STATE OF THE UNIVERSITY, 2007
Good morning and welcome to the new academic year at Ohio Northern University. Toby and I hope you've had a super summer and that you are returning to the University refreshed and ready for an exciting and eventful year. We certainly are. During the course of the summer we enjoyed several weekends "off", visited with friends and relatives across the country, played in the waves at Hilton Head Island for an all too brief four days, and, for one glorious week, focused exclusively on our grandchildren, Tanus, Savannah, and Kennedy, all of whom are under 2-1/2 years of age. Yes, it was hard to return from Colorado! Yet, exciting things are happening at ONU, and as tough as it was to give our magnificent grandbabies back to their parents, we knew we would soon be inaugurating a new school year with all the excitement, promise and anticipation this wonderful process generates every year.
As is always the case, the new school year builds on the one that precedes it. It has long been my tradition, therefore, to begin these annual State of the University talks with a review of the accomplishments of the year before. The past year, though, has been filled with truly extraordinary events: transformative financial gifts that will make things possible at ONU that were previously merely fantasies and dreams; unprecedented athletic success and accomplishment; and continuing programmatic growth and faculty excellence that is the envy of our peers. Where does one start in describing 2006-207?
Well, let's begin where we always begin - - with our students. Their many activities, successes, and accomplishments are simply phenomenal. Indeed, as I prepare this talk each year and review the many distinctions our students earn, I always wonder whether it can get any better. Amazingly, it always does and 2006-2007 was no exception. Once again, our students represented us and ONU incredibly well. Just listen for a minute to a few - - and it is truly only a few - - of the recognitions, honors, and awards our students received in 2006-07. Melissa Csuhran won election as the national President of the Public Relations Student Society of America, the organization that represents almost 10,000 students nationwide in 285 college and university chapters. With her election, Melissa follows Kevin Saghy, a 2007 ONU graduate as president. I haven't asked Steve Iseman, the ONU faculty member who has worked so hard to build ONU's PRSSA organization, whether Melissa's election following Kevin's is unprecedented. I'm sure, however, that it is very unusual. Moreover, one thing is for sure: this is a striking tribute to the excellence of an academic program at ONU.
But, other students achieved national prominence last year as well. Jimmy O'Brien of our track team won the indoor and outdoor national championships in the 800-meter run and was voted as the Great Lakes Male Track Athlete of the Year by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. Eric Lange not only co-captained our swimming team and won the 100 meter breast stroke competition at the OAC championship, he also served as President of his fraternity and Vice President of the Inter-Fraternity Council. He graduated with a 3.93 GPA in civil engineering. Perhaps not surprisingly, Eric was the recipient of the 2006-07 Clyde Lamb Award as the top senior male athlete at ONU. Equally important, Eric won the E.F. Colley Award which is the highest honor the Theta Chi fraternity can give one of its undergraduates.
Meghan Davlin, our former Student Senate President and last year's Panhellenic Council president, was honored as the most outstanding Greek in the Midwest when she received the Wayne Colvin Award at the Mid-American Greek Council Association Conference in Chicago in February. Karla Geise, former ONU basketball player and management graduate who now works for Crown Equipment in New Bremen, received one of only fifteen national awards for her involvement and leadership in the ONU Chapter of the Society for the Advancement of Management (SAM). Jenny Pelton was a key statewide student leader in the campaign to oppose the Governor's reduction of the Student Choice Grant; she led our campus efforts as well, including persuading more than 1000 students, faculty and staff to sign a petition opposing the measure. Ryan McLelland of our Law School and his colleagues on the Jessup International Law Moot Court Team did very well at the International Round of the International Law Moot Court Competition in Washington D.C. in March. But, Ryan was judged the twelfth best among more than 400 advocates from over 70 countries who participated in this competition. ONU students, in other words, succeeded not only in national competitions but in international ones as well last year. Finally, a number of our technological studies students worked together to create a robot that "manufactured poker chips... and labeled them with ONU before passing them out as souvenirs to other competitors and the general public." These students, Matthew Myers, William James III, Robert Wambo, Ryan Risner, Jared Simon, and Jonathon Rankin,won the Robot of the Year Award at the National Robotics Challenge held at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Marion in March.
To this point, though, we've concentrated on individual achievement. When we focus on what our students did in groups last year, the results are equally impressive. For example, another group of technological studies students consisting of Robert Hanley, Ryan Profera, and Robert Slater, won a gold medal at the National Robotics Challenge. Similarly, our business Management students finished third in the competition at their National Society for the Advancement of Management Conference, while the Students in Free Enterprise organization in The James F. Dicke College of Business Administration actually won the competition in Cleveland against representatives from 25 college and universities in the region. Students in the American Marketing Association chapter were equally successful at their national convention in New Orleans. They took first place in two of the three major areas of competition at the meeting. Moreover, our chapter was one of only nine nationwide that was selected to "provide a leadership session on fund raising at the Conference". This represents an enormous accomplishment, especially when one recognizes that there are more than 200 AMA chapters across the country.
