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Good afternoon and greetings to the faculty, staff and students who are here today in person and to those who might be watching on the Webcast… or viewing this after-the-fact on the UC web site.

I want to thank the faculty for the invitation to speak today, and for changing the timeline to allow for my start date. Thank you in particular to Faculty Chair Marla Hall, who works very diligently to make sure that the faculty maintain an active voice and presence in the university’s governance.

I have already attended several Faculty Senate functions with Dr. Hall. She also served as a member of the Presidential Search Committee, along with other members of the university community.

Today marks day No. 18 on the job, if you count weekends and holidays. And daily, I am reminded what attracted me to this job. Even before my arrival, I had been familiar with UC for many years, growing up in Muncie, Indiana, only 123 miles away.

Back in 1995, I visited UC for a book-signing for my memoir, “Life on the Color Line.” At that time, I served as dean of the law school at a university somewhere north on I-71 and was well acquainted with my colleague at UC’s College of Law, former dean Joseph Tomain. Our close friendship was punctuated by a healthy rivalry as UC graduates regularly beat us on the bar exam. In the bar results just announced earlier this month, I am pleased to note that UC placed No. 1 among all test-takers.

So when I was invited to apply for the opening here, I was well aware of UC and the quality of its academic programs. There were many strengths that attracted me to this great university.

Let me highlight some of them:

• UC’s world-class faculty, who dedicate themselves to excellence in teaching, research, scholarly and creative activity, entrepreneurship and community engagement. 
• An incredible and diverse student body. 
• UC’s stature and proud identification as an urban research university. Our immense research enterprise places us in an elite group of universities with “very high research activity” as classified by the Carnegie Foundation. It also ranks us among the nation’s Top 25 public research universities. Our urban location cannot be overestimated as the city and the region that surround us offer a rich array to strengthen the learning experience along with vast opportunities to pursue new knowledge and discovery. 
• UC’s momentum. The upward trajectory of recent years, under UC|21, is undeniable and has not gone unnoticed. As I noted on the day I was appointed: While UC once stood for “under construction,” it now stands for “Up and Coming.” And that comes straight from U.S. New & World Report and the Chronicle of Higher Education, not just me. 
• UC’s standing and impact not only within the regional and state community, but also nationally and internationally. 
• UC’s acclaimed physical transformation. This exciting campus has become the hottest in the region and the state. 
• UC’s renowned Academic Health Center, which provides much-needed and high-quality health care to our region while standing at the forefront of medical discovery. 
• And UC’s intercollegiate sports program. I know I risk alienating some who may not be sports fans by mentioning this. Nevertheless, our student-athletes and their success provide a unifying force and spirit that is hard to equal in any other way.

Yesterday at our Board of Trustees meeting, there was a healthy and robust discussion on funding for the Jefferson Avenue Sports Complex. That conversation was a good one, and very appropriate for a campus, with differing points of view.

Athletics is an example that may hold some valuable lessons for us. I would postulate that we, as an academic community, might look at the UC football program and its transformation as a model that deserves some closer examination.

The program dreamed big, set high goals and went from obscurity to a national ranking of No. 5 in about five years. They have truly changed the way the nation thinks about UC football. How did they do that? It can't be just money, because we have one of the smallest athletics budgets in the Big East. Can what they have achieved bring a new dimension to our thinking as we pursue our academic ambitions?

While UC football presents a timely example, we also have many top-ranked academic programs that offer models to emulate. Design and architect in DAAP and music, voice and conducting in CCM are just a few examples. I know we have more, but in the interests of time I will not recount them now. From our top-ranked programs, what lessons can we learn about how to excel? Do we have the potential to achieve things on this campus that we’ve never imagined possible?

As I look back over the list of what brought me to UC, now that I am here I realize how very much each ties into the excellence and greatness that defines the University of Cincinnati, both as a result of your diligence and the work of my predecessors. I am beholden to you and to the leaders who have gone before me for the firm foundation that has been established.

Under President Emeritus Joseph Steger, the Campus Master Plan literally rebuilt the UC landscape, with results that have been acclaimed across the nation and around the world.

