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Chancellor Holub Gives Address at Alumni Reception

September 17, 2008

Good evening and welcome.

I am delighted to be meeting with the loyal and generous alumni of the great institution I now have the honor of leading. I can tell you that I have a single goal in mind for my tenure as chancellor: to make your degrees more valuable. I can accomplish this task only by assisting the campus in becoming better, and that will be my sole focus as long as I am chancellor.

We have a great institution, recognized widely as the finest public research campus in New England. We should all be proud of this accomplishment, which is a testimony to past leaders, to faculty accomplishments, to great students, and to the support of alumni. But we should never be content with limited success. UMass Amherst must be more than a regional power; it should aspire to be among the top public research universities in the country.

We have a great basis for reaching this lofty goal. The most important element in any university is the faculty, and we are blessed with outstanding faculty members in a variety of disciplines from Polymer Science Public Health to Sports Management and Linguistics. We are consistently ranked among the very best universities in terms of faculty awards, and over the years our academic profile scores in the US News and World Report survey have been invariably higher than our composite ranking. We therefore have a great foundation for making the progress that I envision and that the campus desires.

We also have a great student body, one that seems to get better every year. I don’t know whether it is appropriate to disclose this tidbit of information at a celebratory event, but many persons who are currently alumni of UMass Amherst, including perhaps some of you in this room, would today have difficulty gaining admission. Last year we had a record number of applications, almost 29,000, and an acceptance rate of less than 65%. From these applicants we assembled the best class in the history of the institution in terms of both composite scores on the SAT and high school grade point averages. At the same time I am proud to tell you that we have one of the most diverse incoming classes in recent memory, numbering 22% in minority students.

A third dimension that gives me an indication that we can make significant strides toward national prominence is the building boom on campus. I don’t know how many of you have been to Amherst lately, but if you have traveled to Western Massachusetts and visited us you will have seen several busy construction crews, piles of dirt, cranes, and open ditches. Not all construction is ongoing; some has reached completion. The new, more fuel efficient power plant is now up and running; the refurbished nursing building, Skinner Hall, opened its doors to students and faculty a couple of weeks ago; the Studio Arts Building has its dedication ceremony and gala opening on Friday, September 19, 2008; and the Integrated Science Building should come online for the spring term 2008. As you know, we have several other projects underway, including a new student recreation center, which was little more than a parking lot when I was appointed, but is now framed and looking more like a building every day.

Perhaps even better news on this front was the passage of two major bond issues in the legislative session. One brings over a billion dollars of construction to the University of Massachusetts system; a good portion of this funding will come to Amherst. Already earmarked are a new science building, which will complement our almost completed Integrative Science Building, and a large classroom facility. Also earmarked are renovations to many essential facilities. The second bill targeted life sciences in the Commonwealth, and in this legislation UMass Amherst was promised a $95 million life science building. This unprecedented support for our plant will go a long way toward rectifying the years of neglect and the large accumulation of deferred maintenance on the campus.

My feeling is that we are living at a very special moment for UMass Amherst, and that we have the opportunity to take the campus to another level if we all pitch in an help.

We do, of course, have challenges, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a few of them for you this evening: I have told you about our great faculty, but I didn’t mention an important feature of their existence: compared to their peers they are underpaid. In order to attract and retain the best faculty, we will have to make certain that we have the appropriate resources available to us. These resources must include an increased number of endowed professorships and greater support for research activities.

The building boom is impressive, but there are many more buildings that need attention and many more building projects that need funding than we currently are able to afford. The largest percentage of the recent construction boom has been and will be funded by the institution and paid for from its operations budget. Very little is supported by private giving. We will never achieve our desired place among the best public institutions of higher education if our first-class faculty is forced to work in substandard laboratories, offices, and classrooms.

Graduate education: If you look across the country, you will not find one great public research university that does not have excellent graduate education. UMass Amherst does well in many programs and in some colleges, but if we are to become a leader on the national scene, we must have better programs, better students, and, above all, adequate funding to go toe-to-toe with our aspirational peers.

Undergraduate education at UMass Amherst is outstanding, and the faculty is truly dedicated to the classroom experience of the students. As a large public, flagship university, we must continue to provide a high level of instruction for the undergraduate population. To offset the large and sometimes alienating lecture courses students encounter during their first year, we must find ways to make the campus experience “smaller,” more intimate. To counter the false notion that research and teaching are opposed and that the focus on the former harms the latter, we must seek new and innovative ways to incorporate our putative weakness as our strength. And we must make certain that we are contributing to the public weal by providing a general education for undergraduates that prepares them for the real world and assists them in becoming better informed citizens of their communities, their state, and the nation.

In overcoming our challenges, I ask especially for the support of the alumni, those of you have had the advantage of both an education at the University of Massachusetts and the experience away from the campus that has confirmed for you the value of that education. The Amherst campus has great alumni, and I have met many of you in my short time as chancellor. But our alumni giving, in terms of percentages, annual giving in terms of total dollars, and endowment funds are all significantly below comparable figures for our peers and aspriational peers. Only with your help can we make certain that UMass Amherst is competitive in this important area of funding.

The question with which we are faced today is “can we do it?” Can we take advantage of the great opportunity that presents itself to the campus and move forward to compete with the very best institutions in the country? When I have spoken with some individuals I have been greeted with skepticism and reasons why such an ambitious goal is out of reach. I have heard that the state or the system does not extend to us adequate funding, that Massachusetts does not support higher education, or that our location in the western part of the state puts us too far from Boston, resulting in neglect from politicians and government.

My response to these disquieting thoughts has always been that we must leave the past behind; we must make use of the resources available to us, which are not inconsiderable, and invest them wisely; and, in general, we must take our fate into our own hands. I note on campus that departments that have done so in the past are now among the most renowned, while those who have grumbled and waited for the situation to change have not fared as well.

The anecdote that best expresses my feelings about our potential comes from the athletic history of the institution. In July of 1871 a group of young men trained for a regatta against the allegedly superior crew teams of Harvard and Brown. We weren’t supposed to be competitive in this contest. But through training and perseverance, we not only won the race, we set a course record. The President of our ancestor institution, Massachusetts Agricultural College’s William Smith Clark, was so delighted with the outcome that he plunged into the Connecticut River to great the triumphant squad and rode his team of horses back to campus in a frenzy to announce the victory across the campus.

We must regain the spirit of 1871 and the determination of those young men who set themselves a goal and then accomplished it. When we have achieved it, I might even take a dip in the river (or perhaps the pond) and ride a stallion around the campus celebrating our triumph.

My words and actions alone cannot place us in the upper echelon of public research universities. Only in consort with faculty and students, with alumni and friends of the campus, with government officials and legislators, can we fulfill our destiny. The alumni have a central role in our progress, as both financial contributors to the campus and as supporters who assist us in our efforts in the community, with the government, and with industry.

I call on you today to assist me and the campus with a forward movement that will not only enhance your degrees, but also provide better education for the citizens of the Commonwealth, increase economic prosperity across the region, and place public higher education in Massachusetts on a par with education in the very best states in the nation.

Thank you for joining me here this evening.