Opening Convocation 2009-10
Remarks by President Ruth J. Simmons
The Main Green
Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 4:00 p.m.
Chancellor Tisch, fellows and trustees of the Corporation, Provost Kertzer, academic department chairs, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and students: It is my great pleasure, as President of Brown University, to open the two hundred and forty-sixth academic year.
It is my pleasure to welcome the distinguished members of the entering classes of the graduate school, medical school and the college. They are distinguished indeed. Among them are:
- 96 brilliant medical students
- 566 scholarly graduate students (302 PhD; 264 Masters)
- 6 indefatigably serious RUE students
- 93 very prescient transfer students
- And of course 1500 first year students who help to make up the phenomenal class of 2013
We are privileged to have you here and feel energized by your immense potential as scholars and humanitarians. Whether you are returning to College Hill for another year, just beginning your undergraduate career, or embarking upon a course of graduate or medical study, you join generations of scholars, researchers, teachers, and leaders in furthering Brown’s mission and its legacy of academic excellence.
Regardless of individual aims and circumstances, you all share a common goal: to prepare yourselves, to the best of your ability, for ethical, committed, useful and fulfilling lives. You represent a great wealth of experience, diverse perspectives, and unique individual backgrounds. What you bring to this learning environment is beyond measure; what we hope to bring to you is the opportunity to enlarge upon those talents and find a path to contribute to the world from your own unique vantage point.
You will be aided in all your endeavors by an outstanding faculty. I am especially pleased to welcome new faculty today who, from all that I can discern from having met many of them, bring extraordinary expertise to inspire you, mentor you and guide you toward the excellence you seek. We know you have worked hard to get here, so we are working hard to ensure that we meet your expectations.
Because of the past period of economic uncertainty, I’d like to give you a very brief overview of how Brown opens this new year in the context of last year’s downturn. Thanks to the efforts of so many, Brown has been able to continue to strengthen its offerings. While most students and faculty were away this summer, renovation of Rhode Island Hall was completed to accommodate the Artemis A.W. and Martha Sharpe Joukowsky Institute for Archeology and the Ancient World. The transformation of Faunce House began with the Blue room being relocated to the ground level as major construction goes on on the upper floors. I am pleased to tell you that The Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center will open earlier that we initially expected; all work will be completed in time for the opening of the 2010-2011 academic year. At this point, I pause to thank the many employees in Facilities who have worked throughout the summer to make improvements in time for your arrival. They do a marvelous job and I hope you will help me acknowledge that.
Also completed this summer was the consolidation and expansion of advising and academic support programs to J Walter Wilson in an new effort to make these resources more visible and accessible to you.
I hope that you will all take advantage of these and other resources available to you and thoughtfully seek the kinds of experiences that will expand your knowledge and understanding of this extraordinarily complex world that we seek to know. I look forward to watching you grow, create, explore, debate, and — above all — excel in the months ahead.
We begin this year after a prior year in which declining asset values caused most universities to freeze salaries, cut expenditures, and even reduce staffing. Our Corporation worked with us to develop a plan that, over three years rather than one year, would bring our expenses in line with our reduced revenue. That means that again this year we will face further adjustments in the budget. Importantly, we will continue to seek the input of this community as we set priorities and accomplish the cuts mandated by the Corporation. You may notice, in your day to day experiences a slight change due to these reductions. Although your student activities budget derived from student fees remains unaffected by these measures, events that are supported by university funds may be somewhat more modest. But if we can make such adjustments, we can preserve things of greater value to our community: fewer jobs lost, fewer changes in the overall quality of your experience at Brown, and so on.
The crisis last year, painful as the fall-out has been, taught us a good deal about what matters. As we worked through the crisis, we were able to agree to proceed with important academic initiatives, important student spaces, important improvements to campus. While such decisions will be an ongoing challenge, I thank this community for being willing to make those choices in the service of the mission that brought you all to Brown.
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Now, I am pleased to introduce someone who offers strong evidence of why it is important to continue to protect our academic priorities. Today’s keynote speaker, Johanna Schmitt is the Stephen T. Olney Professor of Natural History and director of Brown’s Environmental Change Initiative, an interdisciplinary program that brings together faculty, students and researchers from the physical, social and life sciences as well as those involved in public policy.
Professor Schmitt joined the Brown faculty in 1982, after completing her bachelor’s degree at Swarthmore, her PhD at Stanford, and post-doctoral work at Duke. During her time at Brown she has taught, mentored and conducted research with scores of students who have gone on to productive careers in academia, research and conservation. She has been an adviser for 48 senior theses and a number of undergraduate independent study projects, and has also worked on more than 30 publications with undergraduate co-authors.
Her scores of published articles in leading journals attest to the reach and import of her research. She has lectured widely around the world and served as visiting researcher at Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding and Imperial College. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, she has served as president of both the Society for the Study of Evolution and the American Society of Naturalists. Her service to her profession and the University, as well as her collaboration with faculty and scientists at Brown, across the country and around the world, distinguish her as one of the most productive and illustrious members of the Brown faculty.
Professor Schmitt’s research focuses on natural plant populations, their evolution, and possible adaptations to global climate change. Currently the co-principal investigator on an NSF grant on molecular evolutionary ecology of developmental signaling pathways in complex environments. Her address today will focus on “Natural Selection in an Age of Global Change.”
Please join me in welcoming Professor Johanna Schmitt.