President Cofer's Investiture Address at May Commencement - May 18, 2002
Dr. Clausen, Judge Jones, Dr. Hill, Distinguished Platform Guests and Members of the Faculty,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Thank you all for sharing this signal day in the history of The University of Louisiana at Monroe with us. The ULM community is much larger than the boundaries of this campus, and your presence here underscores that.
Members of the Class of 2002:
I congratulate you on this a special day for you, your parents, family and friends. I have but one regret on this day, and that is that I have not had the time since I arrived on this campus 52 days ago to get to know you, and for you to get to know me. I think we would have enjoyed our relationship.
We, the ULM faculty, staff, and administration, want to thank you. We want to thank you for selecting this institution, and for sticking with us through good times and bad. I know that you have grown to love this place in the years that you have been here, just as Deborah and I have fallen in love with this campus, the community, and its people in just the few weeks since we arrived.
You, the 2002 May graduates, and I are sharing today, the opening of a new chapter in our lives. For this is not the end of college, it is the beginning of a whole new and wonderful time for you, as it is for me. You and I will always share this special bond of starting our new adventure together.
I have some advice for you today, as all good commencement speakers do.
I challenge you today to take the knowledge that you have gained here and use it for the greater good. With your diploma comes a commensurate responsibility to do your part to make our world a better place in which to live. The distinguished faculty here under whom you have been privileged to study rank with the finest assembled anywhere. Among your instructors have been internationally recognized researchers and widely published scholars, and all of them have dedicated their lives to the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. Many of them have been your mentors during your years of study. I encourage you to remain in touch with these individuals who have meant so much to you, so that they may continue to provide invaluable advice and counsel.
I stand before you today deeply humbled by this honor, and also sobered by the tremendous responsibility that comes with the presidency. I have personally known and admired many leaders, and I have learned from every one of them. I will borrow extensively from their experiential wisdom throughout my tenure here. Their mentorship is among the most important keys to whatever success that I might hope to have.
Here today, celebrating with us, are many of my personal mentors: men and women who for the last thirty years have nurtured me as a student, an employee, a colleague, and as a friend. I learned from all of them, and they cared enough about me to travel many miles to celebrate this special occasion. Like the mentors you have had here on this faculty, they want nothing but to see us succeed, and to celebrate with us our success. I would be remiss in not showing my deep and sincere love and appreciation for them if I did not recognize them at this time.
Here with us today are:
Dr. J. Chester McKee, Vice President Emeritus for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at Mississippi State University;
Dr. E. E. Thrash, former Executive Director of the Board of Trustees of the State Institutions of Higher Learning in Mississippi; and
Dennis Johnson of Atlanta, Georgia.
Here in spirit are:
Dr. Manuel T. Pacheco, President of the University of Missouri System;
Dr. Patricia Ann Somers, Associate Professor at UMSL and UALR;
Dr. Kala Stroup, Director of the Missouri Department of Higher Education; and
Governor William F Winter of Mississippi.
I continue to seek the advice of my mentors even today, and they continue to give freely of their advice and counsel.
I must admit that I am strongly attracted to the traditions of the Academy. A university president's job is a constant tightrope walk between traditions and the courage to challenge those traditions. Clark Kerr once said, "The test of a modern university is how wisely and how quickly it adjusts to important new possibilities." The reality of his counsel is imperative, for our institution must change fundamentally. If we do not, we will fail.
In my first address to the University, I outlined many of the challenges facing the future of this University. I also told you of my values: academic excellence, respect and responsibility. I think by now you know that I also value inclusion and openness. As we move forward it is important for you to know what my priorities are for this institution during my tenure as president.
I have three priorities.
The first of these is our students, specifically our future students. We must continue to attract bright, energetic young men and women to this institution if the University of Louisiana at Monroe is to prosper and grow.
Recruitment of new students has to be one of, if not the top priority of every member of our faculty and staff, every administrator, every graduate and friend of this University, and every member of this community. The decision that your children, or your friends' children, or your neighbors' children make when they choose where they will attend college directly affects all of us. The direct effect to the University is obvious, but you might ask how does it affect everyone else?
It means an enhanced quality of life for everyone:
ULM faculty and professional staff members, together with many of our students, provide a base of intellectual capital that the community and region can build upon. Our employees are regularly sought out for expert opinions on a variety of subjects; for research consultations in the health sciences; for performance enhancements to our area symphony, ballet, and theater; and for coaching expertise in our little leagues. Were ULM not here, many of those individuals whose presence in our community enriches all of our experiences would not be here, either.
It's good business:
A recent update of an extensive 1989 Economic Impact study estimates that the current annual economic impact of ULM on our 13-parish service area is approximately $441 million. This number represents the direct spending, multiplier effects, and induced spending by individuals here only because of ULM's existence.
While this number is significant, if we had maintained our 1989 enrollment of 10,560 students, the inflation effect alone would have made the economic impact $489 million annually. Therefore, the community is suffering a loss of approximately $50 million dollars a year, or $25,000 per student.
ULM must be the institution of choice for northeast Louisiana for northeast Louisiana to prosper. Everything we do and say, and everything you in the community do and say, about ULM will affect a prospective student's college choice decision.
My second priority is students, specifically our current students - educating and retaining them.
