Convocation Address
President Charles Middleton

August 27, 2004

It’s a great pleasure to be here for the beginning of the third year of a journey that constitutes, for you and me together, all of the things that we value and cherish in our professional lives, in the lives of our students and in the life of this wonderful University. Every year is a step on that journey, and every year brings new opportunities and new possibilities that we dream about. This year is no exception.

Before I begin to update you on what I think some of those opportunities might be for this year, I would like to thank our chairman, Jim Mitchell, and all the other trustees whom I’m going to introduce individually, not just those at Roosevelt, but those at National-Louis University, for the very hard work and dedicated commitment that they give to these two institutions.

I know from experience -- not just here, but elsewhere -- that no university can really attain its goals if it doesn’t have the active support, not just of the faculty and staff, the students and the alumni and all the other people with a stake in the outcome of our work, but the active support, encouragement, and hard work of the trustees who provide guidance to the institution.

The president of the university sees the level of that engagement on a daily basis. Most of you do not, and so I want to assure all the members of our community and the National-Louis community that you have in these two boards – and I now know all 70 something of these individuals personally at some level – dedicated women and men who really want us to be as successful as we have the capacity and talent to be.

And so it’s my privilege to introduce them. I’ll start with the Roosevelt Board members who are here and ask them all to stand. When they’re all introduced, we can give them our thanks. Bruce Bachmann. Bruce Crown. Don Field. Norm Frankel. Charlie Gardner. Jonathan Green. Joe Hanauer. Larry Howe. Don Hunt. Pam Kimmel. Blanche Manning. Jack Metzgar. Nicholas Pluta. Pamela Robert. Anne Roosevelt. Micah Levi Spangler. Joan Steel and Jill Wine-Banks. These are the Roosevelt trustees. Let’s welcome them.

In addition, we have the privilege of having four National-Louis trustees with us today, and I would like them to stand and be recognized. James Croft. Lynn Donaldson. Brian Hanessian, and Estelle Walgreen. Thank you very much for being with us this morning.

And I want to say to President Curt McCray, in response to his very kind, generous and supportive comments, that there are many presidents who are admired nationally because they’ve done wonderful things. Those of us who are at the beginning of our presidential journeys look up to them. I must say to you, Curt, publicly, that you are on that very short list of distinguished presidents with long service to higher education who have transformed the nature of the academy over the course of their career, and I thank you for the possibility of following in your footsteps.

I don’t know how many students are here, but I saw some of you come in because you arrived just as I did. Would all the students please stand so that we can recognize you.

I want to challenge you students to do something. I want you to turn around and just look at this unbelievable theatre in which we’re having this convocation. In my view, there is no more beautiful space in the city of Chicago or anywhere else in the country than the Auditorium Theatre. I welcome you to the University. You were already wise enough to make the most important decision of your lives. You decided to come study here with us. You will be transformed forever because of that decision.

I give you this challenge. We want you to graduate. We want you here in four years, or if you’re on a slightly slower plan, five years or six years or however long it takes you. We want you here on that happy occasion at the end of either the Fall or the Spring semester when we fill this Auditorium Theatre not once, but twice, with students who have finished earning their Roosevelt degrees. We want you here so that you can walk across this stage, be recognized publicly for your accomplishments, be made a Roosevelt University alumnus or alumna, and shake my hand.

So I congratulate you on your wisdom in selecting Roosevelt, and ask you to remember that the only rule at the University is that when the President gets into the elevator, you’re supposed to say hello. And if you don’t, then he’ll say hello to you. Promise.

Students become alumni, and alumni are the backbone of the university. We are fortunate to have many alumni here today. I want to introduce two in particular because they’re ambassadors for our 60th Anniversary Year, about which I’ll say something in a minute. I’d like to start with J.C. Hernandez, who is ambassador for the Class of 2004. He was Sara O’Leary’s (who you heard earlier) predecessor as student body president here at the Chicago Campus. He did such a wonderful job last year that we said, “J.C., stay on. Work with us in Institutional Advancement and let’s make Roosevelt even better.”

I also had the pleasure this morning of meeting Alfreda Burke who is ambassador for the Class of ’87, when she received her Master’s Degree in voice and vocal performance. Alfreda, where are you? Please stand up. In January – I’ll let you in on a little secret – we’re going to start a new tradition of celebrating the Martin Luther King holiday, and we’re going to do that with a show that will star, among other people, Alfreda. It’s called Too Hot To Handel.

