Fall Convocation
President Kay Norton’s State of the University Address
4 p.m. September 19, 2006, Garden Theater
Thank you, Dr. [Norm] Peercy.
I’m pleased that we’re renewing the campus tradition of fall convocation today. 
In the recent past, it’s been customary for the president to give a state of the university address. But convocation speaks to more than the state of the university. It also considers the heart and indeed the soul, the future more than the past. The word comes from the Latin for “a calling together.”
I still plan to talk with you about the University of Northern Colorado’s condition and our accomplishments. But this is also a time to remember our heritage, celebrate our traditions, pay tribute to our faculty, enjoy the community of those around us, and look to the future together as we welcome more than 3,000 new students and more than 30 new faculty.
If you’re new to campus, I hope you’ll leave this convocation with a better understanding of what we’re about—what draws us back to Northern Colorado each fall—the élan vital that sustains the life of this 117-year-old institution.
Whether you’re new to campus, or you’re a returning student or faculty or staff member, you’ve made a good decision to come to Northern Colorado.
At a university, fall is a time for optimism. Students can still think it’s perfectly reasonable to have three majors and expect to make the dean’s list in each of them. Dr. Peercy can believe he’ll make it through the semester without one student’s cell phone ringing in class. It’s fine for our new Chief Financial Officer, Randy Haack, to dream that the Legislature will find us an extra $10 million. I can even imagine it’s quite possible we’ll finish our first football season in the Big Sky Conference ranked at #1.
Why not? We already have a lot to be proud of. We should be thinking big.
It’s not as though the planting season has just begun at Northern Colorado. A transformation of our campus is well under way. We have planted and watered and weeded, and the harvest season is upon us.
Some changes are easy to see. If you’ve been by the old Jackson football field at 6th Avenue and 20th Street lately, you know what I mean. Our students’ investment in sports and recreation facilities has literally transformed it. It’s now Jackson Soccer Complex—with a lighted championship-grade playing field and a new scoreboard and field house. 
On West Campus, the Butler-Hancock athletic fields used by hundreds of students who play club and intramural sports are completely re-done. We’re installing chair-back seating and a new sound system inside Butler-Hancock. We have six new tennis courts, and we’re expanding the Campus Rec Center with a new gym.
There are equally dramatic changes at Michener Library, where we renovated garden level space for the Office of Academic Support and Advising. ASA gives students one-stop access to several services. It offers information about orientation and academic learning communities, advising services, assistance choosing a major, and individual and group tutoring. The next renovation in Michener will be for the new Center for Honors, Scholars and Leadership.
Other changes are not so obvious as you walk across campus. The way Colorado funds higher education has certainly been transformed during the past four years. As our state funding dropped dramatically, we invested tremendous energy in becoming more efficient. At the same time, we made a concerted effort to be more transparent about our finances. We know that when public resources grow scarce, we’re expected to be even more accountable for their use.
Hand-in-hand with state funding cuts came painful tuition increases. Colorado’s investment in higher education holds down the price of tuition. When the state invests less, students are expected to pay more.
But funding is not just about cajoling legislators to support Northern Colorado. Now we have to make a case for individual investment as well. This was cause for further transformation on campus—at the UNC Foundation. It has reorganized, and with the leadership of its new President and CEO Virgil Scott, the Foundation is working to determine our readiness and lay the groundwork for a capital campaign.
While operating with less state funding is difficult, some of the results are positive. In retrospect, we can say that we didn’t do ourselves any favors by depending so heavily on the state. We didn’t always have to make tough decisions, so sometimes, we didn’t.
But we learned quickly to engage in the business of vision. We stand now on the threshold of greatness. To get there, we must focus on the things most important to us. That focus will sharpen as the campus community sets academic goals and priorities this semester. Academic planning—an outgrowth of the Charting the Future process—lies at the heart of what we must do.
Yes, harvest is upon us, and the temperature is dropping a little lower every night. We will be hard pressed to harvest every field before autumn’s first frost. Before next spring, we must think about what to plant then. Some of our crops are bountiful. Others will command a high price. Some are easy to gather but difficult to transport. Some represent greater up-front investment. Others are grown from unique heirloom seeds. Some are prone to spoilage. Others can withstand bad weather—but there are no guarantees.
These are difficult priorities to set. But we must be both judicious and expedient. Time spent deciding is time lost.
We will focus our resources on the things most important to us. But as a public university, we cannot set priorities in isolation. We’re part of an increasingly global society. It is no longer sufficient for us to think about our local sphere of influence. We must think about multiple spheres of influence—our campus, our community, our state, our nation, our world.
We must help students truly understand civic engagement—understand that the results of our actions ripple through every sphere.
It’s a lot like living in the residence halls. Cranking up Fallout Boy at 2 a.m. doesn’t just wake up your roommate. It causes your suitemate to pound on your door, which makes your neighbor call the RA, which brings the RA stomping down the hall, which wakes up the light sleeper four doors down, which—you get the idea.
In a global society, neither can we assume that everyone shares our perspective. I traveled with Provost Allen Huang to China this summer to a conference about higher education reform. Much like the United States, China is concerned about higher education resources and quality. One of our stops was at a business school in a beautiful new building. In a classroom for teaching banking, at every student workstation, there was … an abacus. China is changing at a previously unthinkable pace. While there are still some gaps, like the abacus, it is clear that other countries aspire to universities that measure up to ours.
