Office of the president

Convocation address

Gregory L. Geoffroy, President
Monday, Sept. 26, 2005

Thank you for joining us this afternoon for our annual Fall Convocation. Let's thank our student musicians--Laura Ohl, Brooke Westphal, Michael Westphal and Heather White.

We have had a great beginning to the new year. We have welcomed 25,741 students, and they have again energized the campus, as they do every year.

Two weeks ago, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the beautiful Reiman Gardens. It is hard to imagine Iowa State without that beautiful place.

Also two weeks ago, we were going to celebrate the start of the construction of our new Hixson-Lied Student Success Center with a "beam signing" ceremony, until it was disrupted by a small tornado that blew through the campus.

We kicked off our "Eye on Cy" and "Cy-Day Fridays" campaign, and we've had a terrific start to our fall athletic season, especially in football where we are 3-0!

Welcome to campus

And we have welcomed many new faculty, staff and administrators to the university, and let's give a special welcome to: Cheryl Achterberg, new Dean of the College of Human Sciences; John Brighton, Vice Provost for Research; and Jamie Pollard, Director of Athletics, who will be joining us Oct. 1. It's great to have them as part of our leadership team.

We also want to recognize several other leaders for their dedication and service to Iowa State--Jim Bloedel, Vice Provost for Research; Pam White and Jerry Thomas, who served as interim deans; and Stan Johnson, Vice Provost for Extension, who is retiring later this year; Bruce Van De Velde, Director of Athletics; and Wendy Wintersteen, interim dean of the College of Agriculture.

Before discussing the year ahead, I want to briefly review the achievements and successes of the year just completed, because we do have much to be proud of, and I want to highlight those achievements.

We have a new Strategic Plan in place, with a strong endorsement by our Board of Regents.

In July, we inaugurated our new College of Human Sciences, a college with a very bright future under the leadership of its founding dean, Cheryl Achterberg.

Budget situation improved

We have a greatly improved budget situation, having seen the first increase in state funding in five years, and an optimistic outlook for next year and the state's overall budget situation.

Sponsored funding continues to rise. Last year, we set another new record with $287 million brought in by our faculty and staff, up nearly 5 percent over last year, and research funding alone up 10 percent.

We had very impressive growth in private giving from alumni and friends, with more than 55,000 donors. That's a new record and a 17 percent increase in two years. We raised $82 million in gifts last year from alumni and friends, up 30 percent from the previous year and up 112 percent in two years. The gifts are wonderful in themselves, but more than anything, this tremendous support signals confidence in the university and the directions we are going.

Great progress on facilities

Last year, we made great progress made on important facilities needs. The renovation of Morrill Hall is well under way; there's a big hole in the ground where the Hixson-Lied Student Success Center will be; plans have been approved for the new Dairy Teaching & Research Farm; and we have completed renovations to the teaching classrooms in the Physics Building and the new LeBaron Hall auditorium.

And last year, after much study and evaluation, we decided to continue our great VEISHEA tradition, with the goal of making it even stronger.

This past year, there have been many very impressive achievements by our faculty, staff and students, and it would take me many hours to highlight them.

Athletes achieve, in class and out

And it was a very good year for Cyclone athletics, with the football team being co-champions of the Big 12 North and an Independence Bowl victory, the men's and women's basketball teams advancing to the NCAA Tournament, and a very impressive academic performance by our student-athletes.

For all student-athletes, the Spring Semester average gpa was 3.01, which is substantially higher than the all-university average of 2.84. Our women's basketball program ranked 5th in nation in GPA, and was the only Division I team in the top 24. These are truly students as well as athletes.

All in all, last year was a very good year for Iowa State, because of you and the great work of the rest of our faculty, staff and students.

Now let's turn to the year ahead. I will outline some of our most important agenda items.

It again promises to be an exciting year, particularly if the start is any indication, since we began with a launching--of our new College of Human Sciences, and an implosion--of the Towers!

There are two very important topics that I want to spend most of my time on--the implementation of our new strategic plan, and enhanced student recruitment. And I'll get to those, but first, let me just briefly touch on a few other key agenda items for the coming year.

First, we have several very important leadership positions to fill--Dean of the College of Agriculture and Vice Provost for Extension, both, obviously, very important for Iowa State. We have great search committees and I am very optimistic that we will have strong candidate pools and be able to recruit great leaders.

This year, we must successfully complete our accreditation process by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. That's something we have to do every 10 years. The visiting team has been established and will be here on March 27-29, 2006. There's really no doubt about the end result; we will be re-accredited. But it is important to treat it seriously because it is a great opportunity for self-examination and self-improvement. Our immediate task is to complete the self-study by end of this semester.

