The State of the University At the University’s first commence-ment, President William Rainey Harper expressed his hope that this ceremony would be celebrated “even a thousand years hence . . . in the same spirit though in different form.” As a new millennium approaches, Harper’s words take on special significance. They remind us that we must nurture this “spirit” of our University even as we recognize that it will manifest itself in forms ever new and ever changing. At this important moment in our history, it seems most appropriate to state again what I see as my primary responsibility as President. It is my responsibility to preserve the distinctive characteristics of our University: our dedication to research and to the growth of knowledge—especially knowledge that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries; our emphasis on graduate education and the “teaching of teachers”; and our commitment to a college that is, as one of our colleagues recently described it, a laboratory for the arts and sciences. It is also my responsibility to generate and to guarantee the resources that are necessary for sustaining these fundamental characteristics, so that our University will continue to flourish, as Harper imagined, even a thousand years hence. It has been the central paradox of my time as President that, in order to preserve and strengthen these defining characteristics for future generations, we have had to imagine and to implement change, and to make difficult choices about what is truly essential to our mission. As we set a course for our future, we must keep what makes us distinctive from all other universities at the forefront of our plans and build upon what have historically been our greatest assets: our faculty and our students, and the culture that shapes them and is in turn shaped by them. We must continue to support innovative research and educational programs, and to promote interdisciplinary endeavor. Finally, we need to care for and to enhance the facilities in which our faculty and students do their work. This is how our University will thrive, now and in the future. President Max Mason once declared that the University of Chicago “must be outstanding or nothing,” and the University’s excellence depends on the excellence of our faculty. One of our historic strengths has been our ability to identify, attract, and nurture talented young faculty and to provide them with the resources, the environment, and the encouragement they need to do their best work. It is no wonder that so many of our greatest scholars have been with us from the earliest days of their careers—and in some cases even earlier—Edward Levi, Milton Friedman, Philip Gossett, and Janet Rowley, to name but a few. The Faculty Committee for a Year of Reflection describes the underlying reason for this phenomenon quite eloquently, “The University has always understood its heart or core, its greatest resource and basic raison d’être, to be its faculty, their research and teaching needs, development and morale. This commitment and [our] intellectual atmosphere have been what drew and kept faculty here in spite of the blandishments of institutions with other advantages to offer. . . .” While time does not permit me to speak about all of our remarkable young colleagues, I would like to say a few words about several of them, for they are our future. Experimental astrophysicist John Carlstrom, who won a MacArthur grant in 1998 and a McDonnell Million Dollar Centennial Fellowship this year, uses an imaging technique he developed to map the universe at the age of 300,000 years and to weigh all the matter in the universe. His interferometry method produces clean and sharp images of the microwave radiation that is the echo of the big bang. Carlstrom and his colleagues hope to determine the shape of the universe, the amount of matter in it, the rate at which the universe is expanding, and the rate at which this expansion is speeding up. He is a wonder in a field that is defined by wonders. In the Division of the Humanities, I would like to call attention to the outstanding work of Katie Trumpener. In 1998, Trumpener was awarded the Rose Mary Crashay Prize of the British Academy and the Modern Language Association’s Prize for a first book for Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire. Interestingly enough, the 1996 MLA Prize for a first book was also awarded to a member of our faculty, Elaine Hadley of the Department of English Language & Literature. The MLA selection committee described Trumpener’s Bardic Nationalism as “stunningly researched, elegantly written, and brilliantly argued.” This year, Trumpener has been awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies so that she can continue her recent work on modernism. In addition to her academic successes, Trumpener has also been an exceptional citizen of the University, as a dynamic and creative teacher, as chair of the Department of Germanic Studies, and as co-editor of Modern Philology. Trumpener demonstrates that one can do many things on a University campus—and do them all exceptionally well. In the Social Sciences Division, Roger Gould of the Department of Sociology has been hailed as “the best young historical sociologist in the country.” Gould has published widely in the leading sociology journals, and the American Sociological Association has designated two of these publications “best articles of the year” in the field of historical sociology. Gould has also published a book entitled Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune, which one reviewer has praised as “the most original and challenging reinterpretation of the Paris Commune to appear . . . for many years.” In recognition of his outstanding scholarship, Gould has been awarded a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. It is a privilege to have him here at our University. Beth Garrett, Professor in and Deputy Dean of the Law School, is a rising star in the world of public law. Garrett has offered innovative and sometimes startling analyses of such issues as term limits, ballot initiatives, the line-item veto, and a controversial tax provision known as PAYGO, which requires advocates for new tax expenditures to pay for them in some manner. One of the nation’s finest scholars of the legislative process, she is currently editing what promises to be the authoritative casebook in the field of legislation. In addition to her scholarly contributions, Garrett is also a dynamic and engaging teacher, who, as a second-year member of the faculty, received the Law School’s award for teaching excellence. I am proud of the accomplishments of these and other faculty, and I am especially proud of what one colleague has referred to as our “intellectual ecology”—that is to say, the environment that makes so much of this important work possible. What is it that makes our environment so stimulating? We select our junior faculty with unusual seriousness and care, with a keen eye to their potential as scholars and scientists. We offer these talented newcomers a vibrant intellectual community, where graduate seminars