose another challenge. We know that if West Virginia University is to expand its research enterprise and grow the number of faculty and staff positions, then we must address the limitation created by our existing facilities.

Facility challenges we recently outlined at the Board of Governors meeting include, but are not limited to, research and graduate programs growth, classroom and lab scheduling, the use of leased space, improved use of the riverfront property, modernization of some older facilities, traffic patterns and congestion, and budgetary constraints. We will need to address these challenges, and others, as we move forward to develop the next phase of the facilities master plan.

Funding is another large challenge. Only 25% of our revenues come from state appropriations. This has made us entrepreneurial and requires us to work in a highly competitive national environment for resources. The University has enjoyed solid relations with state and federal legislative leaders, donors, alumni, foundations, the business community, and others. We will need these strong relationships more than ever.

So where do we go from here? What are our next steps? The 2010 strategic plan will run its intended course after this year. It was a good plan, and it laid a foundation upon which we can build a new plan for the future.

But my challenge for all of us now is to develop a long-term vision, define big goals, and identify the specific actions it will take us to get there. As Dr. Wheatley put it recently, “The impetus as we move to 2020 will be to find ways to align planning across campus. We need to come together as an institution with common goals and vision.”

While we await the arrival of two key leaders – whose scope of responsibilities encompass the teaching, research, and service areas that define our mission – I ask that you offer your own thoughts about our goals ideas and challenges in the areas I outlined. Let me know what is missing. This is a beginning, not an end.

Today, I have announced several steps we will begin taking immediately to address some of the challenges we have clearly identified. After the New Year, we will put together specific planning initiatives that will focus on a big-picture vision and creating together very specific action steps we need to take to both address obstacles and ensure progress.

Any goals we establish or strategies we plan will require an increase in faculty. I have talked with enough people to understand this reality. Today, I am announcing a commitment to add a minimum of 100 faculty lines over the next three years. That is at least 100 new faculty lines. This is a commitment we must make to advance in any of the areas outlined today. I am asking Provost Wheatly and Chancellor Colenda to work with the deans in the strategic implementation of this investment. This dedication of resources should help address current workload challenges and enable us to strategically pursue the goals we establish in the coming months.

It will take careful resource management and planning as we move forward to address this and other challenges like technology, staff development, facilities, and
salary investments. But, I feel confident that we will be able to meet those challenges.

As we move forward, we will operate on the principle of shared governance. This is the only way I know to operate. So, with shared governance as our anchor, I would like to offer some guiding principles for us to discuss:

• Ethics and integrity must permeate everything we do

• All employees are valuable

• Our campus culture is defined by respect and creativity

• Diversity is valued and celebrated

• Globalization is pursued

• Stewardship of resources is everyone’s responsibility

• Student success is our highest priority

• State service across teaching, research, and service is our core mission

• Partnerships will enable us to be more effective in the future

Let me end by reminding you of the words you used to describe our University: Life-Changing. Innovative. Visionary. Affordable. Resilient. Capable. Committed. Empowering.

Another word that came up a lot, and one that I really like, is when asked to describe WVU in one word, many of you said “home.” WVU is home. I love that one, being that this is our new home. These words should remind all of us that we are united in an amazing spirit of dedication and optimism and that we stand together on a solid foundation of success.

This is our University; it’s a great University. Let’s build the future together.