This is our 60th year and it’s going to be an amazing year, unlike any other in the history of this wonderful University. Sixty years ago, a group of courageous professors and students from the Central YMCA College decided that they were going to create a new college which ultimately became a university. This new college would be “dedicated to the enlightenment of the human spirit” and would admit all qualified students regardless of their race, their religion, their place of birth or any other personal characteristics that were or are irrelevant to their ability to do successful academic work.

That value system became the law of the land 20 years later, but our Roosevelt University founders made that the law of their hearts by founding Roosevelt College. We are eternally grateful to them for pursuing the values that this institution maintains even today. We, of course, have expanded that inclusiveness as the country has changed and new groups have gained more understanding and acceptance. We continue to be a place of opportunity and we welcome all who would study here and/or would like to be on our faculty or staff.

Now, looking forward, we face another decision, a decision that in some senses is as great or maybe even greater than the one that faced those founding mothers and fathers. That is whether or not we should merge with another distinguished university. I’d like to bring you up to date at the outset of my remarks on where I see the discussions standing so that everyone can be on the same page as the fall semester begins.

Back in April, Jim Mitchell and Curtis McCray had a preliminary discussion about the possibilities of creating a larger, more robust and encompassing institution by merging National-Louis University and Roosevelt University. Based upon that preliminary conversation, the presidents of the two universities and members of the two boards of trustees held a series of formal and informal discussions over the course of a couple of months. These discussions led to some preliminary findings, two of which are important to repeat here.

First, the trustees concluded that there are many potential advantages that would lie before us if we were to make a decision to merge. And second, at least insofar as we could tell by doing a preliminary assessment of each other’s current state of affairs, there are no insurmountable objects to success. There are challenges, of course; we both face them independently. But so far it seems that there are no insurmountable objects that would stand in our way and make a merger impossible no matter what we do.

Indeed, as Curt has said to you, our two institutions have much in common. A list probably could never be totally comprehensive, but let me give you a few of those commonalities.

We both believe in broad access. We believe in student success. We believe in high quality programs. We have strategic goals that when you lie them side by side are very similar, and indeed sometimes identical. We have the same number of students in our programs. We have operating budgets that are more or less the same size, and we both have student bodies with a significant component of adult learners.

Maybe more importantly, we have long traditions, collectively and in our individual colleges, as long-time Chicago institutions. The Chicago College of Performing Arts, for example, is the successor of the Chicago Musical College, which started in the 1860s, long before Roosevelt University was thought of, or National-Louis for that matter.

We believe in civic partnerships and civic engagement. We believe in keeping the cost of private higher education affordable to the maximum extent possible while we deliver a high-quality product.

When the two boards looked at all of those similarities, they came up with a clear set of purposes for a potential combined university. First, we would seek to attain higher academic quality together than would be possible separately. And second, our students must have even more opportunities for success than they now have.

So this potential merger is about enhancement. It’s about getting better. It’s about being more inclusive. It’s about all the things that are embedded in the value system of both universities. These are the potential advantages of a merger to all constituents.

For students, a combined university will provide broader programs as well as more in-depth programs. This will enhance program quality and make students and graduates more competitive in an increasingly competitive world. For the faculty, there would be new colleagues, greater possible program breadth and depth, and an expanded and yeasty mix of intellectual and creative activities that always transpire when you have more people sitting around a seminar table.

For the City of Chicago, we will be a university dedicated to the success of Chicago, educating people from the city and the surrounding areas to be leaders in many important endeavors. For the metropolitan communities outside the City, by combining our resources we will have an opportunity to take our values and programs to the new groups and communities who live in the suburbs, many of them first generation.

And, of course, we would enjoy economies of scale and, therefore, we would be able to spend our money more wisely. We can provide greater services to our students and to our faculty so that the students are more successful, and our faculty have more rich and rewarding professional lives. And last, but not least, we would move into a new academic league of national research universities and become eligible for different levels of financial support from foundations and corporations. That’s a very exciting prospect for us all.

