Good morning and welcome to the campus of East Tennessee State University as we begin academic year 2007-2008. This has been a busy and exciting summer. The period from the conclusion of May commencement to the arrival of students for fall semester classes is not a calm and restful time for many of our ETSU staff and faculty. That has especially been the case this summer. The building we are in today is undergoing extensive renovation. Carter Hall, one of the two oldest buildings on the campus, is being refurbished. Next door to us, the newest and largest residence hall on the campus is readied for occupation. Even with the opening of the new Governors Hall, our housing staff is working overtime, trying to accommodate a waiting list of students. Some of those students will be temporarily housed in local motels.
Employees in offices like Housing and Residence Life and the Physical Plant keep ETSU going, yet their work is often unrecognized. I appreciate the folks who get our students comfortably situated in residence halls, the people who keep our offices clean, the staff who cut our grass and trim our trees.
The summer of 2007 has been a time of great activity on our campus. All of our orientations have been packed with students and parents. This fall, we will likely set an all-time enrollment record, with the potential of topping 13,000 students for the first time in the 96-year history of the institution. In addition to the promise and the optimism that a record enrollment brings, we are also enjoying one of our best years in state funding in well over a decade.
I appreciate the leadership of Governor Phil Bredesen and the members of the Tennessee General Assembly for the improvements that have been made in operating budgets across the state, in both the Board of Regents and University of Tennessee systems. For the 2007-08 fiscal year, ETSU received new state appropriations totaling $6,645,000.
A three percent, across-the-board salary increase was granted to our faculty and staff, effective July 1. An additional pool of funds equal to two percent of salaries has been identified to address the next step in our salary equity plan. And an across-the-board bonus of $500 for each employee will come our way in November.
This is indeed a good time to be teaching, working, and studying at ETSU. One of the most frequent comments I hear ETSU faculty and staff make goes something like this: “You know, I came here expecting to stay for four or five years and then to move on. Instead, I’ve made my career here.”
That’s my story, too. Nancy and I came here in 1985, and we’ve never left. This campus and this community embrace you, and you don’t want to leave. That is my hope for the new faculty and staff who are joining us this semester. That you be so taken with us that you stay here for a long, long time.
What is it that is so special about this place? In my few minutes with you this morning, I’ll try to answer that question. In four years, we will celebrate the 100th birthday of East Tennessee State University, so we will be looking back a lot between now and then. Part of our lore at ETSU is the story of how we came to be located at this particular place. Many of the veteran faculty and staff here this morning know the story. But it bears revisiting. And it’s something our newcomers need to know, because it says so much about who we are.
We are a giving campus, in many ways. We fill food baskets at Thanksgiving. Our students stay up all night raising money for cancer research. Community members come to the campus every August and help haul televisions, computers, and wardrobes into residence halls for our students. We raised $7 million in a year for a new College of Pharmacy, some of it in six figures, some of it in twenty-dollar bills dropped anonymously in envelopes.
We are here now, occupying more than 350 acres, because of a gift. Beginning in 1909, when the Tennessee legislature authorized what were called “normal schools” for each of the three grand divisions of the state, intense competition began among the cities and towns of East Tennessee. Johnson City won out because of the generosity of one man. He was an elusive, enigmatic figure, as rich as any man in Appalachia in his day, but reclusive and not at all interested in personal recognition. His name was George L. Carter, and he made his money in coal and railroads. He laid out the Clinchfield Railroad through 275 miles of mountainous terrain.
George L. Carter knew what an institution of higher education could do for a town and for the larger region of Southern Appalachia. So he stepped up and donated his farm to the state of Tennessee. No charge, no strings, no fine print. Just the promise that his cow pasture would turn into a college campus. And it did. By the fall of 1911, what became Gilbreath Hall was open for business. So was a women’s residence hall that would later be named for Mr. Carter’s wife. Not only did Mr. Carter give away 120 acres of land, he contributed $100,000 toward the establishment of the normal school. And he provided free lights and power and ultimately a trolley linking the campus and downtown Johnson City. In the 1930s, I learned, East Tennessee State’s president, Dr. Charles C. Sherrod, wanted to honor Mr. Carter by renaming the school for him. But true to his humble spirit, George L. Carter declined.
What eventually evolved into a complex university enrolling 13,000 students and employing 2,800 faculty and staff began with an act of generosity, and the faith of 29 original students who rode trains and streetcars to get here, most seeking careers as teachers, some in search of domestic science courses so they could be better homemakers.
This fall, we remember George L. Carter, as his name will be permanently associated with a new railroad museum, the brainchild of Dr. Fred Alsop, professor of biological sciences and our Faculty Senate President for 2007-2008.
When I accepted the presidency of ETSU almost 11 years ago, I chose the train as a metaphor for my administration. As the recent Johnson’s Depot celebration showed, Johnson City was a town created by the railroad. Trains remind us of our past, while they are also symbols of movement and progress. That ETSU Express metaphor has served us well, and it accurately describes our enterprise.
Back to my original question. What is it that keeps so many members of the ETSU family on the train so long? This is an institution with an enormous economic impact on its region-well over $600 million yearly. Our College of Pharmacy alone promises an annual economic impact of $30 million. As important as those numbers are, ETSU is, at the same time, a place that values its impact on the individual person.