Of course, when one thinks about ONU students working together, one of the areas that comes quickly to mind is athletics. And, what a year we had last year in athletics!! As I hope most of you know, ONU won the All Sports Trophies in the OAC in both men's and women's athletics. This has been accomplished on only two other occasions (both times by Mt. Union) in the entire history of the OAC and thus represents a truly phenomenal achievement. To win the All Sports Trophy, ONU's women won titles in volleyball, cross country, swimming, tennis, softball, and golf, "and had upper division finishes in all ten sports". Our men were OAC champions in soccer, swimming, and tennis, "and had upper division finishes in nine of the eleven sports". But - - and - - to me this is the really exciting part - - while winning these championships, two thirds of our women and more than one third of our men earned grade point averages of 3.0 or better. Indeed, five of our women athletes and four men compiled perfect 4.0 GPAs while striving to be OAC champions. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the conept of the "student athlete" is alive and very well at ONU.
Another group of athletes also did exceptionally well last year. In April, the Men's Club Volleyball Team won the Intramural-Recreational Sports Association National championship in Louisville Kentucky. The team's record last year was 43-11 and in addition to winning the national championship, it claimed the All-Ohio Championship for the fourth year in a row. Among the institutions that couldn't match up to our Polar Bears last year were Michigan, Ohio State, Indiana, Miami, Ohio University, Bowling Green, and Cincinnati. As I think everyone in this room will agree, winning a national championship in anything represents a truly phenomenal accomplishment. Hence, Brian Hofman, our hats are very much off to you and your incredible young men. How about a "repeat" this year!?
There was, though, another group of students who achieved excellence similar to that of our athletes last year. These were the students who helped design, construct, produce, play, and sing the Magic Flute. What an incredible performance this was. Whether one focused on scenery, costumes, music, or acting, the descriptor was - - and must be - - the same: Absolutely excellent! In fact, a number of the individuals I talked to about the show insisted it was the best overall production they'd ever seen on a college campus. That's high praise but it is also accurate and incredibly well deserved. Lloyd Butler and Kirsten Osbun-Manley deserve enormous credit for coordinating this undertaking and for producing an unforgettable performance and evening.
Many of the students who sang in the Magic Flute had participated in the student auditions of the National Association for Teachers of Singing before rehearsals began. Not surprisingly, they did very well. Among those winning awards were Christine Wenning, Christopher Chiles, Michael Doyle, and Adam VonAlman.
But singing and dancing weren't the only activities that received campus attention last year. As you've already seen students in Technological Studies were focused on robots and in addition to their other awards at the National Robotics Challenge, they garnered first place for "Best Electronics and Controls" at the National Association of Industrial Technology Conference in Cleveland. Students who use technology essentially every day, namely broadcasters, were equally successful at their national convention in Chicago. Matt Schimmoeller and Seth Castle won first place in the audio sports play by play category and Emmy Llewellyn won first place in the audio public affairs/interview program. Our concrete canoe enthusiasts also did well last year. They finished second to Michigan Tech in the regional competition, and this qualified them to participate, for the second year in a row, in the national finals with their canoe, "Northern Edge". They finished twelfth, up one from last year, and are looking forward to this year's competition.
Other engineering students concentrated on community service last year and this focus paid off as well when ONU's Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers received the Governor's Award as the Best Student Chapter in the region. Our Habitat for Humanity Chapter also focused on community service last year and sponsored three trips that involved more than 129 students. Finally, "more than two dozen law and accounting students provided tax assistance to elderly and low income tax payers through the Voluntary Income Tax Assistance program."
Now, if I haven't completely exhausted you with this listing of student distinctions and accomplishments, I want to mention that in addition to everything else, our students did a lot of traveling last year. Six education majors , for example, completed student teaching assignments in Greece, Germany, and Switzerland, while a number of our Pharmacy students were completing rotations in Kenya, Germany, and Alaska. At the beginning of the 2006-07 academic year, nine of our students participated in an unique and path breaking program at the University of Havana. From all reports, these students had a fabulous experience and we are indebted to Dr. Terry Maris for initiating this program which will continue this year. In the summer of 2007, five other students traveled in the opposite direction, namely to South Korea, where they participated in a four-week international program at Hanyang University . Although I've not yet had the opportunity to talk to Stephanie, Susan, Jessica, Jared or Brett, the reports I've received indicate their summer adventure, which included a visit to China, was, indeed, an extraordinary experience.
Our students, however, weren't the only ones spending time abroad last year. David Smith, a geographer from our History, Politics and Justice department, accompanied our students to South Korea and taught in the summer program in which they were enrolled. Nils Riess in Communication Arts continued to build his international network and this resulted in the extraordinary concert last fall that featured works from Estonia. Dede Shine, Director of our International Admissions program, spent a number of weeks in Europe and Asia last year and was even the focus of some extensive media coverage for her talks about the possibility of bringing students from a Japanese High School to Ada for an intensive summer program. And, Anas Alhajji traveled regularly to the Middle East and Europe, including a trip to Geneva in March where he served on a panel at the Geneva Center for Security Studies.
