OPENING DAY ADDRESS
August 22, 2003

 I would like to welcome all of you to Opening Day 2003.  I was talking to John Harbal, one of our Board of Trustees members.  He is one of my many bosses.  I have nine on the Board of Trustees, about 1,500 faculty bosses, 20,000 students and about 2,000 staff.  There are a lot of people that I work for, but he is one of the individuals who make up the Board of Trustees, a very important group in helping us shape the direction and the policy for the University. 

 It seems that the summer just floated by.  I am welcoming you back to the beginning of Academic Year 2003, and it seems like we were just concluding the academic year a few weeks ago.  Before I go into my comments, I want to first of all also say hello to our friends from Firelands.  The Firelands Campus is a real gem in the crown of Bowling Green State University, and although they are unable to be here, we are connected electronically to the Firelands Campus.

 This is my ninth Opening Day.  I feel like a baseball player or any athlete at the beginning of the season.  I can honestly say that after nine years, I am more confident about the future of the institution today than I was in the previous six years, and definitely more confident than I was in years one and two.  In those years I was going on a wing and a prayer.  Fortunately, I am a person of deep conviction and faith and believe in achieving the impossible, because I had no idea back in 1995 the direction we should be pursuing and the challenges that would face us internally and externally.   But, fortunately, because of a committed faculty and staff, supportive Board of Trustees and wonderful alums, we have made an immense amount of progress. 

So, on Opening Day 2003 I can stand here before you and say we have a compelling story to tell.  We are a very distinctive university, and our niche is unique – a niche that is going to not only sustain us, but also set high standards for the educational communities in Ohio and throughout the United States.  It is one thing to be really good at what you do, in this case serving our students, our research communities and our professional disciplines.  It is one thing to do that, but I believe is on the next level where you develop paradigms or models that others emulate.  Now part of that is gratifying because of ego.  Look at us, we are really good!  The other part of it, probably the most serious part, is that the advantages and the qualities that are unique to our institution are advantages and qualities that can be shared with more people.  And that is exactly what we are pursuing at Bowling Green State University. 

 When we left for the Spring back in June, some folks earlier in May, the situation for higher education was pretty cloudy.  The budget debates were taking place in Columbus, higher education didn’t fare well, nor did most of the state agencies because of the shortage of funds in the State of Ohio, as well as in the United States in general. The economy is supposed to be recovering, but many haven’t seen the recovery.  Clearly our state budget hasn’t seen a recovery.  So that was one cloud – tight budgets.  In addition to that, there was global instability.  There was turmoil geopolitically throughout the world, and all those things impact what we do here on campus and what we do on a day-to-day basis.  You can’t ignore the fact that the nation was at war.  You can’t ignore the fact that there were threats of terrorism and activism of all different kinds throughout the world.  So those things had some impact on our institution and we had to manage our way through that.  We had to be assured that we were able to maintain our focus and direction in spite of all those activities. 

 The budget crunch is a reality and is still with us.  I am not going to talk a lot about the budget today, because there is really not a lot we can do about it.  The budget has been set for higher education.  We know what that budget is, and we have to manage within the confines of that budget, and we will.  And we will do it successfully.  So, my talk today is not going to be about the budget.  But I do want to mention – I would be remiss if I didn’t – that we do need to be very diligent and very focused on how we manage our funds through the rest of this year and through the entire biennium.  The hiring freeze is still in effect at the University.  If you look at our budget picture and where we are today, right now probably in just the last three years, we have lost about $1,000 per pupil in state support.  We received between $5,000-$6,000 per student three years ago and now we are down to $3,000-$4,000 per student.  We have lost money in almost every category of our operating budget and that is a reality that you can’t ignore.  Thus, we have a hiring freeze. 

There are no new positions that are really being supported or funded at this particular time.  The only positions that we are funding are replacement positions, and most of those only on an interim basis until we figure out what is happening with this budget.  To give you an example of how seriously we are taking this, in the President’s Office we have eliminated one position that was dedicated primarily to the Board of Trustees – the Secretary to the Board of Trustees.  After eliminating that position, we reassigned those responsibilities to someone else in the President’s Office.  The result is that we have saved substantial funds. Those functions are being picked up by the Executive Vice President, who is serving in a dual capacity.  

