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Inauguration AddressPresident Hart's Inauguration AddressPresident Hart's Inauguration Address Temple in the 21st Century Introduction Mr. Chairman, trustees, honored guests, deans, faculty, administrators, students, alumni, and neighbors: good afternoon and welcome. Betsy Leebron, thank you for making this such a wonderful day for all of us. To the members of the Board – thank you for the trust you have placed in me. I accept it with gratitude and with confidence that, working together, we will achieve our common goals. Your leadership has brought Temple to new levels of achievement and prominence. Today, I will ask yet more of you. To Sonia Sanchez, Priya Patel, Ruth Marie Garcia, Jane Evans, Rodney Timmons and Loretta Duckworth: thank you for your elegant and generous words. Each of you has a distinguished record of accomplishment. I will learn from those accomplishments, and call upon you for your support as we shape Temple’s future. To our accomplished administration and staff, I admire your dedication and professionalism. You manage this institution with creativity and efficiency. I will depend on your talent and direction to guide Temple into the future. To our civic, corporate, and community colleagues: the region and nation have been inspired by your efforts to transform our historic city. Your commitment and investment in North Philadelphia have launched its revitalization, creating a magnet for private investment and new businesses and residents. Temple is investing hundreds of million of dollars in capital improvements, with much already in evidence at the new Gittis Student Center, the spectacular TECH Center, the Entertainment and Community Education Center, and elsewhere. We will be your partners, and I will ask Temple to do more. To our neighbors: thank you for welcoming thousands of Temple students who now live on and around campus into your lives. I pledge that Temple will be a committed partner and investor in our shared community, and we look forward to a future together with anticipation and excitement. To our alumni: thank you for joining us today. You have helped to establish and perpetuate Temple’s reputation by your personal, professional, and philanthropic accomplishments. In addition to your continued support and guidance, I will ask you, too, to do more for Temple. To our students: young and old, graduate, professional and undergraduate—you represent the vibrant diversity that makes up the face of America. You are the lifeblood of this institution. Our first responsibility will always be to you. The vitality, energy, and devotion of generations of Temple students have inspired so many in the past. Today I will ask you to be more active partners in shaping Temple’s future. This is a special day. My heart is full, and I proclaim my pride as a new member of this great university. As we rejoice in Temple’s accomplishments, past and present, I call on all of you to renew our collective commitment to the higher calling that Temple represents—to bring reason, clarity, and understanding to public debate, and to make a unique contribution to the creation of new knowledge and a decent and just society. Access to Excellence A little over 50 years ago, William Faulkner accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature, proclaiming the distinctive ability of every member of our society “to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before.” That kind of transformation is at the heart of Temple University’s mission and challenge. From the earliest times, temples have served as open, dedicated, and sacred spaces. Temple University embodies this idea. Our core value is to provide access to an intellectual and creative space where academically talented, highly motivated and prepared students can achieve excellence, regardless of their status or station in life. We offer access, and thus create a community that recognizes that excellence comes from hard work—that it must be earned. In the pursuit of excellence, we expect no less of ourselves. We share a long and honorable tradition. And together, every day, we create something that did not exist before. Let us pay fitting tribute to the human spirit embodied in the Temple mission. Let us commit today that, through our actions, we will ignite a great light to shine from this temple—this great center of learning—a light that illuminates its beauty, highlights its excellence, and warms its welcoming atmosphere. A light kindled by the spirit of the students who come to us seeking a better, fuller life. A recognition, in Faulkner’s words, of the “eternal verities of the human heart,” those “universal truths,” the capacity of the human spirit for intellectual achievement, inspiring creativity, public citizenship, and moral compassion. Let our light shine on a new day for Temple. On its emerging role as a leader in the intellectual community, its place of increasing prominence in the consciousness of the city, and its renewed calling to offer access to excellence. My life is an example of the impact that access to a great research university, hard work, and a strong will to change can have. I, too, set out to create something more from the gifts and opportunities bestowed on me. My decision to come to Temple was reached in large part because I believe in Temple’s long honored pledge to provide access. Temple’s doors