and workshops regularly provide them with a critical forum for the refinement of their ideas. Our faculty, and particularly our younger faculty, have always flourished in this milieu, right along with our students. Graduate students in particular play a vital role in the intellectual ecology of the University. In 1982, the authors of the Baker Report observed that, “Since its creation, the distinctive qualities of the University of Chicago have rested substantially upon the special character of its commitment to graduate education.” Whether through their work in our graduate workshops, our laboratories, our classrooms, or our libraries, graduate students are essential to the extraordinary level of discourse on our campus. The talent of our graduate students and the rigorous training they receive here is recognized throughout the academic world. In fact, a recent Lingua Franca study determined that, for fourteen of twenty-one fields studied, the University of Chicago ranked first in the number of Ph.D. graduates who were appointed to full-time, junior-level faculty appointments. I would add that that we ranked second in six of the seven remaining fields. That is who we are. To maintain and strengthen our graduate programs, particularly some of those most affected by cutbacks in government and foundation support, I have instructed the Provost to make immediately available the equivalent of the income on $20 million of new endowment, with the express purpose of supporting graduate students in the humanities and social sciences. This support—approximately $1 million per year—will supplement funds already committed to graduate education. This funding will be essential to strengthening our role as leaders of graduate education. Our College students are also known to be outstanding and this year were recognized with three Rhodes scholarships, a Marshall scholarship, and a Truman scholarship, together with many other awards. These student scholars have obviously benefited from the rigorous program of study we offer, as well as from recent educational innovations, particularly in the area of international education. In recent years, we have won a $1.3-million Mellon grant for teaching language across the curriculum, started Western Civilization programs in five European cities, and initiated a traveling fellowship program for third-year students for research abroad. Our students are reaping great intellectual rewards because of these innovations. In terms of College admissions, we also continue to attract the special kind of student that will thrive on our campus: lively, opinionated, intellectually curious, and academically committed. Applications have increased 24 percent, and early applications have increased 44 percent. While SATs do not tell the whole story, they are revealing. The scores of this year’s applicants are, on average, thirty points higher than the scores of last year’s applicants. We have also improved our selectivity, accepting only 46 percent of our applicants, compared to 71 percent three years ago. Even though we have been successful in improving both the quantity and quality of our applicant pool, this year we will hold the entering class to 1,012—the same size as last year’s entering class. We will do this, in great part, so that we may begin making more concrete plans about how the University will address the teaching needs of a larger College. This winter, John Boyer and the Divisional Deans issued a statement to the Council of the Senate about the ways in which we anticipate proceeding. This statement—which the Provost and I approved—acknowledges that, to the extent that additional teachers will be needed to maintain small discussion classes, we will do so through a combination of targeted tenured and tenure-track faculty appointments, Harper-Schmidt faculty instructors, and advanced graduate lecturers. In this way, we will ensure that the quality of undergraduate education will be sustained. One of the great attractions of our University, for faculty and students alike, is our commitment to interdisciplinary endeavor and the permeability of traditional departmental and divisional boundaries. As President Lawrence Kimpton once described it, “We have no discrete empires, because the world of the mind knows no nationalism. The University [of Chicago] is organized so that ideas, no matter how diverse, may be exchanged.” A few weeks ago, it was my privilege to preside at the naming of the Franke Institute for the Humanities, where we celebrated the generous gift of Barbara and Richard Franke. The Institute was the brainchild of a faculty committee led by Daniel Garber, and in 1990, under the leadership of Dean Philip Gossett and with the enthusiastic support of President Hanna Gray, it came into being as the Chicago Humanities Institute. Since that time, the Institute has provided a physical and intellectual home for senior and apprentice scholars in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and beyond. For them, the Franke Institute is at once a time, a place, and a public forum. It is a time when scholars, thanks to a generous fellowship program, can engage in intensive research. It is a place where these scholars can share and debate ideas—particularly with individuals from other disciplines. Finally, and increasingly, it is a public forum, a venue through which scholars can engage with many audiences—including non-academic audiences. It has been a source of great pride and hope for us that, in a time of uncertain government commitment and support for the humanities, the work of the Franke Institute continues to flourish. Soon we will have another interdisciplinary research enterprise, the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics. Under its auspices, experimentalists in physics, chemistry, andbiological sciences, will collaborate with theorists and computational scientists to gain a deeper understanding of the extremely complex processes of life at the molecular and atomic levels. The research that will be conducted at the Institute thus promises to create intellectual and practical opportunities that are truly astonishing. The physical processes under consideration will be those that comprise our own bodies and minds, in health and sickness. The prospect of being able to inspect and understand how ordinary molecules organize themselves into biologically active molecules is an exciting one, particularly when one recalls that when we come to understand a physical process at the most basic level, we may also come to understand how to replicate or modify that process. In addition to the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, we are also preparing to establish a Center for Human Potential and Public Policy—thanks to a generous grant from Irving B. Harris. Housed in the Harris School, the Center will facilitate multidisciplinary research on questions of child and family policy, poverty and social inequality, education and training, and other, related issues. Researchers and students at the Center will use a variety of disciplinary lenses in undertaking this work, including