We are doing position sharing.  There is someone in the President’s Office who had a full-time staff position in the President’s Office who is now being shared with the Provost’s Office.  So the budget situation we face is very real.  Everybody must do their part to try to help us through this difficult time.  It is going to mean doing things differently and extending ourselves in different ways.  It is something that it is going to be important for us to do as we manage our way out of this budget crisis.   That is not the topic for today, but I wanted to make sure that I shared with you that this is the reality we are working with.  In spite of that reality, there is a unique purpose for education at Bowling Green State University.  There is a direction that we are pursuing.  There is academic excellence that characterizes our programs, and that is what makes us unique.  That will allow us as we manage through these difficult times to maintain our momentum, our direction, and allow us to establish ourselves as the premier learning community in Ohio and one of the best in the nation. 

 I was reading about a week ago some information that is related to my talk today.  A major part of the talk today is going to be a presentation that you are going to see that talks about the special education, the special niche that we fill as an institution at Bowling Green State University.  This presentation was actually developed by Marketing & Communication’s Kim McBroom and her staff.  It is a presentation that attempts to capture the character of Bowling Green State University and exemplifies that in a few programs.  This presentation really deals with the purpose of education.  I want to read to you something that was shared with me by folks who helped prepare this presentation.

 “Too often college men and women have a misconception of the purpose of education.  Most think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so they can forever trample over the masses.  Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.  It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of a man and a woman in a society.  The one is utility and the other is culture.  Education must enable a person to become more efficient to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of life.  Education was also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking.  To think concisely and to think for one’s self is very difficult.  We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices and propaganda.  I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose.  A great majority of so-called educated people do not think logically or scientifically.  Even in the press, the classroom, the platform and the pulpit, in many instances they do not give us objective and unbiased truths.  The sage men and women in our society who the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education – to save us from propaganda.  Education must enable one to sit and weigh evidence to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and facts from fiction.  The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intently and to think critically.  But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society.  The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason but with no morals.  We must remember that intelligence alone is not enough.  Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of a true education.  “ 

 This is taken from a speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1948 at Morehouse College, and it is still a very valid approach to what education really means for us in contemporary society.  The words of Dr. King are valuable in that they focus us on what is the purpose or meaning of what we do as members of this academic community.  What is unique about the education that is provided at Bowling Green State University?  I would say to you that our education is unique because it is a more valuable education that addresses the basic essence of teaching, learning, exploration, discovery and how all those things come together to create life, meaning, purpose, for this community and for our society.  What we are going to share with you in just a few moments is a presentation on a variety of different formats that we have developed to talk about Bowling Green State University and all of the initiatives that have gone into creating our current academic program.  In the last eight years, we have: developed a number of residential colleges, developed some specialized niche doctoral programs, been engaged in projects that work collaboratively with the community on educational reform, been involved in economic development, been involved in creative and expressive activity that has shown the talents of our faculty but also fundamentally changed the disciplines in which they work.  There is no way that one presentation can capture all of those essentials that are a part of what we have been doing.  This presentation talks about the core essence of learning and teaching at Bowling Green State University and it highlights a few programs that really exemplify those qualities.  We have over two hundred academic programs at Bowling Green State University, so there is no way that we could showcase all of them.  But what the power of this technology really allows us to do is, because it is a digital presentation, is to be able to add a number of vignettes.  You could show the core piece of the program that talks about teaching and learning and the quality of education at Bowling Green State University, and then add a number of vignettes, depending on the audience you want to reach. You could showcase the Entrepreneurship Program, for example, or Environmental Studies or Intercollegiate Athletics—along with the core Bowling Green content.  

 Today’s presentation talks about the essence and the meaning of education at Bowling Green State University.  It talks about specific programs that exemplify that.  These are programs that we picked to showcase today, but it could be any number of our several hundred programs and activities.  The reason that we developed this presentation is that we are operating in an environment in higher education right now that is extremely volatile.
 
