Speeches

Dr. John J. Petillo
Interim President
University Day Address
September 21, 2004

Welcome to University Day, our annual celebration of the scholarship of the Academy. On this day, we pause to take stock in our accomplishments of the past year and to set our sights on our course for the future. It has been a good year because of the dedication of so many within this university community. In fact, thanks to the faculty and the thousands who support their efforts, UMDNJ is one of the fastest growing and most well-recognized comprehensive public health sciences universities in the nation. In a relatively short period of time, the University has established itself as a contemporary leader in American health science education and research.

Permit me to state the obvious, which at times has been lost or forgotten. Health sciences are the very essence, the fabric, and the core of who we are and what we do. Unlike any other institution, such activities on our part are not incremental or an appendage. We are New Jersey's academic health sciences university. We simply need to unapologetically profess it. With more than 13,000 employees, UMDNJ is the eighth largest employer in New Jersey. We have a faculty numbering more than 2,500. We have an operating budget of $1.5 billion touching the lives of almost two million people yearly. We have a significant presence, but we also have an Academy with substantial intellectual wealth. Partnerships with firms like Eli Lily, Aventis, and Schering-Plough are becoming more common. We continue through our schools to recruit scientists for the endowed chairs, ever increasing our research capabilities and capacities. Our faculty has been pathfinders in fields such as autism, cancer, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and environmental illnesses. We also have established several nationally recognized centers and institutes throughout the state, including The Cancer Institute of New Jersey, which has just had its designation by the National Cancer Institute as a comprehensive cancer center renewed. It is one of only 13 such designated centers in the nation. Our Central Jersey campuses house the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute and the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine. The Stem Cell Institute of New Jersey along with Cardio-Vascular Institute will provide additional testimonies to our Academy's abilities. We are not limited , however, to these Central New Jersey campuses. Centers of excellence exist elsewhere. There needs to be an enlivened awareness of what can yet be accomplished on our other campuses. Whether it is the statewide Child Abuse Research Education and Service Institute or the prospective Geriatric Institute in Stratford, or the Center for BioDefense or the Neurosciences Institute in Newark.

We are now beginning a new academic year. The university's five-year plan has come to a successful close. It is now incumbent upon us to ask the questions of our future. The sociologist Mary Catherine Bateson says that "The self is learned, yet ironically it often becomes a barrier to learning" as it becomes established, comfortable, and dependable. This university is not just buildings of labs, classrooms, and offices. It is people. People who cannot afford to become comfortable and staid. Today, I would challenge all of us to avoid continuing "business as usual" no matter how successful. Because at this moment in time, I believe we stand on the brink of an institutional version of what the late evolutionary biologist Steven Gould might have called punctuated equilibrium, where the ingredients for change have been quietly accumulating and a major and dramatic leap is now possible. Possible, but only if we pursue our course collectively, inclusively, and aggressively.

Where should we be going? In Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass," Alice asks the Cheshire Cat, "Would you please tell me which way I ought to go from here. In response the Cat says simply, "That depends on where you want to get to." Before we chose a direction, we first need to know our place. We need to articulate that place for one another. We need to develop what I would like to refer to as a commonality of language. With such a common facility we can move more easily towards a university culture rather than a federation of eight schools and several institutes.

The self-study process for the Middle States Accreditation has provided the opportunities to do just that- to refocus our vision as a single, statewide University and engage in a thoughtful and candid assessment of what we are doing and how well we are doing it. Within the next week, the draft report on the self-study will be posted on the University's web site and the input of the entire University community is being solicited. At its inception, the steering committee for the self-study, ably chaired by Dr. Karen Putterman, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Audrey Gotsch, Dean of the School of Public Health, and Vivian Lubin, Associate Vice President for Academic Planning and Assessment, selected two issues they believed to be germane to the fundamental character of UMDNJ.

They are:

Our success in fulfilling our mission as a statewide, freestanding health sciences university.

Our success in forming collaborative relationships within the University and with academic partners.

Now we begin the discussion about where we want to be as a University in the future. We cannot afford to be without a defined direction with measurable benchmarks. The university community, especially the Academy, will set this direction through a strategic planning process. It will not be top down. It will be inclusive and transparent. A web site will be operational within the next few weeks for this purpose. Most importantly, it will be an ongoing university-wide effort commencing when our Board of Trustees approves the plan. The deans and vice presidents met last month to begin the discussions about the strategic plan and the Board of Trustees will gather later this week to do the same. From initial conversations, five topics have been identified as critical to the development of a strategic plan.

They are:

• To enhance and protect the University's statewide franchise in health sciences.
  
• To develop its capital base to sustain high academic quality and the ability to be responsive to changing needs.
  
• To sustain a competitive presence in the provision of clinical care throughout the tri-state area.
• To create through increasing collaborations with the pharmaceutical industry a unique contribution to the state's economic development engine.
• To use the University's size and comprehensiveness to the State's full advantage.
  

To explore each of these issues in depth, accepting or rejecting them, five work groups are being established, in addition to a steering committee. The faculties of all of our schools are represented. In addition to the web site, we will be soliciting your input through focus groups, town hall meetings, and by whatever other creative means possible. In the coming months, I pledge to you that these processes will be highly interactive with all constituencies within the university. A schedule for this planning process should be posted on the web site shortly.

In the "Idea of a University", John Henry Newman stressed that "the intellect of man?eizes and unites what the senses present to it; it discerns in lines and colors, what is beautiful or not. It gives meaning, and invests them with an idea". As the university community undertakes this strategic planning, it must be rooted in people who through their intellect propose ideas of what this university should be. For this process to be successful, there must be participatory discussion at all levels and in all communities within the Academy. I ask that as we develop the strategic plan you be open, honest and forthright. Dissent must be tolerated and sabotage must be an anathema. The success we realize from this process is highly correlated to the extent of participation by all. The time line for the development of the strategic plan is a very aggressive one, with preliminary results targeted for presentation to the Board of Trustees in December. In subsequent months, the goal is that we own this plan and in so doing, own the University.

During the discussions on restructuring higher education, many people in the state garnered a better understanding of how valuable an asset UMDNJ is to New Jersey. We also discovered along the way, however, that as a community we should have a more mature appreciation for ourselves as a university (not a federation). Through this process the Academy along with other members of the community can articulate clearly its direction so that as we harness our energies and imagination we truly become a powerful institution in service to the people of this State. In developing this commonality of purpose, language, and accountability, the Academy flourishes because it is affirmed and challenged. Advocacy not adversary should be the manner in which we interact with one another.

In closing I am excited about the possibilities that lie before us. You have all invested an enormous amount of talent, energy, resources and hope in this university. Now we must be willing to make the hard choices that compliment our hallmarks of past achievement and drive us to greater excellence as we go forward as a university. UMDNJ is a gift given by the people of New Jersey to the people of New Jersey and beyond. We must believe in ourselves. In the quality and excellence of our service we must be unbelievable if we are to be believed in our mission. As our new marketing thrust says: UMDNJ is a resource for life. We must provide the stewardship of the resources that have been entrusted to us by the people of New Jersey.

Joan Leitzer, former president of the University of New Hampshire and a strong believer in the power and goodness of public higher education, said, "Education is both an individual benefit and a social good. Collectively we have responsibility for the future of the University. We accept the moral obligation to see that it succeeds, not at a marginal level ... but at a level of true excellence." That is the state of UMDNJ. This is now our moral obligation not simply to continue but to attain even greater levels of true excellence. It can only be obtained if our imagination is not restricted by our knowledge. It can only be obtained when the Academy is affirmed, challenged, and involved.