Other faculty and staff confined their focus to local, regional, and national events and activities. Listen, for a moment, to just a few of their distinctions, awards, and accomplishments. Keith Durkin in Psychology and Sociology was elected President-elect of the Mid-South Sociological Association, an organization in which he has been active for many years and at whose annual meeting he has been able to feature his students and their research on repeated occasions. Mellita Caragiu and Terry Sheridan, in Physics and Astronomy, were elected Chair-elect and Vice Chair of the Ohio Region Section of the American Physics Society. Robert Alexander of History, Politics and Justice, Michael Milks , Pharmacy, Donnie Sullivan, Pharmacy, and Srinivasa Vemuru, Engineering, were all identified as Outstanding Teachers in the annual issue of the Ohio Magazine that focuses on "Excellence in Education". Michele Govekar , Business, received similar recognition when she was cited by the Society for the Advancement of Management as the National Faculty Advisor of the Year, while Bob Ward, Engineering, was identified as the North Central Section Outstanding Campus Representative by the American Society of Engineering Education. Just recently, we learned that Charles Bates, Music, was featured several years ago in a celebration of the OSU Marching Band for his "Quad Pass" marching technique. His colleague, Sunny Zank was elected to the Japanese Studies Association Board and John Estell, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, was elected to the Board of Directors of the Computers in Education Division of the American Society of Electrical Engineers. Alumnus and former faculty member, Mr. Robert Cupp , was, as I assume everyone knows, elected to the Ohio Supreme Court and current chairman of the ONU Board of Trustees, Mr. Robert Smith, was appointed to the Workmen's Compensation Board by Governor Strickland. Adriane Thompson Bradshaw, student affairs, welcomed alums of the Gospel Ensemble back to campus for a gala weekend and concert in celebration of the group's 20th anniversary, and Kristen Dickerson, admissions, not only conducted our women's chorus, she enjoyed recognition as the Ohio Association of College Admissions Counselors "Outstanding New Counselor". And finally, David Crago , law, received the 2007 Legal Educator of the Year Award from the Ohio State Bar for his outstanding contributions to Ohio law and the Ohio Bar.
As in the case of our students, this is an impressive - - very impressive - - list of accomplishments. As I am reminded every year as I prepare these talks, it is not an accident that we are privileged to have and to graduate such outstanding students. They are recruited by the reputation and attention of our incredible faculty and staff and then nurtured and developed by these same people when they are here. When they leave ONU, they are ready - - indeed eager - - for the challenges and opportunities they will encounter.
As I have noted on previous occasions, one of the features of this special educational relationship is the involvement of students in the professional programs of their faculty and last year provided more examples of the beneficial outcomes of this special emphasis. For example, three physics students, Kevin Wells, Andrea Herrick, and Michael Garee , presented a poster at the 59th Gaseous Electronic Conference. They were the only undergraduate students presenting research at the conference. Their research originated in the ONU Plasma Physics Laboratory under the supervision and with the inspiration of Terry Sheridan . At the Mid-South Sociological Association this year, five of Keith Durkin's students presented two papers - one dealing with binge drinking among first year college students and the other with on-line victimization. A final example of this marvelous educational practice is the collaboration Jeff Talbott and his students have initiated with several researchers at the University of Michigan. Their topic is whether the beneficial effects of pain killers like vicodin and oxycontin can be "enhanced" without increasing their negative consequences. From everything we know from the popular press, I suspect all of us would agree that this is an exceedingly important and relevant topic.
Now, I am sure it is clear to all of you that research and collaborations of this nature don't occur unless there are strong commitments to continuing professional development on the part of the faculty. And, when one looks at some of the evidence of this among ONU faculty, one is very impressed. In preparation for this year's speech I asked Institutional Research to compile the data from the annual Faculty Record Form on publications and presentations for the past five years. What I learned was that, on average, we publish, create, or exhibit about 134 refereed articles, book chapters, creative works a year. This work is done by almost a third (31% to be exact) of our faculty. What is equally impressive is that while our output of refereed publications was not as strong in 2006-07 as it was in the previous year, the overall number of refereed publications was, on average, up almost 10% between 2002-03 and 2006-07. Moreover the number of faculty participants was up almost 31%. In other words, while the proportion of faculty publishing in refereed journals was 26% in 2002-03, it was 34% in 2006-07. Now, when we add non-refereed publications as well as books and monographs to the data, the patterns are equally impressive. On average, we publish or exhibit 282 pieces a year and this increased by about 30% between 2002-03 and 2006-07. These materials were contributed, on average, by 47% of the faculty and this has increased by more than 14% since 2002-03.
In addition to all of this work, our faculty make, on average, according to the Faculty Record Form, more than 250 formal presentations at state, regional, national, and international meetings every year. In 2006-07, this was the same as it was in 2002-03 but the number of participants had increased by about 6% to almost half of the ONU faculty.