economics, education, history, law, biology, and psychology. The new Center will have a three-fold mission: to train professional and doctoral students, to facilitate interdisciplinary research in areas of social policy and human potential, and to interpret these research findings for the benefit of those who make and enact important policy decisions. Finally, in conjunction with Argonne National Laboratory, we are about to establish another interdisciplinary Institute: the Computation Institute. Given the profound impact that advanced computation has had on the analysis of problems across a broad spectrum of disciplines, the Computation Institute promises to be a most exciting endeavor. Its mission will be to connect developments in advanced computation with those in the biological, physical, and social sciences (including finance), as well as in the humanities and the arts. The Computation Institute will foster research on the economic, social, and cultural impact of computer and information technology, as well as on problems of scientific modeling and simulation, analysis of massive data sets, and communications and networks. I have spoken to you about how we are figuratively building on our strengths, in terms of faculty, students, and new interdisciplinary programs. Let me now turn briefly to the literal. Frank Lloyd Wright is reputed to have said, “We create our buildings and they shape us.” If this is indeed the case, this year and the years soon to follow will play a vital role in shaping the University of Chicago. This spring, we will complete the first physical master-planning process in thirty years. This is an exciting time for our University, as we anticipate an important evolution in our landscape and much-needed improvements to our facilities. The change that will affect the greatest number of us is our plan to build new facilities for the Graduate School of Business on the site of what is now Woodward Court. This siting has advantages for the entire University community. Most obviously, the chosen site will provide the Graduate School of Business with the space it requires for all of its on-campus needs, while allowing it to remain closely situated to the center of our campus. At the same time, the GSB’s move will open up buildings on the quadrangles—namely Walker, Rosenwald, and Stuart—for use by the Humanities Division, the Social Sciences Division, and the College. For the first time in our University’s history, the main quadrangles will be dedicated to the arts and sciences. We will also see significant changes in the Science Quadrangle, where plans for a new research building are well underway. In addition to housing the new Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, this building will provide a home for the Department of Chemistry, the Franck Institute, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Appropriately, this new interdisciplinary laboratory is sited where our current facilities for the physical and biological sciences intersect. We are also making concrete plans to address our long-acknowledged need for better athletic and recreational facilities. Next year, thanks in great part to the generosity of Gerald Ratner, an alumnus of the College and the Law School, we will begin constructing a facility that will take us well into the next century. The distinguished architect Cesar Pelli has been chosen to design the Ratner Athletics Center. Building student housing closer to campus is also a University priority. Plans are underway for the construction of new residence halls in the vicinity of Regenstein Library. The renowned architect Riccardo Legorreta, who has designed buildings that range from the San Antonio Public Library to Pershing Square Park in Los Angeles, will design the new dormitories. One of the most vital projects currently underway is the reconfiguration of the Joseph Regenstein Library. Henry Ward Beecher once remarked that “[a] library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life,” and nowhere is this statement more true than at our University. In February of 1996, Regenstein Library had reached full capacity, and was expected to grow by at least 94,000 volumes per year for the next ten years. When the library reconfiguration is completed this summer, we will have increased our net physical capacity by approximately one-third (that is to say, by 1.2 million volumes). I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Board of the Library for all of their hard work in this important reconfiguration process. Before I conclude, I would like to congratulate the Social Sciences Division and the Biological Sciences Division on the completion of the new Biopsychological Sciences Building, the Oriental Institute on its new wing, and the Law School for its opening of the Kane Center and new classroom wing. I also want to wish the Press well as they plan for their long-awaited building, and I look forward to having more to report on that front in the future. In the meantime, let us remember how much these facilities will contribute to our research and teaching. At the beginning of this address I spoke about the central challenge, or paradox, of my time as President. How do we nurture and protect the most distinctive and central characteristics of our institutional culture, while at the same time making certain that the resources are in place to ensure their existence, as Harper put it, “even a thousand years hence”? In short, how must we change so that, ultimately, we can remain what we have always been—and more? The course we have embarked on for the past six years has been a challenging one, but we have made genuine progress. We have significantly increased our endowment and the relative rate of growth of our endowment. This has been accomplished not just because we have increased our attention to fund raising or because we have been successful in overseeing our endowment, but because the Deans and faculty have been so helpful in raising and managing resources. For your tireless efforts on behalf of our University, I am grateful. The combined effect of all of these accomplishments will help us to build an even stronger foundation for our University’s future and to protect what is most essential to our ethos and traditions. That includes: an emphasis on research that asks the biggest and most profound questions; intellectual endeavor that transcends the boundaries of disciplines; libraries and laboratories that make such important research possible; support for graduate students, whose work contributes to the high level of discourse on our campus and hence to its distinctive culture; and a strong College with a rigorous curriculum. I am confident that the choices we are making together—the choices we are making today—will preserve and enhance what is most essential to this great University, so that we will continue to enjoy our special place in higher education for many, many years to come.
Hugo F. Sonnenschein is President and Trustee of the University, and Professor in the Department of Economics and the College.
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