Installation Address
President Charles Middleton

March 10, 2003

Thank you Chairman Mitchell. I accept this original charter, and commit myself to its twin principles of equal opportunity for all and freedom to seek and disseminate the truth.

What a wonderful occasion and a stimulating ceremony this has been. Thanks to all of you for coming today and sharing this joyous occasion with me.

I would like to begin by thanking a number of people who helped make this day possible.

First, to Board Chairman Jim Mitchell and all the members of Roosevelt University’s Board of Trustees, especially Don Hunt, who headed up the Presidential Search Committee: Thanks for the confidence you have shown in me. I will do everything I can to live up to the values of Roosevelt University. I ask for your continued guidance and engagement as we work to enhance Roosevelt’s future.

To my predecessors Chancellor Ted Gross and President Emeritus Rolf Weil: Thanks for your support, advice and many years of accomplishments. Your achievements prepared the very foundations upon which we will continue to build this extraordinarily special place. In a real sense, we who are the stewards of Roosevelt University today can aspire to greatness because of your work in elevating the University in the past.

To the elected officials who are with us today: Thanks to each of you for your ongoing support of higher education generally and specifically.

Please join me in recognizing

• Congressman Danny Davis of the 7th District in Illinois
• State Representative Terry Parke of the 44th District

Visionary leadership from public officials like these men and others who could not be here today is as vital as it is sometimes hard to find. We are honored to have you among our friends and allies.

To all the university presidents, and delegates from universities across the country, and especially my friends and former mentors who taught me so much

-- Sidney Ribeau from Bowling Green State University and Don Langenberg from the University System of Maryland -- thanks for joining us today. You honor Roosevelt University with your presence. It is a privilege to have you here.

To my friend and colleague Freeman Hrabowski: Thanks not only for your thoughtful and encouraging comments here this morning, but for your continued support as I work to achieve goals we share. Your encouragement over the years means more than I can ever tell you.

To Anne Roosevelt, my new friend and the granddaughter of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: Thanks for rekindling the words of your grandmother here today. I will look to your guidance and continuous advice as the future unfolds. We will do great things together.

To the other members of the platform party who spoke this morning: Thanks for your very kind words of support. I look forward to working closely with each of you for the betterment of Roosevelt University.

To our musical performers today: Thanks for allowing us to enjoy the beauty of your music and for making the ceremony so special. I would especially like to thank our artist faculty members who are performers with the Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera Orchestras: Dale Clevenger, Jay Friedman, Tage (TAG-UH) Larsen, Robert Parton, Channing Philbrick, Gene Pokorny, and Charles Schuchat (SHOOK-IT).

To the Roosevelt University staff, faculty, students and alumni: John and I feel a warm personal welcome in our new University community. Thanks for making us feel at home here. You have already taught me much about this place, and you have been receptive to my ideas. You have been great colleagues during this time of transition just as I know you will continue to be as we embrace the future together.

This ceremony marks the culmination of a period of celebration of Roosevelt University’s successes. During the past week, we have enjoyed numerous events to highlight the accomplishments of faculty, staff and students throughout the University. These events, which are listed in the program, are too numerous to mention individually, but I do want to single one out.

Fifty Roosevelt student photographers have capture life at the University – snow and all – in a creative exhibit call “Snapshots in Time.” This was the students’ idea, and it is a wonderful way to see our Roosevelt University community in action. The exhibit is on the second floor of the University. I hope that you will all see and enjoy it after this ceremony.

My thanks to Michael Durnil and the entire Installation Committee for organizing all of the Installation Week activities. This has been an energizing celebration of Roosevelt.

All my family is here for this occasion and it has been wonderful to spend time with them over the past few days. They know how much I cherish each and every one of them.

Finally, allow me to introduce four extra special people:

• John’s parents, Kenneth and Josephine Geary, who traveled from California and who have been unfailingly kind to me ever since we met nearly a quarter a century ago
• My mother, Dorothy, who really is from Kansas! Mom came here from our family home in Georgia to see how it has finally turned out after 58 years of watching me grow-up! All I can tell you mom, is to keep watching as I’m still a work in progress, and
• My life partner, John Geary.

What a privilege it is to be standing here on the stage of the Auditorium Theatre – a special place by any definition of the word “special.”