Can there be any question, therefore, about the extent of our faculty's professional commitments or the consequences of these commitments, namely exceedingly well prepared, eager, thoughtful, and motivated graduates? I think not. The connection between the quality of our faculty and the success of our students is irrefutable. And, it's not, therefore, a surprise that our faculty are celebrated for the significance of their contributions. This year, for example, John Estell and Julie Hurtig in engineering received the 2006 Best Paper Award from the Design Engineering in Education Division of ASEE for "Using Rubecks for the Assessment of Senior Design Projects". Just last month, moreover, we learned that John Estell and J. D. Yoder were the recipients of the 2007 Best Paper Award from the Freshman Program Division of ASEE. The active learning program reported in this paper is a collaboration between ONU and Northeastern University.
These, though, are but two of the topics featured in ONU faculty writings this year. There were many others. Victor Streib wrote about "The Fairer Death" or "Executing Women in Ohio". His colleague in the law school, Scott Gerber, wrote about judicial review and released his novel, "The Law Clerk". Their colleague across the street, Ray Schuck, wrote about Babe Ruth while another colleague a couple of buildings down, Rosanne Dufault, wrote about "Diversifying the Discourse" through "Outstanding Feminists Scholarship Between 1990 and 2004". Across the campus in the Meyer Center, Rod Anderson was busily compiling "The Invisible ABC's," an absolutely fascinating children's science book. In Dicke Hall, Anas Alhajji, continued to write about oil issues and to be called upon by practically every major print and broadcast organization in this country and beyond for comment. On Toledo's public radio station, Becky Casey could be heard talking about and playing the music of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin while Rob Alexander commented on the electoral college on the television arm of WGTE.
Whether one focuses on summary statistics or actual content, it seems clear that 2006-07 was a banner year for professional activity at ONU. There is, though, one other piece of evidence that reinforces this impression that I want to share with you this morning - namely grant activity. In 2006-07, we submitted 54 proposals for extramural funding. This is about the same as the 48 we submitted in 2004-05. However, the total amount of funds requested was $3,574,985 in contrast to $2,013,022 in 2004-05. In May of this year, we had received almost $600,000 in funding which was about $100,000 less than we had received in May, 2005. But, in May of this year over $1.5 million in requests, including an $800,000 request to the Kresge Foundation in support of the Mathile Center, were still pending. In this area as well, then, it is clear that faculty/staff commitment is strong and growing significantly. Indeed, our $3.6 million grant request in 2006-07 represents a 160% increase over the $1,374,380 we requested in 2002-03.
I suspect, moreover, that this number will double and triple again in the years to come, for these funds make programming possible that would otherwise be unreachable. The $700,000 grant from the State Department for our LL.M. program is the best example of this. But, there are others. Hence, let us, briefly, celebrate the external funding requests of the past year. In pharmacy, Jon Sprague recently received an NIH grant for $247,500 to continue his internationally renowned research on the drug ecstasy. His colleague, David Kisor, is the co-investigator on another NIH project focused on developing "non-invasive, rapid and reproducible methods of sampling drug concentrations". "In the third year of [this] project and with $15,000 in NIH funds, Dr. Kisor and two pharmacy students will do research at ONU". In biological and allied health sciences, Dennis DeLuca and his colleagues in technological studies and elsewhere received $63,509 from the Ohio Department of Education in support of the third year of our very successful Summer Honors Institute. The Engineering College and our Chemistry Department have joined the recently formed NSF Center for Layered Polymeric Systems Affiliate program at Case Western Reserve University. Under the leadership of Jeff Gray, Wei Chen, and Eric Baumgartner, this affiliation will give "ONU students an unparalleled opportunity to study advanced polymer formulation processes." NSF has committed $19 million to this effort over the next five years and ONU will receive $120,000 for its participation. The music department will benefit from a $25,000 grant from the Presser Foundation because it will enable it to purchase five pianos and Forrest Clingerman and Mark Dixon in the Department of Philosophy and Religion benefited last fall from a $15,000 grant from the Metanexus Institute because it enabled them to establish the working group on religion, ethics and nature. Finally, our minority recruitment efforts were enhanced by a $13,953 grant from The Ohio Foundation of Independent Colleges. This funding will enable us to establish the vision builders program which will be under the direction of Curtis Ferguson II, Tabitha Courtney and Clyde Pickett.
As I hope is clear from this brief listing, our faculty and staff are increasingly looking to external sources to help us fund some of the exciting educational programs we are developing. Our advancement staff is doing this as well. In fact, 2006-07 was the best year in the history of the University in terms of fund raising. Altogether, over $21 million was donated to the University in the last fiscal year. The $10 million from Clay and Mary Mathile in support of the new Mathile Center for the Natural sciences was certainly the highlight of this very successful year. But, the $3 million gift from the estate of Eugene Beeler, one of our most distinguished graduates, will enable us to enhance our endowment and thus the operation of the institution, while the $1 million from Clair Butturff to name the atrium in the new Mathile Center, helps us to meet the $5 million match required by the original gift. Among the most gratifying gifts this year, though, were the ones from our faculty and staff. To date, 81% of the faculty in the Natural Sciences have pledged a total of $26,500 in support of the new Center. Across the quadrangle, $61,000 has been pledged by pharmacy faculty, including every member of the College Executive Committee, in support of the magnificent Pharmacy Skills/Drug Information Center renovation. Finally, our on-campus campaign this year yielded $78,006 as of July 31, 2007, and saw the participation of 70% of our work force as contributors. These are incredibly impressive numbers and we are extremely grateful for your support.
