Good morning.   I know I’ve said this before, but it’s a pleasure to call our first assembly to order and welcome everyone to the beginning of a new year.  I hope your summers were invigorating and productive.  The start of the fall semester is always a time of heightened energy and anticipation—we are fortunate indeed to follow the professions we do and to do so here.

In a few moments new members of the Trinity community will be introduced and we will hear of their many talents and accomplishments. I know that all of us who were privileged to come to Trinity before them offer each a warm and sincere welcome. 

We are delighted you will be working with us in the pursuit of our common goals and aspirations.  It is especially gratifying to have you part of this extraordinary enterprise, at this special time in our history, with all the challenges and opportunities before us. 

We know you will be enthusiastic colleagues, committed to our students and to the University, colleagues who will make substantial contributions to Trinity’s continuing advancement.

The essential Trinity of tomorrow will continue to be the essential Trinity of today, a place where multi-talented students get the very best education from superb faculty and staff on one of America’s finest collegiate campuses. Our task is to sustain and to strengthen even more that essential Trinity, to move it from eminence to preeminence, to insure our successors inherit a Trinity as worthy of their admiration in their time as the Trinity we inherited is worthy of our admiration in our time.

I won’t describe for you now in detail the many initiatives that we have been engaged with in recent years, initiatives undertaken to advance this common aspiration—they run from redesigning the common curriculum and re-conceptualizing student life to the creation of an academic honor code (which will this year apply for the first time to first years through fourth years); they run from piloting a sophomore residential college to new facilities such as Northrup Hall, the Dicke Art Building, and the Smith Music Building; from expansion of externally supported student summer research programs to re-establishing the Trinity University Press; and from the transformation and re-vitalization of KRTU to the largest capital campaign in Trinity’s history, a campaign that has a $200 million goal and that should help shape the continuing essential Trinity into a Trinity  that is accessible to students based on their ability to perform, not on their ability to pay, a Trinity that can enhance further the close, personal, and inspirational interaction between faculty and students that is characteristic of the essential Trinity experience, a Trinity that can fully support faculty and student research; that can launch, develop, and sustain the five academic initiatives that emerged from the “Re-envisioning” planning process, and a Trinity that can continue to provide the facilities and services that nourish the best of all teaching and learning environments.

The arriving members of our community will learn more about these things, and others, but traditionally, the most important function of today’s assembly is to introduce them formally to their new colleagues and to launch the new year, a year that I hope will be memorable for all of us.  Because this assembly is also an opportunity to re-connect with one another and to learn about developments that affect our joint enterprise, before the introductions begin, let me offer a brief status report on a few such developments.

Thus far we’ve held receptions for the capital campaign in fourteen different cities around the country, with eleven more scheduled this year and next, including Dallas, Ft. Worth, and Austin this fall, and we have seven others yet to be scheduled.

Last May, we reported to the Board of Trustees that the total of gifts and pledges had surpassed $135 million.  Since that time, we have moved along nicely, and will report to the Board, and to the campus, in September both a new running total and that we continue to be on a trajectory that will lead to successful completion of the campaign.

While there are a number of other gratifying things about the course of the campaign—especially, for example, being able to ask Vice President Fischer to begin developing criteria for the new Trustee Professorships and knowing that roughly two-thirds of the faculty have now made a gift or pledge for a total of more than half a million dollars, numbers we hope to see go even higher this year—while our progress has been good, the current momentum encouraging, and the coming year very promising, we must remember that the campaign’s full effect will be felt over time as pledges are fulfilled and as they mature during the rolling twelve quarter phase in required by our endowment spending policy. 

A second matter of considerable importance is that we are scheduled this year to undergo reaffirmation of our accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Since we last met, the SACS compliance certification committee has been working intensely to complete a compliance report and to assemble all the necessary supporting documentation for the twelve core requirements, the more than fifty comprehensive standards, and the eight federally mandated requirements.

The compliance report is in the final stages of editing and will be submitted as required in September, to be evaluated by a SACS appointed off-site peer review team in November.