It is awe inspiring to know that this building, designed by two of the greatest architects of all time, Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, is as impressive and functional today as it was in 1889 when it opened and when its electric lights and air conditioning were novel ideas.

This is the most magnificent university-owned theatre in the world, and a treasure that Roosevelt University will always preserve and protect.

In this theatre

Baryshnikov danced,
Marian Anderson sang,
Sarah Bernhardt acted, and
Theodore Roosevelt was nominated for president.

More importantly, it’s where we hold our commencements and celebrate the accomplishments of those who earn their degrees at Roosevelt University.

In January of this year, Roosevelt held its most recent winter Commencement Ceremony in this very place. It was an impressive sight as more than 650 graduates marched across the stage individually to receive their diplomas and to accept applause and congratulations from their relatives and friends. Since the University’s founding in 1945, more than 60,000 women and men have become alumni. More will do so in the future as we accelerate graduation rates through enhanced retention and student success.

Our graduates have gone on to successful careers in business, law, politics, performing arts, education, community service, advertising and many other areas. And some, like General Jacques Paul Klein, Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations and Coordinator of the United Nations Operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, are currently serving our country and working to maintain international peace. Everyday these alumni serve as a reminder of the University’s global reach.

Roosevelt University’s founding was an event that attracted international attention because courageous women and men stood tall for a set of principles they believed in. Following several years of debate, in April of 1945, Edward J. Sparling, President of Chicago’s Central YMCA College, wrote a letter to his board chairman in which he said, in part:

“During the past year, the college board took action seeking to limit academic freedom, and members of the board, individually, tried limiting [the enrollment of] certain minority groups, particularly Negroes. Realizing that the college cannot further develop under these auspices, and [that] under these circumstances can no longer remain true to its pledge of academic freedom and equal educational opportunities for all, and being personally unwilling to compromise on these principles, I hereby submit my resignation as President … under protest.”

Remarkably, 98% of the faculty and students stood behind their president and left the YMCA College to form a new college, originally to be named after Thomas Jefferson. However, as Anne Roosevelt has pointed out, when Franklin Roosevelt died, shortly thereafter, the school was renamed Roosevelt College.

“The college will be a memorial to President Roosevelt,” Board Chairman Edwin Embree declared shortly after FDR’s death. “It will embody the democratic principles to which President Roosevelt gave his life, and it will always stand for academic freedom and racial equality.” Today we reaffirm that always means, always!

Recently, we have heard a great deal of talk about heroes, and we have witnessed a debate about whether in today’s fast-paced world, people really do still have heroes, be they women or men. Well, in my book the founders of Roosevelt College were heroes. They didn’t know what would happen if they rebelled against the YMCA, but they knew that the status quo wasn’t right. They made a tough decision to take charge of their destiny, and they were prepared to live with the consequences.

That is a lesson for us all, and one of the reasons we cherish the founders of our University even today. They were visionaries long before their ideals were embedded in the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s. Every day, we embody their bold vision – and every day, we have a sacred trust to expand upon it. It will be a cardinal goal of my presidency to assure that their passion for social justice and high-quality educational opportunity remain the twin beacons that guide all of our activity.

The early years at Roosevelt were truly golden. Professors and students worked closely together and the College was alive with activity from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. The first classes at Roosevelt College were held in September of 1945 and 1,300 students enrolled. One year later, that number had grown to 3,600 students – remarkable growth for such a young institution.

I have met many of those who taught and studied at Roosevelt in those early years. They are a remarkable group of people whose stories have expanded my knowledge about this foundational period and have moved my heart.

I would like to pay tribute to our earliest alumni by asking everyone who graduated from Roosevelt College or the YMCA College before 1955 to please stand and be recognized.

I’d like to say something about each of you special people, but time doesn’t permit me to do so. However, I do want to recognize two individuals:

• Mrs. Florence Chill, our earliest graduate here today – class of 1940. She and all the other YMCA graduates are also alumni of Roosevelt.
• And Dr. Howard Johnson, who graduated from the YMCA College in 1943. Dr. Johnson went on to become President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is here today as a delegate representing MIT.

In the fall of 1946, President Sparling spoke at the first Senate meeting of the academic year and outlined his vision for Roosevelt College. Rolf Weil, our distinguished emeritus president, was a business professor at the time and attended this meeting.