You support us, though, in all kinds of other ways as well. Some of you help us recruit students and through your efforts we have been able to build the highest quality student body in the history of the University. Others of you help us care for our students once they are here and through your efforts we've been able to develop a new student judicial process, and residential spaces that meet the complex and diverse needs of, often, uncompromising students and families. Still others help us balance our budget (this time for the 51st consecutive year), establish our new "True North" marketing concept, maintain all of our facilities, grounds, and infrastructure in excellent condition, and create ways to address salary and benefit needs, campus emergencies, and even parking. And, finally, there are all the faculty, staff, and students that have helped us greet and interact with more than 5000 alums at 50 events on campus and throughout the country in the past year. This effort was highlighted by Homecoming which drew the largest crowd ever and included more than 2000 alumni.
For all of these truly extraordinary efforts and contributions, I want to express my very deep appreciation. It is a truism to say that no organization succeeds without an exceedingly dedicated and committed group of colleagues and co-workers. Labeling it a truism, though, makes it no less true and in ONU's case, there can be no question that the strength and excellence of the institution is a tribute, in the first instance, to the exceptional quality of its people. Thanks for everything you do.
Regrettably, we lost some of these cherished and beloved people last year. Over the years, they and their spouses and families made enormous contributions to the excellence and welfare of this institution. We miss you Joe, Evie, Edith, Michael, Myra, Rosie, and Chuck Heller, our trustee. We also lost two students of great talent and promise. We miss you as well Robert, and Kara, And all of higher education was shocked by the bus accident that took the lives of five members of the Bluffton baseball team and horrified at the senseless carnage at Virginia Tech that deprived 32 promising young people of their dreams. Let us take a moment to remember all of these individuals who impacted our lives in one way or another last year.
Now, what about this year. What issues, projects, and questions are likely to concern us in 2007-08? Well, one issue that I expect us to focus on right away is calendar change. As you know, a recommendation was made to the Academic Affairs Committee last spring that it "formulate models for presentation to the faculty for their consideration". The proposal indicated that these alternatives should be available for discussion "no later" than the faculty meeting in November. I have talked with Laurie Laird, Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, and our goal is to get models out for faculty evaluation as soon as possible. Our hope is that our presentations will be able to answer some basic questions. For example, when would a semester begin and end? What breaks would be specified? What loads would faculty be expected to carry? Would class sizes increase? If so, how much? Would faculty/student ratios increase? If so, how much? What ratios would be used in converting quarter hours to semester hours, that is, what would a 4 quarter hour course be worth in semester format? Would general education requirements have to be changed and, if so, how? How would labs be accommodated? Would course sequencing have to be changed? Which courses would have to expand or contract and how? How long would the conversion take? What resources would be available to facilitate it? Would the conversion be cost neutral?
And I'm sure there will be many, many more questions. Our goal will be to share the information we have about various models, to listen to faculty concerns and questions and try to find answers to them, if possible, and to promote constructive faculty debate through open forums about the advantages and disadvantages of one format over the other and of change itself. Hopefully, before Christmas, we will be ready to take a faculty vote on conversion. If it were to call for a change to semesters, this would give us enough time to prepare the materials for Board review in February.
Given the history of this issue on this campus, I have no doubt that the discussions we will have this fall about our academic calendar will be spirited. However, they will also be very thoughtful and sensitive. I am convinced of this because of my review of the 15 pages of comments faculty provided in response to the survey we did on this topic at the end of the spring term. You will recall that the purpose of the survey was to get some idea of the issues that were on the minds of faculty with reference to calendar change so we could check the experience of other institutions on these matters and, through this, hopefully develop some answers and responses to questions and concerns that could be a part of the fall debate. Although some of you were unhappy with some of the questions, we learned a lot. I, for example, was impressed with how strongly the faculty focused on learning issues. If one favored semesters, there was repeated reference to the value of a longer instructional period to in-depth writing and research and to thinking, integrating, and contemplating. If one favored quarters, the discussion was about the value of this format for breadth, diverse and expansive learning opportunities, specialized course work, and flexibility. It is clear to me that this is a matter about which faculty have strong philosophical preferences. What we'd like to do this fall, therefore, is to answer enough of the mechanical and technical questions so we can concentrate our conversation with one another on what's best pedagogically and programmatically for the University.
