General Faculty Meeting — Thursday, May 8, 2008 — Brooks Center
Thank you, and congratulations again to all of our award winners and retiring faculty members we honor here today. Your contributions to Clemson University have been tremendous, and we thank you for them.
To our Emeritus Faculty, I say: We may have to close the University. You have ensured that the Clemson Experience has meaning and significance for our students. We are grateful to you.
I.
By tradition, this meeting in May is the one focused most clearly on faculty. That’s especially appropriate this year because we are at a very interesting place in the cultural landscape.
A college professor has written America’s current Number-One best-selling book. More astonishing than that – the book is based on a college lecture.
That one-hour lecture went viral on the internet. Between You Tube, ABC News and Oprah Winfrey, it has been seen in whole or in part by 10 million people.
You know by now, of course, that I am speaking of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Dr. Pausch has terminal cancer. But he used his last lecture to share his thoughts on living — not dying — with his students, and with his own children. He did that with such grace, intelligence, wisdom and humor that the lecture’s impact has reached far beyond the academy and has become a universal lesson in living.
Randy Pausch is a self-described computer nerd. Earnest. Optimistic. Even corny.
He is un-ashamed to be un-hip.
He cares about his students. He is demanding. He is a great teacher. And this geeky, un-hip professor is one of the most admired men in America today. I just have to think this is good news for Clemson, and for higher education.
We often speak of “teachable moments.” I believe this may be one such moment, when academic culture and the popular culture meet and intersect briefly.
Many of our students next year will have seen The Last Lecture. Even more of our students’ parents will have encountered it.
They have a better feeling, today, about college professors. They have a better understanding, today, of the real value of higher education.
And we have a chance, today, to show them that there are many professors in our universities who are as talented, dedicated and caring as Randy Pausch. Some of them are in this room with us this morning.
We, in the academy, also have a chance to learn from Randy Pausch. The Last Lecture has life lessons for anyone, but there is particular wisdom here for us as teachers.
You have heard me say before that I believe there is genuine greatness in each of our students at Clemson – the kind of greatness that can change the world. Our task is to help each of our students find the greatness that is within, and to help them nurture it so that they can leave this place and change the world.
Dr. Pausch can help us accomplish this task with his lecture on “Achieving Childhood Dreams.” He talked about how he achieved almost all of his dreams through persistence and education.
For that, he thanks his mentors – first his parents, then his coaches, his teachers and his professors at Brown and Carnegie-Mellon.
He subscribes to the philosophy of Walt Disney: “If you can dream it, you can do it.” And he instills that confidence in his students.
He believes: “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” He teaches that by example every day.
He credits his parents with teaching him this philosophy: “If you have a question, then find the answer. Open the encyclopedia. Open the dictionary. Open your mind.”
He was wait-listed at Brown and initially rejected for the Ph.D. program at Carnegie Mellon.
But he believes: “The brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. They’re there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”
And this quote: “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. It’s a phrase worth considering at every brick wall we encounter, and at every disappointment. It’s also a reminder that failure is not just acceptable; it’s often essential.”
The one childhood dream Randy Pausch did not achieve was to play in the NFL. But he says:
“I sometimes think I got more from pursuing the dream and not accomplishing it … than I did from many of the ones I did accomplish.”
He had a very tough youth football coach who worked, he says, in a “no-coddling zone.” He learned teamwork, and he learned that: “When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you … that means they’ve given up on you.”
There are several chapters that speak directly to us as university teachers and administrators.
In Chapter 24, entitled A Recovering Jerk, he gives very practical advice on how to help students learn to judge themselves honestly. He believes there is “too much stroking and too little real feedback” in education today.
He doesn’t completely reject the customer-service model of higher education. But he says we need to be careful to use the right business metaphor.
“It’s not retail,” he writes -- a degree in exchange for tuition. “I would compare it to paying for a personal trainer at an athletic club.” We professors play the role of trainer, giving students instruction and access to the equipment. “But after that, it is our job to be demanding,” he says.
“A professor’s job is to teach students how to see their minds growing in the same way they can see their muscles grow.” That is, when they put in the effort in the gym. I believe each of our students and their parents can understand this metaphor
In Chapter 26, he tells how his students blew him away with their team projects in a course called Building Virtual Worlds. What he loved most was that teamwork was so central to their success. “In this course, you can’t do it alone,” they learned. The success he had is exactly what we hope for our students on Creative Inquiry teams at Clemson.
And finally, he writes: “It’s a thrill to fulfill your own childhood dreams. But as you get older, you may find that enabling the dreams of others is even more fun.”
He believes in paying it forward, and that’s what he’s done with this remarkable little book.
II.
Randy Pausch is not in denial about his disease. But he is described by his doctor as “the poster boy for the healthy balance between optimism and realism.” I would like to think that describes Clemson University, too.
We face some serious challenges next year because of fear and uncertainty over the economy,and because of falling state revenues. But our challenges are nothing compared to fighting cancer. And we are facing them with a healthy balance between optimism and realism.
The state budget process for next year is not over. We are continuing to work with Columbia.
However, we know we face funding cuts … coupled with inflation in energy and other costs … coupled with unfunded state mandates for pay and fringe benefits increases.
The combined effect could amount to an almost 8% reduction in E&G state funding and a roughly 5% reduction in PSA state funding.
Obviously, we continue to look at internal reallocations and to cost-savings through our discovery process. We will work together, look deeper and be even more efficient. We will seek alternative revenues and collaborative funding.
We are sensitive to the real hardships that families face because of a weakening economy, rising costs and turmoil in the credit markets, which is also affecting student loans.
But we will not turn to discussions of tuition and fees until we have completed all of the steps I’ve just outlined, sometime later this summer.
In all of this work, we will be guided by a set of principles, among them:
- We affirm our commitment to our Top 20 vision, the 10-year goals we adopted in 2001 and the eight Emphasis Areas.
- We are committed to maintaining and increasing quality as a hallmark of a Top 20 university.
- We will build on previous efforts and lessons learned, … and
- We will work together as “One Clemson.”
The planning under way right now in your departments and colleges will be closely tied to funding decisions made in the coming years. We will also align our private fund-raising efforts with Road Map priorities.
My final message to you today is a reminder: “We have been here before, my friends.”
Those of you who were around when we began our quest for the Top-20 know that that goal was born in a time of even greater budget pressure and more uncertain funding.
Yet somehow Clemson managed not only to survive, but to thrive and move forward.
As Professor Randy Pausch would say: The obstacles are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.
Thank you, and have a great summer.