On the federal level we have the Higher Education Reauthorization Act where there is talk of extending price controls, the possibility of having national examinations for college graduates, all kinds of things that are unique and unusual as the process of debate is going on for the Higher Education Reauthorization Act.  Not in known history has the Higher Education Reauthorization Act been used in this particular way. I am working on an op-ed piece about the dangers that we face in this Higher Education Reauthorization Act.  Can you imagine a national exam for college graduation?  The attempt would be to model it after K-12 proficiency exams and outcome assessment, and we all know how well that works.  That is something, in fact, that the Higher Education Reauthorization Committee from Congress is actually discussing.  On the other extreme, they are discussing price controls and talking of standardizing costs.  I think this will be a hearty debate, but I think reasonable minds will prevail in this debate.  Whatever the outcome, every institution, public and private, will be held to that standard, because any institution that gets federal money, whether it be student financial aid money, research and grant money, these standards will apply to you.  So we are living in an environment where people or external forces are attempting at the federal level, at the state level, to tell us how to do our business, to tell us what standards they want us to meet.
 
It is critically important, and to go back to this presentation, for us to tell our story, for us to explain what education means to us.  We are the professionals—the professional faculty, the professional staff, the researchers, the writers, the artists, and the ones that know this business.  I would not go into my medical doctor’s office and explain to him how he should practice medicine and the standards he should apply to medicine.  I would expect that there is a medical examining board that is responsible for that and that board is really made up of people from that profession and discipline.  Likewise, we must tell our story.  We must tell it locally, we must tell it to all 120,000 alums, we must tell it to the legislature, we must tell it to the business community, we must tell it to Congress, because if we don’t, other people will define our future for us.  We are, in fact, in a position now to engage in a debate and to chart the course for higher education in the State of Ohio and the nation.  So this presentation is very important because it helps us to solidify and clarify what our niche really is.  In addition to that, it allows us to talk about education to a variety or myriad of audiences that need to know who we are and what we do.

PRESENTATION TEXT

Investment to Achievement DVD Presentation

Welcome to Bowling Green State University, a learning community designed to foster a life-long love of education and a commitment to social responsibility.

At Bowling Green, we offer many of the benefits you might expect to find at a large, public university — a broad selection of majors, prominent faculty, and a host of nationally recognized educational programs and opportunities.

Perhaps more importantly, we offer many benefits you may find refreshing — an emphasis on values, a culture of respect, celebration of diversity, and a nurturing atmosphere closer to that of a small, private college.

It is an emphasis on character that distinguishes Bowling Green.  We’re fast becoming the premier learning community in Ohio, and one of the best in the nation.

Dr. Martin Luther King wrote that education must enable a person to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing ease the legitimate goals of his or her life...to help one to think critically.  And yet he cautioned that the most dangerous mind is that of a man gifted with reason, but no morals.  “We must remember that intelligence is not enough,” he wrote.  “Intelligence plus character — that is the true goal of education.”

Nowhere in Ohio do these words ring more true, more clearly, than throughout the academic environment at Bowling Green State University.

In our effort to produce graduates equipped not only for the logic, science, and creativity necessary for productive work, but also with the ethics, critical thinking, and tolerance necessary for productive human beings, we have established and agreed upon five core values that define our culture:

 • respect for one another,
 • cooperation,
 • intellectual and spiritual growth,
 • creative imaginings,
 • and pride in a job well done.

Business people tell us they want to hire graduates with integrity.  So we have incorporated exploration of these core values into our orientation, academic, and co-curricular activities.

It’s important to note that the goal of values based education is not to prescribe a single version of morality that students should embrace; rather, our culture teaches students to thoughtfully consider values, develop critical thinking skills, and make reflective, rational decisions about difficult issues.

Tomorrow’s leaders will face competing values.  Prepared students will need the ability to confront the conflicts that face civic life.  Should taxes be cut?  Should the environment be protected?  Should healthcare be universal?