He recalls that the College’s chief librarian, Marjorie Kennleyside, was then the secretary of the Senate. She recorded in the minutes that President Sparling gave an inspired address. At the next meeting, when approval of the minutes was asked for, professor Helmut Hirsch rose to object to the secretary’s having characterized Sparling’s remarks as “inspiring.” Hirsch said that the faculty was perfectly capable of making its own decisions as to whether the president’s remarks were inspiring. President Sparling, to his credit, immediately rose and moved that the world “inspiring” be stricken from the record.

I’m happy to report that the Roosevelt University Senate even today successfully maintains this tradition of aversion to the use of adjectives to describe the President’s remarks!

The central question I would like to pose today is this: How do we extend this marvelous legacy so that students of the next decade, from 2003 to 2013, can be imbued with the same sense of excitement, fulfillment and accomplishment as those who studied here in that first decade, from 1945 to 1955?

When I first began my discussions with you during the Presidential Search process, I must confess that I didn’t know much about the University other than where it was located. Since that initial chat with a representative of the Search Committee in the fall of 2001, I have learned a great deal; and though, to be sure, there is much more to learn, I have begun to develop my personal sense of this place and its meanings.

I am here today to share the news from that ongoing course of study -- my continuing education about Roosevelt University -- that I have been privileged to undertake.

You know and I know that what we offer students today must be as vital and as important as what the University offered students five decades ago. That commitment, while broad, at the very least compels us to assure them:

• An opportunity to learn from outstanding, caring faculty members.
• An opportunity to pursue a wide variety of rigorous academic programs.
• An opportunity to study in one of the world’s most dynamic cities.
• An opportunity to become involved in meaningful community service.
• An opportunity to interact with creative and diverse classmates.
• And most important, an opportunity to welcome -- not just to admit -- into our community students, faculty, staff and others without regard to race, religion, disability, national origin, or sexual orientation.

These are the characteristics of our Roosevelt University educational community. Our commitment to them has made Roosevelt a special place since 1945. They will continue to be the essence of our mission, however we adapt it to the imperatives of the 21st Century.

During my tenure as President, as I have noted, I have met hundreds of Roosevelt University alumni. All of them can recall the name of at least one Roosevelt professor who had a powerful impact on their lives.

History Professor Paul Johnson, Sociologist St. Clair Drake, Accounting Professor Samuel Specthrie, and Political Science Professor Frank Untermyer are but some of the early faculty members who were mentioned several times as having been both outstanding teachers and caring mentors.

From this group, Professor Untermyer is with us this morning. Would you please rise, Frank, so that we can thank you? By your presence we honor all those other faculty and staff from those early years for all they have done for Roosevelt University from its inception.

Recently, one alumnus captured the spirit of those early years in a note he sent to welcome me as President. He wrote: “When I first began my studies at Roosevelt in the late 1940s, I was the graduate of a leading New England prep school, an Ivy League College and was a Naval officer stationed in Chicago. What Roosevelt gave me that I had not had before was the encouragement and enthusiasm of some great, devoted academic minds and teachers. They instilled in me a love and respect for serious scholarship, which inspires me still.”

That tradition of academic excellence remains an integral part of our aspirations and accomplishments today and for the future. Current students with whom I have pizza a couple of times a month, both in Chicago and in Schaumburg, tell me heart-warming stories of numerous faculty members who persist in maintaining it.

Doing original research or creative work while simultaneously engaging our students through excellent teaching takes a great deal of time and discipline. When you combine those activities with advising, going to departmental meetings, mentoring students and attending meetings of professional organizations, the life of a university professor can be extremely hectic. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our faculty who go the extra mile to work with our students. Your dedication is in the best Roosevelt University tradition. I salute you.

However, to rest on our laurels, to seek to maintain the status quo, is not only not to grow -- it is to fall behind in the highly competitive world of higher education. We must always look for ways to improve. We must recognize that every curriculum can be strengthened, and that the bar of intellectual challenge and excitement must continually move upward.

At Roosevelt, we must aspire not only to clear that bar in all of our programs; we must aspire to set it at the highest level in the first place.

One of my major goals will be to ensure that all of our academic programs are unambiguously rigorous, and that the talented faculty members who teach in them have the resources that they need to attain that excellence to which they aspire.

