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Convocation Address 2018

CONVOCATION ADDRESS
Mayer Theatre, SCU
11 September 2018

 

Welcome

Good afternoon, and thank you for attending this Convocation as we commence a new academic year.  Thank you, Dennis, for the introduction, and Lisa Kloppenburg for the invocation. It is a pleasure for me to meet with you and with so many others via live stream as we focus on the dawning Fall Quarter. My hope is that you have enjoyed some vacation time and a restful break from your various responsibilities here on campus. For us, it was a time for serious reflection and action on a number of issues that I will address in a moment.

Before getting to that, let me greet our newest members of the Santa Clara community who join us.  First, I ask all of our most recent faculty and staff members please to stand so that we can recognize you. We are delighted to have you join us.

Also, I ask new administrators to stand and remain standing as I introduce you.  I welcome the new Executive Director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Dr.  Donald Heider, who comes to us from Loyola University, Chicago. I wish to greet the interim dean of the School of Engineering, Dr. Jon Strauss, former president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Harvey Mudd College. Joining us as Associate Vice President for University Marketing and Communications is Celine Schmidek, and assuming the position of Associate Vice President for Finance is Jessica Matsumori. Father Dennis Smolarski, from the department of Mathematics and Computer Science, is directing the Office of Campus Ministry. Let us give all new faculty, staff, and administrators a warm welcome to Santa Clara.

Over the summer, my reading list included a pre-publication copy of John Farnsworth’s Coves of Departure: Field Notes from the Sea of Cortez. Recently retired after many years as a senior lecturer in English and in Environmental Studies, and now Emeritus, John described experiences from a decade of natural history field trips to Baja California with his students. In his book, he reflected on the students’ delight of discovery beyond their textbooks. They reacted with excitement when they patiently paid attention to creatures in nature and suddenly recognized what they were unprepared to see.

John describes the “delight of discovery”: “The adult world underappreciates delight… . In defense of delight I argue that it goes hand-in-hand with discovery, and I observe it often folds appreciation and gratitude into the discovery process.”[1]

 

Discovery - Delight - Gratitude

I structured my remarks this afternoon under these three categories. These concepts help organize much of what has happened at Santa Clara, as well as assist us in making sense of where the new academic year is taking us. As I will discuss in a moment, many in our academic community joined us in such discovery. Like John’s students, I invite you to join me in learning beyond preconceived notions by patiently paying attention to whom and what we encounter. Looking with new eyes will enable us suddenly to recognize what we might otherwise be unprepared to comprehend and cherish.

Discovery

To recognize what is happening around us, we must ask questions and be prepared to listen to the answers. In doing so, we must patiently focus our attention on our colleagues. We do best if we observe without distraction or interruption, with unblinking eyes, with our ears perked up, and cell phones turned off. I know for myself that preconceptions can hinder my listening.  I also have discovered that the hard work of paying attention with an open mind yields revealing insights. Let me offer a few examples of discoveries from the past 12 months.

1. Housing. With the recovery from the Great Recession, Silicon Valley firms have greatly expanded and created thousands of new jobs. Amid this employment expansion, regrettably, the building of new housing has not kept pace. The Bay Area Council reports that “the Bay Area has failed to build enough housing to keep up with population growth, let alone with the record pace of job creation… .”[2]

Through your sharing and our discovery, we know that faculty and staff alike have had to deal with this burden. We know this weighs more heavily on some of our faculty and staff than others, and we are committed to helping those who need it the most. Hearing from so many of you and others, the University administration has engaged in important study and exploration of how we can assist.  Michael Crowley, Vice President for Finance and Administration, has made affordable housing for faculty and staff a high priority.

Michael and his staff report that the University currently has 91 residential units that faculty and staff currently occupy. His office is investigating six sites we own and considering 10 different housing options that could be built on these sites. The largest of these sites could host up to 195 additional new high-density units for our faculty and staff.  These sites are located very near campus to help eliminate commute time and are located in two cities, Santa Clara and San Jose.  All project sites under review are within a 10-minute walk to campus.

The University is considering numerous different types of homes, including garden apartments, condominiums, and townhomes – to meet the varying needs of our faculty and staff. Limitations we face with these projects include city approvals and funding considerations. Michael and his staff have consulted with the housing offices at Stanford and USF to benefit from their experiences in building such housing.  Next steps include seeking additional feedback from faculty and staff in late Fall of 2018 or in Winter 2019. We plan to do everything we can to move from the input and planning stages to having actual homes for more of our faculty and staff to live in as soon as possible. We must also continue to explore other housing options as well.

