2007 National Conference of Epsilon Sigma Phi
September 13, 2007
Charleston, SC — Francis Marion Hotel
I am honored to be invited to address this outstanding group of Extension professionals and delighted to welcome you once again to South Carolina. I know you heard from Charleston Mayor Joe Riley yesterday, and you’ve had a chance to explore a little bit of this beautiful city. You now know why Charleston is the perfect location for a conference that focuses our attention on globalization and its effects.
I find it interesting that so many people think this is somehow a new phenomenon.
The truth is, the foundation of Charleston history is global agriculture. On the eve of the American Revolution, Charleston was the 4th largest city in the 13 colonies, but it had the highest per capita income. The great wealth of the Port City was based, in large part, on the export of rice and other agricultural and forest products from the New World to the Old World.
Fast forward 70 years, and a young man named Thomas Green Clemson — my university’s founder — was appointed the chief U.S. diplomat to Belgium. He negotiated the first trade and navigation treaty between our two nations. Ratified in 1846, it eliminated tariffs, and opened up direct trade routes between Antwerp and New York for the export of cotton and other raw materials and the import of finished goods.
Today, you will find that South Carolina once again has one of the most globalized economies of any U.S. state. More than 350 European-owned companies call our state home. One out of every 12 private sector jobs can be attributed to foreign-owned companies, the highest percentage in the nation.
Not surprisingly, Germany is first and France is second on the list of the Top-10 foreign employers in South Carolina. Both BMW and Michelin have their North American headquarters near Clemson in Greenville, SC. Both are partners with us in the Clemson University-International Center for Automotive Research.
Since we are in a city with so much history … and since we are celebrating Thomas Green Clemson’s 200th birthday this year …
I’d like to begin my remarks with some history on the man who was not only Clemson University’s founder, but also one of the founders of the Land Grant College movement in America.
Next I will discuss how we are expanding and enlarging that Land Grant ideal, and bringing this 19th century movement into the 21st century.
And finally, I will close with some observations from my recent international travels.
Thomas Green Clemson is not well known outside South Carolina. But he was among the most well-educated, most cultured Americans of his day. He graduated from what is now Norwich University in Vermont, but had to travel to Europe to study science. He attended the University of Paris and the Royal School of Mines, traveled widely throughout the Continent, and spoke fluent French. He also enjoyed the arts. He painted, played the violin and piano, and composed music.
He was a mining engineer and a diplomat, but Mr. Clemson was first and foremost a scientist and a farmer. During most of the 1850s, he and his wife Anna lived on a small farm in Prince Georges County, Maryland, about four miles from the capitol. There he was part of an influential circle of people who promoted scientific agriculture and scientific education.
He conducted experiments and ran what amounted to a demonstration farm for his neighbors. He gave a series of lectures on soil chemistry and fertility at The Smithsonian Institution and contributed articles for publication in The American Farmer.
He supported the creation of the Morrill Land Grant Act and worked for its passagein Congress. He helped raise money to establish Maryland Agricultural College -- now the University of Maryland. He wrote: “The only hope we have for the advancement of agriculture is through the sciences, and yet there is not one single institution on this continent where a proper scientific education can be obtained.”
In 1860, he was appointed U.S. Superintendent of Agricultural Affairs, then under the Patent Office. At the request of President Buchanan, he drafted a paper suggesting the organization of a cabinet-level Department of Agriculture.
Though born in Philadelphia and opposed to secession, Thomas Clemson cast his lot with his wife’s home state of South Carolina in 1861. In the years following the Civil War, they dreamed together of building a scientific and agricultural college on land surrounding their home, Fort Hill. Their home still stands at the heart of the Clemson University campus. If you have not yet visited us, we hope you will do so one day. We will welcome you as warmly as I have been welcomed here today.
There you will find many parallels and connections between your institutions and ours. We -- all of us -- believe in the power of education to change lives. If we did not, we would not be working in education, especially Extension education.
It’s impossible to overstate Clemson’s historic role in the economic development of South Carolina by providing expert manpower to agriculture, business and industry. Through research and extension education, our land-grant universities have helped all our states evolve and prosper.
Economic development is not “mission creep” for the land grant university. Economic development is our mission, and always has been.
However, our economy has changed, at the state, national and global level. The problems we face today are not the same ones Thomas Green Clemson grappled with. He did experiments and wrote papers on whether bat guano from Peru was superior to local horse manure. Today, we understand soil chemistry and fertility. We understand best practices in crop cultivation, livestock management and food preservation.
No, the most pressing problems we face today involve our nation’s need for biofuels as an alternative to imported fossil fuels … conserving and managing scarce water and land resources … food safety, particularly the safety of imported foods in a global economy … diet and nutrition in an age of plenty, rather than an age of food scarcity … raising healthy children and encouraging healthy communities.
Today, we are all working to redefine the land grant university for a new century.
The current issue of Clemson World magazine features a cover story on “6 Things You Must Know about Clemson.”