Along those lines, many have argued that we have too many academic programs to enable us to succeed in this endeavor. We’ve grown from approximately 51 areas of concentration in 1955 to 126 today. We do a disservice to both our students and our faculty when we stretch ourselves too thin. It is time to conduct a thoughtful review of our entire academic program to ensure that each degree program we offer is deep enough to be competitive with the strongest programs of its type. Shallow ranges in course offerings do not serve the interests of our students even when the individual courses themselves are well-taught.

If the program reviews are done well, and I believe they will be, they will foster academic excellence at all levels and will provide guidance about both the most efficient use of available resources and the ways in which we can expand current resources to enhance our success in the future.

One of our most important resources, of course, is this building, which we purchased for back taxes in 1946, one year after Roosevelt was founded. It is a national historic landmark and is considered by Town and Country Magazine to be one of the 10 most influential buildings ever built. This impressive list includes the Parthenon, Chartres Cathedral and the Guggenheim Museum, among other famous places.

We all know that location is everything. Those of you visiting us for the first time, and perhaps some who have come here more often, may be unaware that Roosevelt is located in the most vibrant educational community in the nation. Our Chicago Campus anchors what is informally called the Chicago Educational Corridor. Within one mile of our front door on Michigan Avenue, there are 24 institutions of higher education enrolling more than 70,000 students.

It is impossible to over estimate the value of being located in the heart of downtown Chicago and to stand at the epicenter of this urban educational village. This city offers an endless number of opportunities from internships and jobs to cultural institutions and social activities. We need to assure that these priceless resources are fully integrated into Roosevelt’s academic and social fabric, and so we shall.

Our challenge is to see to it that Roosevelt is always on everybody’s list of institutions known for the quality of higher education available in Chicago – that we are as distinguished in that regard as other universities here are leading examples of nationally prominent research universities. When people everywhere think of higher education in Chicago, our name and reputation should always be used as one example of the best the City has to offer. We already have stories to tell; the challenge is to build upon them and to assure that they become part of the educational milieu both locally and nationally.

What do I mean by that? As an example, we are reaching out to 18 to 24-year-old students with new student housing options. When it opens in the fall of 2004, the new University Center of Chicago, at State Street and Congress Parkway, will provide attractive and desirable living quarters in the South Loop for 300 Roosevelt students. And housing needs for students attending the Schaumburg Campus should be actively discussed as we seek to expand our reach in that part of Chicagoland.

As another example, in the near future, we’ll also be reaching out to a new group of students, many of them traditional age, who are attending community colleges across the region. New partnerships will allow us to bring faculty and programs onto community college campuses so that students will be able to earn their Roosevelt degrees without leaving their communities. It’s a phenomenon that’s been picking up steam in many parts of the country, and we’re going to be a leader, just as we’ve been with our distance learning initiative, RU Online.

RU Online has not only exceeded enrollment expectations, but because of our commitment to excellence in pedagogy and our insistence on having explicit learning outcomes in every course, it has become a respected model for other distance-learning programs around the country. I expect it will continue to attract increasing numbers of non-traditional students who will continue to make up the majority of our overall enrollment.

Our success overall, however, cannot be measured solely by these accomplishments in our Chicago Campus, or in cyberspace.

Just as Roosevelt was one of the first universities in the South Loop, we were one of the first universities to realize the potential and needs of the Northwest suburbs. Our presence in this growing area has been a boon to both the University and the communities there, as more than 3,200 students now take courses at our modern facility at the Schaumburg Campus. They, like students at the Chicago Campus, encompass a wide range of ages and backgrounds.

These suburban communities are increasingly diverse and are now addressing issues long commonly part of Chicago’s heritage. The new immigrant communities in Palatine, Arlington Heights, Des Plaines and other villages and cities aspire to college degrees for people in all generations. Mayors and other political leaders seek research and practical solutions on how to develop communities that are advantaged by the presence of an increasingly diverse population. Business leaders look for ways to provide timely and cost-effective education to employees so that their workforce is better prepared than ever. Educators in the public schools and in the community colleges seek ways to expand upon their programs, especially for position-based and returning adults.

