Remarks By President:

We come together this year energized by the year-long efforts and thoughtful recommendations of the internal and external Commissions on The Future of The Florida State University. No one who participated or who read the proceedings could help being impressed with the vision and wisdom expressed by so many of our faculty and friends in that process. The ideas many of you articulated about the future of this university remind me once again of the incredible talent and devotion to the ideals of higher education which exist in this community of scholars. I thank all of you who participated for your commitment to the well-being of this institution.

This faculty is a diverse group, of course, and your recommendations for priority action ranged far and wide across disciplines and across our missions of teaching, research, and public service. I am happy to say, however, that there is a remarkable convergence of opinion about our opportunities for the future, in both the internal and external commission recommendations.
 
That consensus of opinion can be summarized in one clear, simple statement: The time has come for The Florida State University to earn its place in the top tier of the nation’s public research universities.
Neither I, nor the 19 faculty who constituted the internal Commission on the Future, nor the 32 friends of the University on the external Commission, express that vision lightly. It is not intended as an attractive platitude, designed to make us feel good about ourselves as we go about the important work we perform each day. Instead, it is a call for sustained action. It is a commitment to transform this very fine institution into one of the premier universities in America.

A truly challenging, common vision of the future is what is required of us at this time. Our Commissions on the Future understand the value of thinking large thoughts and the importance of stretching toward goals that may seem far away.

In a book called Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within, the author Robert Quinn offers a message to each of us:

Trusting our vision enough to start our journey into the chasm of uncertainty, believing that the resources will appear, can be very difficult. The fact that we have enough trust and belief in ourselves to pursue our vision is what signals to others that the vision is worth investing in. Acting on a vision that exceeds our resources is a test of our vision, faith, and integrity.

And so we are challenged to not remain content with what has been built here in our 147-year history, but to honor those who have nurtured this institution, leading a renaissance that will carry us to greater distinction in the beginning of a new century.

There is precedent. Throughout our rich history, our faculty has often grasped a new vision and propelled itself into higher realms of distinction. We remember in particular the period following World War II and the transformation from a marvelous women’s college into a comprehensive research university.

Circumstances were aligned during that period to produce a distinguished university. The GI bill and the resulting demand for access to college permanently changed us. And we gathered enormous internal strength from the legendary “49ers,” that distinguished group who came here in the late 1940s and early 1950s and who laid the foundation for our great progress during the post-Sputnik era when enlightened federal policy provided support to science research. These 49ers led us to our designation in 1994 as a Carnegie Foundation Research I university.