Should it be necessary, following the off-site review we will prepare and submit in January of 2008 a Focus Report addressing any issues raised by the off-site team. We do not as yet have firm dates for the on-site peer review, but anticipate it will take place some time in late February or early March.

As the Compliance Certification Committee has been doing its work, another committee chaired by Professor Alida Metcalf has also been working on development of a proposed implementation plan and budget for our Quality Enhancement Plan, or QEP, that was adopted last spring.  (My thanks to Judith Fischer and the QEP committee members for leading the campus-wide process).  The QEP, which is officially titled “Expanding Horizons:  Using Information in the Twenty-first Century Knowledge Economy,” is a critical compliance element of the SACS’ core requirements and an exciting opportunity to enhance student learning, and it too is due for submission in January of 2008.    

You will hear in more detail about the implementation committee’s work from Professor Metcalf in a short while, but let me say now that I’m delighted by the direction these plans are taking and the progress the committee has made.

We are, however, entering a crucial period in the QEP’s evolution, particularly if it is to be as transformational as it potentially might be and if it is to satisfy the SACS requirement that it be the product of broadly based campus participation.  I urge everyone to get involved and to support the committee’s work wherever and however possible. The QEP is crucial to the reaccreditation process and will be an important element of Trinity’s future academic topography.  If you want to help make a difference at Trinity, your efforts and energy could not have a better focus.

The Compliance Certification Committee is chaired by Dr. Diane Smith and includes:

• Diane Saphire
• Ana Windham
• Becky Spurlock
• Susan Baker
• Deborah Bolster

The Quality Enhancement Plan Committee includes Dr. Metcalf as chair and

• Michelle Millet
• Diane Graves
• Judith Fisher
• Diane Persellin
• Diane Saphire
• Bert Chandler
• Charlene Davis
• Mark Lewis
• Bladimir Ruiz
• Ben Newhouse
• And students Sarah Hills and Megan Murphy

Each of the members of these committees deserves our thanks and admiration. Please join me in acknowledging their efforts.

On other matters: after long, tedious, and sometimes confusing negotiations, we concluded this summer a much too complicated agreement with the San Antonio Independent School District that will guarantee us access to parking at Alamo Stadium for the next twenty-five years, a relief, no doubt, to many students and staff, in addition to the manager of the Skyline Room.

Also this summer, as is always the case, we implemented a substantial portfolio of capital renovation projects, including expansion of the Information Commons in the Coates Library to include the entire fourth floor, a project financed by a gift from AT&T; we also began creation of a Women’s Studies Resource Center in Coates Library,  made possible by a generous gift facilitated by Bonnie Korbell from her mother, Ruth McLean Bowers; and our consultant, Arthur Lidsky, and his colleagues of Dober, Lidsky, Craig and Associates made considerable progress in studying our science and engineering facilities needs and in developing options for addressing those needs.  Their report is due this fall.  We completed a renovation of the Coates Center information desk area,  had a groundbreaking for construction of the new Mabry Tennis Center, and extensively renovated Lightner Hall, a renovation that will result in Lightner meeting the requirements to be LEEDS [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] certified.

This last project, Lightner Hall, is particularly significant in that it initiates a new era of Trinity construction and operations, an era guided by an ethic of, and commitment to, sustainability. It is my hope and expectation that Trinity will be a national leader in developing an environmentally sustainable academic community.  To that end I have appointed a Presidential Task Force on Sustainability that will have a comprehensive charge to review and analyze our sustainability status and identify areas of high priority where we can do better. 

Having agreed to serve on the Task Force are:

• Richard Reed, Chair
• Heather Sullivan
• Kelly Lyons
• Peter Kelly-Zion
• John Huston
• John Greene
• Bruce Bravo
• Ana Windham
• David Tuttle
• And students Alex Wallender and Molly Ellis

I deeply appreciate their willingness to take on this important assignment and look forward to working with them.