2. Adjunct Faculty and Lecturers. Let me be clear: all of our faculty are important to the educational experiences our students receive. But, there is one group that has not felt our appreciation as they should have: our adjunct faculty and lecturers, who play a vital role in the fulfillment of our educational mission at Santa Clara. Over the past five months, I have hosted 12 hour-long listening sessions over breakfast or lunch with a wide variety of adjunct faculty and lecturers. I deeply regret that the issues they were experiencing took me this long to hear and understand fully.

Like students on field trips to Baja with John Farnsworth, my personal journey began with paying closer attention and listening. From adjunct faculty and lecturers I heard about many concerns: the outdated-reappointment processes, the need for greater job security, the absence of a career track for faculty primarily focused on teaching, and the financial realities these faculty face in the Silicon Valley. Like the students, I heard with new ears and saw with new eyes.

I am deeply grateful to these faculty who spoke so candidly. They revealed their deep love of the students, their delight in teaching, their desire to serve their departments, and their excitement about their research. They were already contributing constructive input to the Committee on Lecturers and Adjuncts, the Faculty Senate, the Faculty Affairs Committee of our shared governance, and the new Lecturer Best Practices Task Force. Through these associations, they have all shared their views and recommendations with me and my staff. The collective voice of our adjunct faculty and lecturers is being heard, and their concerns are being acted on.

From these encounters have come further developments. The Provost announced in several emails since April a series of meaningful steps we have taken to implement many of the solutions that have been identified.

  • Rental Assistance: A new rental assistance program for renewable term lecturer faculty was put into place for all 35 eligible faculty.  Those supplements will begin on September 22.
  • A new shared-equity, down-payment program, offered with the assistance of Landed Housing Solutions, to assist senior lecturers (who meet specific eligibility criteria) with down-payment assistance to buy a home. We held one information session in June and another will take place this Fall for this important new program.
  • Improved and Accelerated Appointment Process for Academic-Year Adjunct Lecturers: We heard how important it was for our Academic-Year Adjunct Lecturers to have more certainty about reappointments, so we have addressed this as well.
  • Expedited Renewal Process for Renewable Term Lecturers: By the same token, our Renewable Term Lecturers correctly expect to have both clarity and expedience in their reappointments. This new process addresses this matter.
  • Compensation: As we build a new teaching track, it will be supported by a new compensation structure.  The Faculty Affairs Committee will continue working with the Provost’s Office on improving all faculty salary scales.

These actions are concrete responses to what we have heard. We shall continue to work with lecturers and adjunct faculty because of the University’s commitment to all its employees. We know we have more work to do, including building a deeper culture of respect. This will take time, effort, and good will.  To be clear, this issue is one that no outside organization can fix. We need to do this hard work ourselves – and we will.

In the meetings I hosted, I heard repeatedly about the matter of respect. From Quarterly Part Faculty to Senior Lecturers, faculty members of all ranks reported feeling disrespect as teaching professionals from their colleagues. The Administration is working to address institutional processes that irritate or demean. Now we need to show how seriously we view adjunct faculty and lecturers as essential colleagues. This matter of University Mission involves all of us. How we humanely treat our colleagues concerns the heart of the mission of this University.

3. Campus Climate SurveyAs a direct result of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Diversity and Inclusion and the follow-up Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion, the administration contracted with Rankin and Associates to conduct a campus climate survey this past year. The main goals of the study were to gather information on the experiences and perspectives of our students, faculty, and staff as comprehensively as possible; use the findings to set priorities as we implement the recommendations of the Commission and the Task Force; and establish a baseline to measure future progress with regard to diversity and inclusion.

I would like to thank the members of the Climate Study Working Group for their hard work on the development and administration of this survey.

Rankin and Associates will present their findings at two community-wide open forums on Wednesday, October 3 at 12:30 and 5:30 pm, here in Mayer Theatre. The university will release the report in its entirety to the campus on October 4. I shall receive the report simultaneously with the rest of the community and I will prioritize key action items to implement at the university-wide level, in consultation with our collaborative governance system. We will share further information about next steps in the coming weeks.