In addition to engaging the calendar issue this year, we are going to have to be patient with the construction crews that will be visible on campus throughout 2007-08. As I think everyone knows, we have already begun the construction of a 97,000 square foot science center adjacent to Meyer Hall and behind the Pharmacy Complex. This new three-story building will house the Mathile Center for the Natural Sciences and will provide state-of-the-art facilities and instrumentation for the biological, physical, and allied health sciences. As I have said on many occasions, ONU is a science based institution and if we expect to continue to recruit top quality students, faculty, and staff and to develop and adapt our curriculum to constantly changing needs, we must have first rate teaching and learning environments. The new Mathile Center will meet this essential priority.
To date, we have raised about $3 million of the $5 million we need to satisfy the Mathile's challenge that we match $5 million of their $10 million donation with another $5 million. I am very confident that we will generate the additional $2 million we need. However, the building is now projected at $21 million rather than at the $15 million that was estimated when this Center was originally proposed. Hence, we actually need an additional $8 million for this project. As you all know, I have not been willing to borrow money to complete capital projects since I arrived at ONU in 1999. Everything we have done in the past eight years has either been paid for with donated funds or mortgaged and then paid for with revenues generated by the facility. The Mathile Center is a little different. Since we have not yet been able to raise the entire $21 million, we will borrow the difference between what we raise and what we need and then pay this note off with funds generated in our forthcoming comprehensive campaign.
Yes, we are preparing for a major campaign at ONU and the Mathile Center will be the top priority. Before we talk about this initiative which will also be a major agenda item in 2007-08, let me mention one other major construction project that will be part of our lives in the year to come. As I am sure all of you have noticed, the University Place Apartments have been disappearing in recent weeks. The four remaining senior citizens that were living in this facility now have lakeside accommodations in University Terrace Apartments. As a consequence, this space can be used to build a university inn. Construction will start this fall and if the schedule works as proposed, it will be open for business by September 1, 2008. It will be a 2-story facility and all 39 rooms on the bottom floor will be used for the hotel. At present, the Board Task Force that is working on this project is assessing whether the second floor rooms should be for hotel guests or for law students. The advantage of the latter, of course, is that it would give the facility an income source in its initial years of operation that could help with mortgage payments. A decision on the use of the second floor will be made early in the new year after we've had an opportunity to research our potential market a bit more.
The inn will be a major addition to the campus and will enable us to offer programming that is impossible without it. We anticipate that faculty will be able to offer our campus as a site for academic meetings and for continuing professional and enrichment programming of many different varieties. We also anticipate that the inn will be helpful to us in the recruitment of students, faculty, and staff. Yet, we see it as a community and regional resource and thus we believe that a variety of organizations and groups will take advantage of its facilities. In addition to these uses, it will be available for weddings, reunions, and other kinds of gatherings. Dave Dellifield in the McIntosh Center will be the manager of the facility. Hence, if you have suggestions, thoughts, or even plans or projects, I know he'd be delighted to talk to you.
We talked earlier, though, about a comprehensive campaign for ONU and I want to return to this topic for a moment because it will be a third important component of the 2007-08 agenda. At its meeting in December, 2006, the Executive Committee of the Board authorized the University to explore the possibility of a major comprehensive campaign by recruiting a campaign consultant, beginning preliminary conversations with major internal and external constituents, and starting the formal gift counting process on January 1, 2007. This was reported to the Board in February, a campaign consultant, Campbell and Company of Chicago, was chosen, and formal interviews with about 50 prospective donors and leaders of the campaign began in May and are ongoing. We anticipate a formal report to the Board in October and then - - assuming the feasibility report is positive - - Board endorsement of the campaign. It is expected that what is known as the "quiet phase" of the campaign will run from January, 2007 to October, 2008. During this time period, we will focus on raising 50-60% of the campaign goal. The campaign will then be formally and publicly announced at a gala event in the fall of 2008 and continue for three to four years.
At the present time, we do not know what the ultimate campaign goal will be. This will be decided by the Board on the basis of the recommendations the consultants make in the feasibility report. In October, therefore, we will have a better sense of the amount of money we hope to raise during the campaign. This preliminary estimate will then be discussed internally and externally and a final campaign goal will be determined in the spring of 2008.
I mentioned earlier, though, that we started counting for the campaign in January of this year. So, where are we at this point? With the Mathile gift, the Dicke pledge, the Beeler, Martin, and Butturff requests and other funds that have been raised for the Mathile Center and other projects, we are currently at about $40 million. This is obviously a wonderful foundation for a comprehensive campaign.
Typically, a comprehensive campaign focuses on four broad categories of gifts: scholarship and fellowships for students; endowed chairs, professorships and lectureships; program support, which can include either specified or unrestricted funds to support particular components, programs, equipment, library or technology needs, etc., of the University; and capital projects. Decisions about precisely what the priorities in each of these broad categories will be will be made on the basis of what we learn from our consultants and what we hear from our faculty and other internal constituencies during the conversations we will sponsor this fall. In all of these discussions, we will be guided, as we are in all of our decision-making, by the University's constantly evolving strategic plan, ONU Charts Its Future.
