>> GAIL HACKETT: Good morning.
Welcome to the 2018 State of the University Address.
I am Gail Hackett and I have the privilege of serving as provost
and vice president for academic affairs here at
Virginia Commonwealth University.
I am very pleased to welcome the many members of the community
who are here today at the James Branch Cabell Library as well as
the many others who are joining us via live-streaming through
our website.
I would also like to welcome VCU Board of Visitors member Ben
Dendy who is here with us today, as well as other Board members
who are joining us online. The State of the University Address
is an annual tradition at VCU that provides the opportunity
for each of us to reflect on our many successes and to learn
about our future goals and aspirations.
Before we welcome President Rao to the stage, we'd like to take
a few minutes to meet some of the people at VCU and beyond who
are ensuring that our public university is a public good.
And in the process, are making our community and our world a
better place.
>> MALE SPEAKER: I am becoming more and more of an adult and
thinking on my own two feet in a way because I used to be really
shy back in high school.
Doing all these music-related things and being involved in
music has unlocked parts of my brain and just has opened me up.
>> TERRY AUSTIN: You just should not have a preconceived notion
about what these kids can accomplish, or what they're
going to be like, or how they're going to react to things.
Treat them like you treat any human being.
>> ELIZABETH GETZEL: Tyler's experiences at VCU illustrate
the impact of college on his ability to grow, which
ultimately will lead to his goal of working in music therapy.
When we really fully embrace diversity and are committed to
inclusive environments, really good things happen.
>> JEROME LEGIONS: You don't find people standing on a corner
selling drugs in Carver.
By the time we realize that it's happening as residents of the
neighborhood, we make a few phone calls and it's done.
It's done.
We attribute that to the community policing.
And community policing for us in Carver, as well as VCU,
is a partnership.
We get good information back and forth back and forth because
we're talking to each other.
>> MALE SPEAKER: Carver is a great example of the
collaboration between a community and our department.
It's our way to rely on the community and it is their way to
rely on us.
A lot of that comes from the research.
>> ROBYN DIEHL MCDOUGLE: As we are applying our research and
our studies to that community, they are giving us feedback on
where we are right, where we are wrong.
That's an amazing opportunity as an academic to have that real
life, real world application of the research you're doing.
What we are teaching our students is a result of the
relationships that we have with VCU PD and the Carver community.
>> MARILYN COLEMAN: If I want to eat something that I love to
eat, guess what?
I don't have to worry about, okay, will this trigger a pain?
Will this trigger an onset?
I was the fourth patient to have that surgery.
Since surgery, I haven't had any pain medication.
So, this was one of the best decisions that I've made in
my life.
>> MAZHAR A. KANAK: It is a motivation for us to do more and
more for all these patients, to help them better their lives and
do better in their career or whatever they are not able to do
when they have this chronic pancreatitis disease.
>> DR. MARLON F. LEVY: The driver at VCU to me is the
passion of the team members and, I think, the insistence that a
patient comes first.
All of us on the team are humbled and gratified by her
trust and by the ability to help her and do what we had hoped to
do, which was to restore her life.
>> PRESIDENT RAO: Good morning.
It is so good to be together with all of you again this year.
I want to begin by thanking Provost Hackett for her
introduction and for setting the stage, if you will.
I also want to take just a moment to say thank you to our
colleagues and our neighbors who shared their incredible stories
in the video that we just watched.
Very inspiring and, of course, remind us that, as a public
university, the university must always be the public good.
And so, if you will please stand, those of you were in the
video, I know you joined us today, so that we have a chance
to say thank you to you.
So, as is the tradition, we are gathered here so that we can
reflect in this new year on the state of our university.
And I ought to tell you, this is a year brimming with history
and, of course, hope.
So, first, let me start out, logically, with our history.
This is an institution that began 180 years ago with a great
commitment to the social good.
And when we came together under the VCU name 50 years ago, our
charter asked us - and I'm going to read it specifically -
to confront on an intellectual and practical level the social
environment which surrounds us, to relate ourselves to the
community, and to participate in the solution of
existing problems.
This mission remains unchanged.
In fact, today more than ever, we embody a commitment as a
positive force for progress.
We are the consummate catalyst for our commonwealth.
VCU has the greatest economic impact of any university in
Virginia at $6 billion a year.
We conduct more than $275 million in sponsored research
and creative activity, which is a record, by the way, for the
ninth time out of the last ten years.
