Belmont University | FYI


September 11, 2009

PHOTO OF THE WEEK


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Opening Convocation
Click the more link below to read a transcript of Dr. Fisher's remarks from Opening Convo.

President’s Address
Opening Convocation, September 9, 2009

Time presents numerous dilemmas. For example, nobody seems to have enough of it, but we all have all there is. Or, if we could just “put time in a bottle” as Jim Croce laments, we could save it for a time when we would use it better. Or, another musical lament, “time keeps on slipping, slipping into the future” (Steve Miller Band).

But the time dilemma that I encountered as I prepared for my tenth opening convocation at Belmont was more along the lines of “it just seems like yesterday” and on the other hand, “it seems like a long, long time ago” when I first came to be a part of this community we call Belmont.

A lot has changed for me in these nine years. One of the best changes is the expectation for this speech. I was told when I first arrived that I was expected to say something profound to inspire all of you. I gave that a shot the first couple of years, but I don’t think that worked. So, for the last several years I have focused on trying to communicate my impressions as to the “State of the University” and my hopes for where we might be headed together.

I am so pleased to report to you that even in these turbulent times, the state of the university is very, very good. In fact, in my opinion, it has never been better.

In fact, the times are so good that I only have one significant disappointment to report and that is related to our diversity goals. We have made what I would deem “acceptable progress” in regard to the ethnic diversity of our staff (18 percent) and the ethnic and gender diversity of our Board of Trustees (36 percent). However, the ethnic diversity of our faculty seems to be stuck at about 5 percent and the percentage for our students actually declined last year from 13 percent to 10 percent.

We must do better, and I challenge every person here today to think and act on what you can do to make Belmont more diverse. I don’t doubt that our intentions are good, but maybe our methods of implementing those good intentions could be improved?

But, now back to the “best of times.” Certainly that is true of our financial condition. Our cash position is the strongest it has been in more than a decade, perhaps ever. This allows us to continue with our construction projects when all around us others are not only delaying but are halting projects that have already been started.
The $30 million health sciences addition will serve as home to our new School of Pharmacy, our Physical Therapy program, and our Psychology program. This project is proceeding within budget and is expected to be completed on time in May of next year.

Two new connected residence halls with space for 409 students and classroom space for freshman seminars are also under construction at a cost of approximately $20 million. Their construction is also within budget and on track to be completed for occupancy by next year’s class. With these additions we will be able to house all of our freshman in the core of campus in Hale, Heron, Pembroke, Maple, and the two new halls (to be named Gingko and Hackberry if we don’t find some donors to “step up” to this opportunity).

This financial strength will also allow us to continue to build the university’s most vital asset—its people. There is no doubt that Belmont is blessed with extraordinarily talented, motivated, and hard working people. In this decade we have seen our yearly investment in people in terms of salary and benefits grow from $28 million to $60 million. I would expect that investment to continue to grow by $3-5 million in the current year. In the same time frame we have increased full-time faculty employment from 196 to 288 and staff employment from 318 to 483.

At a time when layoffs and reductions in workforce are common in organizations all around us, I do expect our total employment to continue to rise, but not without strong justification of each individual case. We will continue to be very thoughtful regarding the addition of new positions and in filling of current positions as they become vacant.
Increased discipline in managing our costs can serve to make us even stronger and to promote the welfare of every individual who is a part of our community. While it may even seem counterintuitive, financially good times present the best opportunity to make disciplined, rational decisions about controlling costs.

When we look at our students, we know the state of the university is very good. The quantity of the students is up by more than 8 percent to around 5,400 and the quality of their academic credentials continues to rise with the average ACT now exceeding 26.

These overall numbers are being driven by increased freshman enrollment and by steadily increasing retention rates. I am grateful to all of you for answering the call to expand your efforts to be an active participant in the recruitment process. You are making a difference.

You are making a huge difference in retention as you make extraordinary efforts to connect with students in a positive manner and to help students to connect with other students. Student Affairs is structuring its programs to create a sociology of inclusion for all of our students. With the growth in the student body we must make deliberate attempts to broadly link students to one another while avoiding the creation of cliques that lead to isolation and division.

Our General Education program is playing an important role in connecting students to students, students to faculty, and even faculty to faculty as they team teach. All of this results in a greater sense of community and, it seems to me, is creating a campus-wide awareness of the power of interdisciplinary learning and systems thinking. I think this is a really big deal!

Speaking to the strangeness of time, finalizing the change in our relationship with the Tennessee Baptist Convention is one of those events that seem to have occurred many years ago, but it has actually been less than two years since that issue was settled.

