Office of the Chancellor

» back to Remarks and Speeches

Chancellor Holub Remarks At New Faculty Orientation

August 26, 2008

My first order of business is to welcome you to the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts. We are delighted that you chose to join us here in Western Massachusetts. From my perspective UMass Amherst is on the rise, and you are part of the reason for that rise. The faculty has always been the strength of this campus – it is my belief that the administration must double its efforts to attain the same level of accomplishment – and over the past few years we have seen more talented, more diverse, better prepared, and more engaged.

It is my strong conviction that the present and the future of this university, indeed, any university, belong to the faculty. I believe strongly in the words of Clark Kerr, the renowned first Chancellor of the Berkeley campus and the President of the University of California, who stated at a press conference in 1968: “If you make good decisions on your faculty, and every other decision is made badly, you have a great university. You make every other decision well, but badly choose your faculty, you’ve a poor university. The quality of a university is the quality of its faculty.” I think with this group of faculty members we have made good decisions, and we in the central administration are going to do everything we can to ensure that these good decisions are backed up with the support you need to flourish in your research and teaching here at UMass.

By all rights I should be sitting among you, since I am also a new faculty member on the campus. But I haven’t passed muster yet; my case has been held up evidently, so that for the moment I am only an administrator and not yet a member of the faculty. Allow me, however, to say a few words about myself and my career so that you know that I belong to the faculty as much as to the administration.

I come from a campus known for its academic values, the University of California at Berkeley. I spent 27 years on that campus as a member of the German Department, as a Department Chair, and, toward the end of my time there, as Dean of the Undergraduate Division in the College of Letters and Science.

I then moved to the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and served two years as Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. I’d like to think that my experience at Berkeley and Knoxville supplied me with the kind of academic standards and lofty aspirations that will serve me well in the position of Chancellor at UMass Amherst.

One thing I did learn is that you have to maintain high standards and high expectations for the faculty. We have in Amherst a fine research university. We rank high in faculty awards and in our profile among national universities. But we still have significant room for growth in this area and in many other areas. We are counting on you to assist us with that growth; our goal as a campus should be perfectly consonant with your individual goals: we would like you to attain prominence in your field, to become a highly profiled, recognized, and renowned contributor in your respective disciplines.

The administration of the University of Massachusetts exists to help you achieve your goals. Only by helping you become the best faculty member you can be, can we attain our own goal, which is to make certain that UMass rises in the ranks of public universities and becomes one of the premier institutions of higher education in the country.

Most of the people who spoke during the course of your orientation talked to you about services and assistance they can provide for you. Please avail yourselves of their services and assistance. They have given you valuable advice and I trust have been able to point you in the right direction.

Most of all, however, I want to ask you to contact me personally if you should encounter difficulties that can be resolved administratively. I can’t do much about making the weather more reasonable once the winter sets in, or about stopping an infant from crying (I have enough trouble with my three young daughters), or your inability to get easily the kinds of food you may have been used to in another part of the country or the world. But the Provost and I will certainly make an effort to resolve difficulties you may encounter in your teaching and research. So if you hit bureaucratic barriers, please get in touch with me or Charlena or someone in our office.

During the spring term I will be scheduling a lunch with you and on this occasion I will be asking you about your experiences at UMass. I want to learn about your experiences here and see what we are doing successfully and where we can improve. Above all I need to meet with new faculty so that I am well versed in issues that you face as you make your careers at UMass. So if your department head and dean are unable to help and the issue needs a stronger voice from the central administration, I hope you will come to me.

This first meeting is thus hardly our last, and I hope it is one of many times we can get together in a larger or smaller group during the course of the years to discuss what really matters: teaching and the process by which knowledge is transmitted and critical thought is promoted; research, scholarship, and the discovery of new knowledge; and service to the campus, to your respective disciplines, and to the community and commonwealth.

Let me wish you well for the coming term and again extend my warm welcome to you as new faculty at UMass Amherst, an institution that is proud of its distinguished past achievements, but seeking for much more in the future.