Take one example out of thousands, a former student named Keith Jennings, known to people who have been around here awhile as “Mister.” Keith “Mister” Jennings was one of the best point guards ever to play basketball in the NCAA. He played high school ball in Culpeper, Virginia, and because of his relatively small stature, he was overlooked by college after college. Les Robinson, ETSU’s head basketball coach at the time, saw promise in the young man and signed him to play here. He became one of the nation’s leaders in three-point shooting percentage and assists and claimed the Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award in 1991 as the most outstanding collegiate senior basketball player in the nation among those six feet tall and under. He went on to play professionally for three seasons with the Golden State Warriors. Still, despite all his basketball success, “Mister” regretted the fact that he never finished college. Sixteen years after his stellar basketball career, he is back on campus this fall, taking classes toward that degree.
East Tennessee State University draws its strength from the hills. Whether you are a native of Appalachia or a newcomer, the spirit of this region will hold you. Appalachian people embrace challenges. We don’t like to be told we can’t do something. We respect hard work. We respect the land and the relationships that grow from it.
So what do those traits have to do with the workings of a large university? They have inspired us, over those 96 years, to step up to some daunting challenges.
Even keeping the institution open was a painful struggle through Depression and War during Dr. Sherrod’s time. Faculty and staff went for long periods without being paid. They were fed on credit by Scott’s Grocery Store near the campus. In 1936, the Tennessee General Assembly debated closing the school, calling it an “unnecessary luxury.”
As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the graduation of our first College of Medicine class, we remember the battles, the great risks, the sacrifices that gave rise to an institution that has now graduated 1,371 M.D.s. Dr. Charles Allen of Johnson City took time away from a fledgling medical practice to traverse the state making the case for better health care in East Tennessee. The late State Representative P.L. Robinson abandoned his dairy farm to fight the University of Tennessee and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, a battle that would ultimately shorten his life. Dr. D.P. Culp, fourth president of ETSU, defied his boss, the Governor of Tennessee, Winfield Dunn, to press for the medical school, and continued to do so even after Dunn had vetoed the bill authorizing the creation of the school.
ETSU people have stepped up to the challenge of building now 10 doctoral programs. A Ph.D. in experimental psychology is in the works for fall 2009, and we are now exploring a Ph.D. in social work and an interdisciplinary doctorate in mathematics and biology. A doctoral program in early childhood education is now under consideration by the Tennessee Board of Regents. Programs like these require extensive background work, they involve vision, and they involve risk.
In the late 1990s, we said collectively that we aspired to be the best regional university in the country. It was and is a tall order, but consider only a few of the milestones we have reached together since then. We have graduated over 1,000 students twice a year and, through community and corporate partnerships, have created a regional job market that allows a high percentage of those graduates to stay in this area for employment. We have built a Center for Physical Activity and named it for benefactor Wayne Basler.
We have created an Honors College, the first in our university’s history. We own an Innovation Laboratory, supported by the first research foundation of any state university in Tennessee.
In the spring of 2007, ETSU was presented the Outstanding Rural Health Program of the Year Award, by the National Rural Health Association. That national award is the culmination of 16 years of work, involving faculty, staff, and students from every college and school at ETSU. It measures how well we have carried out the concept of a university without walls.
I’m glad to work at a university tied so strongly to place. I’m glad to work at a university that thinks expansively. A university that undertakes the excavation and preservation of a massive, seven-million-year-old fossil site. A university that goes beyond prescribed borders to teach art, dance, and banjo in downtown Kingsport. A university that cares about renewing the inner lives of rural high school teachers. A university that sends a faculty member to Kurdistan to help address mental health needs in Iraq.
I’m proud to work at a university that tackles the most all-encompassing reference work on Appalachia ever produced. A university whose faculty and staff write about Bear Bryant, women’s studies, London theatre from the Restoration through the early 19th century, and soup beans.
Your accomplishments as faculty and staff are impressive and endless. A stellar passing rate on the licensing exam for nurses, better retention of students campuswide, initial accreditation of the master’s program in social work, new exchange programs with Azerbaijan and Russia, and much more.
To attain excellence, you must care more than others think is wise, risk more than others think is safe, dream more than others think is practical. Such is the culture of ETSU.
We dream of a performing arts center, we dream of additional doctoral programs, we dream of improved athletic facilities.
Certainly, new buildings and big numbers make headlines, but most of the work of a university goes on quietly. You see it every day. When a student delivers her first speech in Spanish. When a chemical equation balances. When a budding actor captures the rage of King Lear. When a nursing student successfully inserts that first IV. When a student completes his first survey of property boundary lines.
Yes, people make careers here at ETSU for many reasons. We’re a warm and welcoming campus, an adventurous campus, a campus not bound by walls, a campus that thinks beyond traditional limits, a campus that celebrates the daily triumphs of individual students. I believe you will find a special sense of place here, too.
It is my hope that this academic year for you will be filled with the wonder of discovery, the peace of quiet study and contemplation, and the satisfaction that comes from the joyous exchange that is teaching and learning.

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