The Inauguration of Dr. Richard T. Jurasek
Inaugural Address
April 5, 2008
Chairman Collins, members of the board of trustees, students, faculty, staff, distinguished guests, parents, representatives of other colleges and universities, dear friends and dear family.
A year ago, I was an aspirant for this job. A year ago in that chain of introductions and interviews and presentations, I was asked with laser insistence about my ideas, about what I was thinking, about my record, about my philosophy, my values, the facts. That is how it should be.
But there was little inquiry into how I was feeling. My sentiments at the moment. How I was processing things. How I was responding in my heart was surely not appropriate during a search when the employer is trying to objectively choose the best candidate for the job. That is how it should be.
But things are a bit different now one year later. I am allowed to have more contour, more complexity in that human sense. And these past few weeks, increasing numbers of well-meaning insiders (including my family) and outsiders have been asking how things are, how it feels to be so near the inauguration, what I feel about the College, about my experiences. What does it feel like, you are asking.
My response? I am experiencing, deeply, a wide range of complex emotions. Sometimes contradictory. I find that I am intellectually alive as never before. And I find that I am emotionally alive as never before.
Since you asked, I will talk about my work, your College, our College, about myself – all interrelated – in terms of four sentiments: gratitude, pride, humility, ambition.
The first sentiment: Gratitude
I am very, very thankful.
I am thankful that I have not received a pink slip from my bosses, the Trustees. Nor have I been impeached by the Faculty. Nor has my office been occupied by student protesters. Nor has the College been sued because of a mistake I made. These are not little things.
But there are more important dimensions to my gratitude.
Those of us who are teachers or have been teachers talk about the magic, the rejuvenation, the energizing associated with working with young people. Teaching generates hope. It tells you life is rich and endless opportunity. It reminds you that unqualified love does exist and can cause miracles. Only one thing can match that in reward and that is the pleasure of watching a son or daughter grow up, mature, embrace life’s possibilities. I am thankful that my daughter Christina is here, that she is watching me, listening to me, stimulating me, rewarding me, and giving me hope.
And to my wife Barbara, I am grateful. I thank her for being brilliant in matters of the classroom and in matters of life. I thank her for being my support. I thank her for being my partner. And on behalf of Medaille College I thank her for her ever-increasing contributions to the college.
Dear students, dear alums -- there is a habit in higher education to be terribly reductionist -- to speak of current students as customers, to speak of alums as current donors or potential donors and nothing else. I regret that. You are the evidence that we have existed, that our mission matters to us. You are the raison, the argument that we should exist. You are our values, you are our value-added. Thank you for being loyal, thank you for being successful in the classroom and in life. Thank you for being the evidence for hope.
Dear faculty colleagues -- I thank you for so thoroughly enacting our mission and dedication to student success. I thank you for welcoming me and laying hands on our collective need to re-fashion our systems and re-create a constructive and productive culture.
Dear support and administrative colleagues - I thank you for responding so energetically to my requests for extra effort, for longer hours, for more strategic and effective ways of serving and supporting our students and each other.
To the Board -- with sincerity I thank you for joining me in creating new Board systems and a new Board culture. I have never had “supervisors” who meant so well by me and so well by the College.
Dear all, I thank you.
The second sentiment: Pride.
The numbers are telling: There are 2,727 four-year colleges and universities in America. That means I have no more than 2,726 colleagues and peers. Nationally. What a distinctive assignment.
When I describe what it feels like to be inside of a national search for a college president, outsiders are astonished at the scope and spectacle of the process. What a serious and thorough and tough road it is for the searchers and for the candidates.
Most of the 2,727 institutions have a Founders Hall or a Founders Room or a Founders Gallery of Presidents’ portraits. When I was a young assistant professor I was cynical when I contemplated those portraited persons whose past I did not know. It just all seemed so stiff and museum-like. Now I see it differently. Of course I do. These are the people who stepped forward, who were chosen, who had the mettle and the skill sets, who preserved the institution, who advanced the institution.
Only five other persons in all of history have shared exactly my portfolio -- the five preceding presidents of Medaille College who steered the College from 1937 until today.
And these five previous presidents echoed and enacted the legacy that went before.
Leadership from the Sisters of Saint Joseph steered an institution, a Normal School, that from 1875 to 1937 prepared young women, sisters, to teach in Western New York’s schools. Nearly 2,000 such teachers.
Leadership from the SSJ steered an institution that from 1937 to 1967 continued teaching teachers but now at the baccalaureate level.
And all of this work – nearly 130 years of tradition – is all blessed by the example of Fr. Medaille who founded the SSJ in 1650 and who called upon all who were near him and who came after him to service “which consoles, relieves, unites.”
Pride? Yes, a college president is a rare professional appellation. Being a college president is also distinctive – in all of educational history ours is unique unto itself. I have been entrusted with something that is as valuable as it is vulnerable, something that is as much about today and tomorrow as it is about a 350-year tradition that reaches back to Fr. Medaille.