have always been open to those who dream of broader horizons and greater possibilities and prepare themselves to benefit from its resources. This University has provided opportunity to hundreds of thousands of dedicated students to build a better life. I am especially proud that many of the students who enter Temple are the first members of their families to go to college. No one works harder. No one feels more strongly the challenge of opportunity. Shining our light on them and their proud families leaves a very special glow. Increasingly, Temple alumni now send their own children and grandchildren to Temple. New generations seek the opportunity offered by this great University, and build their own traditions. Who are these wonderful students? More than a third of Temple’s students are people of color. They shine with an increasing sense of empowerment, social justice, and political responsibility. They are powerful leaders in the university’s student government and other organizations and influential catalysts in every aspect of campus life. They represent one of Temple’s most profound contributions to our society and one of its most enduring commitments. Temple will remain steadfast in honoring that commitment. More than half of them are women. They do not take this opportunity lightly. If you ever doubt their gifts and their determination, come and watch them in the classrooms, the laboratories, the studios, and on the playing fields. These women are strong-minded and independent—fit companions for, and tough competitors with, the talented and ambitious men who now are 45% of our undergraduate student-body. More than 500 Temple students are varsity athletes. Men and women. Many more participate in an array of intramural and club sports. Their participation in these rigorous and diverse athletic challenges teaches lasting lessons about integrity, loyalty, and teamwork. These students’ access to excellence comes through various points of entry to Temple. Temple has always been a destination for non-traditional students, professionals seeking advanced degrees in the evening, and older students returning to campus to complete or enhance their studies. Each year we welcome thousands of new transfer students from community colleges and other academic institutions. These students earn their degrees at the same rate as those who enroll here as first-time students. Temple promotes opportunity and will continue to welcome students at multiple points of access. Strengthening our Neighborhood and Community Temple’s intellectual reach, campus life, thriving community, and commitment to public citizenship are visible far beyond the brick and glass of our formal classroom buildings. Temple is tied to its neighborhoods, offering many gateways through which our community and the university resources pass. Access and exchange are provided for children and lifelong learners, for those who seek health care, those who seek jobs, and those who steward our neighborhoods. They work in elementary schools; they shovel snow and clean up neighborhoods; they offer medical and dental care and social services. They offer law, business, management, and other needed training and skills. The Center for Social Policy and Community Development conducts employment preparation programs. Temple’s hiring initiatives promote job opportunities at the University to residents who live in the neighborhoods surrounding the campus. Temple’s fine arts students and faculty spread light throughout the region. The Tyler School studio artists create beauty throughout our community, working with the Mural Arts Program and with local educational and cultural groups. The Boyer College of Music and Dance teaches its performers innovative paths toward self-expression and stages more than 300 concerts and performances each year. I am committed to doing more. I will soon launch an effort to encourage Temple employees to live where they work—in our neighborhoods. In partnership with the City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we will offer financial resources to help faculty and staff to buy homes in close proximity to Temple. We will encourage continued growth and investment in our city, from Main Campus south to City Hall, and north to the health sciences campus. More information about this initiative will be available later this spring. Sustainability: A Green Campus Culture The astonishing growth and beauty of Temple’s campus and the neighborhood are visible foundations for the future. As we nurture the physical surroundings of Temple students and neighbors, as civic and business leaders invest their capital in North Philadelphia, and as we encourage Temple faculty and staff to bring their families here, we must ensure that Temple’s community is not only economically stable, but also environmentally sustainable. In this time of acute awareness of the earth’s fragility and limited resources, Temple will demonstrate how a large urban university can contribute to a sustainable future for all. Temple can and must take advantage of our location and the growing concern among citizens and government at all levels to design programs that make our campus environmentally responsible. Temple is actively engaged in this global endeavor. Temple’s Center for Sustainable Communities is a leader in this region, promoting new approaches to preserving a high quality of life through sustainable development, improved public health, and balanced relationships between environmental integrity and economic prosperity.