And in the last six years with UC|21 under the guidance of former President Nancy Zimpher and Interim President Monica Rimai, UC’s standing in the Greater Cincinnati community and the national academic world has soared. I should also add my appreciation to both Dr. Zimpher and Monica Rimai for their efforts in working with the entire university to address some of the university’s thornier challenges, including fiscal planning, budgetary shortfalls, compliance policies and the start-up of Performance-Based Budgeting. We need to stay the course on all of these fronts.

Since my arrival on November 1st, each day I have found more evidence that the University of Cincinnati truly has much to take pride in. You may be wondering what I have been doing for the past two and a half weeks. I have been at my desk very little, thanks for the “First Day, First Week, First Month” schedule that Vice President Greg Vehr and a committee put together for me. My days have been chock full of:

• Visits with the deans and the colleges, University Libraries and Professional Practice. Only Allied Health Sciences remains, scheduled for December 3.
• My first Cabinet meeting. 
• Meetings with the Faculty Senate Cabinet, the regular Senate and Student Government leadership. 
• An alumni reception. 
• College advisory council meetings and scholarship dinners. 
• Meetings and phone calls with civic and elected officials, including Governor Ted Strickland and Chancellor Eric Fingerhut, representatives in Washington and White House staff. 
• A breakfast with corporate leaders. 
• Media and radio interviews.
  

As a result, I have been greeted by rows of faculty and staff lining up outside of University Pavilion and from the parking lot to the building entrance at Raymond Walters College. I have viewed plans for Clermont College’s collaboration at the Ford Plant.

I have also: witnessed students using the 24/7 services of UCit@Langsam; listened in at the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, as faculty members learned a new process for collecting learning outcomes data, all connected to semester conversion; participated in a news conference at GE Aviation, with GE President and CEO David Joyce, Governor Strickland and Chancellor Fingerhut; watched student-designers and student-architects at work in studios; visited medical school students at the new CARE-Crawley Building; served as honorary captain of the football team at Nippert Stadium; posed for pictures with the UC Bearcat; petted the zoo’s live bearcat, LUCY; and tasted chili made by Dean Larry Johnson. I also received a permanent cut-in-line pass for the CECH annual barbecue!

Truthfully, my UC immersion began before arriving in Cincinnati as CCM hosted a Steinway concert in New York and alumni Jeff Williams and Richard Thornburgh hosted a reception for me and my wife, Sara, in the Big Apple. My son Zach and I also stopped at a New York alumni chapter event to watch UC Bearcat football on TV.

At the end of my first week, I sent an email greeting to the UC student body. The response I received back from them has been heartening, as well as complimentary of all of the hard work you do as a university.

One student observed in an e-mail: “As a current undergraduate student, it has been an amazing experience being here at UC and fully taking advantage of all that is offered here. Keep up the good work…”

Another, from a student in the nursing program at Clermont College, wrote: “I feel like our college is the BEST in Ohio! The teachers are tough, but fair. And they all teach so much, it is wonderful! I feel like our teachers really do care about the students.”

From all of this activity in a very short time, the chief lesson I have learned is that UC enjoys the true support and commitment of a large and caring community that encompasses dedicated faculty and staff, wonderful students, loyal and proud alumni, as well as generous donors and partners.

From our Board of Trustees to deans and faculty…from current students to alumni…without exception, the people whom I have met have voiced the desire that the University of Cincinnati continue to build on its great momentum. Our university prefers not to stand still or to rest on its laurels. Rather, the University of Cincinnati embraces a desire to reach ever-higher. I embrace that desire, as well. You embrace it, too, or you probably would not be here today.

While I have been talking about what attracted me to UC and what I have learned along the way already, I thought I would also share a bit about my background and how that background intersects with who I am as a leader and a university president. I bring to UC a commitment to the transformative power of higher education formed not only by my professional experience but my own personal life as well.

As you may know from the title, “Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy who Discovered He Was Black,” or the articles you have read about me in UC Magazine, I grew up until the age of 10 believing I was white and having lived the life of privilege that afforded me.

Then my parents separated, and my mother left with our youngest two siblings. And literally overnight, as my father confessed his racial heritage to me, I became black.

My father, my brother, Mike, and I took a Greyhound bus from Virginia to Muncie, Indiana, moving into a shack in a segregated, black part of Muncie with my African American grandmother. Both dad and Grandma were alcoholics and could not provide for us.