I have no doubt that our campaign will be successful and I know that the initiatives we will be able to pursue because of the resources secured through the campaign will help the University continue its successful efforts to achieve excellence. Yet, the most important outcome of the campaign will, likely, be the development of a culture of giving on the part of our alumni and friends. As I think we all know, we are too dependent on tuition at ONU. We must find other sources of revenue if we wish to secure our future. One important potential alternative source is annual and major gifts from alumni and friends. To nurture an attitude that promotes and supports this, though, we must convince our friends and alums that their continuing involvement in the life of the University is vital to its success, growth, and excellence. A comprehensive campaign will provide a major opportunity for us to emphasize this message.
Another message I hope we will have opportunities to emphasize this year and in the years to come is the importance of Ada to the University. One of the critically important components of any visit to ONU - - whether by a prospective student and his or her family or a prospective faculty or staff member - - is the visit to our village. Hence, projects, efforts, and initiatives that enhance the village environment help the University enormously. The streetscape project that was completed a couple of years ago is a good example. Visitors to the campus now regularly talk about how great our downtown looks. All summer, moreover, I've had folks comment on the beautiful new school that has been emerging north of the village. We've now even got some folks talking about how nice Lima Avenue will look when the current renovation is completed. And, how nice it is for us to be able to say when we are asked that we have excellent, fully qualified emergency medical services readily available in our village.
We're discovering, though a new and interesting characteristic of campus visitors. They seem less and less willing to accept that the "amenities" typically associated with modern life cannot be found in a rural village. They expect a Starbucks or equivalent, ... and a bookstore,... and a restaurant, ... and a tenplex,... and, even a mall! And we say: we can't support that kind of a lifestyle in a rural village in northwest Ohio!
In the future, it may not be possible to continue to make this argument. If we cannot provide the living environment prospective students expect, they may elect to attend other institutions - - especially since programs like pharmacy that have been key to our success over the years are emerging at competing institutions across the region. We discovered a few years ago that contemporary students didn't want to live in the kind of traditional housing that was available on our campus. As a consequence, we initiated a process which will, ultimately, completely transform the residential spaces available at ONU. We may, however, have to change more than housing.
The environment of our University and the lifestyle it will support encompasses more than what is available on our 285 acres. Accordingly, I talked with Mayor Retterer this summer about the possibility of putting together some kind of planning effort for our community that would help us think about where we might like to go in the future. I indicated that the University would be willing to support such an effort, that we would make our expertise and facilities available for such a project, and that we'd be happy to urge University personnel to serve on a community wide planning task force. This, of course, is by no means a unique or original proposal. Communities all around us, including places like Indian Lake and New Bremen, have already developed planning documents and options. It would seem that such an exercise would be valuable for Ada as well. Then, as opportunities occurred, we'd have some community priorities that we could reference as we decided how to take advantage of them. I'm looking forward to talking further with the mayor and to supporting any kind of community planning effort he and his colleagues may create.
Finally, this morning, I want to reinforce some advice shared with us by an alum last fall. As some of you will remember, The James F. Dicke College of Business Administration sponsored a program last November that featured four graduates from the 70s, including our current Board chair, Mr. Robert Smith, who had gone on to enjoy enormous professional success. One was Steve Malbasa, a 1975 graduate in accounting who now lives and works in Cleveland and Los Angeles as the Senior Vice President of American Funds. Each of the panelists that night made exceedingly thoughtful and stimulating comments about the paths to business and personal success with all stressing that failure is an integral component of success. Steve Malbasa emphasized another theme: "think big". Listen for a moment to his comments.
It seems to me that this advice is as relevant to us as it was to the many students assembled in this hall for the presentation last November. And I want, today, to encourage you to "think big". I want to encourage you to aspire to greater success, greater achievement. I want to encourage you to stretch, to be and become more, perhaps than you might have thought possible. But I want the same thing for the wonderful institution that we are all part of. I want it, too, to become better at what it does and to become better known, recognized, and respected. To what, though, should ONU aspire? We are a good - -nay, very good - - institution. But if we wanted to be "great" (to borrow a term from Jim Collins' book, Good to Great) or if we wanted to be in the very top group of universities that offer programming like we do, what would we look like? In answering this question, I think we should follow Steve Malbasa's advice. I think we should think big. After all, we're not talking about what we would like to be tomorrow or next year. We are talking about what we would like ONU to be like five, ten, fifteen, twenty years from now. When we think in these long range terms, it seems eminently appropriate to think "big", to aspire, to stretch.
And, I've been trying to promote some of this kind of thinking of late. For example, when I did my annual open forums last spring, I invited faculty and staff to share their dreams and aspirations with me. I got some fascinating responses. Several of you focused on housing issues and urged the University to find ways to purchase, build or rehabilitate housing that could be made available to faculty and staff and used to encourage alumni and friends to come to Ada for their retirement years. Some of you even suggested that Engineering and Technological Studies students might be able to take advantage of such initiatives in their course planning. Others of you focused more on quality of life issues, suggesting that we develop a summer concert /exhibition series that could be located in a renovated town square or green or take the lead in insisting that renewable forms of energy be used in all areas. Some also referenced our curriculum and urged cross-disciplinary programming that would feature faculty from all of our colleges teaching together. Breath should be our focus, it was argued, rather than specialization.
