Office of the president

Iowa State University 2007 Fall Convocation Address

President Gregory L. Geoffroy
3:15 p.m. Monday, Sept. 10, 2007

It's a pleasure to welcome everyone to this Fall Convocation, and especially our new faculty, staff and administrators.

Before discussing the items on our agenda for the current year, it's important that we take a moment and reflect on the many achievements of the past year, which was indeed a very good year for Iowa State University.

First, we had the best legislative session in many years. We saw a 10.2% increase in state appropriations, including funding for our new Chemistry Building and Biorenewables Research Laboratory. This allowed us to apply a substantial amount of special funding to faculty and staff salaries, to begin to increase the competitiveness of our compensation packages. The good state funding also allowed us to fill the gaps created by the one-time funding of past years, and to begin strengthening key academic areas & infrastructure after many years of budget cuts.

In past convocations, I've discussed the demographics of Iowa and other states here in the Midwest--how the number of high school graduates is steadily falling and the challenges that creates for our enrollments. We have worked hard to address those enrollment challenges, by increasing our marketing efforts, increasing funding for financial aid and creating some innovative new scholarship programs, increasing our admissions staff, and greatly improving our relations and partnerships with Iowa's community colleges. And that hard work is really paying off in our enrollments.

Slide 1: enrollment trends

This fall, we welcomed 4,347 new freshmen-a 9.1% increase over last year-and 1,527 transfer students-a 4.5% increase-making this the third-largest entering class in ISU history.

Slide 2: total enrollment 2000-2007

There are now 26,160 students on campus this fall, a 2.7% increase in overall enrollment compared to last year. I'm proud to report that we continue to enroll more Iowa high school graduates and more transfer students from Iowa's community colleges than either of our sister universities. We continue to serve Iowans!

Last year was another great year for the work our faculty, with many important and high impact advances that brought national visibility to them, and to Iowa State. For example, we clearly established our leadership in biorenewables, that among other things led to our ConocoPhillips collaboration. Clearly, we demonstration to Iowans and to our elected leaders that we are committed to applying our leadership and expertise to help Iowa maintain its leadership role in biofuels, which I believe was an important factor in our good state appropriations.

This past year we launched several new centers and institutes, including: the CyberInnovation Institute, Engineering Policy and Leadership Institute, Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation, and the Grape and Wine Industry Institute, all of which promise to enhance faculty and student collaborations, sponsored funding, economic development, and bring increased recognition to the high impact interdisciplinary work done at Iowa State.

And to support the work of our faculty, staff, and students, we significantly upgraded some important infrastructure. We completely rebuilt C6, which is now the most realistic virtual reality environment in world. We launched the Keck Lab for High-Throughput Atom Scale Analysis. And we joined universities of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin to create the BOREAS-Net, a high-capacity communications network, 64 times faster that our prior network.

In the facilities area, we opened the new Hixson Lied Student Success Center, which our students love; we rededicated the beautifully restored Morrill Hall; we completed the Memorial Union addition, including nearly completing the Great Hall renovation; and we are right on schedule with all the other projects that are under way.

And as we just recently announced, we had a terrific year in private fund-raising!

Slide 3: 5-year gift production

New gifts and future commitments totaled $105.5 million last year, up 15% over the previous year and a 176% increase in 5 years!

Slide 4: annual giving results

And an area that we carefully track, Annual Giving, which comes from direct phone and mail contact and donations using our website, totaled $5.3 million, a $1 million increase over the previous year, and a 76% increase in 5 years. Last year, 8,857 new donors made commitments, joining a total of just over 54,000 donors.

Other significant accomplishments of the past year included:

• winning the re-competition for the Department of Energy contract to manage the Ames Laboratory
• achieving full accreditation for our college of Veterinary Medicine
• obtaining Regents approval for our first Ph.D. program in the College of Business, which is a very significant milestone for our business college
• launching several new academic programs, including baccalaureate programs in software engineering and bioinformatics and computational biology, and master's program in seed technology and business
• inaugurating the new name of our College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
• and, of course, we kicked off our sesquicentennial, our 150th anniversary celebration, which was the theme of our State Fair exhibit, and which will be the focus of many, many events and activities throughout the year. The timeline exhibit that was created for the sesquicentennial is on display along the west wall.

It was indeed a very good year for Iowa State!

*****

I would now like to turn to the current year, and outline some of our most important agenda items for the year ahead.

The first couple are familiar items--ones that I have talked about before, and ones I strongly believe need to be on our agenda every year.

First and foremost, it's very important that we continue to place a strong focus on enhancing the academic excellence of Iowa State, and on increasing the impact of the work of our faculty, staff and students. This requires that we emphasize faculty recruitment and retention, and competitive salaries are essential to making that happen. For that reason, we will continue to place high priority on competitive salaries in our budget request to the state, and in on-campus budget decisions. But it's also important that we work very hard on faculty recruitment--identifying and proactively recruiting the very best faculty candidates in all our searches, with competitive offers and start-up packages, and aggressive recruitment efforts.

Advancing the excellence of the university also requires that we place focused emphasis in key areas where we can truly be among the best in the world. There are many of those, but one that is vitally important right now for Iowa is the growing bioeconomy, especially biorenewables and biofuels produced from plants. For that reason, we will launch a Bioeconomy Institute to enhance collaborations and coordination of our many efforts and the impact and visibility of our work, along with funding from external sources. The institute will be led by Dr. Robert Brown, and a major priority this year will be to ensure it gets off to a good start, building on the tremendous momentum and funding that already exists.