Just this month, I charged a group of faculty, administrators, and students to foster practical, useful, and forward-looking change as members of a Temple Sustainability Task Force. As the light of Temple glows, let us be certain that it is renewable—that it will define the practice and teaching of urban sustainability. Incubator of Innovation and Entrepreneurship At the core, Temple’s basic mission is to generate new knowledge, new ideas; to stimulate public service; to bring to bear creativity and life-altering research to build a better world; and to change lives. Temple University was founded by a visionary whom today we would call an “entrepreneur.” Temple preserved that spirit and continues to create an environment that advances and promotes the principles of entrepreneurship. Temple must now become an energized incubator of new ideas and a center for innovation. In the not too distant future, the new building that will house the medical school and a new library for the health science campus will provide desperately needed modern laboratory and research facilities. Other spaces will be renovated and renewed, providing the basics to support our expanding research enterprise. Faculty will be supported and encouraged in their work to develop applications for their research and proposals for technology transfer; we will renew and expand our efforts to assure that the research conducted here translates into new ways of living and doing. The Fox School of Business and Management is already renowned for its entrepreneurship programs. The Office of Technology Transfer is working with a few Temple scientists to transform their ideas into new businesses and applications. But innovations and new ideas are not limited to the business school nor to the disciplines encompassing the sciences and engineering. Temple’s national prominence in scholarship in the areas of psychology, fine and performing arts, educational leadership, African-American and African studies, criminology, finance, and communication will also flourish. Across our schools and campuses, we will engage in new and bold efforts to engage the thinkers, teachers, and students of the new century in applying new knowledge to problems of our time, nurturing new enterprises through entrepreneurial applications, and actively seeking new collaborations with private, corporate, and industrial partners. International Presence This heightened focus on engagement through our disciplines must reach beyond our immediate community or nation. It must be international. In this next century, we must confront a simple fact: Globalization changes everything. If Temple does not internationalize teaching, research, and community outreach, we will be increasingly left behind in a dynamic and changing world and increasingly unaware of the true nature of that world. Our students will be less prepared to excel and prosper. Temple is distinctly poised to become a truly global university. We have the infrastructure, the history, and the international presence of few American universities. Temple’s reach extends far beyond Philadelphia and the United States. Operating since 1982, Temple University Japan is the oldest and largest American university in Japan, and was the first to be recognized by Japan’s Ministry of Education. Temple’s campus in Rome celebrated its 40th anniversary this year and is recognized by its peers and accreditors as one of the finest study abroad programs of over 100 in Italy. Temple has offered courses in Paris since 1950, in London since 1969, and in Ghana since 1993. Dental students treat patients in Haiti. Our law faculty introduce basic concepts of the rule of law to judges, lawyers, and government leaders in China. We teach environmental responsibility in Africa and provide summer programs in dozens of other countries. I am privileged to serve as chair-elect of the Commission on International Programs of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant colleges. In that role I will lead efforts to encourage international study, critical to the futures of our students, faculty, communities, and nation, and to ensure that international study moves from the periphery to the center of Temple’s commitment to teaching, research, and engagement. Temple students: internationalization will help you develop the point of view essential to contribute as citizens of the world and compete in the international marketplace. I urge each of you: Get a passport and use it during your years of study at Temple; go on study abroad; serve an international internship. I am so convinced that this experience is essential to your education that my husband Randy and I will pay your passport fee. Beginning this summer, each new Temple student who gets a passport for the first time will receive support at the Office of International Programs through a fund we will establish. Plan ahead; you can do it! Sharing Commitment to Access to Excellence Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Ideas must work through the brains and arms of good men [and women], or they are no better than dreams.” The aspirations and initiatives I have articulated today must emerge out of the realm of dreams into the realm of action. A few minutes ago, I said to our trustees, neighbors, alumni, and friends