Category: Presidential messages

Dear Members of the University of Washington Community:

Welcome to those of you who are new to the University this fall, and welcome back to those who are returning for another academic year. I hope all of you have had productive and rewarding summers and are ready to continue the work that makes the University such a special place.

The start of a new academic year in many ways represents a fresh beginning. We have new classmates, new professors, new colleagues, and new subjects and ideas to engage and explore. We also have a number of new facilities opening this fall, including a newly renovated HUB, a new molecular engineering and sciences building, a new wing of the UW Medical Center, a new library addition in Tacoma, and two new student residence halls in Seattle’s west campus. These wonderful facilities will add immeasurably to the academic and student experiences at the University and provide much needed research, study, and living spaces for many years to come.

Students in particular I hope will also notice some new resources devoted to their instructional programs. Thanks to many in our University and alumni community and beyond, the state Legislature passed a supplemental budget in the spring that halted the erosion of the University’s state appropriation. This meant that we could begin the arduous task of restoring some of the resources that we had lost in previous years. We increased faculty and teaching assistant positions to add more sections of critical courses students need to progress in a timely way through their programs. We also were able to shore up advising positions so that students can better access the guidance they need as they navigate their way through their academic programs. And we were able to provide additional financial aid funding so that students could better afford the increased tuition that resulted from the past several years’ cuts in our state budget. Virtually all of the new expenditures were targeted to enhance our students’ learning experience.

Students will also see this fall an increased use of technology in their courses. More faculty are experimenting with ways to incorporate the use of new technologies in their classrooms to intensify the learning experience and broaden their ability to interact with students in even more meaningful ways. In some cases, students will be asked to do more advance work online before coming to class, all in an effort to make better use of class time and squeeze even more learning into the course. We expect these innovations to continue as we become more adept at exploring ways to take advantage of the rapid changes in technology.

There is much to look forward to this year and much to accomplish. I intend to describe some of what I hope we can accomplish as an institution at my annual address to the University community on Thursday, October 18, at 3 p.m. in Meany Hall. I hope you will be able to join me. In the meantime, explore and enjoy this exceptional university.

Sincerely,

Michael K. Young

Dear Members of the University Community:

As we enter the final week of spring quarter, it is hard to believe my first year at the University is nearly over. I look forward to congratulating this year’s graduates at my first UW commencement ceremonies. The year has moved very fast, and much has happened. We have many things to celebrate, from two Rhodes Scholars to our newest MacArthur Fellow to our three new inductees to the National Academy of Sciences, and so much more. In this regard, it has been a typically exceptional year. But there have also been immense challenges, most notably our budgetary struggles and our rapidly increasing tuition levels. For me, it has also been a year of successive epiphanies, as I discovered remarkable students and awe-inspiring faculty. The people I have met have been overwhelming in their accomplishments and success, and the programs to which I have been introduced have been among the most vibrant and creative I have encountered anywhere.

A few weeks ago, Provost Cauce wrote to you about our efforts to stabilize our budget in this coming fiscal year 2012–13. With a slowly recovering economy, the Legislature seems prepared to stop the slide in state support for higher education and to support greater operational flexibility. Meanwhile, we have used the recession to re-evaluate our own administrative costs, encourage greater efficiency, and implement a budget system that is transparent and encourages accountability. All of these factors should help us slow significantly the rise in cost of tuition and begin to make strategic reinvestment in the quality of our educational mission.

We hope this is the beginning of another era of vibrancy and dynamism at the UW when we can put behind us the herculean effort to hold our university together and make it through the Great Recession and its immediate aftermath. It may be too soon to pronounce with certainty that the worst is over, but I believe it is. We now need to turn our focus to the future.

Our people are the University’s most precious resource. The University has one of the most outstanding faculties in the world, as evidenced by our prominence in international rankings of world universities, as well as by our remarkable record of success in competing for research funding. For those who are relatively new to the UW, it is worth pointing out again that every year since 1974, the University of Washington has been the top public university in America in competing for federal funds for research. Among all universities—public and private—we have been in the top five every year since 1969 and in recent years have been second only to Johns Hopkins. This is a remarkable record of success, and it helps shape the research-intensive environment in which our students learn. It is also from my perspective the single most telling fact about the quality of this faculty and our support staff. We must do all we can to ensure that this quality remains among the best anywhere in the world, and that will require retaining and attracting talent and ensuring our people are fairly compensated for the extraordinary work they do. I want to assure the entire community this is my absolute top priority going forward as we plan for the 2013–15 biennium.

