My thanks to Chairperson Paul Panayotatos and the Senate as a whole for the opportunity to appear here today to discuss the State of the University.

 While the president of the university is called on to give this address once a year, I have many opportunities in the course of my work to update other audiences on what we are doing, and discuss our directions and goals.  For example, in the past year I made visits to Rutgers alumni clubs across the country, spoke to a great many donors and potential donors to the University, and shared with my audiences the highly favorable coverage our scientific and other advances receive in the media.  In my travels far and wide, it is clear that people everywhere know of our outstanding reputation in such areas as philosophy, neuroscience, pharmacy, the arts, ceramic and materials engineering, biomedical engineering, marine and coastal sciences, health policy, innovations in the digital library, and other fields.  And everywhere I go I see fresh evidence that more and more people have the greatest respect for Rutgers quality, Rutgers accomplishment, and Rutgers potential.

 One of the most significant audiences we reach each year with the latest information on Rutgers is the State Legislature and our other representatives in Trenton and in Washington, D.C.  If good news alone could secure adequate and predictable levels of state support for Rutgers, life would be easier for all of us.  Unfortunately, the economic downturn affecting our nation has also affected our support from the state.  That is why, while there is much good news to report on other fronts, our state appropriation for the current Fiscal Year contributed significantly to a difficult budget year.  Overall, though, in the face of funding shortfalls, we were able to manage a significant mid-year budget reduction while maintaining our liquidity and our bond rating.  And, as hard as it was, we did this while protecting our core academic programs and services to students.  I want to thank everyone for working together to achieve that impressive feat at this difficult time.

 It is a good sign that the governor is preparing for a summit on New Jersey higher education this fall.  The necessity of providing adequate funding for Rutgers and all of New Jersey higher education will undoubtedly be high on the agenda at that event.

 It is also encouraging to note that this summer the Camden recovery bill was signed into law.  That measure includes an $11 million appropriation to the Rutgers-Camden campus as part of the vision to grow Camden as a premier University City.  This grant will support our ongoing purchase and rehabilitation of nearby properties for the betterment of the campus and the community.  It will allow us to expand the Camden law school to include state-of-the-art teaching facilities that promote smaller class sizes; a mock courtroom; and enough space to increase its pro bono legal programs.  We also intend to expand on-campus student housing, and to enhance service to New Jersey's business community through the campus's Technology Incubator.

 And just last month we announced that the State Commission on Science and Technology has awarded us $7.78 million in Research and Development Excellence Program funds over five years to support multi-disciplinary, multi-university projects in nanotechnology at the School of Engineering, food technology at Cook College, and wireless sensor technology at the Wireless Information Network Laboratory.  The Commission also awarded a matching grant to the joint Rutgers-Princeton Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, which we know as DIMACS.

 Our budget difficulties have meant that all of us must do more with fewer resources than we had last year.  And yet, in some important areas, new tasks have been added as well.  For example, in the course of the past year, both at Rutgers and beyond, "Homeland Security" became a new imperative and Rutgers is responding to it.

 DIMACS is leading a comprehensive new five-year program to explore scientists' ability to use mathematical modeling and computer science to understand and control epidemics.  The effort is bringing together scientists from around the world to discuss the role of the mathematical sciences in defending against bioterrorism.

 Our Center for Advanced Information processing (CAIP) sponsored a symposium on "Information Technologies for Homeland Security."  We also held symposia addressing problems in protecting our food and water supplies, environmental quality, disease propagation, and biometric identification and surveillance.

 Within 24 hours of the terrorist attacks, "N-J-serves-dot-org," our Citizenship and Service Education program's Internet portal for the New Jersey civic sector, was providing New Jerseyans with accurate, timely, constantly updated information about how they could help and where they could get needed services in their own communities.

 Turning to some examples of the impact of other agents of change upon our University, one of the major agenda items in the new academic year relates to the work of the presidential search committee.  I know that John Colaizzi is doing a conscientious job as chair; the committee members have been working with great diligence; and I am sure the process will result in an exceptional appointment.

 This fall, we are welcoming some key college and campus administrators as they take up new responsibilities at Rutgers.

 First, Dr. Adesoji Adelaja is our new Executive Dean of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Executive Director of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, and Dean of Cook College.  He joined Cook College as an associate professor in 1986 and became director of our Ecopolicy Center in 1993.  Three years later he was named chair of the department of agricultural, food and resource economics.  He has been a senior policy adviser to the secretary of agriculture and director of our Food Policy Institute, and is a recipient of the university's Presidential Award for Distinguished Public Service.  He is with us today and I would like to ask him to rise.