that I would ask more of you. This is that moment. One common denominator drives our commitments to access, an increasing international presence, innovation, entrepreneurship, community, and the growth and prosperity of our region—investment. The first investment in Temple’s future must be in teachers and scholars. For the current academic year we have authorized 130 searches for world-class academics for departments across the university. This is wonderful and exciting but only a beginning. New colleagues in executive leadership positions will join us in building Temple’s future. Mr. Anthony Wagner will join us on April 9 as the new Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer.Today, I am delighted to announce that Dr. Lisa Staiano-Coico, currently Professor and Dean of the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University, will become our new Provost on July 1. In the past few years, Temple received generous gifts that made possible six new endowed faculty positions in fields ranging from accounting to early childhood development. We are thrilled to have these accomplished scholars at Temple, but we must have more. We are limited by our relatively few endowed positions, a fraction of the number of our peers. Temple’s facilities and finances must keep pace. With your help and support, we will renovate the interior of the Baptist Temple to create a new special events center, extending the reach of the Avenue of the Arts North. We will make major investments in new research and library facilities, new laboratories, and new homes for the schools of medicine, business, and art. In order to help assure the future, we have focused intently on sound financial management. Temple’s financial statements show significant growth in revenues and unrestricted net assets. We have retooled our budget to reflect more closely the size of the enrollment, achieving better cost control. These steps are not enough. Our investment must be in continued commitment to access. While we are tremendously grateful to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for its commitment to education and its support of Temple, we can not depend on increased support in the future. In 2006, the state appropriation accounted for only 18% of our operating budget. Temple has become increasingly dependent on tuition and fees. Yet, 76% of Temple undergraduates demonstrate financial need in order to pay that tuition. This is a challenge, particularly since Temple does not enjoy the huge endowment incomes of other institutions, nor their long traditions of private giving by alumni and friends. We must create that tradition now. We must change the way we think and act regarding the practice of philanthropy. To achieve the goals I have outlined this morning, we must create a different and lasting balance in our sources of revenue and focus new energy on funding for scholarships, for buildings, for faculty and research, and for an endowment that sustains the extraordinary achievement of which Temple is capable. Temple has 240,000 living alumni around the world. One in every eight college-educated residents in the greater Philadelphia area holds a degree from Temple. Temple-educated Philadelphians have a city- and region-wide impact unmatched by the alumni of any other University. The next step in Temple’s growth must come from a new culture of philanthropy. From a personal connection between you and the school whose teaching has stood you in such good stead. From the choices made out of a deep sense of who you are. As Trustee Len Barrack advocates: reach not only into your hearts, but into your pockets. We face great, but not insurmountable, challenges. In response, we have set ambitious but achievable goals. Let us form the leadership community of neighbors, colleagues, citizens, alumni, and friends to fulfill them. Philadelphia has been a center of education from its beginnings. Temple is a proud part of that history. Today, Temple has entered more fully into the consciousness of our reborn city. Join us as we transform the lives of our students and our community and in the steady transformation of the city and its people. Recognize the opportunity we face in joining a long line of illustrious Philadelphians in making a difference. Temple will change. It will grow in excellence, reach, and influence. Our surroundings will change. Our fundamental values will not. Our ways and tools of teaching will change. Our commitment to learning will not. We are respectful of the past, and we are ready to meet the future. Temple’s light was kindled by a man of imagination and courage. Today, Temple lights the way for students, faculty, and neighbors. Tomorrow will bring the opportunity to cast that light even farther, to illuminate a new century of learning and understanding. The Pledge The light and warmth of Temple guided and comforted our predecessors. We must pledge to our successors that we will shine that light and generate renewed warmth into the future. Temple is Philadelphia’s University; Temple is the world’s university. Our hearts as well as our heads will be dedicated to its future. Join me in this great endeavor—feel the glow of the Temple you know and the Temple you envision. Then “trust your feelings. I trusted mine.” That is why I am privileged to join you here today. Thank you for that great privilege.
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