Chancellor's Remarks

The Inaugural Address of Chancellor Javier Reyes

Governor Healey, Congressman McGovern, President Meehan, Chairman Karam, and distinguished members of the UMass Board of Trustees, state-elected and appointed officials, fellow UMass chancellors, representatives from other academic institutions, UMass Amherst faculty, students, staff, alumni, and members of the greater community, thank you so much for your support. Muchas gracias a todos por estar aquí.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst has been on an unprecedented trajectory of success. We are one of the top public universities in the nation and are increasingly a destination of choice for students, faculty, and staff from across the globe.

It is an awesome responsibility to ensure the continuation and acceleration of this success.

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But no one accomplishes things alone; it is always a supportive team that moves us forward. This is true in the success of UMass Amherst as well as in my own life.

I would not be standing here today without the support of my incredible family—my parents Jorge and Lulu, who gave me so much, starting with my education. My brothers Jorge and Carlos, with their unconditional support, and an amazing extended family of uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. As well as for the support of an amazing group of friends that I grew up with in Mexico and that I have made throughout my travels in the U.S.—some of whom are here today—and I can’t thank them enough.

But first and foremost, I want to thank my sons Javi and Diego for being the joy and pride of Maritza’s and my life. You are just starting your own paths. But know that you inspire me every day to be better and keep growing, playing, and learning with and from you. Los Amo.

Now to the love of my life, my partner, my closest advisor, and my biggest supporter. Maritza, you have been with me every step of the way for the past 31 years, and you are the reason why we have been able to do what we do. Your compassion, wisdom, patience, love, and strong will are the foundation of our family. There are no words to express just how much you mean to me. Thank you for everything. Te Amo.

I have also been very lucky in my professional pathway. On every step of my journey, I have had people who supported me. 

Sergio Garcia, my boss at the investment bank when I was an undergraduate student in Mexico; Pepe Auernheimer, my advisor at Texas A&M University; Dan Worrell, my first dean at the University of Arkansas; Sharon Gaber, my provost at the University of Arkansas, now president of the University of North Carolina Charlotte—she gave me the opportunity to jumpstart my career in higher ed administration; Eli Jones, also a dean at Arkansas, who went back to our alma mater, Texas A&M University, and took the time to make sure I was listening and thinking about the long-term objectives in my career; Gordon Gee, president at West Virginia University; Joyce McConnell, who was my provost at West Virginia University; Michael Amiridis, my chancellor at the University of Illinois Chicago, now president of the University of South Carolina; and President Marty Meehan, who allowed me to join his team and take this dream position.

Thank you for pushing me, guiding me, and supporting me all along the way, so that a student from Mexico would become the next leader of the flagship campus of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

It is a great honor to stand before you as I—officially—assume the chancellorship of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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On this momentous occasion, I can’t help but think back to my childhood in Mexico City. From a young age, my parents wanted to expose my brothers and me to English—and one way to do so was by watching American TV. Saturday morning cartoons were a big thing in our house.

When I was twelve, my parents sent me on a summer exchange program to Minnesota. For a full summer, I lived with a host family. At first, I was upset and anxious about being away from my family and my friends.

But once I got settled in, I realized for the first time that I could actually understand English, that I could speak English. In an instant my world was bigger. From that moment on, I knew that I wanted to study in the United States one day.                                                                                                                                     

During my undergraduate years at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, I was lucky to land an internship as a freshman at an investment bank. When it was time to graduate, my boss told me that I should explore an advanced degree. He said that I should, and I quote, “because you ask too many questions. “

My team here at UMass will tell you that I still ask too many questions.

My dream came true when I was accepted into a doctoral program in economics at Texas A&M University. My first plan was to return to Mexico afterwards and pursue a career in investment banking or work at the central bank. Instead, I fell in love with academics and research and never looked back.

I love academia because every day invites the possibility for discovery.

Academia is where knowledge creation happens and opportunities for economic, social, artistic, and human development are envisioned and advanced.

And nowhere is the drive to advance the human condition stronger than here at UMass Amherst.

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On this campus there is also a deep and profound commitment to social justice and a long tradition of activism—activism that has been front and center during my first year here.

I stand before you today to reaffirm our campus commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression in all its forms. Our university must be a place where challenging ideas are explored, and diverse perspectives are welcomed. We must also instill in our community—faculty, students, and staff—that while we may not always agree, the power of persuasion lies not in being the loudest and most disruptive—but in making the strongest case through civil dialogue grounded in facts, logic, and reason.

Each year a new cohort of students arrives on our campus—students eager to learn, innovate, and shape their visions for the future. Their energy and their ambitions are inspiring. And when these students graduate, they will go out into the world prepared to act on these visions. This is the power and promise of higher education.

This said, we are living at a time when attitudes about higher education are changing and rapid advancements in technology, with artificial intelligence at the center, are forcing us to find new ways to meet our obligations.

How does higher education respond to these challenges?

How do we meet the needs of today’s students—students who are increasingly mobile and more agile?

How do we meet the needs of a changing society?

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How do we remain nimble and adapt so that our students are prepared to be active and engaged members of their communities today, tomorrow, and for decades to come?

These are the questions that will shape the future of this institution and all of higher education.

To address these challenges and chart the future of UMass Amherst, we have spent the past ten months immersed in a campuswide strategic planning process.

Our strategic plan will focus on six key areas: education; research and creative activity; translation and knowledge transfer; engagement; inclusivity and wellness; and financial and operational viability.

It is important to stress that these are not six independent areas. Rather, they are six interconnected areas that must work in synergy with each other to achieve our goals.

As we plan for the next decade and beyond, we have a mandate to reimagine how we do things.

We have a mandate to both redefine and reaffirm our role in society.