We also need to resume making strategic investments in programs and developing new capabilities to engage the world’s biggest, most complex challenges. Many of these opportunities invite broad interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches—exactly what this university is exceptional at. We must redeploy resources and restore our capacity to respond to opportunities and keep this university moving forward in expanding knowledge and solving problems. And as we do so, we must always—always—strive for only the very highest quality. This is what makes us distinctive, and we must not let the difficulties of the recent past blur our focus on quality. Quality will be the first thing we invest in and the thing we will not sacrifice. This is the value that has guided and sustained the University of Washington for a century and a half, and it will continue to be the true north on our compass for the future.

Finally, we must maintain our deep commitment to access and opportunity for our students. We are rightly proud of having one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation. This diversity undergirds our excellence and ensures the high quality of what we do. The fact that thirty percent of our freshmen this year were the first in their families to go to college reflects our values to make higher education accessible to anyone capable of doing the work, regardless of economic circumstance or cultural heritage. More than a fourth of our freshmen from Washington are Pell Grant–eligible Husky Promise students who pay no tuition. This year, we were also able to provide additional grant aid to some 2,000 lower middle–income students. For all of our students, we need to get back to more modest and predictable increases in tuition. We must also creatively and aggressively develop ways to ensure that financial aid is available in some useful form to everyone who needs it. Keeping this university accessible to all is part of our DNA and lies at the heart of our being a great public university. We remain firmly committed to that mission.

It has been an eventful year, one I hope represents a transition point from the constraints of the past few years to a more expansive and innovative future, a future I very much look forward to sharing with you.

Have a great summer—whether you have a long break or not—and see you back here in the fall.

With best regards and much thanks for all you do to make this such an extraordinary university.

Sincerely,

Michael K. Young

“I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Charlie Earl only since I arrived in Washington in July. It is clear to me what an important role he has played in our state’s community college system, and it became immediately apparent what an exceptional collaborative partner the four-year institutions had in him. He has been a strong advocate for the community colleges and for smooth articulation between them and the four-year universities. He’s been great to work with. We wish him a very joyful retirement.”

On behalf of generations of students, faculty and staff at the University of Washington, I want to express our deep gratitude to Congressman Dicks for his lifetime of service to the citizens of Washington and especially for his unwavering support over the many years he served in Congress for higher education and his alma mater. His service to his constituents and his knowledgeable commitment to education have benefited countless numbers of people in the Northwest and beyond, especially his staunch support for protecting the environment and conducting research to understand it better. He also was one of the early supporters of establishing the University of Washington in Tacoma. He has been a great friend to this university and a special alumnus in whose accomplishments as a public servant we take great pride. It is hard to imagine Washington’s Congressional delegation without him. If ever the phrase ‘well-deserved’ applies to a retirement announcement, this is certainly one of them.

University of Washington President Michael K. Young issued a statement today about President Barack Obama’s budget, saying:

“The president’s commitment to expanding research funding in his 2013 budget to spur our nation’s innovation is a critical investment in our nation’s future and one we at the University of Washington fully support. The partnership between the federal government and our nation’s research universities in funding and conducting basic and applied research has fueled innovation for 60 years and propelled the U.S. to the forefront of the world’s economies. It is crucial, especially at this point in time, that this partnership remain vital and productive. We warmly applaud the president’s initiatives in this regard.

“We are also very pleased that the president is maintaining support for federal student financial aid through Pell grants and federal work-study programs. This aid is crucial to helping students afford a college education, particularly when states have been struggling to support higher education, forcing tuition to rise. It is important for states to reinvest in their colleges and universities, as well as for universities to continue to operate as efficiently as possible. College affordability remains one of the hallmarks of American higher education and one of the chief paths to opportunity and success. We are grateful for the president’s recognition of this reality and his support of students, especially in these difficult times.”

Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff:

The weather last week made a normally challenging quarter even harder. Losing three days from a total of 47 instructional days in the quarter has a real impact. Unlike K–12 schools, we do not have the luxury of adding make-up days at the end of the quarter. We know there is an effect upon all of our programs, especially our instructional ones, and we understand those lost days will be difficult to recover. We know that some faculty have been placing lecture PowerPoint presentations or classnotes on websites and/or engaging in online discussions with students (at least during times that power was available). More than a few mentoring sessions have happened over the phone or on Skype. We appreciate your dedication, especially under tough conditions, and are confident you will all continue to find creative ways to minimize the impact on student learning. We will be talking with students and instructors in the days ahead to assess which efforts worked best so that we can disseminate and facilitate best practices along these lines in the future.

Deciding to suspend operations is, of course, a decision not taken lightly. We weigh the effect upon the academic program against the risk to public safety of traveling in dangerous weather conditions, and as you might expect, we come down on the side of safety. Many of you live in close proximity and walk to and from your classes and places of work. Many commute from long distances. We gather as much information as we can about road conditions, public transportation capabilities, weather forecasts, as well as the condition of our campuses before arriving at a decision to suspend activities. As each day went by, we wanted not to have to suspend, but the weather just did not cooperate. Our local topography makes the challenge even harder. People who grew up in winter climes in the Midwest, for instance, gain a fuller appreciation of our hills and valleys, and how even relatively small amounts of snow and ice can turn a winter wonderland into a winter nightmare.

Many in jobs that are considered “essential” made their way into work to keep the University functional. These include all the staff in our medical centers, which do not have the ability to pause for the weather, to staff in our residence halls who regardless of the weather must provide meals for our 6,000 students living there, to those in our facilities divisions who kept the power on and who worked to near-exhaustion to get the campuses ready for our return. To all of them and many others who braved the weather, thank you for your service.

Let’s hope our adventure with nature this winter is over, and we’ve seen the last of disruptive storms. A little meteorological calm in our lives would be wonderful.

Sincerely,

Michael K. Young	Ana Mari Cauce
President	Provost & Executive Vice President

Dear Members of the University Community:

At the half-way point of my first year at the UW, there are still daily revelations of how great this University is and what that greatness is built upon. The more I look inside the campus, the more I see extraordinary, energized students and faculty applying their talents to expand and share human knowledge. The more I venture outside, the more I find alumni, donors, legislators, and private citizens who treasure the contributions the UW makes to their lives and to the good of the world.

As part of my discovery, I am increasingly impressed to see that the remarkable drive, inquisitiveness, and ambition of our faculty, staff, and students are tempered by a deep, pervasive respect for the rules and societal standards that define the right way to conduct our work. Such steadfast adherence to ethical principles is far from universal, nor can we take it for granted. Indeed, the news of the past year left us with far too many examples of the lasting harm done by malicious and careless individuals, whose acts were sometimes extended by the inaction of those who might have spoken up or intervened. For that matter, our protracted economic slump is rooted in a widespread, unchecked disregard for responsible financial practices. We have seen prominent public officials caught behaving unethically and recklessly. Persons entrusted with academic, administrative, and athletic responsibilities at institutions of higher education have been found to have actively betrayed that trust — or to have stood by passively allowing the destructive behavior to continue.

In contrast, it is clear to me that the University of Washington’s century and a half of success has been built on a strong foundation of integrity. When problems have been discovered, they have been dealt with promptly and appropriately, as one would hope. Overall, the UW has nurtured a culture of responsible conduct, which has sustained our perennial success in attracting scholars and administrators who share a visceral inclination to act honorably. This institutional legacy is certainly one of the reasons I am proud to be among you.

Having inherited such values, one of our duties is to periodically renew our commitment to maintain these high expectations of ourselves and of one another. To that end, I hope you will join me in resolving to make 2012 another year of hard work in the service of education, research, and public service, carried out with the highest standards of integrity. This is the one certain path to continued pride in our individual and collective accomplishments.

Best wishes for a New Year filled with discovery and prosperity.

Sincerely,

Michael K. Young