Values exploration at Bowling Green State University does not attempt to answer these questions.  Instead, it attempts to develop future leaders capable of articulating their own, reasoned answers.

And while values exploration and character development are at the heart of the BGSU experience, they are not the only key differentiators of our university.

Our vision to become the premier learning community in Ohio, and one of the best in the nation, is also supported by an extensive portfolio of distinctive undergraduate programs, focused master’s and specialist degrees, and a select number of nationally recognized doctoral programs.

We offer scholarly and creative endeavors of the highest order.  Our academic planning keeps pace with society’s changing needs.  Our teaching is challenging, and fully connected with research and public service.  Ultimately, we offer an educational environment that develops culturally literate, self-assured, technologically sophisticated, productive citizens who are prepared to lead, inspire, and preserve the great traditions of our democracy.

We want people to understand our vision and remember what makes our university different, because its important to me that those who support Bowling Green State University understand the return they get from their investments of time, energy, capital, interest, and other important resources.

In an era where so-called “state universities” receive less than half of their funding from the state, we have a responsibility to earn the other half of our funding through the same healthy and intense process of competition that other businesses face in their daily lives.

With that in mind, I’d like to turn to a discussion of the competitive advantages that make Bowling Green the university of choice in northwest Ohio and beyond.

It’s easy enough to list the tangibles:

 ...a College of Arts and Sciences offering a broader selection of majors
 than any other university in our region;

...a College of Business Administration offering 16 specialized career paths taught by responsive professionals taught in small class sizes.

...a College of Education and Human Development with Ohio’s most modern facilities for the study of motor behavior and dance;

...a College of Musical Arts offering a residential community where students who study music can live and learn together;

...a College of Health and Human Services with a consortial nursing program that is nationally recognized and one of the largest and most highly regarded in the country

...a College of Technology whose students participate in a three semester-long cooperative work experience, earning -- on average -- enough to pay tuition for each of those semesters.

...a Graduate College that offers a community of scholars who work and learn together in preparation for the challenges of tomorrow.

 ...and BGSU Firelands, a regional campus that extends our reach
 beyond our main campus.

But it’s more fun, and perhaps more interesting, to provide examples of what our students and faculty are accomplishing that make our university worthy of continued investment.

(Vignette 1)

For 500 years, a town on the banks of the Sola River in Poland was home to a thriving Jewish community.  Families reared their children.  Tailors sewed.  Shoemakers cobbled.   Merchants went about their business.  Synagogues were filled with the sound of study and prayer.

Then, in 1939, the town of Oswiecim became known as Auschwitz.

The horror of Auschwitz may have obliterated the gentle history of this town if not of the efforts of Abraham Musher-Eizenman, an instructor of architecture at BGSU, who collaborated with renowned architect Arthur Rosenblatt to create a center dedicated to depicting and memorializing the life and culture of the Jewish Holocaust victims by focusing on the largely unknown history of Jewish life in Oswiecim.

The Center opened to critical acclaim on September 12, 2000 and has been lauded by world leaders, including President Bill Clinton, as an inspiration for peace and healing.

The passion and dedication that Abraham brought to the Auschwitz Jewish Center now benefit Bowling Green architecture students and the city of Toledo as he inspires students to create site specific architecture that benefits the city.

(Vignette 2)

The auto industry said it couldn’t be done.  And now the space industry wants us to improve it.  What is it?  It’s a 175 horsepower, electric motor -- lightweight and practical enough to use in a production automobile -- developed at BGSU’s Electric Vehicle Institute by students working under the leadership of Professor Anthony Palumbo.

Small enough to fit on your kitchen counter and capable of powering a vehicle at 140 miles per hour, the engine has attracted the attention of NASA.

NASA recently provided BGSU with a grant to research, design, build, test, and deliver a lighter weight version of the electric motor which could eventually have applications for commercial aviation.

(Vignette 3)

Dr. Patty Kubow, BGSU professor of educational foundations and inquiry, recently returned from Durban, South Africa, where she is seeing the fruition of a project that is proof that one person can truly affect worldwide, substantive change.