On July 28th and 29th, therefore, after looking at all of these possibilities – and they remain just that, possibilities – the two boards agreed on a number of points in a non-binding Letter of Intent. First, if we do merge, the institution will be called Roosevelt University, maintaining the great tradition and visibility of this wonderful, diverse American family that we have been associated with and have represented in many ways ever since the 1940s. The governance will be organized around the Roosevelt University Board by-laws, with specific modifications that the two boards have agreed on.

Jim Mitchell will continue to serve as the Chairman of the Board and we will bring onto the Board all of the National-Louis trustees, thereby expanding the Board’s talent, energy and enthusiasm and keeping alive the traditions of both universities. Diana Rauner, who is the Chairman of the National-Louis Board, and with whom I’ve been working and of whom I think very highly, will serve as Senior Vice Chair and Deputy Board Chair.

Diana is chairing an Integration Task Force composed of an equal number of Roosevelt and National-Louis trustees who will be working with President McCray and me to assure that we become a seamless university of which I will be the President.

We are now in the due diligence period where we seek to find out about the particulars of our universities so that the boards can make a wise decision on merging. Since July, we have been doing many things to be sure that we leave no stone unturned.

We have a commitment to communicate as widely as possible in both Roosevelt and National-Louis. We have been holding town hall meetings. We will hold many more. We send out regular bulletins via e-mail and snail mail so that you all can keep up-to-date with what is happening in our discussions. It’s very important that we not allow the rumor mills to start creating fanciful flights of creativity about things that actually are not happening. I believe our two PR offices have done exceptional work in helping keep that information channel open and flowing, which is part of our tradition here, as you know.

The due diligence period will allow us to do specific things. We will investigate each other’s governance and administrative structures. We will look at our faculty, our accreditation, our regulatory compliance. We will look at finances, technology and facilities. We will look at our market position and the outlook for student recruitment. We will look at our academic programs. We will look at all of our major contractual obligations and contingencies. In effect, no stone about the daily, monthly, yearly or historical operations of either university will be left unturned as a result of the due diligence process.

Much of that work, however, will be preliminary because much of it is going to take years to work out to its final conclusion. In fact, in a typical merger situation in higher education, collaboration on most of these issues does not need to be finalized prior to the formal decision to merge. The financial and regulatory aspects, however, will have to be concluded as a pre-condition to a merger vote. So we are concentrating on those aspects of the discussions, working with the vice presidents and others in both institutions to prepare the documentation necessary to get the full picture of each other’s current status.

I do not yet have a position on whether we should or should not merge. I do not know all of the answers to the questions that will energize and focus the boards in their deliberations. But what I can tell you is this. I believe passionately and firmly that whatever we do has to benefit our students first. And it has to be done in such a way that the academic quality of the merged institution is likely to be enhanced.

At the end, the trustees have to vote on the merger after reviewing the numerous pieces of information that they will get through the due diligence process, which I expect to take two to three months to complete. At least that’s the normal pattern, but one never knows about these matters until they’re finished.

In the meantime, we need to continue to move Roosevelt forward as we envisioned in our Strategic Plan because the Plan is about academic quality, excellence and reputation. It is about student success. It is about all those things that are in support of those two fundamental values embedded in our seven strategic goals.

Provost Reid continued this discussion at our faculty retreat held a week ago today. Over 170 people participated in the retreat, which focused on the single most important issue facing us: what does it mean to have quality? What is high quality? How do we know it when we see it? How do we strive for it?

The Provost said something then that I want to repeat now because I think she hit the nail right on the head. She said, “ We can create our own model of excellence. I believe that the first steps toward this end have already been achieved in the Mission and Strategic Plan. You have worked long and hard to produce this Strategic Plan. It is impressive in scope and aspiration, but now that it is in place, the even harder work begins. Now, we must decide how we translate the plan into action.

How will we define excellence? How will we enact excellence? And again, how will we fit it into the context of social justice?”

With that charge from the Provost, the faculty did what the faculty does best. It deliberated and began to come up with ideas. There were several lively discussions, in fact, numerous lively discussions that produced practical ideas for exploration and for implementation at some time in the future on a variety of important issues.

For example, what constitutes teaching excellence and how do we know that we are actually teaching at the highest level of our ability? How do we measure student success? Is it just in the graduation rates or are there other intangibles that contribute to the graduation rates? What about the diversity of our faculty? Isn’t a really important measure of quality to have a faculty that is more diverse than ours currently is? And if so, as we know it to be, how do we get there?