In that cold winter of 1954, in all of Muncie there was only one person willing to reach down to two little lost boys. That person was a 55-year-old black woman with an eighth grade education who lived some blocks away – Miss Dora Weekly Terry.

She was not a relative. She just saw how we lived in a tarpaper shack and brought us food when she could. She worked 10-hour days as a maid – a job she did six days a week for the princely sum of $25 a week.

And yet she reached out to us, and eventually took us in to her own home, and raised us as her boys.

While Dad had his demons and lost many jobs during his life, he did teach me the value of education. He taught me to dream… and to believe that dreams can come true. He taught me that I could do whatever I wanted… Or become whatever I wanted.

Thus my experience growing up in the black housing projects of Muncie, Indiana, taught me:

• Perseverance.
• Never give up hope.
• Dream big.
• Work every day on those dreams.
• Be committed to your goals and if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well.
• Take the chance to be part of something bigger than yourself.
  

And I promise to use all of these personal principles to work toward the betterment and excellence of the University of Cincinnati.

I know a lot of questions are buzzing about what direction we will now take together to move the university forward. One thing for sure is that we must build upon the great foundation that has been established. Another certainty is that I do not intend to lay out my plan for moving forward, but rather to build our plans together.

In the weeks and months ahead, there are many questions we must ask ourselves:

• How can we build on the great success that UC and UC|21 have achieved…to keep us on an upward trajectory… to shape a future for the University of Cincinnati that brings us to a heightened level of excellence?
  
• What opportunities are there to move our university forward and enhance our programs, our recognition and our reputation?
• What are the big ideas that will galvanize action in pursuit of our full potential as a world-class research university?
• I feel the“UC|21” concept is a great one and was not something developed simply as one person’s vision, but rather the entire university’s. It is not a finished product, however, so what will its next iteration encompass?
• While the six goals of UC|21 are spectacular, do they need to be refreshed or revised?
• What is the idea-generating process that we can use to shape our plans … that will be streamlined yet inclusive and vet ideas with key stakeholders?
• How do we prioritize our priorities?

I have already begun to ask the deans, the vice presidents, the Faculty Senate Cabinet, students, alumni and others to think about the ways we can boldly move forward. I invite you to do the same and share with me your thoughts. Please email your suggestions to me at president@uc.edu.

While I have outlined a number of questions, there are several themes or issues that I suggest should factor into our thinking going forward. The first is:

• Completing our conversion to semesters in a way that truly renews our curriculum for the 21st century, provides greater opportunities for students, and realizes our aspirations to become a world leader in learning and student success. 
• Expanding the impact and standing of the University of Cincinnati, nationally and internationally.
• Continuing to build the quality of the student experience on our campus. Great strides have been made as the National Survey of Student Engagement and other surveys have shown. We must stay the course to achieve further improvements to retention and graduation rates along with outstanding student service and advising.
• Ensuring the success of our $1 Billion Proudly Cincinnati campaign. This is an absolutely critical component of aiming higher.
• Enhancing our diversity efforts. Excellence and diversity go hand in hand. We can be proud that UC remains one of the nation’s most diverse campuses, according to Princeton Review; yet there are challenges that remain, and we must find creative ways to maintain and grow our diversity.
• Expanding our international opportunities. A part of our diversity is our multicultural student body and our commitment to making sure that our students understand the world. We must find new ways to open the world’s doors to our students by building international experiences into more courses and giving many more of our students the chance to travel overseas.
• Continuing to break down the silos that separate us from ourselves. If we want achieve the recognition we desire, we must truly unite to become greater than the sum of our parts.
• Ensuring a leadership position for our Academic Health Center for our region, state and beyond.
• Advancing our stature in the University System of Ohio.
• Deepening and expanding our connections with our alumni. I have truly been impressed by the extent of UC’s alumni support. Further enhancements would expand the membership and involvement of our proud alumni network.
• Strengthening our connections with our business and community partners….Tremendous progress has been made yet so much more opportunity remains. We can work smarter, more innovatively and more strategically than ever before.

I want to thank you again for this opportunity to speak to you today. I have no doubt that UC has the capacity and desire to be the best and to become a truly premier and national university. And I look forward to joining forces with you to achieve our goals.