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Welcoming Remarks: Fall Open House

October 17, 2009

Good afternoon to one and all! I have the pleasant task of welcoming you to the Open House for the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts. So on behalf of the campus, its administration, and its faculty, I want to extend to parents, friends, and prospective students a heartfelt welcome to the campus. It’s great to see all of you here today.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is the foremost public research institution in New England. As such, it offers ambitious and intelligent students numerous opportunities that they will not encounter anywhere else in the Commonwealth. Great things are happening here in Amherst, and I am here to ask all of you to join us and participate in the rising fortunes of this campus.

Today we will try to inspire and impress you with the advent of a new era in the illustrious history of UMass Amherst; our purpose in this program is to convince you to come back and spend more time with us. I am thinking four years or so would be the right amount of time, and I can promise you that these four years will be the best time of your life. The reason is simple: we have so much to offer here in Amherst, from path-breaking stars of academia to tremendous intercollegiate athletics, from great student activities to a host of stimulating cultural events. UMass Amherst is a great institution of higher education – and it’s getting better every year. Let me give you just four reasons among many that you should consider the University of Massachusetts at the top of your list for where you are going to spend the next four years of your life.

The first reason is that we have great students, and the students who choose UMass Amherst are getting better every year. We know that they are better because of their performance in the classroom, but for those of you who doubt our judgment, you need only look at the numbers. This past year we had the highest average SAT scores ever for an incoming class of students. The SAT scores of the incoming class improved by 16 points this year and have gone up by 29 points in a two-year period. This indicates that students are considerably better prepared for the rigors of university education than they were in the past. The high school GPAs and the class rank of attendees have also improved for two years in a row.

UMass Amherst students have also won more prestigious national scholarships and fellowships than ever before. Last year our students received a Goldwater Scholarship, a Truman Award, the Wilma Rudolph award for scholar-athletes, a couple of National Science Foundation awards, and eight Fulbrights for study abroad.

So it’s no exaggeration to say that our current student body is the best ever at UMass. The record-breaking first-year class is the result of a record number of applications, almost 29,500, and this year we expect an even greater interest in UMass Amherst among high school seniors. How do we know? Just look around! We have a record crowd here for this open house and had to turn away others who wanted to come.

The second reason: we have great faculty, and they’re getting better as well. As I’ve already noted, we are the best public research university in New England measured by the achievements of our faculty and their reputation among their colleagues in the country. In terms of faculty awards we are consistently among the top public institutions in the country. Many of our programs are ranked highly in national surveys, and some departments, such as Polymer Science, Sport Management, Linguistics, and Food Science, are included among the top programs in the nation.

Faculty excellence takes many forms. For example, Lynn Margulis, in the department of geosciences, recently won the Darwin-Wallace medal from the Linnaean Society of London. This award for major advances in evolutionary biology is given only once every 50 years. The poet Martín Espada, a professor of English here, has published 16 books and won an American Book Award and many other literary honors. Sigrid Miller from Art, Architecture, and Art History was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. Professor of Economics Robert Pollin’s report, “Job Opportunities for the Green Economy” was cited in the official document of the Obama administration in laying out the stimulus program. And Kevin Fu of Computer Science was not only awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship, he was also named Innovator of the Year by Technology Review for his work on security.

Everywhere you turn on campus you can find burgeoning excellence, in the natural sciences, in the humanities and social sciences, and in the professional schools.

A third reason to take a close look at our campus is that future students will benefit from the substantial investments we’ve made in new buildings -- $660 million over the last five years. Our new structures include a beautiful Studio Arts Building at the southeast entrance to the campus. Skinner Hall has been completely renovated for our highly respected Nursing School. We opened both a new University Transit Center and a new Central Heating Plant last spring. Later in the fall, we’ll start building a new home for the campus police department, an important investment in the safety of our community.

We celebrated the grand opening of our Integrated Sciences Building in September. It’s a state-of-the-art facility that forges a new model for science teaching and research on campus, focusing on the connections among the life, chemical, and physical sciences. It’s just the first phase in the development of a new life science complex on campus. Next spring we plan to break ground on a second and third science building, and these new structures, once completed, will form the core of our life science teaching and research, so vital for the future of the state, the country, and the world.

Our newest building on campus will be open soon. The Recreation Center has weight-training and fitness facilities, a three-court gym, three multipurpose rooms, a juice bar, and lounge space. It’s free to all students who want to work out, take exercise classes, or use the gyms. This building rivals any recreation center on any major college campus.

The ceremonial shovels we bring out for groundbreaking have gotten good use recently. When I leave here this afternoon, I will walk across Commonwealth Avenue and use one to officially break ground for a terrific new home for our award-winning Minuteman Marching Band.

A fourth reason that UMass Amherst is right for you: nowhere else in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts –and at very few places across the nation – can you have the combination of a world-class research university and a beautiful, traditional college campus. Amherst was recently named the top college town in America – first by MSN.com and second by a national travel group. It’s widely recognized as a wonderful place to live, to learn, and to realize all your dreams.

Speaking of national recognition, our dining program continues to receive numerous awards for excellence. Just last week, the popular blog the Daily Beast put UMass Amherst on its short list for the best college food in America.

So we have the best college food in the best college town in America, and Amherst and the surrounding communities offer one of the greatest concentrations of intellectual resources in the country. We have arranged things so that undergraduates at this institution can take full advantage of offerings throughout the region. Our five-college consortium, which includes Amherst College and Hampshire College in Amherst, Smith College in Northampton, Mount Holyoke just down the road a few miles south of here, and of course UMass Amherst, allows students enrolled at any one of these institutions to take courses at any of the other schools. In coming to UMass Amherst, students in effect are able to access the faculty, facilities, and offerings of five top-notch institutions of higher education.

What about the highest achieving students among you? Do we have something special for you? A few years ago you might have considered UMass Amherst your safety school. But there are good reasons that it should now be your first choice. Commonwealth Honors College affords you one of the best opportunities in the state for the attainment of your personal educational goals. It is designed to provide a tremendous and personalized educational experience and to enable students to realize their vast potential in a variety of academic disciplines.

One of my most memorable experiences with the student body came last year in a visit to Commonwealth College. I remember in particular a conversation I had with a group of students, many of whom had been here for two or three years. They told me of the outstanding education they had received and how thrilled they were that they made the choice to come to UMass Amherst, and to attend Commonwealth College. Some also admitted they were a bit apprehensive at first. It seems that some guidance counselors out there – and perhaps a few parents and students as well – are still a decade or two behind the times and haven’t recognized that in Commonwealth College and on the UMass Amherst campus a student gets more value for the educational dollar than anywhere else in the state. That’s the reason that Smart Money magazine ranked UMass Amherst so high in return on investment, ahead of such institutions as Harvard, Yale, Swarthmore, Dartmouth, and the University of Michigan. Should you decide to attend UMass Amherst, you will be making not only a wise educational choice, you’ll be making one that makes monetary sense as well.

At the same time that we have admitted stellar classes with students more accomplished than ever before, we have done our utmost to keep the cost of attendance low. Most student paid less in out-of-pocket expenses last year than they did five years ago. Since 2004 we have increased financial aid by close to $11 million dollars or almost 50%. It’s no wonder that US News and World Report ranked UMass Amherst fifth lowest in student indebtedness among all national universities.

There is something for everyone at UMass Amherst. You just have to take advantage of the many opportunities this campus offers. So if you are seriously considering your future educational plans (and you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t), if you want a place that is exciting and stimulating, beautiful and fun, I think UMass Amherst is your ticket.

Thank you very much for taking the time to be with us today, and welcome once again to the Amherst campus! Go UMass!