And pride in us as inquiry, as the life of the mind. Indeed, we recently enacted the life of the mind in classical fashion when I asked students to form into seminar groups and to intellectually unpack the idea of sustainability. Nearly 85 students – undergraduate and graduate – volunteered and exceeded all of our expectations. It was very pure and very good: analytic and moral inquiry at its best. I will speak to this later – under ambition.
The third sentiment: Humility
During renovations in the foyer of Main Building we stored the portraits of the five Medaille presidents in my office. On the floor behind the desk where I work. There are rules about how a portraited person is to sit, how to fold their hands and – most importantly – where to look.
Arrayed behind me, I was convinced they were looking at me. I could feel it. I was convinced. And they didn’t really give me advice. They just stared.
I had said that their legacy inspires me, made me proud of the trust given to me. But it keeps me humble. Can I do what they have done? Can I preserve this entity that reaches back to Fr. Medaille in 1650? How can I justify myself in their portraited eyes, in their gaze?
And beyond my office in our real world how can I or we justify ourselves collectively and institutionally in the eyes of our stakeholders, in the public gaze?
We all know that many institutions in the public gaze are tax-exempt: hospitals are exempt because they tend to our health; museums, because they tend to our art and our culture; churches, because they tend to our individual and collective spiritual wellbeing as well as our tangible material lives.
Their mission is their justification.
But why, really, should a college be tax exempt? Not simply because we train for jobs. That makes us a service industry and nothing more. Not simply because it is not-for-profit, I would hope. No, higher education should be exempt because it is a “higher” endeavor. Because it is exceptional. Because it makes a difference. Because it seeks the public good.
Yes, of course, higher education is the life of the mind and as such it is dedicated to seeking the good in a Platonic sense. I know that and believe that and I know how to build speeches around that.
But with humility and honesty I ask -- how can we and how do we earn our privilege as the creators of possibilities, as the fashioners of the future, as the teachers of civic-mindedness, as keepers of citizenship? Pro bono publico?
Higher Education is in trouble from a public relations perspective. I know this because we are reduced to the warfare I see on the admissions front: the Financial Aid war. Colleges discount prices and scramble to outbid each other in offering financial aid. We worry about sticker shock because our unique and precious service has been commodified. We are becoming just another commodity to be purchased. And then there is the amenities war. Colleges try to outbuild each other in comfort, convenience and coolness in facilities. And to outbid each other in financial aid. This competition reinforces the sense of us as a service industry and nothing more.
Higher Education is in trouble from a mission perspective. Higher Education talks about community service, about outreach, about neighborliness. We talk that talk but many people want to know us only for Division I sports, March Madness, obscene endowments, obscene prices, undergraduate binge drinking – we are known in very narrow ways. Yes, I know many colleges do very good things. But I fear we still may be the ivory tower separated from the community by a campus gate. I fear that the average and uninformed word on the street is that we really have not earned trust, respect, reputation in working pro bono publico.
If we do not have the incontrovertible evidence that we deserve the public trust because we serve the general public welfare, how, in great humility, can I provide the argument for Medaille that justifies our privilege? How -- with humility -- can I make big claims for us and about us? How do we deliver what is expected of us in the highest order of things?
The fourth sentiment: Ambition
My first thesis: I think there is a national and a local deficit in civic mindedness and I think Medaille can do something about it.
A second thesis: I think that the notion of “community” is devolving into an idea only, a hypothesis, a possibility. And I think Medaille can do something about it.
A third thesis: I think that colleges and universities do good things. They do cause civic mindedness and create community. They are doing good work but not their best work. I think that Medaille can do much better.
I think that – in light of higher education’s PR and mission crisis – we at Medaille have to do much more of that social and individual work that unites, consoles and relieves others, as Fr. Medaille suggested (and expected).
And on campus I think that Medaille’s habits of working must be more focused on what is doable, fundable, and achievable. In the short term and the long term “sustainability” may be a more important value than “growth.”
Indeed, I think that the three Medaille campuses should evolve and are evolving a new vocabulary, a new lead concept: “Sustainability.” There are two general meanings to today.
On the one hand “sustainable” is the only-choice alternative value to the old-school value: material growth. Few among us contest the evidence that our footprint on the planet is the fingerprint that will indict us. We have not stewarded the planet with proper long-term perspective and respect and the young people in the room today will have to sort their way through painfully difficult choices. Sustainability is of course the Call to Action that is not so underground and so radical as it might have been at the first Earth Day in 1972.
On the other hand there is the application of sustainable to a new conceptualization of community, of our collective life, of our ambition to create the ethos, the relationships, the capacity to bind and bond human beings in ways that make life rich, that make life possible. In ongoing ways.