A university is an enormously complex institution. It is a place where ideas are born and shaped and then either whither or bloom. It is a place where ideas are exposed so that they may be blunted or focused by sharper minds, and we end up in a position other than where we started
Dr. Keith Briscoe, President of Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Iowa, writes in an essay entitled, "Interiors of the Presidency":
. . .we must give students a chance of every imaginable idea. We must make them open to the disharmony, the cacophony of learning, for learning is not always harmonious; learning is conservatives having it out with liberals, behaviorists with Jungians, modernists with post modernists. This flux, this chaos of ideas, must be encouraged. To seek harmony at a college is to stop learning.
In all this confusion of ideas, fresh air is blown in every direction you never knew existed. Working together, we are greater than we could ever be alone. We are carried to new heights. From chaos comes new order, decisions, and progress.
But as noble and exhilarating as this exchange may be, it is not all that we are or should be. For our job at this university is - and must be - the whole student. Our job is much more than the open and free exchange of ideas. Our job is much more than to transfer knowledge for fifty minutes three times a week. Our job is to develop our students socially, culturally, emotionally, physically, and intellectually, so that they may be prepared to take their place not only in northeast Louisiana but anywhere in the world they choose.
We do that by providing a rich academic experience; vibrant, active, and frequent student activities; a clean, attractive, and safe living and learning environment; significant leadership opportunities; a full range of intercollegiate athletic experiences; and frequent and meaningful contact with faculty both in and out of the classroom.
These actions take resources, which we fully intend to provide. More importantly, they take commitment. Dr. Joe McGahan showed commitment when he helped organize the Chautauqua Nexus, where innovative ideas are openly talked about and freely debated. He and others are now preparing to expand this concept to high school faculty and students. Long before I ever borrowed his idea, Joe McGahan showed commitment when he organized faculty, student, and staff work parties because he was concerned about his campus and decided to do something about it. Yes, Joe shows commitment when he encourages his students, both undergraduate and graduate, to explore their discipline by performing their own research, and then prompts them to discuss their findings with a President who is walking the campus. Yes, you know this psychology professor understands the difference between teaching and learning, because when you see Joe, you see students. It is exactly Joe's level of commitment that this campus and our students need from all of us.
My third priority is also students, specifically our former students:
Whether you are of the Class of '33, or the Class of '02, or any of those in between, you are still our students. You, our alumni, represent and transfer the history, traditions, and culture of this institution and are the far-flung ambassadors of all who stay here. Whether you called it N-L-U or U-L-M, please remember it as O-U-R University.
As you have seen in the last few weeks at ULM, the mood on campus is changing, and we are beginning to move forward again. I ask that you be a part of that progress. Affiliate immediately with the ULM Alumni Association chapter nearest your home, and recommend ULM to others who are deciding where they might wish to further their education. And, most important of all, please come back to campus to visit with us as often as you can. You will always be welcome.
While the investiture of a university president is an historic occasion, there is another one that is even more significant in the life of a university. That is the conferring of degrees at Commencement. For that reason, we have combined both ceremonies into this occasion this afternoon. I wish to express my sincerest appreciation to the Class of 2002 and to their families for sharing their special day with me.
I congratulate the Class of 2002 on a job well done, and a life well begun. It is now up to you to use the knowledge that you have gained through your experiences here to create a life well lived.
I also challenge the Class of 2002, our newest group of alumni, to join with us in making ULM an even better place to study for those who follow you. Students are the single most important element around which all other functions of a university revolve.
Dr. Keith Briscoe borrows from Emerson and former Harvard President Elliot when he states:
Certainly, a college is not the lengthened shadow of one man or woman. It is the collective light of many people, all committed to the welfare of the whole.
There is much to be done during the next few years, and I am asking everyone --- administrators, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and the community at large --- to help us as we plot the course. I challenge faculty and administrators to mentor students. Start with one and build on that beginning. Join your students in the cafeteria and Wigwam once a week as I do. Students and alumni, talk to your friends about the positive change at ULM. Recruit for us. To the community at large, remember that we are your hope for the future. For each of you this will be your university, and if you do your part, it will fulfill your hopes.
The best and highest values of American higher education are represented here. We offer advanced learning to men and women regardless of their background, we are responsive to the problems of the people of our state, and we offer a haven for free and open inquiry into both the unpopular and the liberating ideas. My task is to protect and preserve these strengths, to ensure that all who come to ULM have what they need to grow to the extent of their abilities.
To our faculty and staff I pledge myself to your success as teachers, researchers and professionals; to the current and future students, my commitment to assist you to achieve the education you seek; and to our alumni, I commit my efforts to the preservation of excellence of the University you know and love. I will champion the University of Louisiana at Monroe in every corner of this state, from every forum, and with every constituency. You may expect much from me; I assure you that I expect much from you, as well.
I am deeply honored to be President of The University of Louisiana at Monroe. Both Deborah and I embrace this new phase in our lives with joy and great anticipation. There will be challenges, but there will also be the excitement of meeting those challenges with creative, imaginative solutions developed by all of us working together with one question only before us: Is this in the best interest of the University?
Thank you, and congratulations to you, our newest graduates, as you begin your new and wondrous journey.
James E. Cofer, Sr.
ULM President