How about community partnerships? How do we reach out to people and bring them into the University, and how do we send our students and faculty into the communities? What about internationalizing the curriculum? A robust presence of international students strengthens the quality of the University. Should we establish a center for teaching and learning with all that that would mean for the quality of the instructional program?

How do we incorporate technology into the classroom so that technology becomes the servant of the learning community, not the driver of the learning community? How do we engage the communities where we are offering our programs in ways that make our presence there meaningful to the people who live and work in those communities?

And then maybe most interestingly, how do we assure that our students are thoroughly engaged in the disciplines they’re studying so that a growing number go on to further education for Masters, Doctoral and other advanced degrees?

The work on these issues will continue, irrespective of whether we merge or not, because it is our work. That’s the fundamental goal we set out for ourselves two years ago when we adopted the Strategic Plan. It’s our challenge, and I would argue that it’s also fundamentally the core of the Letter of Intent between the two institutions.

Let me turn, therefore, to my annual report card and tell you how we’re doing. At the beginning of every year I like to ask, “What are the measures of our success? What are our challenges? How big are they? What are we going to do next?” So this is my annual report card of just a few indicators of our work over the last two years.

Let’s start with enrollment. Enrollment is critical. Are we reaching the audiences that we seek to serve and are they coming to campus and being successful? This Summer, our tuition revenues were up 1% over last Summer, and our credit hours were also up a similar amount. Particularly strong was enrollment in graduate education, which was up 15½%. We can do more with our summer school, but it’s moving along nicely. It’s not a major part of our overall academic program, but it’s an important part in the lives of many of our students.

In the Fall, our registrations are up, compared to this time last year, but, of course, we won’t really know until two weeks into the semester when we take the final counts.

With regard to student success, we always look at how many students came back, how many were retained. Presidents always articulate these very basic principles. One of mine is, “You can’t graduate if you don’t come back.” 52% of the freshmen students returned from the Fall class of 2001 to the fall semester of 2002. Last year you will recall we celebrated the fact that 68% of our 2002 new, full-time, first-time first-year students, returned as sophomores in the Fall of 2003, a 16-point increase! This Fall, counting those second year students who are registered today, that number is 72%. So we’ve moved up another 4%. These are remarkable numbers. We still have to do better, but the changes are encouraging.

I believe that the University community, faculty, staff and others, should be congratulated on this growing success because students return when their interests are being attended to and their needs are being met. That’s what you’re doing and I want to thank you for that.

You can see the same results in our graduation statistics. The six-year graduation rates for first-time, full-time freshmen back in the mid 1990s was about 25%. The 1998 first-time, full-time freshmen class this year graduated 37%, which is a 12% increase. This means we also reduced the attrition in our junior and senior classes in the past two years. That’s very encouraging and consistent with our overall mission of enhancing student success.

The academic quality of our students is right up there with the very best. This year’s freshmen have, on average, a 3.2 GPA from high school, which is up slightly from last year’s 3.18. Our new transfer students are again at 2.9, and graduate students are at 3.2. These are very good scores and averages. These promise to be great students to lead, great students to have in your classes.

The ACT scores of our freshmen remained above the national average. One of Chicagoland’s best-kept secrets is that the Roosevelt freshmen are actually above the national average on ACT scores.

Thanks to our new residence hall we have a 51% increase in the number of students that we’re housing this fall in either the Herman Crown Center next door to us and/or the University Center down the street. The University Center is full. In fact, Roosevelt students are about the only people over there right now. The others will arrive from Columbia and DePaul later.

We have 100 students in the Herman Crown Center, which despite the overall increase, gives us a shortfall in occupancy of that facility. So we have a challenge to increase the size of our first-time, full-time freshman class. But because of the vacancies in the HCC, we also have the ability this year to provide student organizations with their own office space, which we will do on the fourth floor.

Our challenges for the future are clear. We have to continue to recruit faculty nationally with as much talent as our new colleagues this year have. I congratulate the Deans and the departments for recruiting such an excellent faculty class this year. I was very impressed by the credentials of the people we hired.