 I am also proud to introduce Carmen Twillie Ambar, the new dean of Douglass College.  She comes to us from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where her administrative responsibilities included oversight of the school's graduate programs, curriculum development, budget allocation, academic support, and other functions.  She is a graduate of the Columbia School of Law, the Woodrow Wilson School, and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.  I also want to note that she has studied at Sciences Po in Paris and the Université de Caen in Caen, France, and was an exchange student in Japan.

 On our Newark campus, another important search was successfully concluded with the appointment of Felissa R. Lashley as dean of our College of Nursing.  She comes to us from serving as dean and professor at Southern Illinois University's School of Nursing, and clinical professor of pediatrics at the same institution's School of Medicine.  This appointment takes effect in two months.

 Dr. Lashley earned her Ph.D. from Illinois State University and is an expert on genetics, infectious disease and HIV/AIDS care.  She is an educator of stature and experience who will lead the College of Nursing in continuing to strengthen its vital role in the state.

 Also on our Newark campus Dr. Steven J. Diner, professor of history and dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, has taken the reins from Norm Samuels and is serving as acting provost.

 Another major area of change has come with the success of our RUNet project, formerly RUNet 2000.  The project's initial phase will be completed this fall, on budget and more than six months sooner than anticipated.  And it accomplished its goals of upgrading and expanding the telecommunications network; installing wiring in the interiors of 260 campus buildings; beginning the operations of our own video network; and increasing the speed and capacity of the intercampus links among our three regional campuses.  Now 97 percent of residential students have direct connections to the network, 93 percent of faculty have direct network connections from their buildings, and nearly 500 buildings are now along the network backbone.

 Our students are using RUNet in preparing course assignments, taking part in online class discussions, and interacting with the faculty.  They are paying their term bills online, registering for courses, and using the more than 96,000 electronic books, 6,000 electronic journals, and 150 information databases available online through the Rutgers libraries.  And nearly 90 percent of residential students have access to the RU-TV network in their rooms.

 On the faculty side more than 660 classes with more than 16,000 students are using the online course systems WebCT, Blackboard, and eCollege, and our faculty are supplementing their teaching with streaming audio and video.  RUNet has been a real boon to collaborative
research, both intra- and inter-university, which uses the various available technologies as well as our connection to the high-performance Internet2 network.

 In terms of operations, our "Standards for University Operations" (a/k/a "The Red Book") has become famous across the university and helped pave the way for implementation of the university's first enterprise-wide administrative system.  The ability to support that on-line system provides yet another example of the enhanced quality of the university's network infrastructure.  In July, we launched an Internet procurement system that has eliminated a lot of paper shuffling.  I thank Bruce Fehn, Mike McKay, and their colleagues for getting this off to a successful start.

 One of the most important areas benefitting from the recent technological advances is the Rutgers Libraries, which are advancing their Digital Library Initiative plans with innovative services, including real-time online reference, electronic reserves, Web-based document delivery, and online research guides.

 A major success story of the 2001-2002 academic year was the progress of the Rutgers Campaign, "Creating the Future Today."  We set out to raise $500 million to fund scholarships and meet a variety of other pressing Rutgers needs, and the response has been tremendous.  As of August 31 we had raised $438.6 million.  That brought us nearly 88 percent of the way to our goal, with 22 months left to go in the Campaign.  And 3,198 members of the faculty and staff – including a great many of you, I am sure – have donated or pledged $13,443,212 to this important effort.

 I am sure that many of you saw the article in Thursday's Home News about our largest gift of the year to date.  Internationally known artist June Wayne, who revived the practice and art of printmaking in the United States in the 1960s, has given Rutgers her collection of more than 3,000 works, her own lithographs and those of other artists, valued at more than $5 million.  We owe this magnificent gift to June Wayne's admiration for the fine work of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Printmaking and its founding director, Judith Brodsky, now a professor emerita of Mason Gross.  Professor Brodsky herself has donated $500,000 to support the operations of the printmaking center and is working to raise matching funds to supplement her very generous gift.  We owe a great deal to Judith's unique combination of artistic talent, far-sighted leadership, and philanthropic spirit.

 The message our donors and friends are delivering, loud and clear, is that, despite the temporary fiscal distress all of us are experiencing as our new century begins, Rutgers is an institution of quality, and we are working hard to insure that our university will have the resources it needs in order to build on that quality and create a future of distinction.  Our thanks go to the Rutgers University Foundation, which has been absolutely critical to our progress to date, and I would like to ask the executive director of the  Rutgers University Foundation and our vice president for development and alumni relations, Michael Carroll, to stand, as a representative of the Foundation family, for your applause.

