Convocation Address
President Charles Middleton

September 5, 2006

Thank you, Jim.  I thank you and all the other Board members who are present for taking time from your busy schedules to be here with the rest of the University community today. The Board is an integral part of the University; it does not stand apart as a separate entity.  It is composed of volunteers and provides strategic leadership without which Roosevelt could not prosper.  I thank you all for this valuable service and for your unwavering commitment to the ideals of the University.

Good morning everyone, and thank you all for coming this morning.  A special
welcome to the new students, new faculty, and new staff who are here today.  We are very glad that you have joined this remarkable university, dedicated to access and opportunity and the enlightenment of the human spirit, all characteristics that are timeless in the general scheme of human history.

I hope that everyone had an enjoyable and productive summer and that each of you is refreshed, rejuvenated and eager to start Roosevelt University’s 62nd year.

Each year this Convocation gives us an opportunity to reflect on our progress in the implementation of the Strategic Plan and to identify some specific challenges that will focus our efforts in the coming year.

I’d like to begin with a story.  Many of you know that one of the goals we have is to create a buzz in Chicagoland about Roosevelt – to have people paying attention to what we are accomplishing here and commenting favorably on our progress. I have said many times that one way of knowing that we have entered the “buzz stage” would be that Roosevelt gets included in everyone’s list of five universities they automatically think of when the topic of higher education in Chicago arises.

You may have noticed this past week that there was an article in the Chicago Tribune on the most popular majors these days.  There is, per se, nothing remarkable about these annual stories.  What WAS noteworthy is that the survey this year included only six institutions, five on everybody’s list (Chicago, Northwestern, UIC, DePaul and Loyola), and us!  That’s buzz!  And like summer school tuition, where we charge students for five hours if they take six, I’ll take THIS six for five any day!

Today I’d like to discuss five issues with you, two in some detail and the rest in an abbreviated format.  A more comprehensive version of my comments will be posted on the web.  The five issues are:

1. Roosevelt’s growing reputation for academic quality
2. Enrollment trends
3. Student success
4. Student life issues
5. Development/Fundraising

I will review with you our progress in each area and then introduce some of the opportunities we will have and some of the challenges we will face in each as the year progresses.   

1. Roosevelt’s Growing Reputation for Academic Quality

Every University’s reputation for academic quality and excellence is founded by years, sometimes decades of successes by faculty and students, both collectively and individually.  It is the summation of each university’s history and of its measurable successes in attaining its goals.  Not surprisingly, however, as it is being established there is always a lag between accomplishment and the public’s perception of that accomplishment, especially in circumstances like ours where we have not always been as assertive in telling our stories as we have recently been.   Therefore, I’d like to take note here today of some collective accomplishments to supplement the individual achievements mentioned earlier by Provost Reid.

As you know, last spring we received verbal approval of our University-wide re-accreditation application from the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association.  The Provost and I have now reviewed a draft of the visiting team’s re-accreditation report.  The final version will be very strong.  It contains many laudatory comments which, when taken together, applaud our achievements in the past ten years and commend our aspirations and achievements under the new Strategic Plan of 2003.  As promised, the team recommends re-accreditation of Roosevelt University for a full ten years (2006–16) without restrictions or further campus visits.  They also recommend full authorization for expanding our online majors as we see fit.  This recommendation reflects the excellence of our current programs in that format. 

We will publish the final report as soon as we receive it and there will be ample opportunity to discuss its particular findings and recommendations, some of which will require action over the next few years.

Also in 2005-06, the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology received, for the first time, a seven year re-accreditation from the American Psychological Association, the maximum period allowed, and the School Counseling program in the College of Education was re-accredited for the full five years.  These re-accreditations demonstrate the quality of the University’s programs in these areas.  I congratulate the faculty of the respective units for their excellent work in assuring these successes.