We have to figure out ways to use program review to increase excellence. Excellence has to be defined and then we have to strive to attain it. It’s not just our definitions that matter, it’s national definitions that matter. And so we will benchmark the quality of our programs against national standards, and then we will seek to be at or above the national average in every program at the University.

We have to increase all of our revenue streams, but we have to pay special attention to two areas. We need to develop greater opportunities for faculty to generate the support necessary to finance a larger portion of their scholarship and creative work. We simply cannot fund all of these projects out of student tuition revenues. That means greater reliance for the faculty on contracts and grants, and it means that we must hire a Graduate Dean and Research Officer who will provide the guidance and support that will enable the faculty to get those grants. We will do that work in order to enhance scholarly research as part of our overall mission to enhance program excellence.

The alumni of the University, in my view, also need to take greater responsibility for providing enhanced revenue streams. Tom Minar has completely restructured the Advancement Office, including Alumni Affairs. The alumni will be challenged to think about how they can contribute so that our students today can rely less on work and loans to fund their education.

One of our biggest challenges is to tell our story publicly; to get the word out. Things are changing at Roosevelt University. You’ve seen our new signs: “Just Watch Me.” They’re on the windows of this building, and they’re all around town. We will be aggressive in telling our story to anybody and everybody who will listen. When I get onto airplanes, I don’t say, “Let me tell you about my grandchildren.” I say, “Let me tell you about my University.” I think the story is really remarkable, so I tell it. Others will as well.

And finally, we need to have public representations of the intellectual ferment and excitement at Roosevelt. Interesting things are going on here. The fact that we now have this Auditorium Theatre as an integral part of our operation gives us the opportunity to do that sort of programming.

In this content, let me share with you a couple of previews. On October 7, Krubo Kollie from Liberia will be here to deliver the annual Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Distinguished Lecture. She’s a remarkable woman. The title of her lecture is “Working With Women and Children in Post-War Countries – the Liberian Situation.” She went into the jungle at great personal risk and took little kids out of the army and brought them back and put them into the schools.

On November 8, Ted Sorenson, who was the speechwriter for President John Kennedy, will give a special lecture right after the election entitled, “Presidential Leadership Then, Now and Now What?” A good title when you don’t know how the election is going to turn out! That will be here at Roosevelt as well.

Here in the Auditorium Theatre we will have an extraordinary array of high-quality events and programming that will add to the reputation of the University.

Our 60th Anniversary events will be the capstone of all of this activity. We will have a series of alumni lectures beginning with Reg Weaver who graduated with a Master’s degree in education from Roosevelt in 1973. He is currently the President of the National Education Association. On September 28, he will give the distinguished alumni lecture for the College of Education.

Charles Madigan, the editor of the Perspective Section of the Chicago Tribune, and a Roosevelt student, will be here on December 9 talking about issues associated with his experiences in the Evelyn T. Stone University College.

In the Spring, Arts and Sciences, Business and Performing Arts will present alumni of great distinction to remind us all that Roosevelt has traditions and wonderful graduates in all fields who made a difference in the careers and in the lives of others. In the end, that’s what it’s all about.

Finally, we will celebrate our 60th year with a major University-wide gala in April 2005.

So there’s a lot going on. I’m sure all of you think, how do we keep track of it all? We do it together. It’s our commitment to each other. It’s about our collective dedication to a set of principles and values that drive this institution today as they have shaped it in the past.

These are the same principles from 1945 when those very courageous people took a chance that they could create a better place for themselves to learn and to work by founding a college that they had the wisdom to name after Franklin Roosevelt and ultimately to change the name to be the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt University.

So, I want to close with an anecdote, a story, before we all sing the alma mater. In late June, Lynn Weiner and I had an occasion to go to the Mid-America Club to hear Justice Anne Burke talk about some of her experiences on the bench. During the reception we were talking about Roosevelt University and we ran into a person who is a very prominent Chicago individual.

He said, “What do you do?” And I said, “I’m President of Roosevelt University.” And before I could start telling him about the University, he said, “Oh, I hear these amazing things about what’s going on over there. I know that things are happening, but I don’t know the details. Tell me the story.”

In the end, that’s the buzz. We’re doing great things here. I'm very pleased and privileged to be your President as we do them together, and as we say on the outside on our windows, if you don’t believe it, Just Watch Us.

Thank you.