And this year, as part of our bioeconomy work, we will begin the development of our New Century Farm, to be located between Ames & Boone. It will be a site for research into biomass crop production, harvesting, storage, and processing into fuels, and a demonstration site for farmers to learn how to grow and handle new crops optimized for biofuels production.

We are also very excited about the progress & prospects for our new Cyberinnovation Institute, which will have a key role in a national project to develop and deploy the world's fastest and most powerful supercomputer, and about the prospects of a new center we are launching on Crops Capturing Carbon, led by Dr. Patrick Schnable.

As I mentioned earlier we're extremely pleased with the great success we have enjoyed for the past two years in student recruitment. But we can't let up, and again this year, student recruitment and retention will be a major priority. We have set enrollment targets of 4,100 new freshmen and 1,500 new transfer students, aiming for an overall enrollment of 26,300. And just like last year, we aim we exceed all of those!

In every year, private fundraising is a priority activity for the university, but this year is very special, because it is the year we will publicly launch our big fundraising campaign. This will be the biggest fundraising campaign in Iowa State's history, and one that promises to have huge impact on the university for generations to come. The campus community will be invited to attend a special campus kick-off in the Great Hall in the morning of Oct 19th and that will be followed by a kick-off for donors and supporters who are Order of the Knoll members later that evening. This Campaign is extremely important for Iowa State, and it will keep many of us very busy for the next few years!

*****

Let me now turn to several important agenda items which are specific to this year

One of the most important is to continue our progress on implementing the new budget model, what we are calling the Resource Management Model. As the funding landscape for public universities continues to shift, I strongly believe this new budgeting approach will better optimize the use of our resources, and it will stimulate the generation of increased funding from non-state sources, as well as provide greater accountability and clarity to budget decisions.

This is a very important year in this process. We need to make hundreds of key decisions that will shape the working of the model for years to come and at the same time protect those core values that we cherish, especially collegiality and support for interdisciplinary research and education.

We have appointed the overall University Budget Advisory Committee, chaired by Executive Vice President and Provost Hoffman, and the several other advisory committees called for in the implementation plan. All of these groups have begun their work, and they will be influential in polishing the implementation.

The process for developing the FY09 budget will be a "blended" process. The development of that budget will be guided by the principles and many of the processes of the Resource Management Model. It will use the advisory committees that have been appointed, but at the same time use some of our traditional incremental approaches to managing expense increases. The resource management model will then take over completely for the development of the FY10 budget.

Another important agenda item for this year, and one that prospective students and their families are increasingly concerned about, is the safety & security of our campus. We do have a safe campus, but in light of the Virginia Tech tragedy, we cannot assume that we are immune to such events. Earlier this summer, we conducted a thorough analysis of our own policies, procedures and protocols that identified strengths and some areas that need attention, and we will be working on those throughout the year.

For example, we recently made a decision to install the hardware and software needed to create a comprehensive emergency communications system to permit immediate mass notification of an emergency to our students, faculty and staff, using combinations of voice and text messaging technology. And we are also moving to install voice-capable outdoor warning sirens on campus in several locations as another way to speed up communications in the event of an emergency.

And of course one aspect of the safety and security discussion is whether or not campus police should carry firearms. I have asked for input from campus leadership groups and from interested individuals, and I have received a lot so far, and I should have the remainder by the end of the day tomorrow (Sept. 11). I will then send my recommendation to the Board of Regents for inclusion in their Sept. 18-19 meeting docket, which will be released this Friday.

Other important activities for this year include:

• completing the search for a new Director of the Ames Laboratory, an extremely important position for Iowa State and the U.S. Department of Energy, and we hope to have that wrapped up in a few weeks
• continuing our year-long celebration of our Sesquicentennial, which will conclude next March 22nd with a very special re-enactment in the Capital Building of the original signing of the bill that accepted the terms of the Morrill Act
• we will be hosting two Presidential Candidate Forums on campus in early November to give candidates the opportunity to express their views on American competitiveness and innovation and especially the growing bioeconomy
• and we must ensure good progress on a number of important facilities projects that are underway or will be soon, including: renovations to the Memorial Union and the Hub; construction of the new Chemistry Building, the Biorenewables Research Laboratory and Alumni Center; and additions to Electrical and Computer Engineering, Veterinary Medicine, the Design Center and the Seed Science Center

This is also a year in which the Iowa State Center will undergo an important transition. The current SMG management contract has ended, and we will be transitioning responsibility for managing and operating Hilton Coliseum to the Athletics Department. Scheman, Fisher and Stephens will move to a new organizational structure, which we are still in the process of defining, and our goal is to do all of this in a way that does not change the good programming that occurs in those facilities.

And finally, we want to do everything we can to ensure that we have another great VEISHEA this spring, building on the tremendous success of last year's VEISHEA and the year before.

*****

In closing, we have tremendous momentum on a variety of fronts--building on a very successful year last year and with many exciting and important initiatives to work on this year. Iowa State will continue to be a great University, because of our terrific students and the outstanding work of our faculty and staff, like those we are honoring today.

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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