Good morning, 

I am grateful for the opportunity to be with you today in the final week of what has been a difficult term.  

… a term marked by ... the unsettling actions of the federal government which will have significant financial impacts on our research mission, our faculty, and our capacity to educate the next generation of scholars and scientists;  

…a term marked by ... exacting and to date unsuccessful bargaining with both our faculty and student unions; 

And it has been a term marked by ... difficult conversations about the university’s budget and state funding. 

As you know, my personal practice is, in both good and trying times, to do everything I can to pause and reflect, so I can be present to the moment and act with intentionality. Last Wednesday, I framed my remarks to the University Senate by returning to the words of Gwendolyn Brooks in her poem entitled Paul Robeson. They bear repeating here. She reminds us that:

We are each other’s harvest: 

we are each other’s business: 

we are each other’s magnitude and bond.

Here at the University of Oregon and indeed across the higher education ecosystem, we are indeed each other’s business and bond.

So, it weighs heavily upon me to hear about hundreds of millions of federal research funds haphazardly frozen or cancelled; of institution after institution across the country announcing hiring freezes; of 1,300 people being let go from the U.S. Department of Education, a key funder of research at our nationally-recognized College of Education.

When I arrived in Eugene last June, I remember the warm welcome I received, the care and hope and promise of graduation and the year to come. With the challenges we’re now facing, the mood has understandably shifted, and I find myself more and more focused on the difficult work of building trust in this community. 

Trust, however, is earned over time; it emerges as we seek to put our values into practice and navigate the frustrations that arise when values conflict and we need to find a path forward together. I know many of our faculty are frustrated and feel undervalued. I understand too the very real resource constraints under which the university is operating. While significant differences remain between our positions at the bargaining table, “we are each other’s business,” and I believe we have a shared interest in resolving these differences without a strike.  

****

One of the personal goals I set in conversations with Karl at the beginning of the year was to cultivate a culture of leadership across the University. I mentioned in my first remarks to the Board in September that the deans and vice-provosts held a retreat in the summer in which we agreed “To put the academic mission at the heart of the University through values-enacted, authentic, coordinated leadership.” Over the past few months, we have put this commitment to the test during a series of conversations about the academic allocation of the university’s budget and the difficult decisions we need to make to bring expenses in line with the limited resources we have.  

I am grateful to work with a group of deans and vice-provosts committed to bringing their full selves to this challenging work. The conversations have been difficult, and the difficulties are significant, but we are pulled together through them, not torn apart by them.  

And I am delighted to announce to you today that we have selected Jen Reynolds to serve as the next permanent Dean of the University of Oregon School of Law, following a competitive national search! Over the last nine months, I have come to know Jen as a thoughtful, visionary, and committed leader who has succeeded in building trust within the Oregon Law community. From my own interactions with her, I know that, beyond her stellar credentials, she brings an authenticity and relationship-based leadership approach that will elevate and enhance the culture of trust we are developing here.  I look forward to being her partner as she works with students, faculty, and staff to advance the school’s new strategic plan in alignment with Oregon Rising. Congratulations, Jen! 

**** 

I appreciate the focus the Board has brought to the Oregon Rising strategic plan and am heartened to report that we have moved into its implementation phase. President Scholz will provide further information about our implementation progress shortly, but I want to highlight two concrete decisions we have made to advance our goals on timely graduation. 

Working with the Division of Undergraduate Education and Student Success, we are launching two new financial assistance programs this spring. One is a “just-in-time” microgrant program that will allow an estimated 250 students who are facing registration holds due to finances at the end of their first year to enroll the next fall. The other is to enhance financial support through our hugely successful PathwayOregon program. It will provide bridge funding for students who lose Pell-eligibility after their first year and help alleviate financial barriers to re-enrollment. 
  
Both initiatives are designed to assist with student second-year retention rates and are funded through donor gifts. I thank Grant Schoonover and the Oregon Rising Financial Assistance workgroup for championing these initiatives. 

****

As I conclude, let me speak to the moment in which we find ourselves, not only as a local community, but as one of the leading public research universities in the United States.  

For generations, the citizens of the United States found it advisable to establish universities as sacred spaces of inquiry and learning and to support them with public funds because the search for truth and the habits of dialogue enrich the civic life of democracy.

Over the course of the last few generations, public trust in the value of this vital mission has eroded and the university has come to be seen not as a public good, but as an instrument of private and indeed political interest.

Yesterday, Board Chair Holwerda invited us to “lean smartly into the present crisis.” If we are to do this, we must reaffirm both the public and the research mission of our university as a sphere of free inquiry, intellectual humility, and responsible dialogue.   

Re-establishing trust in the integrity of this, the vital work of the public research university will enhance the well-being of society by providing it with new ideas, inventions, and practices of empathy and understanding that enable us to flourish. 

"We are each other’s  harvest: 

we are each other’s  business: 

we are each other’s  magnitude and bond.”  

Thank you.