And as we think about the future, we need to think about not just what we can be, but what we must be.

We must double down on our strengths and be humble enough to acknowledge where we can do better.

And we must put our students and their success at the center of everything that we do.

Demographic trends project that the number of public high school graduates in the United States will decline through the next decade. At the same time, Massachusetts grows increasingly diverse.

We must adapt so that we may continue to meet the needs of the commonwealth and ensure that our world-class education is inclusive and accessible to everyone.

A critical part of achieving this will be to strengthen our role as a public research university.

Fulfilling our role as a premier land-grant public research university will require us to continue to grow our research infrastructure while also expanding opportunities for students across all disciplines and at all levels to engage with research and hands-on learning opportunities.

In the fiscal year 2023, UMass faculty received 1,164 research awards totaling nearly $240 million. This is tremendous and speaks to the confidence in the research that is happening at UMass Amherst and the impact that our faculty have on the common good.

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This academic year, our campus became home to the National Science Foundation’s Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science; the U.S. Department of Energy’s Academic Center for Reliability and Resilience of Offshore Wind; and our university is one of just 18 institutions to receive the National Science Foundation’s inaugural Accelerate Research Translation Award aimed at translating the research conducted in campus laboratories into tangible solutions to real-world problems.

To be truly transformative, we must recognize that we can’t go at it alone. One of the best ways for us to be more impactful is to increase our collaborations—both among and within departments as well as with other universities, foundations, organizations, laboratories, and agencies—and work together to expand our knowledge infrastructure.

Increasing opportunities for community-based research is part of this priority. This is particularly important as we seek to advance sustainable, inclusive, and more equitable communities. Our Gloucester Marine Station; the Cranberry Research Station; the Center for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment; the Arts Extension Service; and all our centers and institutes across the university are well-positioned to continue to advance these efforts.

In addition, our Springfield Center—which provides more access opportunities for communities in western Massachusetts, and our Mount Ida Campus—which connects the flagship campus with Greater Boston, will be vital to our efforts. Both Springfield and Mount Ida offer valuable opportunities for our students and faculty to engage with the greater community, as well as for the greater community to engage more with UMass Amherst.

Part of being a land-grant university in the 21st century is recognizing that the student experience is no longer linear.

Access extends beyond equitable opportunities for low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented students. It is also about how and where we offer education.

As we double down on our land-grant mission, we must continue to strengthen our successful, traditional degree pathways while also forging new ones. This includes providing flexible degree pathways so that students may advance their education, whether they are on campus or off campus. We will meet our students where they are and where they need to be.  

As the flagship campus, UMass Amherst is a critical economic engine of the commonwealth.

Seventy-three percent of our undergraduate student body is from Massachusetts and most of our students stay in Massachusetts once they graduate.

We award more undergraduate STEM degrees than any other college or university in the state, public or private.

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Our students go on to build careers in growing fields, such as biomedical engineering, clean energy transitions, cybersecurity, data science, food and agricultural science, quantum computing, robotics, education, finance, healthcare, nursing, smart manufacturing, and sustainability—all of which align with the state’s critical innovation, technology, and knowledge industries.

And each year we award hundreds of degrees in the social sciences, humanities, and fine arts. These graduates engage in a range of fields, including the technology and innovation fields, as well as communication, government, preservation, public administration, publishing, translation, and the visual and performing arts—fueling creative economies and cultural vibrancy in the commonwealth and beyond.

We must continue to embrace our role as the primary developer of talent in the commonwealth while ensuring that all of our students—regardless of their discipline—have the core skills, soft skills, and critical thinking skills that will allow them to thrive in a rapidly changing economy and a rapidly changing world, so that they can succeed and grow in the fields that they choose to be a part of.

As we embrace and advance our land-grant mission, we will also reflect back on the communities that we serve.

You may have heard me say that we need to bring more of the community to UMass, and more of UMass to the community.

Over the past ten months, I have had the pleasure of attending and engaging in events across all corners of our campus.

From our libraries to the Durfee Conservatory, and from the stage to the field, there is so much vibrancy and activity on our campus! It is time to make this more visible.

I invite everyone—faculty, students, staff, alumni, and the greater community—to take advantage of all that our university has to offer. Visit the Fine Arts Center, participate in the vast offering of cultural events across our campus—including the Springfield Center and our Mount Ida Campus—and support our athletic teams.  

I ask our university community to engage, support, be visible, and partner with organizations across the commonwealth for educational, cultural, research, and economic development endeavors. UMass Amherst is part of the economic engine of the state of Massachusetts. I want us to reaffirm this position.

 

Today is not just my inauguration. It is also the inauguration of the next chapter of our university.

Today we start the journey toward what our next decade looks like.

 

I have spent almost a year listening to everything that our community wanted us to think about as we look toward this future.

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In hearing your stories, your experiences, and our shared successes—and, most importantly, your desire to continue elevating the impact of this institution—I am confident that we will succeed not just in shaping the future of UMass Amherst, but in shaping the future of higher education.

I know that the work ahead will not be easy. I also know that UMass Amherst has been an incubator of revolutionary thinking since its inception.

An institution founded 161 years ago as an agricultural college has evolved to become the number one public research university in New England.

Our campus is home to the first food science department in the nation, the nation’s first department of exercise science, one of the first departments of Afro-American studies, one of the first stand-alone computer science programs, and one of the first bachelor’s degree completion programs.

When I think about our pioneering history and all that has been and is being imagined and accomplished by our faculty, students, and staff, both past and present, I can’t help but be reminded of President John F. Kennedy’s famous ‘moonshot’ address at Rice University when he said, and I quote, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” End quote.

 

Let me repeat this part: We do things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

This is who we are.

It is now time to come together to shape the future of UMass Amherst.

 

Thank you!