First item on the list – Clemson’s “heart” is in educating students. That section details our 14-to-1 student/faculty ratio; our new chapter of Phi Beta Kappa; and our 2008 ranking of 27th out of 164 national public universities in the U.S. News and World Report guide.
But Number 2 on the list is this statement: Public service is still the “soul” of Clemson.
It reads:
One of Clemson’s strongest character traits that’s changed with society’s needs, but never wavered in commitment, is service to people.
This is what is meant by the theme of my talk – “Bridging Strengths of People and Nations – What Higher Education Can Do.”
The land grant university has always been the people’s university. The focus has always been on using the tools of research and education, including outreach or extension education, to solve the problems that stand between ordinary people and a better way of life.
I wonder if, even today, we understand how truly revolutionary that idea is.
Writing in the Journal of Extension a few years ago, a specialist from Oregon State University recounted the lessons he had learned from a sabbatical year in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic.
He had what he called an “Aha” moment when he realized that Extension remains a very powerful and valuable concept. The people he met were amazed at the idea that a faculty member from a university would be assigned to make sure scientific information was available to average citizens for their practical use in improving their lives.
Clemson’s public service programs are located throughout the state in counties and in five Research and Education Centers, formerly known as ag experiment stations.
Here in Charleston, the goal of our Coastal Research and Education Center is to be a nationally recognized center of excellence in vegetable production, with an emphasis on environmental conservation.
The Clemson University Restoration Institute was established in North Charleston in 2004 to drive economic growth by creating, developing and fostering restoration industries and environmentally sustainable technologies. It is located on an 82-acre industrial site on a former Navy base. Faculty are working on advanced materials, historic preservation, materials conservation, restoration ecology, including brownfields reclamation, healthy communities and buildings, and developing renewable energy, including biofuels and coastal wind power production.
The Restoration Institute is just one of several centers that we have launched in the last five years. They are all patterned after the public service / land grant model of education, research and extension to support a specific, knowledge-based industry cluster.
The Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research in Greenville reflects the reality that the U.S. automobile and motorsports industries are increasingly centered in the Southeast. With industry partners like IBM, Michelin and Timken, CU-ICAR is building research and graduate education programs to serve the needs of these industries.
We are also bringing outreach from the periphery to the center of the university through programs of undergraduate research, creative inquiry project teams and programs like the South Carolina Design Arts Partnership, which is a collaboration between Public Service programs and the College of Architecture Arts and Humanities. They are doing great things to develop healthy communities through better planning and design.
Clemson has, in essence, extended the land-grant, public service ideal campuswide. The concept of extended public service and engagement is being embraced by all parts of the university, and by almost all public universities. Your institutions are doing the same thing.
As a result, I believe the land grant idea has never been stronger or more relevant. And as Extension professionals, you can be proud that others have seen the great value in the work you do, and want to repeat this successful model to other economic sectors.
There is a debate currently under way about the nature and the impact of globalization, and this has important implications for higher education in general and for land grant universities in particular.
Yesterday, you heard David Sammons from the University of Florida speak about the ideas and writings of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Friedman argues that technology has made the world flat. Geography is no longer destiny. Human resources are as important as natural resources.
Talented people no longer need to be in the same room, the same city or even the same nation to communicate and work together. Innovation can occur anywhere in the world. “In a flat world,” Friedman says, “you can innovate without having to emigrate.”
Another viewpoint is advanced by author Richard Florida, who says “Globalization has changed the economic playing field but has not leveled it.” He sees a spiky landscape, with a small number of cities that rise like mountain peaks above the hills and valleys – peaks of innovation, creativity, energy and economic power.
Both agree that education is the key component of this new creative economy based on innovation.
Friedman has written: “Money, jobs and opportunity in the flat world will go to countries with the best infrastructure, the best education system that produces the most educated work force, the most investor-friendly laws, and the best environment.”
Florida writes: “With the rise of the creative economy, the university becomes increasingly essential to both innovation and economic growth.”
The U.S. economy, and U.S. higher education, led the world in the 20th Century. We could count on dominating world markets … and the world’s best and brightest graduate students flocked to our institutions to study. Today, there is no doubt that we face tremendous competition for economic growth and graduate students.
To truly understand this, you must get out of your comfort zone and travel to see these changes for yourself. My own travels in recent years have taken me to China, Chile and to Belgium, for the opening of our new European portal in Brussels.
From these experiences, I have observed ………
That’s why I encourage every student at Clemson to have a study abroad experience at some point in their college careers. It’s just as necessary for faculty and Extension professionals.
I’m not sure you can even be a truly educated person in the 21st century without traveling abroad, experiencing foreign cultures and seeing for yourself how interdependent we are today in a global economy.
The irony is … this is something that Thomas Green Clemson and the other leaders of the land grant movement understood very well more than 150 years ago.
There’s a saying in places like Charleston that the past is not history … it’s not even past. So we have come full circle.
The need for the public land grant-style education and public service is as present today as it ever was. And I am as confident as ever that we will rise to the challenge. We bridge the strength of people and nations through our renewed commitment to education in service to people.
Thank you very much.