Dear Clemson Faculty and Staff,
I did a little something different in my remarks to the General Faculty Meeting on May 8, because I was touched, as so many have been, by the story of Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch. His Last Lecture contains much wisdom for all of us – teachers, administrators, parents and students. I wanted to honor that in my remarks to faculty, which can be found here.
I also realized that a “State of the University” talk this spring would have been just too long with too much ground to cover. There have been some remarkable accomplishments announced this semester, and we have reached some important milestones. Here are just a few.
- Physics Professor Terry Tritt won the SC Governor’s Research Award.
- mtiaz Haque was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering.
- Three young faculty members received NSF Career Awards: Pu-chun Ke, Krishna Madhavan and Yong Huang.
- Our students have won two national championships: The Pershing Rifles and the Clemson Ethics Bowl team.
- Two students were named Goldwater Scholars, Shannon Edd and Julee Alaina Floyd.
- Senior Jeff McLaren won the “Best Director” award at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.
- Today we will award our first Ph.D. in humanities – a doctorate in Rhetorics, Communication and Information Design — to John “Mac” McArthur.
- The Cliffs Communities gave land and $10 million to support a Teacher Renewal Center which Clemson will run in conjunction with the SC Department of Education.
- We received total of $2.6 million in gifts from the Cheezem family and the Bernard Osher Foundation for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute; and
- $5 million in funding for a new Innovation Center received State approval.
Among the cultural and community highlights were:
- visits from the National Symphony and the radio show, “Whad’Ya Know?” at the Brooks Center.
- The first Clemson Literary Festival held March 6-8
- The national kickoff for Focus the Nation in January.
We also welcomed thousands of very bright middle and high school students for the FIRST Regional Robotics Competition, the Upstate Regional Science Fair and the LEGO League regional and statewide competitions.
On May 19-21, the first CyberInfrastructure (CI) Days Workshop will be held. This important meeting will help faculty understand how recent improvements in our capabilities for high performance computing can impact and support scholarship, teaching, research and outreach across the disciplines. I am grateful that the response to this workshop has been so positive.
Thank you for all you do for Clemson University. Have a great summer.
James F. Barker, FAIA
President