In attaining academic excellence and the reputation that follows, we all know that the faculty is the key to success.  Faculty members are the life-blood of the institution.  This fall we have 243 funded tenured and tenure-track faculty lines, the largest number in the University’s history.  In 2006-07, the Provost will coordinate twenty faculty searches across all colleges, sixteen of which will fill vacancies resulting from retirements and resignations.  I have also authorized the recruitment of four new faculty positions in the College of Arts and Sciences, two in Psychology and one each in Communications and Women's Studies.  These new faculty lines are a response to the enrollment growth in this College.   I anticipate that they will be the first installment in our plan to grow the full time faculty as enrollments increase.

Last spring, nine faculty members received tenure and were promoted to Associate Professor; three faculty members were promoted to Full Professor and one faculty member received tenure and a promotion to Full Professor.  All of these candidates were rewarded based on the quality of their academic record in all aspects of evaluation -- teaching, research and/or creative work and service.   Because the primary way that we assure the future quality of the University is through the accomplishments of the faculty, we will continue to reward excellence in faculty performance as assessed through a rigorous peer review process both in determining annual increases in compensation and in evaluating candidates for reappointment, promotion and tenure.  

Extremely important to enhancing our academic quality and reputation are the new colleagues that we welcome every year.   These new faculty, twenty-three of whom arrived on Campus this fall, were recruited from an exceptional pool of candidates we interviewed last year. The deans and the faculty who serve on search committees tell me that we are attracting applicants each year who are of higher and higher quality.  This is excellent news and is the result of many factors, paramount among them that the word is getting out in the academy that being a faculty member at Roosevelt is a rewarding and meaningful career.  I see these new colleagues every year both as our promise for the future and as a ratification of the current faculty’s desire not merely to sustain the level of their achievements, but in the end, to hire those who will outpace them. 

Importantly, these additions to our faculty ranks this year reflect greater diversity of all sorts, not just race and gender, but also broader numbers of institutions in which they are educated.  I cannot stress enough how critical it is for Roosevelt’s long-term success to continue to recruit national caliber faculty members whose commitment to scholarship and creative work is both strong and complements their dedication to our primary faculty role here of teaching our students.  I thank the Provost, the deans, and especially the faculty in departments that have made these hiring decisions, for the hard work you did in assuring that we identified and successfully recruited these new colleagues.  And I especially thank those who chose to close searches because they didn’t find a suitable candidate.  This year we will try again and I’m certain that patience and persistence will yield the desired results.

In 2006/07 we will also be conducting searches for two deans, one in the College of Education and the other in the Evelyn T. Stone University College.  Each is a key leadership position in the University.  These searches are critical to Roosevelt’s long-term success and our goal is to find two leaders who will be committed to working with the faculty and staff, along with the Provost and other senior officers, to grow enrollments and strengthen program quality in both Colleges.

The context for our progress is both local and national.  The Spellings Commission on the future of higher education in America met last year and came up with a set of recommendations on which I will be reporting to the community as a whole later this semester.  Their Report reflects nagging doubts about whether the quality of higher education generally is holding up in contemporary America.

Data already show that in many areas, including access and affordability, the United States lags many other countries.  The issue of academic quality, especially outside the most prestigious institutions, has now been added to this list of national issues.  Indeed, the distinguished President of Harvard, Derek Bok, put it bluntly when he noted, “For all of their success, however, American Universities have one major weakness.  The quality of education they provide is not all that it should be.”  (National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, The Week in Review, Vol. XXV, No. 8, August 14, 2006)  This perception is driving a public discussion supported by both the traditional skeptics and maybe more significantly, the traditional supporters of higher education, about whether we can develop “a set of reliable, universally accepted measures for evaluating and comparing student progress toward all the educational goals appropriate to every college and professional school.” (ibid.)

Leaving aside this public discourse, which we will join others in engaging, given our commitment to providing high quality academic experiences for all of our students, I think that Roosevelt departments and Colleges have for our own reasons ample justification for debating how these and other issues apply to us in the context of our own Strategic Plan. The reaccredit ion report that I mentioned earlier has some valuable recommendations for us to consider in this regard.   