 Turning from the state of the university, so to speak, for a look at Rutgers as the university of the state, any review of the past year has to begin not with the first day of the academic year but with the 254th day of the calendar year – September 11, 2001.

 That day provided some defining moments for all of us.  In just part of one morning, the basically safe, usually rational American life to which we had grown accustomed over the years stopped forever.  "America the safe" became "America the vulnerable."  And 37 men and women of Rutgers died that day.

 Rutgers people responded immediately on that terrible day.  They worked at Ground Zero, donated blood and money, and made scores of other contributions to the task of coping and surviving.  Rutgers Service awards were presented to five of our police officers and an associate professor of neuroscience, all of whom participated in the search, rescue and clean-up operations.  Two Rutgers students also particpated in the September 11 operations.  I have invited them to be with us today and I would ask them to stand and be recognized.  They are Lt. Stanley Kosinski, Sgt. James Fisher, Det. Sean Skala, Officers Deron Ilarraza and Jason Farella, Matt Fitzgerald, RU EMS, Community Service Officer Ken Sinabaldi (student at Rutgers), and Dr. Mark A. Gluck.

 Our faculty did research on the quality of the air at the Trade Center site and held workshops on homeland security issues.  Also, a service-learning course in International Humanitarian Relief was developed to train students to provide assistance in disasters.  And just days after the tragedy, we created a scholarship fund for the dependent children of New Jersey residents who died in the attacks.  Four students received these scholarships in the last academic year, and there are seven recipients this year.

 Otherwise, in the past year we were again deeply engaged with the communities that host our campuses.  In New Brunswick, we are conducting studies of ways to ease city traffic and, under a new $5.3 million Pew grant, we are doing nationally as well as locally significant work on early education policy issues.  In Newark, we are giving the state advice on better policing procedures and providing guidance on the Internet to municipal governments here and abroad.  In Camden, building on the success of its charter grade school, last fall Project LEAP opened a high school housed on our campus, with 54 ninth graders.  Eventually the school will serve more than 200 students, and we anticipate the school will move into its own facility in the fall of 2003.

 And I want to make special mention of our Mason Gross School of the Arts, where new initiatives are raising the public profile of the arts at Rutgers.  The new annual series of Rutgers in New York events have enjoyed great success, Summerfest has been transformed into the year-round Mason Gross Presents series, and other advances have been made as well.

 As the state and national economies faltered, Rutgers redoubled its efforts to support economic development.  In Camden, we offered an international business course that included a field trip to Africa, and we opened a new state-of-the-art facility for our Small Business Development Center.  In New Brunswick, we published the latest Heldrich Center reports on workplace issues and Rutgers Regional Reports on the tri-state economy, and we conducted an Emerging Markets Summit.  In Newark we opened a highly sophisticated model trading room floor and started operations at the Prudential Business Ethics Center, funded by a gift from Prudential Financial.

 In a state that has been called "America's medicine chest," Rutgers continues to make major contributions to research on the causes, prevention, and cure of health problems.  For example, this summer we announced that Rutgers scientists, working with colleagues from Belgium, collaborated in discovering several new potential anti-AIDS drugs, including compounds that can block all known drug-resistant strains of the disease.

 Also, using the latest virtual reality technologies, our researchers have developed a way to help in the rehabilitation efforts for stroke victims.  A new $5 million grant funds research on tea as a cancer fighter.  And as biomedical research becomes increasingly dependent on computing, the past year saw Rutgers selected by the National Institutes of Health to develop a National Program of Excellence in Biomedical Computing.

 Another important indicator of Rutgers quality from the year just ended is the fact that, as of June 30, external contract research totals $242.4 million, up by more than $20 million in what everyone would agree was a very bad economic year.  Our patent activity continues to increase and is now running at well over 100 patent filings per year, and U.S. patents are issuing to Rutgers at a rate of approximately 30 per year.  In terms of spin-off companies based on Rutgers research knowledge and technology, five new ones were initiated during Fiscal 2002, bringing the number of Rutgers spin-offs to 42.  In August we announced that one of them, Phytomedics, Inc., signed a research agreement with Rutgers that will bring the university nearly $4.3 million in grant funding over the next five years for work on finding human health products in plants.