Dr. Kubow and Dr. John Fischer, a professor in BGSU’s Division of Teaching and Learning, are partners in a $230,000 U.S. State Department grant titled “Education for Democracy: Strengthening Civic Education through Curriculum and Cultural Exchange in Kenya, South Africa and the United States.”

They are working with South African and Kenyan middle school teachers to develop curriculum that centers around issues identified by the teachers as of profound importance to their countries, which will be taught using democratic methods and geared to each country’s specific culture.

Dr. Kubow was selected by President George W. Bush for recognition at the White House for her humanitarian work abroad, and again in January by the U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington, D.C., for similar work in Eastern Europe.

(Vignette 4)

Any published author will tell you the road to success is paved with stiff competition. That’s why the undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs at Bowling Green State University give students a firsthand taste of the tenacity — as well as the skills — that are required of a successful author.

Their approach seems to be working.

Random House, Harcourt Brace and many smaller publishers are not only printing the works of BGSU creative writing graduates, but the writers also are receiving critical acclaim.

Recent successes include Anthony Doerr, MFA ’99, whose short story collection, The Shell Collector, was selected for the New York Times Book Review Summer Reading list in 2002.

June Spence, MFA ’96, won the Willa Cather Prize for Fiction for her book of short stories, Missing Women.

Philana Boles, BFA ’98, is the author of the highly successful Blame It on Eve, published by Random House in October.

BGSU is one of only a handful of universities in the country to offer both bachelor’s and master’s of fine arts degrees in creative writing. The BFA program is the only one of its kind in Ohio, and the MFA program has been ranked in the top 25 percent of MFA programs in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. 

(Vignette 5)

A bronze sculpture by Bowling Green graduate Emanuel Enriquez was one of four public art pieces selected for installation at the new Fifth Third Field, home of the Toledo Mud Hens.

In "Who's Up?" Enriquez created a life-size bronze vignette of four young baseball enthusiasts vying to peek into the stadium through the knothole of a 10-foot wooden fence. The bronze sculpture serves as a perpetual reminder of the connection between childhood joys and our national pastime.

Enriquez was determined to create a sculpture that would withstand Toledo's rigorous climate, appeal to the general public, and provide a bridge between the new stadium architecture and surrounding historic buildings.

His other work includes sculptures at the Toledo Botanical Gardens and Chrysler Headquarters in Auburn Hills, as well as numerous exhibits of his Migration Series of paintings.

Enriquez, who received a master of fine arts degree in sculpture in 2000, recently received the esteemed 2003 Governor's Award for the Arts in Ohio.

(Vignette 6)

On an ordinary day, Daniel Ayalon might receive an urgent message by courier from the White House, schedule a meeting at the United Nations, and take part in a conference call with the heads of the Israeli government — all before breakfast.

As the Israeli ambassador to the United States, he is the point man on this continent for a Middle Eastern nation that is one of this country’s staunchest allies.  He is the conduit — the main line of communication — between the two powerful countries.  And he is a Bowling Green grad.

Ambassador Ayalon oversees the comprehensive relationship between Israel and the United States — including diplomatic, political, trade, commerce, financial, strategic and cultural affairs.  He says his years in Ohio helped prepare him for the high-profile and complex job which requires that he be a deft negotiator as well as a reasoned conciliator.

Ambassador Ayalon says his days are consumed by the myriad duties of an ambassador.  He is part mediator, part salesman, part orator, part diplomat and part policy adviser — a lot of things to many people.  To us, his success is confirmation that our values-based approach to higher learning is an important point of difference for Bowling Green State University.

Education is excitement at BGSU.  With more than 200 undergraduate majors and programs in seven undergraduate colleges, plus master’s and doctoral level programs, the atmosphere is charged with creative energy.

More than 800 full time faculty members remain involved in research and other activities that ensure modern thinking in our classrooms.  Our senior faculty is committed to teaching introductory-level courses with reasonable class sizes.  Only a small percentage of our freshmen level courses are taught in large lecture sessions.  And even these large lecture sessions often break down for small-group discussions or laboratories at least once a week.