As we wait for the findings of the report, I believe we can also learn through our own observation.  From last year alone, I know we have work to do in mending relationships, making sure everyone feels heard, and improving our ability to respond quickly and compassionately to problems that arise.

Other campus leaders, including the deans, Provost Dennis Jacobs, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Elsa Chen, Vice Provost for Student Life Jeanne Rosenberger, AVP for Human Resources Charlie Ambelang, and members of my Cabinet, have made a commitment to apply the study’s findings to inform action for positive change throughout our campus.

I look forward to seeing you at one of the two forums on October 3 to join me in reflection on the report and discernment to make Santa Clara as inclusive and welcoming as possible for all members of our community.

4. Examen. Four years ago, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Adolfo Nicolas, SJ requested a survey of each Jesuit college and university in the United States. He encouraged a campus-by-campus reflection on the Jesuit nature of each school. Three-to-four schools per year have undertaken this self-review. Each institution considered what it has done, what it is doing, and what it can do to implement more completely the values of Jesuit education.  These Jesuit values include education of the whole person, concern for each individual (cura personalis), promotion of social justice, and respect and promotion of faith and spirituality.

I have asked Fr. Dorian Llywelyn, executive director of the Ignatian Center to co-chair this project. Soon I will name a co-chair to work alongside Fr. Llywelyn. They will consult with the deans, and the leadership of the Faculty Senate Council and the Staff Senate, on how best to constitute a task force, and structure and conduct this review. The self-study, with recommendations, will go to a visiting team of colleagues from other Jesuit universities for their consideration.

The visiting team feedback comes to the president, who in turn will share the report with the campus community. The president will also submit the self-study and the report of the visiting team to the Jesuit Provincial, Father Scott Santarosa. (I should note that Scott is an SCU engineering alumnus, Class of 1988). Father Santarosa will forward the information to the current superior general, Father General Arturo Sosa, S.J. for his comment. Father Sosa, holds a doctorate in political science and has been a professor and university president in Venezuela.

5. Student Mental Health IssuesOver the past year, national media has focused on student mental health issues. Santa Clara is no exception to student problems of depression and anxiety.  Jeanne Rosenberger, Vice Provost for Student Life, and Dr. Jill Rovaris, Director of the Cowell Center, have responded and formed the 17-member JED Campus Program Committee to promote student mental health. The JED Foundation program advocates:

  • shared responsibility for student emotional well-being;
  • helping students understand the links between physical and emotional health and academic success;
  • encouraging help-seeking behaviors; and
  • de-stigmatizing mental health and substance abuse problems.

We have already taken a number of steps to benefit student mental health. We expanded weekend hours in the Malley Center during the school year, trained faculty and staff to become facilitators of Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) gatekeeper training, and prepared over 900 SCU community members to recognize warning signs of a suicide crisis.  

Student Life launched a new JED website in April that tracks efforts related to mental health and provides regular updates on campus-wide actions to promote mental health, prevent suicide, and limit substance use. 

Through the generosity of a number of parents, we are also able to offer free fitness classes for students for the 2018-19 year. Further, in May the Office of Student Life launched an emergency meal fund for the growing number of students who experience food insecurity - a lack of reliable access to sufficient quantities of affordable, nutritious food. Through the Office of Student Life, faculty and staff have donated funds to support the program, and Alumni Relations has adopted this cause for their holiday giving, to assist students who need financial assistance with meals. In the second week of the quarter, the Office of Student Life will send an email with additional information about the emergency meal fund.

Becoming a JED campus illustrates the breadth of concern for student well-being that you, faculty and staff, are supporting and offices on campus are promoting. Thanks to Jeanne Rosenberger and Jill Rovaris, through the JED program we have discovered effective means to deal with student mental health issues.

 

Delight

1. Student Awards. As an academic institution, our greatest success emerges from the students whom we educate.  This past year we excelled.  Not only did eight seniors and alumni receive Fulbright Scholarships, but we set a school record and emerged as a top Fulbright Scholarship Producing university in the nation. Other students received prestigious awards, including our third Rhodes Scholar in eight years.

Special thanks go to Professor Leilani Miller and her team who coached and supported these students and alumni. Such student achievements delight us all.