Our students started 22 new companies in 2016 and
contributed 1.3 million hours of volunteer service, and more
students than ever graduate from this institution, about 8,000
last year coming to us from countless backgrounds and
setting off into limitless futures.
Our academic health center, which is the oldest in the
Commonwealth of Virginia, treated 250,000 patients
last year.
So, I want you to just think about it like this, the entire
population of Madison, Wisconsin or Buffalo, New York coming
through the doors of our hospitals and our clinics
every year.
Our patients include, by the way, 50,000 children.
We also care for 100,000 people in our emergency department,
more than any hospital in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
And remember that we cover 200,000 lives across the
Commonwealth through our Virginia Premier Health Plan.
Across the enterprise, your dedicated efforts have honored
the words of our former president Warren Brandt who said
at the first convocation 50 years ago, he said VCU will
become a name that will mean a great deal in the years to come.
And I've got to tell you, that time has come.
We have grown exponentially.
We will never outgrow our mission.
It is still as it has ever been, simple in phrase, but enormous
in prospect to improve lives, to save lives, and to give
life meaning.
Yes, that's our history.
Now, let me turn to our hope.
In just a few months, we will launch our new strategic plan
that we call Quest 2025: Together We Transform.
It will build on our current plan Quest for Distinction,
which has been extraordinary, if you think about it, as a guide
where we have been able to seize our place among the nation's
premier public research universities, urban public
research universities specifically.
I am so proud of so many of the great things that we have all
accomplished together under Quest.
For example, we confer about 50% more degrees than we did when
Quest began, 50% more degrees than when we began Quest.
That's a staggering number.
And we really don't talk about it enough.
We all need to be talking about it.
Because we're a premier research university, we also award 25%
more doctoral degrees than when Quest began.
Now we're in the top 50 in terms of numbers of post docs.
Our invention disclosures have jumped by nearly another 50%.
Most astounding, though, to me, is this.
We graduate more students than ever and the diversity of our
graduates is unparalleled almost anywhere.
Black and Latina -- yes, worth recognizing.
Black and Latina students at VCU, especially women, graduated
at higher rates than our university average.
So, we have achieved equal graduation rates for students
across racial groups.
That's huge.
That's a really big deal.
In fact, 60% of our academic programs now rank in the top 100
nationally for graduating underrepresented students; more
than 135 different academic programs in all.
So, just think about that for a minute.
What we've done is we've done all of this while raising
admission and academic standards together at the same time
ensuring that VCU is truly a rare place of both access and
excellence at the same time.
Very few universities can really tell that story of increasing
graduation rates, increasing diversity, and academic
standards all at the same time.
This is an amazing story.
But this is VCU's great story.
So let's turn our heads to Quest 2025 where we're going to get a
chance to build on these great successes.
We will realize our local purpose, and at the same time,
we'll achieve the national prominence that this
institution deserves.
We will remain unapologetically focused on the positive impact
that we make.
We will make the most of what makes us stand out, confidently
and unequivocally declaring that Virginia Commonwealth University
is a public university committed truly to the public good.
So, you know, public universities like VCU have
always had a public purpose.
As the American Academy of Arts and Sciences wrote, though, in a
2016 paper, public universities are dedicated to the public.
That is the value that animates all of their activities.
VCU and our public peers have long catalyzed the nation's
technological innovations, democratic vitality and the
promise of opportunity for each new generation.
Our legacy is America's dream.
But let's be realistic.
There are, factually speaking, too many people now who simply
view public education as a private benefit, a pathway only
to personal gain.
That belief that public universities serve the public
good seems to be disappearing.
So, it's really no wonder that some people now question whether
or not public universities are still worth the investment.
Nearly every state has cut funding from their public
universities by about 26% in the last decade on average.
In turn, the cost of tuition and fees nationally has outpaced
inflation by 3 to 1 since the year 2006.
So, we really can't be surprised, then, that in a
recent consumer reports survey, they found that about half of
our college graduates say that their education was not worth
the expense.
But you know what?
Given our history and our hope, VCU will lead in reversing
this trend.
We can change better and faster than any place I have ever been
or ever seen.
And that means that we can do something that very few public
universities can do.
It's true.
So, a recent Brookings Institution study showed that
only 20% of public universities in the nation provide what they
call high social mobility for students, and at the same time,
conduct a high volume of research with a social benefit.