And, in the past two years I couldn’t be more pleased with campus-wide efforts to be more intentionally Christian. Our mission calls for us to point our students to God and to use the teachings of Jesus as the framework for all that we do. I embrace that challenge and ask that each of us take individual responsibility for applying this high-calling to all that we do. In this dimension of our mission we are talking about an eternity of time.

While we shouldn’t let the U.S. News rankings decide how we feel about ourselves, I do believe that they provide a broad, general methodology for assessing institutional quality. I generally hold this belief more strongly in the years that our rankings rise.

So this year, being ranked #7 in the Masters/South category is exciting and valid news! Interestingly, this year’s ranking wasn’t driven by the PR buzz surrounding our hosting the Presidential Debate since our “reputational score” assigned by our peers remained flat from the previous year.

What did drive our upward move in the rankings over the course of the past nine years was our increase in graduation rates by 17 percent, our increase in freshman to sophomore retention rates of 8 percent, an increase in our alumni giving rate, and the improved qualifications of our incoming students as measure by ACT scores and high school class rank. And these are all measures that matter very much to us.

Even though our peers didn’t rate us higher on the reputational component, they did hand us an incredible honor for the second year in a row naming us as one of the two most often mentioned “Schools to Watch.” This is how U.S. News reported this story: “Keep an Eye on These Schools” - These colleges and universities may not be at the top of the rankings (yet), but they’re leading the pack in improvements and innovative changes. College rankings tend not to vary much from one year to the next. In many ways, there’s virtue in such consistency. But how to identify colleges and universities that have recently made striking improvements or innovations—schools everyone should be watching?

This spring, for the second year in a row, U.S. News asked the experts who respond to its annual peer assessment survey to identify schools that fit this profile… For prospective applicants, we believe the schools on this list offer the reassurance that whatever their historical reputation (or lack of it), they’re firmly focused on improving the job they’re doing today—at least in the judgment of their peers.

As happened last year, two midsize schools, Elon University in North Carolina and Belmont University in Tennessee, were cited most often by their peers….

While our #7 ranking is for a limited type of university in a limited geographic area, this citation includes every university in the nation! This is truly an honor and it reflects the effort of every single person in this room. WE did this!

What is next for Belmont?

I would answer that with another question: “What are we the best at?”

We should start with what Belmont has always been the best at—undergraduate liberal arts education. That has been the center of excellence that has birthed numerous highly successful professional programs. In fact, the U.S. News report specifically singled out three components of Belmont’s general education program as “outstanding examples of academic programs that are commonly linked to student success.” The three components cited are Belmont’s Senior Capstone, the First-Year Experience, and Learning Communities. All were featured as “stellar examples."

We must continue the creative and innovative efforts that have led to this recognition. We must continue to apply this creativity to our existing and new professional programs while being sure to connect these programs to our liberal arts core. We must continue to create our own future rather than give in to forces outside our control. We should continue to be bold—smart, too, but never letting our “smartness” create irrational fears. We should continue to emphasize community—remembering that we are all linked together in numerous ways.

I hope we will continue with the overall cooperative spirit that is rooted in mutual respect and has characterized my experience at Belmont—I’m so grateful for how staff, faculty, and students seek the common good. Much of our success is founded in the day-to-day extraordinary effort that we all make. And for me, that effort is driven by recognition of our clear and compelling mission. I know why I’m here.

And most importantly, we should never forget that there is no doubt that Belmont University has been and is being blessed by God. I know that I’m not responsible for all that is happening here. When people in the community try to tell me that they are amazed by what “I” have done at Belmont, I always tell them that I have worked just as hard at every job that I’ve ever had and haven’t seen this sort of results—“I’m not that good” I say, to which Judy is always quick to add “He’s really not.” I always tell them that Belmont is blessed with extraordinarily talented and hard working people and that God is blessing their efforts.

Finally, I want you to know that I love Belmont.

I’ve told some of you how when I visit Dr. Gabhart, he and I inevitably end up in a competition of sorts. He always starts it by telling me that while he knows that I love Belmont, he loves Belmont more. I’ll tell him “I don’t know about that,” and the competition is on. It always ends with me conceding “Okay, you may love it more than me, but you need to know that I’m closing in on you.”

I do love Belmont. And I know that many of you love Belmont too, and I’ll go ahead and concede that some of you could win that competition with me as well.

But, when all of the economic, management, sociological, and other forms of analysis are put aside, what really makes this a special place is the number of people who see this as much, much more than a place to work. They see it as a place to live out their life’s purpose. I hope all of you will fall in love with Belmont and see how this affects your perspective.

There’s so much more I would like to say to you, but then there’s that troublesome concept of time that seems to so rudely intrude. But it really is time to go actually do something. So rather than letting time continue “slipping, slipping into the future,” let’s declare that “the time has come today” and make this another spectacular year for Belmont.


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