State
of the College Speech by President Rokke
STREAMING
VIDEO VERSION OF PRESIDENT ROKKE'S SPEECH
Thanks
Dave…good
afternoon to all of you and welcome back.
Let
me first congratulate Jeanne Guaraldo, this year’s
Medallion of Merit recipient. We’ll
hear more about Jeanne’s
considerable contributions to our college in a few minutes. Suffice
it to say at this point that Jeanne is a remarkable woman
who has been involved in virtually every alumni-associated
event at Moravian during my 7 years here. She
is a leader who has brought incredible energy, ideas, and
action to our campus, from the boardroom to the
ballroom.
In
my remarks today, I would like to do two things. First,
briefly review our current situation as we complete one academic
year and move toward another, and second,
set forth the broad outlines of the major strategic initiatives
that we will work over the next several
years. Together,
they might be called a “state of the
college” presentation…and for those of you who
prefer simply to get the bottom line, I’m delighted to
assert that the “state of Moravian College” is
very good indeed.
Current Situation
Let
me begin by offering some rationale for my optimistic assessment. Once
again, during Academic Year 2003-2004, we set a new record
for student body size…1441 young men and
women…and enjoyed a freshman class with the best academic
credentials in history. We’re
working hard, incidentally, to tackle an unavoidable consequence
of expansion… providing sufficient
housing for our growing student body. The
steady rise in the quality of our student body during the
past few years is certainly reflected in an impressive
range of student achievement.
This
spring, our Moravian choir and women’s
chorus presented the Lehigh Valley premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s
Mass… Their superb production typified the excellence
in music for which Moravian is so well-known.
In
April, six Moravian students made presentations before the
prestigious National Council for Undergraduate Research.
19
students successfully completed a senior honors thesis this
year, in subjects ranging from the acoustic dynamics
of our concert halls to the values of 18th century Moravian
communities. 32
students have submitted honors projects for the next academic
year.
Not surprisingly, Moravian College graduates continue to
excel; they reflect a special mix of the intellect, drive,
and commitment that only a Moravian education can provide. For
example, Tony Costantino is bound for the University of Notre
Dame, where he will study for a doctorate in mechanical and
acoustic engineering. Mark
Schlegel will
seek a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Borko
Milosev will be an analyst
with Wachovia Securities in New York City…where he’ll
work for Robert Verrone, Class of 1990. Angela
Morgan will teach English in Asuncion, Paraguay… and
Tracie Shipman will mentor inner city youth in Chicago as an
AmeriCorps volunteer.
Incidentally,
this year’s graduating class was
the first to complete our ambitious and innovative general
education curriculum instituted some four years ago…we
call it “Learning in Common” or LINC. Our
assessment of its impact on students is continuing, but we
already know that since its implementation…freshman
retention has increased; our students have developed greater
writing and research skills; and they are graduating with broader
perspectives based on upper division courses in ethical and
moral issues, cultural values and global concerns.
Moravian’s
athletic programs are prospering in a similar fashion. How
proud we are to have one of the very best softball teams
in the country this year…. a team with two first-team
All-Americans… and a team that fell only one victory
and two runs short of a national championship. I
was especially pleased at the beginning of the season when
we defeated last year’s national champion, because
the president of that college was an undergraduate classmate
of mine and a close friend of some 40 years
standing.
This
was a year when Moravian Hounds rewrote the NCAA record book: Junior
Heather Bortz set an NCAA Division III record for hitting
in 44 consecutive softball games. The
Moravian women’s basketball team…who
also was invited to post-season play…set an NCAA record
for all divisions and both sexes with 35 consecutive free throws
in a single game. And
senior Mary Kate Cordisco established an all-division
NCAA mark with 25 consecutive service points
on the opening day of the volleyball season. At
the same time, our own Christina Scherwin, currently on a
leave of absence in order to try to qualify for her home
country of Denmark in the 2004 Olympics, is currently the 17th
ranked female javelin thrower in the world. Finally,
Brandon Zaleski from our men’s basketball
team has been selected to represent Moravian College at the
NCAA Leadership Conference at Disney’s Wide World of
Sports Complex in June.
Our
Vice President for Enrollment, Moravian alumnus Bernie Story,
tells me that next year’s freshmen also
walk on water…and, once again, we will establish a new
record with a projected 385 young men and women in the Class
of 2008. You’ll
be pleased to hear that something like 85% of them ranked
in the top 2/5 of their high school classes;
and their average SAT score is on the order of 1135..... some
15 points higher than last year’s record-breaking class. Incidentally,
one of those freshmen scored a perfect 1600 on his SAT test.