While I know I do not have answers to all of the questions that are being raised, many of which are addressed to me when I travel around visiting alumni and friends, I am confident that collectively we will develop answers that make sense for Roosevelt whatever the outcome elsewhere. 
 
Attaining our aspirations comes down to securing adequate resources and I know that there is concern that we not price ourselves at a level that reduces access.  We are a long way from doing that.  This year’s full time undergraduate tuition rate is still below that of 2004 thanks to the adoption of the flat tuition schedule.  And our commitment to increasing financial aid in proportion to increases in tuition helps to assure that our most needy students can continue to enroll. 

Roosevelt continues to be the best bargain in price as a function of the quality of the degrees we grant.  We are under-priced in most if not all of our programs.  However, because this is not generally understood, it is clear to me that we need to have several sets of discussions engaging the whole community on this issue.  I will be visiting with faculty groups and others to explore ways we might adopt further differentiation in our pricing structure so that we can collectively develop a common understanding of the issues and then work together to address pricing anomalies and generate the resources that are essential if we are to achieve the quality we aspire to attain.

One of the areas where these additional funds are clearly needed is academic technology.  Improved technology at Roosevelt is key both to the academic quality of the University and to student success.  As you know, we have lagged over the years in essentially every aspect of campus technology.  This is changing, and rapidly.  This year we are concentrating much of our capital budget on addressing our technology needs.

The Division of Information Technology has begun a project to completely upgrade the data network, dramatically increasing its speed and reliability.  The number of hits on our website increased last year by over 13 million, from the AY 2004-05 total of 58+ million hits to 71+ million.  We anticipate these numbers to continue to grow and we must enhance the network to avoid degradation in services and instruction.

In order to meet the needs of increasing numbers of students using our technology services, help desk hours will be expanded from 40 hours to 75 hours per week.

But perhaps most visible is the fact that beginning tomorrow, all Roosevelt students will have a Roosevelt University email account.  This will dramatically improve communication between the students, the faculty, and the administrative units on every level.  It should also help to foster a higher level of community cohesiveness than was previously possible. 

Finally, we all have special stories of the amount of spam that we used to get, not to mention some of the unusual services and products that were offered.  While you may still get some occasional spam, since no filtering system is foolproof, we are no longer besieged on our personal computers by waves of unwanted junk mail.  The numbers being screened by central filters are astonishing.   For the 12 months ending August 31, 2006, of the 17.8 million emails received, 14.2 million (80%) were blocked as spam -- that’s 39,200 a day!  I mention this because sometimes progress is measured not by what happens but by what doesn’t happen.  My thanks to the people in the Division of Information Technology for taking the steps that will visibly and invisibly improve our technology over the next few years.

2. Enrollment Trends

All the numbers that I will report in this section are from Friday, September 1, 2006.  I know that they are understated because Gwen Kanelos and the Admissions Staff worked Saturday to assure that late applicants could start the term on time. I thank them for this and their efforts all year—great job.

New student registrations on the Chicago Campus continue to be strong, with an increase of 9% over last fall, which is what we budgeted for in the new enrollment management plan.  This is an increase in Chicago for the fourth consecutive year.  These and projected future increases have made compelling the expansion of both the numbers and the types of facilities we own in the Loop. 

Modern facilities and an expanded physical presence in the Loop underlay the Board’s vote in June to acquire property for downtown expansion.

Over the summer we worked diligently to implement this resolution and I am pleased to report that the University now has the Fine Arts Annex adjacent to the Herman Crown Center on Wabash under contract.  The combined site is large enough for us to begin to envision and plan for a new facility that will meet our academic and student services needs in Chicago in new and exciting ways.