2. Donors Continue to Respond to SCU. Our comprehensive fundraising campaign is closing the first of its two phases with great success.  The first half of the campaign, the leadership phase, focused heavily on construction and capital projects.  All told, we have received or have pledges and estates that total $510 million towards implementing our Integrated Strategic Plan. I delight in the remarkable work of the University Relations staff, led by Jim Lyons.

The tremendous momentum bodes well for Part Two of the campaign, the Public Phase. We shall launch this next chapter of the campaign at the 53rd annual Golden Circle Theater Party on January 19, 2019 in San Jose. Additional launch parties will follow through May in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Portland and Denver.

The focus for the coming phase of the campaign will be on raising $500 million for scholarships, faculty endowed chairs, academic programs, and projects to enhance the Jesuit Catholic nature of the university.

3. Academic Achievements: The Deans and Center Directors. Our six deans and three executive directors of our Centers of Distinction shared with me an enormous list of accomplishments. I wish that I could recite all of them this afternoon. I refer you to the text of this address that the University Marketing and Communications office will post online this week. You will be amazed – and delighted – by all that you discover.

The Law School reports good news about the Entering Class of 2018. Applications increased by 3%, enrollment grew from 222 last year to 244 this year, the cumulative undergraduate GPA and median LSAT scores advanced, selectivity rose, as did yield from offers of admission (the highest rate in 10 years).

Thanks go to the members of the Law Admissions and Financial Aid team, especially Professor Brad Joondeph, who steps down from his role as Associate Dean, but steps up to his role as Chair of the Admissions Committee for the 2019 admissions cycle. We would also like to thank Professor Gary Neustadter, who served as Chair of the Admissions Committee for many years, as well as Professors Phil Jimenez, Marina Hsieh, John Schunk, and Margalynne Armstrong for serving on the Faculty Admissions Committee.

Jesuit School of Theology is establishing a Global Theology Initiative among the seven English-speaking Jesuit theology centers. The Centers are located in Manila, Nairobi, Toronto, Boston, Berkeley, New Delhi, and Pune, India. The goal is to offer faculty and student exchanges and classes on different campuses linked by technology. JST is already piloting these types of collaborative exchanges with Hekima College in Nairobi.

The School of Education and Counseling Psychology hired ASU Professor Oscar Jiménez-Castellanos to establish the Center for Latinx Education here.  This addition complements the School’s Latino Counseling Psychology programs, one of the best in the nation.

The Leavey School of Business launched a fully online version of its nationally recognized MBA, a program steeped in the mindset of Silicon Valley, with cutting-edge curricula and unparalleled networking opportunities. Students now have the flexibility to complete the program from home, on their own schedule, while keeping in regular contact with classmates and the professors and Silicon Valley professionals teaching in the program.

Each year, graduating seniors majoring in Engineering pursue a yearlong project of their choosing, under the mentorship of a faculty member. Many of these teams are interdisciplinary, and three student teams spent Spring Break implementing their projects in Nicaragua, Tanzania, and Uganda. Last May, 265 seniors, in 82 groups, presented at this year's Senior Design Conference.

The College of Arts and Sciences launched the REAL program, and the Dean and departments allocated over half a million dollars to fund 127 undergraduate students this past summer, enabling these students to pursue creative work, undergraduate research, paid internships, or individualized projects of their own choosing.

The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics recently joined the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society, in collaboration with Google, Apple, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft.  The Partnership focuses on artificial intelligence and issues of ethics, economics, privacy, transparency, bias and inclusiveness, and the trustworthiness of the technologies. No other institution is prepared like the Markkula Center to play this critical leadership role.

The Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship has launched a new program - Social Entrepreneurship at the Margins. Nineteen social enterprises, serving or led by refugees, migrants, and human trafficking survivors, will participate in the In-Residence component of the program, from October 19-23 on the SCU campus.

The Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education has relocated operations to a beautifully renovated former bank building at Benton and Lafayette Streets.

4. Undergraduate Admissions. For the Class of 2022, we are welcoming 1,396 first-year students from 43 states and 27 countries, plus 158 transfer students. Our hard working Admission staff received 16,242 applications for this class (compared to 14,899 applications four years ago).

The top states where we recruited this first-year class include: CA (54%), WA, OR, IL, CO, HI, MA, MN, TX and AZ. The top countries, after the United States, are China, India, Singapore, Philippines and Canada.  52% are men, 48% women, and 51% are students of color.