Finally,
I need to brag just a little about Moravian’s
faculty. You
alums know better than I that our professors do splendid
jobs as teachers…the magic that takes place
in the classroom is key to the Moravian experience for our
students. You
may not be aware of the research and publication accomplishments
by these professors. In
the past few years, for example, we have had books written
or edited by Professors Dunn in Psychology, Dutlinger
in Music, Jung in Political Science, Keim in History, Smolansky
in Sociology and von Allmen in Economics…other books
have been written by Emeritus Professor Larson in Music and
by Dean Skalnik of the Academic Affairs Office. Professor
von Allmen’s textbook, incidentally…on
the economics of athletics…is selling very well and now
has been published in Chinese.
Strategic Plan
Last
year at his event, I described how we have gone about developing
a “strategic vision” for the future…we
are now in the process of making that vision come to life. In
a nutshell, this means taking actions to increase Moravian’s
prestige as a national liberal arts college through a combination
of excellence in all that we do and recognition of that excellence
by others.
As
you know better than I, Moravian is a top-flight academic
institution and has been for many, many years. For
a variety of reasons, however, including our traditional “culture
of modesty,” we have not achieved an appropriate level
of recognition by our colleague institutions or, more importantly,
by potential students and their parents. Thankfully,
this is changing…Our
inclusion in the Princeton Review; our invitation to join
the prestigious
Annapolis Group; and our movement upward in the U.S. News and
World Report ranking system are but three recent examples of
your alma mater being recognized for what it is. The
challenge now is to complement and accelerate this progress
with concrete programs for achieving even greater
levels of excellence…indeed, we want to move quickly
into the top 100 national liberal arts institutions as recognized
by rankings such as those of U.S. News and World Report. We
currently are ranked 123 out of 214... and you will be pleased
to know that we have strategies for dealing
with each of the various elements in this ranking system, including
class size, faculty demographics, and other measures of academic
resources; alumni giving rates; student selectivity; and reputation
among our institutional colleagues.
Additionally,
we have earmarked more than $1 million of money in next years’ budget
to proceed with ambitious programs in at least five arenas
identified by our strategic
planning process. In
the natural sciences, this includes hiring an additional
biology professor, adding new academic programs such as bio-chemistry,
and beginning a series of improvements to our science infrastructure. Our
goal is to move the proportion of students majoring in these
areas toward 20 percent of each graduating class.
In
music, we have hired a new tenure track faculty member in
jazz; instituted more regional travel opportunities
for our superb choir; added resources for professional musicians
to participate in on-campus choir performances; and…for
the first time…televised our annual Christmas Vespers
program.
Thanks
to a very generous $350 thousand grant from the Payne Foundation,
we have instituted a Leadership Center
at Moravian College, headed by Dean April Vari of Student Affairs
and Dr. Michelle Schmidt of the Psychology Department. This
center will oversee the integration of curricular and co-curricular
leadership experiences for a large proportion
of our student body through a series of leadership institutes,
academies, student community grants and lecture programs.
Funds
permitting, and our athletic facility development efforts
are very close to achieving target levels, we will
renovate the Quadrangle Field located behind the HUB as well
as expand track facilities and apply artificial turf to the
Steel Field complex.
Finally,
the trustees have approved the establishment of the Institute
for Graduate and Professional Studies to replace
the Division of Continuing and Graduate Studies, with sufficient
autonomy to respond quickly and effectively to the market for
undergraduate and master’s level education for nonresident,
adult students.
We
are confident that these measures will allow us to proceed
toward a trustee-approved undergraduate day program
enrollment of 1600 full-time equivalent students by the fall
of 2012. Indeed, we already are three years ahead of schedule
with student quality increasing at impressive increments each
year.
In
short, your alma mater is moving smartly to keep up with
the demands of an increasingly complex and changing
world. I
believe that Moravian students will continue to walk across
the graduation stage equipped with the tools both
to understand this world and to make it better.
Please
allow me to conclude with a plea for your help. I
mentioned earlier that an important criterion in our U.S.
News and World Report ranking is the percentage of
alums who contribute to the college on an annual basis. We’ve
worked hard to improve this statistic and have achieved some
success. From
1998 to 2004, for example, our fund-raising efforts have
yielded approximately $36.5 million. This
money has enabled what is perhaps one of the most ambitious
infrastructure improvement programs in Moravian
history. As
I stand before you tonight, however, we still are faced with
an annual giving rate by our alums of only 23%. This
is not characteristic of a “top 100” college. Please
help us by reminding your fellow alums about the need to
contribute something each year, even if it is a
modest amount. After
all, we share a common goal… making sure
that the Moravian College experience… an experience which
has served each of you so well… can continue to quicken
the mind, body, and spirit of many more generations of alumni.
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