I think we must commit ourselves to both usages of “sustainable.” But it is the latter sense that has considerable conceptual power for me. I say that because I know what Medaille cannot do and what it can do.
I certainly know that we can not do much about the bridge to Canada or the waterfront.
I certainly know we at Medaille cannot frame an ambition as a big bang model of change in which we will make a research corridor happen, bring automobiles back to Main Street, make Western New York into the North Carolina Research Triangle, or serve as a jobs pump and economic driver. We cannot claim to be fuel, an engine, or a foundational wall.
On the other hand, I know we know how to frame an ambition for Buffalo, the region, the planet that builds hope molecule by molecule. In smaller, dedicated ways we can make a difference that accumulates and multiplies and grows exponentially. We can create the human resource, the social and creative capital, the commitment, the sense of service that make the future possible. This week we have unveiled many of our new programmatic initiatives – you might have seen them in the brochure distributed this week titled “Our College, Our Community, Our Future.” Let me capture some of these efforts.
We are at work to create a seamless connection between the classroom and the community. We aim to bring the community into the classroom and to take the classroom to the community. “Community 101” will be piloted next year.
We are at work to create a regular course, a seminar that will carry forward the astonishing level of inquiry expressed in the eight seminars that convened weekly across the last 60 days. Undergrads, graduate students, teachers and guests from the community all engaged the ways we can build the social and creative capital to create a sustainable future for WNY.
We are at work to create a new General Education system that teaches to citizenship and sustainable communities. That work -- as a faculty initiative -- began in the summer of 2007 and has made astonishing and admirable progress.
We are at work to create new ways of serving our communities through new initiatives:
- A Sports Institute, to bring a multifaceted approach to active lifestyles in Western New York.
- An Academy for Creativity and Leadership, to challenge students through teamwork and mentoring.
- And, through the Center for Leadership and Change, to address the leadership and innovation needs of our community.
And as focus for all of this we have, as you know, a stated aspiration, a new paradigm, a new stretch goal, a new organizer.
Medaille College will be known as the leader in preparing learners for career success and a lifelong commitment to a civic and sustainable future in Buffalo, the region, and the world.
In head and heart, in all emerging planning documents, we have charted an ambitious course. How could we not do so?
Conclusion: The Presidency
In a recent seminar, I heard an illuminating presentation. The presenter spoke about “failed presidencies” but not as tragic stumbles by the president or fateful flaws inside the organization. She provided a useful concept – the idea of the presidency as an abstracted moment of hyper-interrelatedness, of connectedness, of mutuality.
Let us say that our college is a crossroads of interests – students, trustees, all employee categories, community. If so, then the presidency is the discernment of the deep and subtle connectedness across all of them.
Let us say that our college is a knowing expression of the mutuality across all of its domains – people interact, people aspire, people buy in, people struggle. The collectivity only succeeds, secures its future insofar as it knowingly enacts this shared will, this shared intention to create something much larger than any of us could create individually.
If the presidency is not an acute sense of these moments of lived mutuality then the president is only a high-level functionary. That may suffice for some institutions for some moments but it really never maximizes an institution’s ambition. Indeed, some colleges are ambitionless mechanical exercises. Similarly, some colleges are a reverie anchored in the “glory of our past.”
If I am right then the successful presidency is the unfolding story of recognized mutuality and ongoing interactions across time and across all stakeholder groups.
All of this is, of course, the beloved community which was central in Martin Luther King’s writings and teachings. He wrote “we are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”
If I am right, then the highest order of sustainability equates with the purest order of the beloved community.
If I am right then the successful presidency helps the institution aspire to be things much more ambitious than today - on campus and off campus.
And if I am right, I think the successful presidency creates a new vocabulary -- such as “sustainability” -- as language and central concept.
So at this symbolic moment I tell you I personally aspire to a successful presidency -- an aspiration far more challenging than aspiring to be a successful president who keeps the peace and keeps his job.
At this symbolic moment I personally extend a request: that you support this presidency and this aspiration to be much more than we are today.
I do so with a sense of gratitude for what I have been asked to do and the support I get. I do so with a sense of pride in our legacy. I do so with a sense of humility in terms of the company I keep and the challenge before us. And I do so with an unlimited sense of ambition: we will do wondrous and memorable and meaningful and energizing things together.
If I have been successful in this presentation, I have depersonalized things. I have focused you all on the presidency, on the college and on the seal affixed to the podium.
If I have been successful I have blurred the distinctions between our campuses and the greater world in which they are embedded.
If I have been successful, I have created a sense of seamless connection: Our College, Our Community, Our Future.
By my own definition this presidency is off to a promising start. I have brought my own very modest gifts and you have vastly multiplied them and have leveraged them to a new level, a new sense of self, a new sense of tomorrow. I can assure you that the last ten months of this wonderful experience have been rewarding and successful in a thousand ways. With gratitude, pride, humility and great ambition I look forward to the next ten years. With your help.
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