All of this contributes to the difference I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation — a small college atmosphere backed by quality academics and the broad resources of a very large university.

No competing university in the state of Ohio occupies this space.

And there’s one more difference at Bowling Green State University, we keep the cost of higher education within reach.  We are committed to helping each student and family find the resources available to pay for a BGSU education.

Sixty-five percent of our students receive financial aid.  Beyond that, we offer more than 1,000 academic scholarships to freshmen, each year.

So what is the result of our efforts?  What is the ultimate return on the investments made in Bowling Green State University by state legislators, alumni, community members, and other benefactors and contributors to our brand of higher education?

We return to our communities students who are prepared to investigate, connect, write, present, participate, and lead.

Our graduates are critical and productive thinkers.  Architects, inventors, researchers, writers, sculptors, ambassadors, and quiet, everyday heroes.  Each with a good heart.  Each with a good mind.  And each with the capacity to change the world.

END OF PRESENTATION

For the people who work on a day-to-day basis with faculty or staff, this is not new information.  As each of you leave here today and go to your offices and your other responsibilities, you know what we are all about.  But other people don’t understand and they are the ones who are right now discussing changes at the federal level and at the state level.  We have something that is unique and it is very special.  It is something that was created by this University community many years ago and has been extended and expanded in a variety of ways.  Those academic programs that were highlighted here could be done with a number of other different vignettes on different programs.  Those programs constitute the fundamental core of our University.  I remember many years ago, in 1995, when we had the community building initiative and there were over 1,500 faculty and staff who actually participated in discussions about the future of the University and came up with those core values.  They aren’t the only values that exist in the world and they are not the ones that the University might have fifteen years from now.  But they were developed by the faculty and staff at the University back in 1996 and 1997.  There was a lot of discussion about why you need core values.  The core values weren’t created for people to emulate.  They grew from the kinds of things that people thought were important in their daily lives and in their work lives – respect, creativity, and cooperation.  And then they became part of what became our core values.  But they weren’t just picked from a book – they came from real people working with real students in a dynamic academic community. 

 What we are attempting to do collectively with our undergraduate program at Bowling Green State University is to assure that the students are prepared academically and that they develop the ability to use that preparation to contribute significantly to their lives and to the lives of people in their community, in the state and in this nation.  As Dr. King said so aptly, it is not enough just to know.  It is clearly not acceptable to know how to use, harass or coerce other people.  But to know and to use what you know to make a difference in your world, in your discipline, in your community and in the lives of others.  That is clearly a very important goal of education. 

 I deeply believe that everybody in this room, every student at this University, every human being who is blessed to walk this planet, has potential for talent and skills.  The highest form of educational achievement is creating an environment to release those skills.  If you are a research scientist in physics, if you are a food services worker in Harshman or Kreischer, if you are the president of a university—even presidents of universities have talents or potential or skills or abilities that should make a difference in the environment in which we exist.  Part of our mission is to do just that – but not just for students.  It is not just about creating a Rhodes Scholar or creating someone who gets a Distinguished Fellowship.  That is a very important mark of distinction and we want to do that.  But in addition to that, we want the students who won’t be Rhodes Scholars to realize her or his potential to unlock the doors to allow them to walk through those doors in a way that their lives are slightly different and more meaningful when they leave here than when they came.  Likewise, every employee in the University should have that opportunity.  The reason that we have a tuition and fee waiver program is not just a collective bargaining issue.  The reason that we have it and the Board continues to support it is so that every member of this community has an opportunity to continue her or his education or to see that their children have opportunities that they did not have themselves.  So in essence, it all comes together in a way that allows each member of the community to engage in intellectual discovery and personal growth that makes a difference in their lives.  I think that is very different here at Bowling Green State University than it is at other institutions where I have been where students and faculty would drop in and drop out of the educational setting.  They were not invested in their community, they weren’t giving beyond their discipline to the community, and as a result they had maybe academic achievement but the holistic education of students and the reciprocal enhancement of other individuals in their lives was not achieved or accomplished. 