When I traveled on a Colorado trade mission to Prague in the Czech Republic last week, I saw similar changes. But I also noticed something missing—in both China and the Czech Republic. They do not yet have the same culture of openness, entrepreneurial spirit, and willingness to take risks we work to foster in American universities. So, I’m not suggesting we fear the future. It is imperative, however, that we ask ourselves what we can do to help our students find their place in this new global society.
As the transformation of our campus continues, there are some things I can assure you won’t change. We will embrace our core mission as a leader in education—at every level. We will be student-centered. Investment in faculty will remain a high priority. And we will foster diversity in all that we do. We cannot afford to think about diversity in the simple terms of an agenda item; we must foster a campus culture that supports every teacher, learner and staff member. This is part of what it means to be a public university in a global society.
Another constant will be the struggle for public resources, not just in Colorado, but across the nation. A recent report commissioned by the US Secretary of Education says: “The bottom line is that state funding 
for higher education will not grow enough to support enrollment demand without higher education addressing issues of efficiency, productivity, transparency and accountability clearly and successfully.” We’ve already begun to do that on our campus.
Public universities’ work is of great consequence. We have an obligation—a pleasant obligation—to tell people about it. I’m going to talk a little more about that, but first, let me say that earning a degree at the University of Northern Colorado is about more than knowledge; it’s about action. It benefits both graduates and society.
Something else I learned in China is that even though college entrance standards are extremely competitive, a college degree offers little promise of a job. If we are to prepare graduates to compete in this global economy, we must align our programs with the needs of our nation.
At Northern Colorado, we recognize that preparing students to compete as citizens of the world in a global economy is an important part of our obligation to students, and to society. Our students learn how to put knowledge to work—and the results are significant. Whether you look a few blocks away or across the globe, you’ll find our alumni making a difference.
Three former Northern Colorado students were part of the trade mission to the Czech Republic. All of them—the head of the South Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, and the Governor’s chief of staff and his wife—were active student leaders on our campus. I have also met dozens of alumni as far away as Taiwan and Thailand.
Many alumni are quick to acknowledge that we helped them build a foundation for success. I got a letter this summer from a student who had just graduated from our Center for Urban Education in Denver. She’s a third-grade teacher now. She wrote to me the day she was offered the job. It was a beautiful letter, but the thing that struck me most was this—she wrote: “I really do not know about other colleges or universities; however, I can hardly imagine that there are many others that care as much about their students as does the University of Northern Colorado’s Center for Urban Education.”
Some of our faculty have been working on a research project about the university’s effect on the economy and quality of life—across our regional sphere of influence. For example, the CEO of Big Brothers & Big Sisters of Colorado, Dave DeForest Stalls, is an alumnus. He also happens to be a two-time Super Bowl champion and says we prepared him for the “strange and wonderful paths” he’s taken. He also says, “By far the best life-changing decision of my life was to come to Greeley, Colorado.” (And by the way, that quote was documented by journalism professor Lynn Klyde-Silverstein, so you can be sure it’s accurate.)
Many of us have stories about the transformative power of education—which brings me back to our obligation to tell people about what we’re doing at Northern Colorado. Over the coming year, I want us to share these stories and use them as the basis for a sustained conversation about why we’re here.
We’ve named this yearlong project “True North.” The idea comes from a National Public Radio program called “This I Believe.” In the 1950s, journalist Edward R. Murrow invited people listening to his radio program to write essays about their deepest beliefs. In the spring of 2005, NPR launched a reprise that’s still airing.
The focus of “True North” is a bit narrower. I invite each of you to share a short personal essay about the power of education—how it engages, how it transforms, how it enriches our lives. I’m afraid these next couple of things will give me away as an undergraduate English major. Nonetheless, by short, I mean about 350 words, and these are personal essays, so yes, you can use “I.” In fact, please do.
It’s my hope that “True North” will accomplish three things. First, that it will give us some shared perspective. Second, that it will highlight the diverse voices within our campus community. And finally, that it will help us tell people throughout our spheres of influence who we are, what we do, and why it matters at Northern Colorado.
We asked three members of our campus community to set this project in motion by writing essays to read this afternoon. Our first reader is a sophomore from Denver. She’s a Daniels Scholar, a Cumbres Scholar, and an Honors student. She’s earning a degree in secondary education with an ESL endorsement, and has a 4.0 GPA. Please welcome Darsella Vigil.
…Thank you, Darsella. The next reader is a longtime member of our campus community. He is an influential leader in the field of gifted education, and has directed our Summer Enrichment Program for the Gifted and Talented for nearly three decades. He is also the most recent recipient of the university’s top faculty honor, the M. Lucile Harrison Award. Please welcome Dr. George Betts.
…Thank you, Dr. Betts. Our final reader earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Northern Colorado in 1999 and went on to medical school at the University of Colorado. He is now completing a residency in anesthesiology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, where he is chief resident physician. In his spare time, he is conducting a statewide campaign for an at-large seat on the University of Colorado Board of Regents. Please welcome Dr. Brian Davidson.
(after the Women’s Glee Club sings the alma mater) …Thank you, ladies. And thank you, director Julian Gomez-Giraldo. You may have noticed that the alma mater refers to purple and gold. Our colors are now blue and gold—but that’s a story for another convocation. Thank you all for joining us in renewing the campus tradition of Fall Convocation. I hope you will join me for a reception to welcome the new members of our campus community.