Remember something, VCU is among that 20%.
In other words, what this is really saying is that our
educational experience helps students graduate with more
opportunities than they had when they got here.
And the research and creative activity that we pursue helps
society by solving some of its most vexing problems.
When you combine these with our safety net health care mission,
our public university serves a public good in three primary
ways: as a social ladder, as a social lab, and as a
social lever.
So let's talk a little bit about that.
First, our educational experience at VCU is a social
ladder for students.
Eduardo Rodriguez is the son of Cuban exiles.
He was a hard worker, but as he says, and I'm going to quote
him, I didn't necessarily have the very best pedigree.
Well, his education from VCU School of Medicine has helped
him to become one of the world's premier transplant surgeons.
In fact, he just recently performed one of the most
complex facial transplantations ever attempted.
What he did by doing that is he gave a badly burned firefighter
a new chance at life.
Eduardo said, and I'm going to quote him directly, I've always
had an interest in finding solutions to difficult problems
- not prompted by the things I say, by the way - and I
certainly received the very best medical education I could have
gotten at VCU.
Maybe he didn't say very, but it sounds good.
Gai Nyok, who is a guy who spent his entire childhood in Kenyan
refugee camps, he had very little formal education.
When he enrolled at VCU - and, by the way, he worked the nights
as a security guard right here in Cabell Library, interesting -
still, Gai is someone who thrived at VCU, graduating with
degrees in economics and international relations, and
then earned a Pickering Fellowship to work at the United
Nations office in Geneva.
Interestingly, by the way, I wanted to throw this in, then
Secretary of State John Kerry told Gai's story in a 2013
speech that he gave.
Today, Gai is an economics officer at the State Department.
But you know what he still says to this day?
He says but VCU is still my home.
Amazingly, VCU has transformed the lives of countless people
like Eduardo and like Gai.
Every day I meet students who will rise from humble beginnings
to reach incredible places in their lives.
That is because VCU educates students unlike so many of the
students that we find at research universities.
We are more diverse.
And, by the way, we are the most diverse in the Commonwealth
of Virginia.
And it's not even close.
Yes, that is something to be very proud of.
Many of our students come from very few family resources
compared to their peers across the state.
VCU educates and we graduate more low-income students than
our peers, William and Mary, UVA, and Virginia Tech combined.
And our Pell-eligible students, they graduate at identical rates
to their VCU classmates who come from much more advantage.
Students are drawn to VCU like no place else because we help
them reach their dreams like no place else.
They come to us to enter meaningful careers, to start
businesses, to invent new technology.
The list goes on and on and on.
They dream and hope about what life can be like for them, for
their families, and for the world around them.
They care about other people.
And they know that VCU is going to give them a chance because
VCU will give them the skills that they need to reach those
dreams no matter where they start from.
You know that Brookings Institution study that I just
mentioned earlier?
It told us something about how our graduates end up faring
economically relative to their peers.
So, let me share a few things with you that are really
interesting from that study.
About 17% of VCU students move up two or more income quartiles
after they graduate, the highest among any of the universities in
the mid-Atlantic.
Two percent jumped from the very bottom quartile all the way to
the very top, the most that you will find in the Commonwealth
of Virginia.
And get this, a student who is born into the bottom 1/5 of
incomes has a 27% chance of reaching the top 1/5 after they
graduate from VCU.
Is that outstanding or what?
And it's because we believe in our charge as a social ladder.
It's also because our students work really hard.
And I'm very pleased to say that our faculty and staff also work
hard and are absolutely committed to the success of
our students.
More and more, our students want to use their prodigious talents
to make the world a better place.
They see their VCU education as a ladder to do just that.
We have an obligation to ensure that they receive the kind of
education that will help ensure that they can become that next
generation of great leaders, great creators, and
problem-solvers in a world that changes faster and faster
every day.
We have the obligation to change as our students change.
We have an obligation to change with them.
Fulfilling our mission as a premier public research
university requires us to focus and concentrate resources toward
the areas that are most aligned with student success, if I need
to say this clearly, with student graduation.
So, we're going to work together over the next several years to
advance the undergraduate experience at VCU; one with the
most innovative curriculum in the nation, one that emphasizes
deeper engagement, creativity, collaboration, and adaptability.