 In 1995, I said that we had an opportunity to do that here.  We are not at that point yet, but you don’t really accomplish things of great distinction or significance without stretching and struggling and working together and tenaciously pursuing those things.  I  should tell you how Marketing & Communications came up with this presentation. They read all the publications from the University and everything that goes out through our external communications.  They read the Academic Plan, the North Central Accreditation Review and they talked to people in this community.  They looked at pictures, read newspaper articles about Bowling Green State University, and that is where they came up with this information.  They didn’t create this.  This was a content analysis of all the information that they could find that was available, and they distilled it down to these particular issues and areas.  As I said, the programs are going to change.  You can talk about any of our programs and activities at the University, but those are the ones included in this initial presentation. 

 Bringing it all together, I would say that we have something very unique and very special here.  Oftentimes, the things that are closest to us are the things that we value the least.  We have a tendency to ignore that which is closest to us.  Sometimes, I really wonder if we realize how special this place really is.  Another visible example of the specialness of Bowling Green State University is the Family Campaign.  When we started the Family Campaign about four years ago, we had approximately 23 percent of the faculty and staff who contributed to the University.  In the first year of the Family Campaign, that number grew to 35 percent.  This year we had over 51 percent of our faculty and staff contribute to the University.  In the first year, the dollar amount given back to the University was about $300,000.  This year $817,000 was contributed by our faculty and staff to scholarships and other areas that they have chosen to support.  These are our own people giving back to something that they believe in.  I meet with other university representatives all the time.  I ask how many of them come from universities where you have 51 percent of the university community giving back.  Whatever they have, large or small, this is just one of the many ways we demonstrate our uniqueness.

 And finally I say that the reason that we are going to be successful and the reason that our brand of education is going to establish a paradigm that is emulated other places is because we live in times where society seems to have lost focus in many ways on what truly is important.  If you look on one end of the business community, if you look at WorldCom, Enron and the corporate scandals, you see people who are putting personal gain in front of doing what is right.  If you look at the international scene, from day to day you don’t know what is going to happen next, where rationale and reason have been compromised to power, influence and a few getting their way or imposing their will on others.  You look at the whole spectrum and you ask, what is missing from this equation?  Where is the rationality?  Where is the stability?  Where are the values that say that human life is more important than property or personal gain?  I think that right here at Bowling Green State University, in a variety of courses and in a variety of different ways, students are exploring those questions.  Faculty members are helping students deconstruct that which is not intelligible in many cases so that they can make sense out of it so that the students can use it. 

 The last thing I would like to say is I think the presentation you just saw does an excellent job of clarifying what I have been unable to clarify probably for a few years here.  That is the fact that critical thinking about values is not about teaching anybody values.  It is about giving students the tool to discover their own values and thus be able to reconcile value differences so that their lives can be more effective and more meaningful.  All of those things are very special and unique. I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future of Bowling Green State University than I am today.  Not because of the budget in the State of Ohio being better, because it is not.  Not because we have more enlightened folks in Congress who understand what higher education is supposed to do, because we don’t.  It is because we know what we are doing, and the only thing that will limit us or the only thing that will curtail us is our inability to actualize our dreams.  I learned early on that you don’t worry about the things you don’t control, but just do a heck of a job of controlling and working with and pushing and creating that which you do control.  We are going to be good because of who we are, but we will be great because of what we decide we want to do.  And it is within our grasp.  I am very proud to be a part of this learning community.  I wish that each and every one of you have a wonderful fall semester and I would like to thank each and every one of you for all that you have done—not just this week or even into next week, but last year, and the year before, and the year before that.  The sacrifices that you have made, the commitment that you have made, going above and beyond what is required, is what makes this University different.  There are not always accolades, there is not always applause, there are not always awards, but you know there is a great deal of satisfaction that comes from doing what is important, doing it well and doing it the right way.  Thank you all very much.