In short, they all are looking to us for the answers and ideas and opportunity that Roosevelt has long since been distinguished for providing. Thanks to Ted Gross’s visionary leadership a decade ago, we can look to them as partners in attaining our Roosevelt University mission to be a dynamic institutional citizen for all parts of Chicagoland.

As all of us know, university life encompasses much more than what goes on in the classroom. Dr. Sparling and the other founders of Roosevelt College believed very strongly that this should be an institution dedicated to the principles of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Accordingly, social justice must remain an important part of our mission, indeed of our very soul.

Throughout the years, there has been a great deal of discussion about what the phrase “social justice” means. As interesting as that debate is, in a time when all universities profess, albeit some more actively than others, to be dedicated to that principle, for Roosevelt it may no longer be the right question. As one of the founders of the concept as it applies to institutions of higher education, I think Roosevelt University needs to ask a new question, which is, what is the distinguishing characteristic of our historic commitment to social justice, and how do we know that we are succeeding at attaining it?

The distinguished educator Ernest Boyer could have been talking about Roosevelt University when he wrote: “A sense of service is expected among adults, but a commitment to civic duty doesn’t just emerge. It begins early, and if we want good citizenship among older people, it surely must become a part of students’ lives. The goal is not only to prepare students for careers, but also to enable them to live with dignity and purpose; not only to give knowledge to the student, but also to channel knowledge to humane ends.”

In short, social justice at Roosevelt University in the 21st Century, while it continues to be at some level about access and opportunity, needs to focus more on outcomes -- on what it means to be a Roosevelt graduate, irrespective of your degree program. There is a growing chorus for whom the answer lies in civic engagement as a part of everything we do, as a part of every course of study.

While there are numerous examples of how many Roosevelt people are already engaged in meaningful community activities, let me mention but one.

On Saturday, over 180 members of the Roosevelt community – students, faculty, staff and alumni – rolled up their sleeves and spent the day working at seven social service organizations in honor of Installation Week. I thank everyone who gave up a weekend day to participate in this worthwhile event and I challenge us all to make this activity a regular occurrence in our annual list of Roosevelt activities.

Finally, I want to end with a look to our future. It falls to the President of every great University the responsibility and the pleasure to imagine and to dream. As a child of the 60’s, I came to understand that the worst fate for institutions, as for individuals, is a loss of imagination.

Many of you here recall when the late Senator Robert Kennedy said, in another period of uncertainty and apprehension, “All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don’t. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity. There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

Permit me therefore to conclude in this spirit with what I dream for Roosevelt University.

To put my dreams into context, you need to know that I use as my oracle for much of this dreaming Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 until 1987, who once astutely said, in an axiom that is often quoted but little understood, that all politics is local. Middleton’s corollary is that all educational opportunity begins in the neighborhoods you serve. And so, when I dream,

• I envision a Roosevelt University that is the exciting institution of choice for increasing numbers of students who live and work in Chicago and the surrounding communities – a university that better prepares all students for success in a global economy, even while it teaches them to cherish the imperatives of civic engagement in their neighborhood.
• I envision a Roosevelt University that continues to attract increasing numbers of students from across the country and throughout the world to study with world-class professors in our very special place with all that it uniquely offers.
• I envision a Roosevelt University that alumni and others point to with pride as an institution that delivers and then continually redelivers on its promise of unambiguous excellence in a lifetime of learning, and is a University with alumni who generously support our efforts with their time and with their treasure.
• I envision a Roosevelt University that continues to open its doors to students of all economic and educational backgrounds because they not only deserve the very best education, they shouldn’t have to travel far from home to have access to it.
• And, I envision a Roosevelt University where the excitement and energy of people who work and study here infuses the whole community, and where the success of each individual is deemed to be the success of the community as a whole.

During these complicated and confusing times, an education of the highest quality, based on and uniformly dedicated to the principles of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, couldn’t be more important.

I am honored that the Board of Trustees selected me to lead the only university named after these great Americans. This job is the ultimate expression of everything I stand for – everything that I believe in. In a sense, my entire career has been a prologue – a prologue designed to prepare me for the opportunity to contribute to the continued growth and development of Roosevelt University in exciting new ways, while at the same time maintaining the traditions and foundations upon which our community is based.

I pledge to you today that I will work along side each and every one of you as hard as I know how to assure our individual and collective success in this endeavor.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.