There will be greater emphasis on learning across all
disciplines so that students learn not what to think, but
rather how to think as 21st century citizens.
So, I want to be clear about this.
This is not something that is going to happen overnight.
It will involve all of us transforming a curriculum.
It takes time and it's something we have got to do together as
a faculty.
It's difficult, but VCU has proven over and over and over
that we can be committed to doing what's difficult and we do
it well.
So, favorably, some of our work has already been done, including
if I look at the new School of Medicine curriculum and the
integration of so much of what we're doing now across all of
our health sciences disciplines, the creation of our Da Vinci
Center which continues to be amazing to those who benefit
from it, not just our students, but all of the companies that
benefit from the wonderful solutions, a revised freshman
year experience that involves focused inquiry and a makeover
of general education.
In VCU, substantial investments in student
innovation and entrepreneurship.
And thanks to the work of Provost Hackett and her great
team, our students now have clearer pathways to success, to
graduation, including more advisers and counselors who can
guide them, more seamless transfer agreements, and more
resources to speed their time to graduation.
This lays a great foundation.
And there is still much building that we have yet to do.
Students at the nation's premier public research university
should not be adapting to the world, they should be changing
the world.
We're going to help them do that.
The educational experience that we offer at VCU will also be
defined by diversity and inclusion.
We lead in a society that's increasingly ethnically diverse
and it's certainly pluralistic.
Historically underrepresented students are
not underrepresented at VCU.
We are absolutely a microcosm of the world that we're all moving
toward, one that creates opportunity for everyone.
Our curriculum has to foster inclusive excellence throughout.
Students from every background will be able to
succeed right here.
They will be able to find mentors here and graduate into a
world that desperately needs their great thinking, their
creativity, and their leadership.
That means our educational experience must bring together
people who have different ideas, who come from different
disciplines, so that they can learn from each other and tackle
problems that are the thorniest problems, but from
new perspectives.
That's one of the great things we do in the Da Vinci Center.
My commitment is that VCU's educational experience is going
to continue to be a social ladder, a public good for the
world our students are going to someday lead.
Next, our public university is a public good because our research
and our creative activity positively impacts society.
We are a social lab.
The purpose of our research is to advance society, to help
people live longer and better lives.
It's research with a social conscience.
You all know that the Gates Foundation just awarded VCU $25
million, the second largest grant in our history, to expand
Medicines For All, that's our initiative, which makes
lifesaving prescriptions more affordable to people.
This amazing work is being done by my colleague Frank Gupton and
our School of Engineering.
And he's joined by colleagues in the Schools of Pharmacy and
Medicine, as well.
We're also tackling the pandemic of opioid addiction
which afflicts more than 2 million Americans now.
Do you know 77,000 people died last year?
Think about that number.
It's staggering.
Opioid overdose is now the leading cause of accidental
death in the United States of America.
You notice I didn't tell you that last year?
I told you it was the second cause.
VCU, by the way, I'm pleased to say is number three among the
universities for funding research in opioid addiction
covering more than 30 projects across our campuses.
These are just a couple of examples of our research as a
public good.
There are also two examples of our commitment to bringing
together people, our colleagues from across disciplines to solve
public crises from all angles.
This kind of convergent research does a couple of really
important things.
First, it helps our record-setting research activity
grow more and more.
Secondly, but more importantly, it builds on our commitment to
the public good as we strengthen the areas where our expertise
matches with the public need.
Consider the enormous impact that we make in the
neurosciences, for example, which is represented in nearly
every college and school at VCU.
VCU now ranks 28th in the nation in terms of NIH funding for
neuroscience research.
No one else in Virginia is in the top 80, by the way.
Nearly 40% of our NIH portfolio is neuroscience research, and
it's approaching $35 million.
Seven of our highest performing research institutes and centers
focus on neuroscience.
Our nationally rising academic health system and medical school
combined with our strong relationship with the Veteran's
Administration gives us unprecedented opportunity to
expand this research in ways that will make a real
difference, a real difference for the people who struggle with
neurological diseases, like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's,
brain damage that results from a stroke or a traumatic injury,
disorders like autism, or the brain disease of addiction.
Thus, the research that we are doing at VCU as a public good
will profoundly impact the human experience.
We're going to take an even greater role in neuroscience
research as we go forward.
So, I'm envisioning constructing a neuroscience research center
in the next few years.