Transformation plan a legislative priority

This year, our legislative priorities are centered around the second year of the Regents Plan for Transformation & Excellence. It will be just like last year. The Regents will request an appropriations increase of $40 million for the three universities with our share being about $16 million. And they will commit to $20 million internal budget reallocations with our share being about $8 million. In exchange, they will hold general tuition increase to the Higher Education Price Index, which is currently about 4 percent.

Our goal is to do everything we can to obtain full funding for the $40 million. And our top priority for the use of new funds is to increase the competitiveness of our faculty and staff salaries, as it has been for the past several years.

Alternative budget models will be explored

On the topic of budgets, this year we will continue to explore alternative budget models for Iowa State, building on the success of the budget summit that was held last spring and that many of you attended. I have appointed a Budget Model Development Committee and asked them to develop by the end of this academic year a new budget allocation model for the university, one that will provide incentives and disincentives to budget units, to encourage alignment with the university's priorities and strategic plan. We need a budget model that is easy to understand, that has a very clear relationship between cause and effect, and that makes the budgeting process more predictable.

The committee will be evaluating several different budget approaches, and in the end will likely come forward with some hybrid that incorporates features of Responsibility Center Budgeting with pieces of incentive, formula, and zero-based budgeting approaches. I have asked the committee to be diligent in communicating progress to the university community and in seeking input from campus groups, and you will be hearing more details as the committee does its work.

On the topic of funding, this year we intend to ramp up even further our private fund-raising efforts. We are now in the "advance gifts phase" of our next BIG comprehensive fund-raising campaign. The ISU foundation has completed its overall fund-raising feasibility study, and on campus, we have just about completed the development of our fund-raising priorities.

Fund-raising focus: Invest in people

I have directed that this campaign have a very strong emphasis on investing in people--raising funds for scholarships to support students and raising funds for more endowed faculty positions, with the goal of at least doubling the number of endowed chairs and professorships that we have at the university.

This year, we will finish appointing the volunteer leadership teams, develop the fundraising case statements, complete fundraising feasibility studies for several major capital projects, and, of course, continue to raise funds.

Another area of emphasis this year, as it has been for quite a long time, is economic development, as we look for even more ways we can contribute to strengthening Iowa's economy. This is a very high priority from legislators and our Regents, and a very clear expectation for the university.

In the facilities area, we will continue the Morrill Hall renovations toward a fall 2006 completion; restart the bidding process for renovation of the Memorial Union; construct the Hixson-Lied Student Success Center; complete the design and begin the construction of our new Alumni Center; and move along the projects at our Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital and the new facilities for Electrical and Computer Engineering.

And then there's VEISHEA, which will be back next April. We will be working hard to ensure its success!

And all the while, we will be enjoying the excitement, and anticipated success of Cyclone athletics.

Planning priorities

Let me now turn to the implementation of our new Strategic Plan, "Forward Thinking."

The plan lays out five important priority areas for the university. In brief, those are the following:

• to improve our educational programs, at all levels;
• to elevate the stature and impact of our research & graduate programs;
• to strengthen the economy of Iowa;
• to enhance the appeal of Iowa as a place to live and work;
• and to make the university an even better place to work and study.

Our task now is to make progress on each of those priorities. It is important to keep each one in front of us; that we keep revisiting them; and that we measure our performance to determine where we are making progress and where more work needs to be done.

One thing is very clear, and that is that we must keep our focus very sharp and put our energies and resources in the most important areas, where we can truly have the highest impact.

What we're passionate about

I think it is also important to always keep in mind what it is that really motivates us, as individuals and as a community, to excel; what drives our emotional energies, and what we, as a university family, are truly passionate about.

I explored this topic last spring with a number of faculty and staff members and groups, and with members of my leadership team, and, of course, there were many different opinions. But several common themes emerged. Among the most important were the following:

• I heard a clear passion for preparing young people to be successful in life
• I heard a passion for the integration of research with education--together; not isolated and stand alone from each other
• I heard a passion among many for a culture that fosters interdisciplinary work and thinking
• I heard a passion for doing work with an impact on improving the lives of the people of Iowa and the world
• and I also heard a passion for being recognized for individual excellence and achievements, just like we are doing later today in this ceremony.

As we work to implement the Strategic Plan, it is also vitally important to assess where we truly can be among the best in class and have the greatest impact, and then make sure we strategically invest our resources in those areas--our human resources and our financial resources.