In Schaumburg recent enrollment reports have not been as promising.  New students and overall enrollment have both declined in each of the past three years.  This fall, however, the story is more encouraging.  Projections are that new students will be up over 20% and that our retention rate continues to be high at 74%, indicating high levels of student satisfaction.  Due to a third straight banner year for graduation in 2005-06, however, this increase is partially offset by 8% fewer returning students.  Even so, it is possible that our overall enrollment on the Suburban Campus will be very close to last fall’s numbers, perhaps in headcount but more likely in credit hours.   The numbers are in flux and these are, after all, just predictions, but the prognosis is encouraging.

It is important to note that we are seeing a significant turn around in new student interest, driven in part by our Saturday Fast Track offerings, as well as other factors.  Though it is too early to tell how much of an impact these changes in scheduling will have overall, early indicators are that they will be especially significant for the College of Education.  There are already more than 40 students registered in the Saturday Fast Track Elementary Education Master’s program.  This cohort comes from 24 cities and suburbs as far south as Calumet City, as far west as Huntley, and as far northwest as Cary.  Sharon Grant tells me that it is composed of adult career changers who are enrolling largely because weekday and evening classes do not work for them, whereas Saturday enrollment does.

If we are to secure additional enrollment growth in Schaumburg, we must think in the future about our Suburban Campus differently at some level than we do currently. We must be cognizant that our student mix and thus our competition in the suburbs is different than our competition downtown.  Over the course of the summer suburban community leaders, University Trustees, faculty and staff have been discussing ideas about creating a suburban vision for Roosevelt University and the extent to which this vision must be different from our vision for Chicago.  In these tough and forthright discussions, which I would characterize is a frank exchange of ideas and perceptions on our current operation, we explored some of the ways that we can effectively implement change in Schaumburg while we maintain our commitment to common core values and the Roosevelt University mission on both campuses.

As a result of this strategic discussion a consensus emerged that Roosevelt, in order to succeed in the suburbs, will need to foster a bottom-up, unit-driven development of proposed enhancements in Schaumburg, with leadership in these discussions coming from faculty in the departments working closely with the College deans and the Provost.  My preliminary conversations with faculty members who have participated in these discussions indicate that there will be many different responses that emerge in these conversations.  I welcome that differentiation, as in the end it will help assure that our Suburban Campus is both committed to unambiguous academic excellence consistent with the University’s overall mission and that it employs academic strategies that will enable Roosevelt to better serve the educational market and the unique and changing needs of the suburban communities, especially when they differ from those of our Chicago Campus.

Finally, there will be corresponding administrative adjustments that will better support and make possible these unit-driven academic changes.

My last comments on enrollment have to do with our summer program, enrollment in which was once again down this summer.  The Provost will be working with the faculty and deans to develop a plan to reverse this trend beginning in the summer of 2007.  Some questions to consider are:  “Who are our summer school students?  What are we trying to accomplish academically with them?  What incentives are necessary in order to assure success at the unit level?”  Summer programs should be an important part of the University’s full year academic profile just as they are a key component of our overall budgetary planning.  There should be a great deal of excitement about what we do with summer programming as we consider these opportunities and challenges.  I look forward to receiving the recommendations that will emerge from these discussions and to a stronger summer session in 2007.

3. Student Success

We can measure our quality and growing reputation by the individual and collective successes of not only our faculty but of the students as well.  Because I focus on this issue at great length in my State of the University address each January, I will mention here just one element of this story: the increased student retention and graduation rates over the past three years. 

For first time, full-time freshmen the retention into the sophomore year has improved from 51.9% in 2002-03 to 68.9% last year.  This year the numbers are not yet final but it appears that they will be close to the same level.  We still have work to do in this area, but the progress so far is palpable. 

Six-year graduation rates are also on the rise which has led for each of the last two years to graduation of more than 2000 new alumni, a first in the history of Roosevelt.  

Individual success stories abound.  We will be publishing as many as we can in future issues of Roosevelt Review.  If you or your students, past and present, have them to share, please be sure that we hear from you or them.