The Undergraduate Admissions team also implemented Slate, a comprehensive Client Relationship Management (CRM). Slate receives materials, reviews of applications and event management, and manages the relationships and interactions with students in one centralized location. This CRM supports the work of bringing a student through the admission funnel. In just 16 weeks, Admissions uploaded over 78,000 prospect records into Slate. Now the Admissions team can contact through email more than 60,000 high school seniors and receive instant delivery reports.

Slate incorporates campus visit registration and general requests for information into a trackable student profile. Within two weeks of going live, Admissions booked close to 500 campus tour registrations. Now, Slate will manage the fall Open House event for about 2,000 guests; and then download over 6,000 early First Year application and close to 200 Winter Transfer applications. Very impressive! Congratulations to our Admissions team for training and implementing this great tool.

5. Construction and Renovations.  As you walk around campus, every section has construction or renovation crews busy at work.  Finn Hall, the Benson remodel, the Heafey-Bergin renovation, and STEM surge construction are all well underway.  I want to give a tip of the hard hat to Chris Shay and his extended crew for coordinating so much work in so many buildings in such a short time frame this summer.

 

Gratitude

Rarely does a day go by without several people asking me about my “retirement.” Given Santa Clara’s commitment to sustainability, I remind inquiring souls that Jesuits are recycled, that is, we make ourselves available for new assignments, not retirement. These frequent reminders of my last year as president have prompted me to focus on our shared mission and what we have achieved together in advancing this mission at Santa Clara.

Repeatedly I hear from parents of our students their deep appreciation for you, our faculty and staff. The litany of appreciation unfolds wherever I travel, most recently in the Minneapolis International Airport terminal, at the NBA Hall of Fame celebrations in Springfield, Massachusetts, and at a dinner in Los Gatos with one of our most generous benefactors.  Yes, I have played my role in this ongoing, university-wide effort to educate young women and men, but only one role.  Reflecting on all that you contribute, day in and day out, year after year, I find myself deeply, deeply grateful. 

Yesterday I smiled when reading that US News and World Report discovered what you and I already knew. Santa Clara University is the Best Regional University in the West. This publication touted our nationally ranked Undergraduate Business Program; our dedication to veterans as the best College for them in the West; our strong commitment to undergraduate teaching; and our distinction as one of the top 10 innovative universities in the West. Yes, we knew.

We have always known Santa Clara is distinguished by an excellent education we offer in the humanistic model of Jesuit, Catholic values.  It is gratifying that rankings such as US News now proclaim what we have long believed. We are aware of our first year retention rate, our graduation rate, our students with high scores in the SAT/ACTs; our first-year students in the top 25 percent of high school class; and our alumni giving rate.

Such rankings can change, and new metrics can appear.

Today, we can all be grateful that we work at such a fine university. No matter the disagreements we may have among ourselves, today we can – and should - take pride in our recognition.  We should be grateful for our colleagues who worked with us to reach this prominence. With this long-desired notice, we should launch our new year with renewed enthusiasm, excitement, and a deeper regard for one another. Now is the time to recommit ourselves to the principles we profess of respect, equity, fairness, and justice. These ideals guide how we educate our students, and they should inspire our actions to work together to better our university community and our world.

Let me conclude with a final reference to John Farnsworth’s book. John described how students on field trips to Baja had to function as a team to ensure their success.  Some students refilled water containers, others pitched shade coverings, and others prepared the meal. Each one provided a necessary function for the smooth operation of the field trip. Students had to rely on one another for their safety, travel, and meals that enabled them to make their discoveries of nature and bask in that delight.

Our university functions in a similar manner. We each have our role to play that contributes to the amazing education offered at this institution. Supporting each other, respecting our colleagues, and fulfilling our responsibilities enables Discovery, Delight, and Gratitude. I look forward to continue to work with you as a team in our journey together this year. 

Thank you for your attention, and thank you for all that you do.

God bless Santa Clara.

Michael E. Engh, S.J.
President

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[1] John Seibert Farnsworth, Coves of Departure: Field Notes from the Sea of Cortez. Cornell University Press, 2018 [pre-publication copy not paginated]

[2] “Continuing Growth and Unparalleled Innovation: Bay Area Economic Profile” (Bay Area Council Economic Institute, July 2018), 22.