Best in class

This past year, Provost Allen and I consulted with deans and other university leaders on this topic, and, indeed, there are many areas of the university where we truly are, or can be, best in class. I won't list all those, but they include our traditional areas of strength, areas such as chemistry, statistics, virtual reality, the food, animal and plant sciences, and the programs that take advantage of the special strengths of the Ames Laboratory.

I also believe we can be best in class in fostering interdisciplinary work. We do that extremely well, and it is important to keep that culture strong and take advantage of it. It is a real asset for the university.

And finally, as we make decisions to implement our strategic plan, it is important to keep in mind the sources of the funds that we need to excel, and that we then work to maximize those resources. We all know what they are--state appropriations, tuition and fees, sponsored grants and contracts, and private giving.

We will certainly work very hard on increasing our state appropriations, with the immediate goal this year of achieving full funding for the Regents Transformation Plan. We also will continue to strengthen programs that have the potential to yield increases in sponsored funding. We will aggressively pursue our private fundraising efforts. And we will work to keep our enrollments strong and to ensure that our tuition and fee structures are optimized for our enrollment and excellence targets, and that includes the evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of various differential tuition structures.

In summary, as we go forward in implementing the Strategic Plan, we need to keep the five priorities of the Strategic Plan in front of us and continually assess our progress; that we always keep in mind what motivates us to excel and what fuels our passion as a university family; that we keep focused on those areas where we truly have the potential to be best in class; and that we work to enhance our key revenue sources.

Enhancing recruitment, retention

That leads me to the last agenda item I want to address today--the enhancement of student recruitment and retention.

This is one of the most important agenda items for the university this year and one that involves all of us. I have appointed three key groups to assist our efforts:

• an Enrollment Leadership Council, created last year and that I personally chair, that meets monthly to examine our overall recruitment and retention strategies and goals;
• an Articulation Council, led by Associate Provost Dave Holger, to focus is on improving the articulation between community colleges and Iowa State and to facilitate the transfer of students from community colleges to our university;
• and a Retention Task Force, led by Dave Holger and Vice President Tom Hill, aimed at improving the retention of our existing students.

Let me remind you of some important facts:

• Iowa State currently enrolls more Iowa high school graduates than any other university in the state;
• we enroll more new transfer students from community colleges than any other university;
• and we have the largest FTE undergraduate enrollment of any university in Iowa.

This fall, our enrollment is 5 percent higher than it was 10 years ago; we enrolled 45 more new students than we did last fall; and we increased our market share of Iowa high school graduates because of enhanced recruiting efforts.

But nonetheless, all three Regents universities saw an overall enrollment drop this fall. Here at Iowa State, we have 639 fewer students than last year.

Reasons for enrollment drops

There are three main reasons for that.

First, between 2000 and 2002, Iowa State enrolled record-sized classes, and those students are graduating now in record numbers. Of course, that is what we want to happen, but it also means that they don't come back.

Second, the continuing decline in the number of students enrolled in Iowa's high schools means that our natural recruiting pool here in Iowa is shrinking.

Third, community colleges have increased their market share of Iowa's HS graduates, in part because of the price differential that has been created by the large tuition increases of the past several years, which were a direct result of the huge cuts in state funding.

Enhancement of our student recruitment and retention efforts and stabilizing our enrollments is one of the most important priorities for Iowa State this year, and we are pursuing it in a number of ways.

First, we are working to increase further our market share of graduates from Iowa's high schools. We are investing more resources in recruiting in Iowa, for example, putting more recruiting staff in Western Iowa where we see particular opportunity.

Second, we will increase our out-of-state recruiting efforts, for example, we will appoint a full-time recruiter who will live in the Chicago area, which has a growing population and where we see increased opportunities. We also will take better advantage of our out-of-state alumni networks and seek the assistance of our alumni in "spreading the word" about the excellence of our educational programs because we know a few words at the right time from an alumnus can get a young student interested in Iowa State.

Third, we are working to increase the effectiveness of our partnerships with community colleges, to facilitate the transfer of their students to Iowa State.

And fourth, this fall, we will roll out a greatly enhanced marketing campaign, aimed directly at student recruiting. You will hear much more about that as we go forward.

Momentum on several fronts

So, in closing, I believe that we have tremendous momentum on a variety of fronts, building on a very successful year last year and with many exciting and important initiatives and challenges to work on this year.

Iowa State will continue to be a great institution, because of our terrific students and because of the outstanding work of our faculty and staff, like those we are honoring today.

My thanks to all of you for your hard work in making Iowa State the great land-grant university that it is!

Streaming video of the convocation

• Full convocation (president's address and awards)
• President's address
• University awards

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