A research center that will give us an opportunity to do what
we've been thinking about doing for years.
And given the breadth of VCU's talents, I want us to bolster
the participation of everyone everywhere at VCU from the arts,
humanities, and the social sciences.
Yes, in the neuroscience initiative.
In the coming years, as we expand our commitment to
convergent transdisciplinary research, we're going to invest
more in the areas of strength across both of our campuses,
like neuroscience, but also like cancer, and there are many other
areas, as well.
But I want to do this in ways that will continue to advance
VCU on the national stage and to serve the public good.
Remember, we've got to have the resources to do what we say
we're going to do well.
And we need to do whatever we do well.
To do this, we've got to be sure that we have the infrastructure
and the policies that help make real this great commitment I'm
talking about to this brand of research, including promotion
and tenure guidelines that will reward great collaboration and
engaging students in research to help motivate them and boost
their educational experiences.
It also means ensuring that our faculty will earn salaries in
line with their national peers.
This is one of my very highest priorities with this General
Assembly session this year.
This way, we're going to get a chance at ensuring that VCU
remains a social lab, a public university that's a public good
in a focused way.
Finally, our public university is a public good because we are
committed to the health and wellbeing of people anywhere
and everywhere.
We are a social lever for human health.
We are where you want to go when you need good care because we're
home to the very best care anywhere.
Our aggressive and ambitious facilities plan paired together
with our health systems vision by design strategic plan led by
Marsha Rapley, our Vice President, and her team.
This plan is creating world-class service and space to
match our world-class talent, and it'll help to meet the needs
of patients that we serve.
Without question, this will go a long way to helping us fulfill
our mission as a public good.
We're also the region's leader in health equity.
We provide care to all patients.
And we work with our community partners to help address the
socioeconomic conditions that contribute to health disparities
that we have a problem with.
And we're extending our public impact even more.
Very soon we are going to open a health and wellness center in
Richmond's east end where many residents live in poverty and
poor health.
This center is going to bring together 16 academic units and
clinical units from across VCU and VCU health.
And what they will do is work together with civic leaders,
community partners, and others coordinated by our center for
urban communities.
It also reflects our enduring commitment to address the social
determinants of health, improving health and wellness
overall, and advancing scholarship and clinical care.
This spring, the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs
will bring new focus to the university's efforts to address
the unprecedented and unresolved inequalities of health care,
housing, and safety enrichment.
A social tragedy that continues to be built on, that continues,
unfortunately, having been built on generations of
deliberate segregation.
As you saw recently in the news pretty much every night, 54
families in Creighton Court, a neighborhood right near our
campuses, were forced to live without heat during one of the
coldest Januaries that we've ever had on record.
That's unacceptable.
No matter how great our intentions are or our impact,
this university cannot undo the effects of historical racism
in Richmond.
But what we can do and what we will do is use our vast
intellectual resources to move society forward together.
Our obligation as a public research university and as an
anchor institution right here in Richmond is to work with our
community partners to dive deep into these issues and to help
find solutions that work.
The Wilder School's initiative will build on the great work
already underway across VCU, including by my colleagues like
Sheryl Garland and Steve Woolf and many others.
And what we're doing is we are working together to make one of
the greatest impacts that we can possibly have on Richmond but
also the entire Commonwealth of Virginia.
We need to mobilize every resource that we have to make as
big a difference as possible for as many people as possible.
And what that may mean is it may mean that we have to push some
other things aside.
This is going to be difficult.
But I'm not going to push us any less just because it's hard.
We have the chance to do things that no other university has
ever been able to do.
We have the chance to change lives and we're going to
change lives.
That's a pretty phenomenal way that our public university can
serve the public good.
It's really been my privilege to be together here with all of you
today and it's certainly my privilege to lead a university
that is remarkable in the commitments that we all
make together.
We're a large place but we do so well together.
We are remarkable in the ways that we help prepare students
and faculty to lead the knowledge revolution and to
change the world around us.
We are remarkable in the ways that we connect student
learning, discovery, and health care innovations to build a
better society for all people everywhere.
So, 180 years from now in a new era of history and hope, we will
be a remarkable example of how a public university served the
public good.
Thank you so much for coming together today and joining me in
this commitment.
It continues to be a privilege to serve together with all of
you, people who are absolutely committed to the success and
wellbeing of all other people, people who are committed to
being a public good.
Thank you.
[Applause]
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