 In addition to the success of these efforts, the good work of Rutgers scholars was recognized in other important ways this past year.  For example:

• Dr. Henryk Iwaniec, a State of New Jersey Professor of Mathematics and one of the world's leading researchers in the study of prime numbers, won the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in number theory, an exceptional recognition that is presented only twice in a decade.

• Dr. Charles R. Gallistel, who holds a joint appointment in the department of psychology and the Center for Cognitive Science, was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

• Dr. David Levering Lewis, a member of our history faculty and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes in recent years, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  These recognitions bring our total memberships in the academies to 45.

• Rutgers historian Ann Fabian and philosopher Stephen R. Neale were named Guggenheim Fellows for 2002.

• Seth Gopin, director of global programs in New Brunswick, was knighted Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques by the Prime Minister of France, the highest distinction for academics and artists that country can bestow.

• We held investitures for three named chairs in the past year.  These were for Douglas Eveleigh, holder of the Fenton chair in applied microbiology; Noshir Langrana, holder of the Raisler Chair in Mechanical Engineering, and Dorothy Strickland, holder of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Chair in Education.

• Natalie Udovidchick, a junior in mechanical and aerospace engineering, received a summer fellowship to the NASA Academy, one of only 16 students chosen from a nationwide pool of applicants.

• Graduate student Monica Bielski Michal was one of only 15 winners selected from across the nation to receive a Woodrow Wilson Women's Studies Dissertation Grant from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

• and Ruth Orenstein, a graduate student in psychology, received the 2001 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the American Psychological Association.  By the way, two of the last three of these prestigious awards were won by students in our Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology.

 In terms of facilities, our Capital Improvement Fund projects are making good progress.  We have broken ground on an 80,000 square foot biomedical engineering building and on a new 75,000 square foot facility for the Department of Genetics, the Human Genetics Institute, and the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials.

 The good word about Rutgers excellence is spreading far and wide.  This year, we received applications from all 50 states and 134 foreign countries.  More than 29,440 students applied for the 6,070 seats in the Class of 2006, an all-time record for applications.  Student quality is going up as well.  Over the past five years, there has been a 17-point increase in the composite SAT scores of our first-year enrolling students.  Since its inception in 1997, more than 4,400 of New Jersey's most accomplished high school seniors have enrolled here through the state's Outstanding Scholars Recruitment Program.  Those students have a mean combined SAT score of 1360, and a mean percentile rank-in-class of 94.

 We have reached a high level of success in accomplishing the goals we set for our strategic plan, which identified areas of particular strength at Rutgers and tied those academic assets to fiscal resources.  We leveraged outside funding through a program that supported scores of projects to advance excellence.  The $24 million we devoted to these projects helped us attract more than $275 million in external support, an approximate return on investment of almost 12 to 1.

 And since the plan was adopted, Rutgers has developed 25 new academic programs, including 14 at the master's, professional, and doctoral levels.  New programs being offered this fall include a bachelor of science in astrophysics here in New Brunswick, a master's in criminal justice on our Camden campus, the master's and Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry, and the newly approved Ph.D. in Women and Gender Studies.

 Despite an extremely difficult budget year, I am pleased to announce that we will provide funding for a sixth round of "Re-Invest in Rutgers," a program initiated in FY98 to ensure that we continued to build that academic excellence that is the heart of our mission.  For FY03 a total of $3 million will be allocated to the chief academic officers on each of our campuses to help maintain the highest priority objectives in our academic units and libraries.

 This is the State of the University:  We are academically strong, our research activities are outstanding, and we are effectively engaged with the communities and people of New Jersey on many levels.  We are achieving the realization of our new vision for excellence in all that we do.

 All that I have said just hits a few of the highlights of Rutgers at this moment – but what about the future?  What are the challenges that Rutgers and all of New Jersey public higher education face, the continuing issues and the new ones – and why should New Jersey care about our problems?  New Jersey should care and does care because public higher education has been, still is, and will be, in the future, more than ever, the door to opportunity for Americans.  New Jersey is, if anything, more aware of that fact than any other state in the union, judging by the significant rise in New Jersey's college-going rates, which have gone up by ten percent in each of the last three decades.  Public higher education is indispensable to the future of our citizenry.  It is certainly vital to the future of each of our children individually in order to enrich their lives and their careers.  But it is also vital to the future of our state.  New Jersey's young people need to be well-educated to provide the highly innovative and deeply principled leadership that our schools, our businesses, and our public sector must have for New Jersey to prosper and to earn the respect it so richly deserves.