4. Student Life Issues

Integral to but somewhat different from student success are matters affecting the quality of student life on each campus. 

To begin with Chicago, we have a record number of students living on Campus.   For the fall of 2007, we will have over 550 students living in the residence halls.  This is an increase of 11.3% over last fall (which was itself a record number) and an increase of 120% since 2002.  Given the importance of residential life in community building, these numbers are vital to our overall efforts to enhance student satisfaction that lies at the core of student academic success. 

In Schaumburg, the new lounges are in regular use when classes are in session and we will soon reopen the cafeteria with food service provided by a local catering company, “Snack.”  In Chicago, we have expanded the concept of remodeling public spaces, begun in the Fainman Lounge in 2004, to include the Michigan Avenue lobby where new furniture and carpeting was installed late last spring.  This fall, we will open a coffee shop in the lobby to further support community use of that space.

Members of the two Student Government Associations successfully initiated a student activity fee this past year.  Student leaders will determine proportionally funded programs on each Campus this year that will enliven campus life at both locations in many exciting ways.

Finally, there has been continued growth of intramural sports on the Chicago Campus.  One outcome is that Roosevelt once again has a baseball team called the Lakers.  Baseball at Roosevelt is a club sport, which is the intermediate level of competition between on-campus intramurals and intercollegiate athletics.  The first fall game (three were played last May) will be held on the campus of Northeastern Illinois University on September 15, at 3:00 p.m.  I hope to see many of you there.

5. Development/Fundraising

We need a robust campus discussion of the role that private giving to Roosevelt should and can reasonably play in financing our overall success.  Therefore, I will ask the Senate Executive Committee to sponsor an open discussion of these issues in advance of the October Senate meeting when the final Senate report on last year’s fundraising is due.  Only when the full range of opportunities and challenges that Roosevelt faces in this area are more generally understood can we determine what levels of success are reasonable to expect.

The preliminary data for this past year on two key indicators of our progress, however, are important to give here as a preliminary introduction to these discussions. As of 8/30/06, total gifts and pledges will be up approximately 20% from last year to $6.6 million, thanks in part to a 12% increase in donors this year.  This broadens the base of donors to the institution while strengthening the foundations upon which future giving will be based.  In this total, the Annual Fund increased over the previous year by 5% to $925,000. 

There are many other pieces of data to be used in evaluating our progress in development and fundraising that I will share in the coming weeks when we have the final numbers.  My belief, however, is that our progress has been significant and will continue to be so in the future.  I also know, however, that we need to do better if our overall goals and aspirations are to be attained and these forthcoming discussions will help focus us all on a collective commitment to common goals in this vial area.

Conclusion

I will end with another story.  As you all know, I am not now, nor have I ever been, enamored with the U.S. News and World Report annual educational rankings.  That said, since others watch them, so do I, as a bellwether both of public awareness of our progress compared to our peer institutions and, because 75% of the ranking score is determined by quantitative results such as graduation rates and percentage of alumni giving – that is, they are objective measurements of our progress on indicators that matter to us.   

When we started tracking these rankings in 2002, Roosevelt was in the fourth tier and ranked 109th.  This year, as in each of the intervening years, we once again moved up slightly, from 92nd to 85th overall out of 143 institutions ranked.  While we are still in the third tier we have moved closer to the second with all the benefits that will accrue to being in that higher group once we get there.

Progress is steady -- slower than you and I might like it to be, perhaps, but it is based upon true change and measurable success.  In short, it is foundational, not superficial.  If the Roosevelt legacy, of which we are all so proud, is to continue well into the 21st century, it behooves us, the current stewards of that tradition, to stay the course we have set for ourselves.  The enhanced substance of our results and the resulting buzz will continue and there are even more exciting days ahead when we do.  Count on it!

Thank you for your time and I look forward to engaging your ideas on these and other issues as the year progresses.