Because of the seeming interest in this general topic, I decided this summer to take this aspirational concept a bit further by asking our outstanding institutional research team of Christy Cole and Heather Hutchings to identify some aspirational schools and then compare them to ONU. This exercise produced some absolutely fascinating results. To identify potential schools, they selected the top fifty national or liberal arts universities from the 2007 U.S. News and World Report rankings. They supplemented this group with the top ten regional masters or comprehensive institutions. They then pruned this list by insisting that the aspirational institutions needed to be private universities enrolling mostly undergraduate, full-time students in liberal and first professional programs. They included only schools that had a total full-time enrollment of less than 10,000 and an undergraduate enrollment of 7500. Finally, they included only schools that had a composite ACT score at the 25th and 75th percentiles that was higher than ONU's.
This methodology yielded the ten universities you presently see on the screen. We concluded that it wasn't fair to look at Tulane at this point because of Katrina and that Washington Lee and the University of Richmond were less comprehensive than the others. This left seven aspirational universities. To this list, we then added a couple of institutions from our peer group, Drake and Creighton.
Now, how does ONU look in comparison to these nine institutions? We don't have time this morning to review all of the findings of our ongoing analysis, but some interesting patterns are emerging and are worth mentioning. For instance, all of the aspirational universities are larger than ONU, with Villanova University having the most students at 10,466. Fascinatingly, though, the student teacher ratios at these larger institutions are, with the exception of Drake, lower than ONU's. This is principally because of the larger faculties these institutions have and because of the larger endowments that are available to support these faculty. Still, it is clear that universities can grow in numbers while maintaining their fundamental character. All that is needed is simultaneous growth in the infrastructure of the institution. This, of course, is the balance growth concept that we have talked so much about at ONU.
In addition to the differences in student numbers, faculty, and endowments, there are two other comparisons between ONU and these aspirational institutions that I want to stress this morning. First, all have graduate programs and graduate students account for between 8% (Creighton) and 41% (Case) of their total student bodies. Secondly, all of these schools have a far more differentiated revenue structure than does ONU. As we have repeatedly emphasized, the vast majority (more than 90%) of the revenue needed to operate ONU comes from student charges. But look at the situations at some of the aspirational schools. Tuition and fees are clearly far less important sources of revenue. This is not a surprise, of course, when one realizes how important private gifts, grants and contracts, and the revenue derived from investments are in operating these universities. The graphs tell an envious story.
But, some - - perhaps many! - - of you are, I'm sure, saying: "so what? What's the point of all of this?" "What's the relevance of this discussion to our 2007-08 agenda and the future of the University?" In my view, this kind of research can be useful as we think about how we want to move our University forward. As I said at the outset, we are a very good institution that is close to the top tier of universities that do what we do. But, suppose we want to be better. Suppose we want to be in the league of the Dartmouth's, Brown's, Case's, or Wake Forest's. What would it take to get there? The data we've reviewed this morning suggests we need a more differentiated income structure, graduate programs, more faculty, and higher endowments. These, however, are only a few of the variables. To complete the map we'd need to draw to help us get to the next level, we'd have to consider a host of other variables including things like retention and graduation rates, overall costs, the quality of entering students, the giving rates of alumni, etc. Institutional Research has data on these variables and many others and is in the process of analyzing them for future presentations. Hence, I will be sharing more about our findings during the course of the year.
Some of you though are, I am sure, still saying: this is silliness! There's no reality to it! We couldn't possibly be like Dartmouth, Brown, or Case. Even Drake and Creighton the argument would go, are a stretch! Well, this is where I would remind us to remember Steve Malbasa's exhortation to "think big". When we think about the development of our University over the course of the next five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years, what's wrong with us saying that we want to move in the direction of a Case Western Reserve or a Wake Forest? The data would suggest that we're already, in many ways, at the level of a Drake or a Creighton. Why not acknowledge this and aspire to move to the next level? Why not aspire to be "great" as Jim Collins would say?
Now, I know I've again talked too long and I'm sure you're more than ready to hear what Dr. Lippert has to say this year about ONU's history. But, before I turn the microphone over to her I want to introduce you to JJ Coat and her dog Zeeke. JJ is a Pre-Vet major and honors student and as her Honors Project, she will be preparing Zeeke this year to become a service dog to help disabled individuals become independent. Zeeke's training period is 16 months and we have given JJ permission to bring Zeeke on campus as long as she respects the needs and preferences of others. Hence, I'm sure you'll see a lot of the two of them this year. Please welcome them.
Thanks much for your patience this morning. Have a terrific year and thanks, again, for everything each of you does every day for this fabulous University.