 It seems so evident as to be indisputable that something so essential to the individual well-being of its citizens and to the collective well-being of the state ought to be the object of well-crafted policies for basic operating support, careful attention to funding for capital expenditures on maintenance and renewal, enthusiastic planning, and bipartisan support for added investment to build excellence. Unfortunately, although New Jersey's financial aid programs give generous support to independent institutions and its combination of county and state funding for community colleges, especially in recent years, has reached the national average, the reality is that the Commission on Higher Education state funding policy recommendations for the three research universities and the nine state colleges and universities have never been used to guide state funding levels.  In the absence of any effective state funding policy, public higher education is frequently relegated to the status of a discretionary expenditure, far from the state's highest priority, more often than not among the first budget items cut back in hard times and the last in line for operating budget restoration or capital funding, even in good times.  Unfortunately, the state also lacks any long-range plan for supporting the capital replacement, maintenance, and renewal of physical facilities and the development of a modern technology infrastructure for this core college and university system.  In order to meet their needs even for such necessities as student housing and academic buildings, New Jersey's three public research universities and nine state colleges and universities have had to issue bonds and rely on student tuition to fund a burden of debt service that is high in relation to our more fortunate peers.  Rutgers' ratio of debt service to operations, for example, is almost double the median for its peers, largely because not only is state capital funding a rare event, but even the sporadic capital funding programs offered by the state have had significant cost-sharing requirements.

 As serious and urgent as all of these lacunae in state policy for predictable, adequate operating budgets and in state plans for long-range capital funding have been and continue to be, they pale in comparison to the problem that is fast approaching the time when it will assume crisis levels: the need for New Jersey to plan for increased higher education capacity in order to meet growth in projected college enrollment which is estimated to be among the highest in the nation.  You will remember that I broached this in last year's State of the University, just in relation to Rutgers.

 According to data reviewed by the Capacity Team of the Higher Education Long-Range Planning effort, if we assume that in the future the same percentage (66 percent) of New Jersey's fast-growing number of high school graduates will go on to college within a year of graduation and, again, that the same percentage of graduates (36 percent) will attend college in their home state, then between 2001 and 2005, overall college enrollment will increase by more than 9,400 students.  Between 2005 and 2008, overall enrollment will increase to over 22,000 more students in 2008 than in 2001.  That is a large increase, but it is modest in comparison to the projection based on the strong likelihood that college-going rates in New Jersey will continue to grow at recent rates.  If that happens, as it very well may, the cumulative effect would be nearly 37,000 more students enrolled in New Jersey colleges in 2008.  By 2010, it is estimated that the more than 42,000 additional students will need an added 3,300 faculty to teach and mentor them.  Factor in as well the capital building program it will require to accommodate this flood of new learners and note that the majority of buildings on New Jersey college campuses were built in the 1960s and 1970s and are in dire need of major renovation or replacement.

 Finally, I have saved for the last what is actually the ruling consideration.  In order to plan for the future, New Jersey must first commit itself to what it wants to accomplish with its public system of higher education.  If it is the intent of the state to provide a system of higher education that will give students the technical training, the critical and creative thinking ability, and experience to perform well in our culturally diverse, globally connected workplaces in the telecommunications and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the other developing high-tech businesses of New Jersey, then it will need to provide the resources for its public higher education institutions to meet those demands and to offer the opportunities for lifelong learning that this sophisticated workforce will need to continue to work productively.  New Jersey will have to commit itself to building the kind of quality in its public higher education system that will contribute to the competitiveness of the state. In doing so, one of the issues that need to be revisited is mission differentiation, a point raised in the 1990s, but put aside for later consideration. Clearly differentiated missions enable
the most effective use of resources for well-defined goals of teaching, research, and service according to each institution's mission.

 The reputation of its higher education system has a tremendous impact on the economic competitiveness of a state.  A flagship institution like Rutgers, with its world-class degree programs and research centers and institutes, has national visibility and a reputation for high quality that enhances the competitiveness of New Jersey in the global economy. Recognized for the quality of its teaching, the brilliance of its research, and the engagement of its campuses, its faculty and its students in public service, Rutgers attracts the most creative and distinguished faculty to teach the best and the brightest students.  To keep this enviable reputation alive and growing, our state needs to make a serious commitment to state support of excellence not only at Rutgers but in all of public higher education, now and for the future of all New Jersey's young men and women who are coming in their wonderful diversity, with the highest hopes, to enter New Jersey's public colleges and universities.

 I am very encouraged by the long range planning effort initiated by Governor McGreevey through the Commission on Higher Education.  This systematic process will examine all these critical issues and ideally result in effective decisions that will enable higher education to meet the needs of 21st century New Jersey.