Trinity’s first priority is teaching, and it is a pleasure to report that the members of the class of 2011 are eminently teachable. Admissions received the largest number of applications in Trinity’s history, over 4,500, a 16% increase over last year.  The acceptance rate was just a fraction over 50%, a 9% reduction from last year, approximately 30% reduction from eight years ago, and a record low.  In every measure of academic performance, the incoming class has higher average numbers than the classes that preceded it, to include grade point average, class rank, ACT mean, and an SAT average  that is a full 10 points above last year’s.

The first year students we greet tomorrow will also be a more diverse group, from 41 states and 44 countries.  In fact, roughly 10% of the incoming class are international students, and 29% are students of color.

Congratulations to Dean Ellertson and his team in admissions and financial aid, and a very big thank you to all the faculty and staff who work with them and make such vital contributions to the admissions process.

As I’ve often said, Trinity is blessed in many ways, but our single most differentiating quality, the sine qua non of our stature and success is people.  So let’s meet our new colleagues and let me conclude my remarks by congratulating those in our midst whose outstanding performance and many contributions to Trinity resulted in their promotion during the last year:

Faculty/Staff Promotions
Faculty	To New Rank	Department
Dr. Bert Chandler	Associate Professor with tenure	Chemistry
Dr. Jane Childers	Associate Professor with tenure	Psychology
Ms. Jane Costanza	Associate Professor with tenure	Library
Dr. Christine Drennon	Associate Professor with tenure	Sociology and Anthropology
Dr. Thomas Jenkins	Associate Professor with tenure	Classical Studies
Dr. Ruqayya Khan	Associate Professor with tenure	Religion
Dr. Jonathan King	Associate Professor with tenure	Biology
Dr. Mark Lewis	Associate Professor with tenure	Computer Science
Ms. Barbara MacAlpine	Associate Professor with tenure	Library
Dr. Natasa Macura	Associate Professor with tenure	Mathematics
Dr. Kimberlyn Montford	Associate Professor With tenure	Music
Dr. Bladimir Ruiz	Associate Professor with tenure	Modern Languages and Literatures
Dr. Claudia Stokes	Associate Professor with tenure	English
Dr. Dante Suarez	Associate Professor with tenure	Business Administration
Dr. Timothy Kramer	Professor	Music
Mr. Christopher Nolan	Professor	Library
Dr. James Shinkle	Professor	Biology
Contract Staff		To
Ms. Denise Amos		Telecommunication Analyst
Ms. Mary Anthony		Assistant Director for Community Services
Mr. Seth Ashbury		Coordinator of Athletic Events
Ms. Sarah Fischer		Assistant Director of Admissions
Mr. Jason Guthrie		Offensive Coordinator, Football
Mr. Gerardo Guzman		User Support Analyst
Ms. Katie Jundt		Coordinator of Greek Life and Services
Ms. Liliana Lovisa		Academic Records Analyst and Coordinator of Graduation
Mr. Eric Maloof		Director of International Admissions and Associate Director of Admissions
Ms. Catherine Storey		Assistant Director for Residential Education
Mr. Burt Stuart		Defensive Coordinator, Football
and Ms. Kate Wheeler		Assistant Director of Admissions

Congratulations to you all.

At the April faculty assembly last spring, we recognized the recipients of the Distinguished Achievement Awards, but it is fitting to congratulate them again now, especially with our new colleagues present.  Receiving the Trinity Junior Faculty Awards for Distinguished Teaching and Research for 2006-2007 were Professor Aaron Delwiche from the Department of Communication and Professor Adam Urbach from the Department of Chemistry.  Receiving the Trinity Award for Distinguished Advising for 2006-2007 was Professor Farzan Aminian from the Department of Engineering Science; the Trinity Award for Distinguished

University and Community Service was presented to Professor Don Van Eynde from the Department of Business Administration; and the Trinity Award for Distinguished Scholarship, Research, or Creative Work went to Professor Nancy Mills from the Department of Chemistry.  And last – and far from least – the prestigious Z.T. Scott Faculty Fellowship was presented at the May Commencement to Professor John Huston from the Department of Economics.  Please join me in expressing our admiration and congratulations to these distinguished Trinity citizens.

Thank you and have a great year.