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Report of the President
Thank you, George [Schaefer, chair of the Board of Trustees], and good morning everybody.
Following the format initiated at the November meeting, I would like to focus my report on some of the University’s recent accomplishments:
Our Architecture and Interior Design programs have been ranked number one in the nation, standing second to none. What makes this even more impressive is that these rankings are based on a survey of employers across the country.
Entrepreneur magazine’s first-ever ranking of university entrepreneurship programs placed UC’s program in the College of Business in the top tier in regional entrepreneurial programs.
We announced an annual economic impact of $3.6 billion at the Medical Center, generating more than 50,000 jobs in the Tristate.
We made headlines with our record year for patent income -- which ranks us 27th in the nation and 14th among public institutions. UC once again led all Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana universities according to the Association of University Technology Managers.
Our June 2003 College of Pharmacy grads had a 100 percent pass rate on the jurisprudence portion of the pharmacy licensure exam and a 93.5 percent pass rate on the licensure exam.
You may have noticed our new radio spots and billboards. Our Division of Governmental Relations and University Communications has launched an exciting new marketing campaign for enrollment. It is before you. It is called “It’s All UC.” If you see a billboard and you say, “I don’t get it” -- you’re not supposed to. It is for the targeted undergraduate student population, but the spin-off will be “All Good News About UC.”
We kicked off a relationship with IBM and, of course, our software partner SAP, to modernize our financial management processes and systems. This project can be likened to a construction project. It is probably even more important than any one building, dealing with $1.7 billion in assets and an annual budget of $750 million. The new system, when it is in place, will have more than 700 end-users and will affect transactions across the entire university system.
Our new football coach, Mark Dantonio, reported to work earlier this month. Mark is the architect of the defense that helped Ohio State win the 2002 national championship and this year’s Fiesta Bowl. We have great expectations.
Three McMicken College of Arts and Sciences professors have been awarded prestigious fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. UC History Professor Ann Twinam and Classics Professors Kathryn Gutzwiller and Brian Rose will use these grants to conduct research during the 2004-2005 academic year.
Over 30 local schools and community agencies received a helping hand from more than 900 volunteers from UC and Xavier during last Saturday’s Crosstown Helpout, showing that February 3’s installment of the Crosstown Shootout is both a healthy rivalry and a community collaborative.
A UC program founded to help women advance in higher education has expanded to campuses throughout Greater Cincinnati. Beginning this month, 35 women from UC, Cincinnati State, Miami, the College of Mt. St. Joe, Northern Kentucky University, and Xavier are participating in this new collaboration.
Young designers from UC joined athletes and sports boosters, city agencies, and other designers in a one-day brainstorming session about the future Greater Cincinnati Basketball Hall of Fame, proposed for a site along the Ohio River at Sawyer Point.
The City of Cincinnati honored our Steve Wyatt, professor and head of finance in the College of Business, along with his wife and daughter. The Wyatt’s efforts have raised scholarships and funding for the St. Joseph School in the West End. Over the last four years they have directly and indirectly raised about $2.5 million for the school.
And, in case you are curious about my first three months at UC, I can report that I made more than 46 addresses from October through December. Thirty were on campus -- I hope to different groups, otherwise excessively painful for the audience -- and 16 to our various off-campus constituents.
In closing these remarks, I would like to congratulate Board member Sandy Heimann, who has just been named the winner of the Distinguished Service Award by the College of Business Alumni Board of Governors. This award will be presented at our Business Achievement Awards banquet on March 23. You may recall that last year another Board member, George Schaefer, received the Distinguished Service Award. That evening, Tony Shipley, an MBA alum, retired CEO and founder of Entek IRD, will receive the Lindner Medal for Outstanding Business Achievement.
And on one final note, we can’t say that the University of Cincinnati never gets any good press (referring to 68 duplexed pages of recent news articles regarding the University of Cincinnati). We are going to weigh you down with this, but I think the medium is the message. You have these clips before you—national coverage of our branding to local articles about our economic impact—and I hope you get a chance to scan them.
Thank you for this portion of the meeting, George.
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