On Tuesday, October 10, at 4:10 p. m. in the SUB, President Geoffrey Gamble delivered a State of the Campus address to the campus and public communities. Below is the text of the president's comments.

(Applause.) Thank you.

Thanks for being here. I want to start, as I sometimes do, with some thank-you's, beginning with my wife Patricia. Although you can't tell, she's sitting up front here with a broken leg from an accident that happened about seven weeks ago. It's kind of a tough time for the two of us to have an accident like that occur as we get ready to get into a school year. There are so many things that together we're required to do at the beginning of a school year. And in spite of a broken leg, Patricia has been there for almost everything that she could. It's taken a huge toll on her and I want her to know how much I appreciate everything that she does, even with a broken leg, and what a great partner to have, both in terms of our job here at the university, and also in our travels through life, so Patricia, thank you for everything.

Next, a big thanks you to the President's office staff, to Shari and Susan. If you look at the staffs of presidents' offices, even in Montana and in other universities our size, you'll find staffs that range anywhere from six to eight to ten to fourteen individuals. And in essence, Shari and Susan take care of everything. They do it magnificently. We could not operate without them.

My final thank you is for the folks involved with shared governance. When I came here, I wanted very much to set up a rich shared governance approach, where people from all across campus were involved in the deliberations and in providing input on decisions. Shared governance has matured very well and a big thank you to Michelle Larson from CEPAC, to Kim Rehm from Professional Council, Cole Arthun, ASMSU, and Shannon Taylor from the Faculty Council. Those folks together, leading the governance council, make some wonderful things happen at the university and for me, it's very gratifying to see that a simple idea of bringing the community in to be part of the deliberations of the university can work so well and so efficiently.

A convergence of personal and professional

I'm going to start by talking about a convergence of things that the institution has gone through, particularly the last six months. I have also gone through a series of personal events almost during that same period of time. Patricia's injury is one of those. Her brother suffered a very serious fall. He fell 60 feet off a cliff and landed in rocks and broke almost everything. It happened the week before Patricia broke her leg. Then my sister, who had a serious illness, died about two weeks after Patricia's injury. And I will just tell you that those events, plus the institutional events, really gave me a pause. I stepped back to kind of look at things and ask, "How does this look? How does it feel?" And so I'm going to be a little more reflective in this talk. I won't spend a lot of time, we won't get morbid about it, but I think there are some important lessons to be gained.

Creating our own image

One of the things that I realized is that as an institution, if we don't work to create our own image, one will end up being created for us. And we don't want our image to be driven by or derived from a series of unrelated or negative events. Instead we need to be proactive to protect and continue to enhance our public image and our local and national profile. And that was an important lesson because it's easy to become passive, and no matter how good we are as an institution, and I'll tell you, we're a great institution, it's important to not ever just sit back and become passive in what you're doing, to be comfortable in what we're doing. And so that was one of the first lessons.

New threats

As the series of events occurred, both personal and institutional, I asked myself a couple questions. One is, how should we evaluate and respond to changes in the context and in the environment in which we work? The second question was how should MSU adapt to what we all recognize are significant changes in the world. Some of the events over the past six months brought us literally out into the middle of world events. We need to be cognizant that Montana State University is part of a world that has changed significantly in recent years. And it's a world that we know and are maybe not reflecting on quite as much as we should.

For example, terrorism threats are a serious concern. As we try to think about the university, moving the university forward, what about the students walking in the door? This is their world, which has shrunk owing to instant communication. We need to be thinking seriously about what the implications of that are in terms of educators, and reaching out to those students, so it's multifaceted.

Illegal drugs continue to be a serious problem in American society, and new drugs are on the market providing new challenges to all segments of society. And those things form kind of a context that tells me that American universities have different types of situations arising for them than we have in the past. Substance abuse and illegal drugs have no place in education, period. Education should be a key component in combating the drug problems that we find in our community and in our nation and maybe even our world. And it's a fundamental piece for me, and I'm going to pick up on that. As you know, I think illegal drugs are a major national problem; it's a major international problem. And MSU has not been immune to the same pressures that we see in the rest of the world, even in our community. However, we are taking real and very serious steps. Student Affairs and health promotions are working hard to provide training and resources to all students. They help students set goals for themselves, create plans for achieving those goals and then evaluate how students' choices regarding substance use may affect their ability reach those goals. We have to do everything we can to reach out to them and help give them the tools to be successful. Remember, we're all about student success.

I'm personally very committed to fighting the drug problem. I have been a member of the Montana Meth Task Force since its inception, and I'm actively working with leaders to develop comprehensive strategies to combat the meth problem in this state. And I will continue to play a role in that. I believe deeply it's a very serious problem. Eighty percent of the females incarcerated in the state of Montana are there because of meth-related offenses. As many as 60 percent of the state's male prison inmates are there for meth-related offenses. Those are huge numbers and they're huge financial drain on this state. And if we can make an in-road in reducing that problem, we have helped the state ease a huge financial burden.

MSU is in the process of hiring an external review team to thoroughly review our residence halls to make sure that we're current and up-to-date with our programming, with our policies, with our procedures, including security. If we can do something better we will.

A global campus

Now I want to talk about nonresident and international students. I truly believe in order to provide the education that is needed in Montana, and particularly for Montana students, we must bring different cultures into the community. And we can do that both through recruiting nonresident students, but more importantly, hosting visitors from other parts of the world. This is the right thing to do culturally; it's the right thing to do educationally. Not only do people from other parts of the world begin to better understand us, but we provide our students and people in this community with opportunities to better understand others. And those others will ultimately be future coworkers, they may be supervisors, they may be subordinates, clients, business partners, neighbors and friends. The opportunity to come together and to better learn about each other is very significant, and as educators I think we have to embrace that and we need to move that direction constantly.

Recently we learned a lesson about today's media environment and about instant communications. You know the incident. This past summer MSU was part of an incredibly intense media blitz surrounding eleven Egyptian students who chose not to participate in the cultural exchange program on our campus. And it was their choice. Remember that these students were chosen by their home institution in Egypt. They were vetted by the State Department, by Homeland Security, by Immigration. Our responsibility started with them when they showed up on campus. The students were actually located within a matter of days. There was never any national security risk associated with them, yet newspapers, TV and radio stations across the country picked up the story.

At the same time, Montana State University was host to student leaders from nineteen Arab countries participating in what's called the Middle East Partnership Initiative Study of the United States Institutions. The program was a resounding success. The young people attending our program raved about the mind-changing, life-altering experiences that they had enjoyed on our campus. In fact, a letter of commendation to Montana State University came from the United States Department of State. It reads, in part, "Your university helped us demonstrate what makes America great, and in doing so played a role in the transformational diplomacy that will provide greater freedom and opportunity to the people of the Middle East."

So what are the conclusions that I drew from these various things that went on. First of all, Montana State University is not immune to the problems of our state, and not immune to the problems of our nation or of the world. But by looking both inside and outside, inward and outward with courage, we have always been and continue to be leaders in finding solutions and that's as true today as it was six months ago or a year ago. This university is quite remarkable in its ability to be honest with itself, take a look and say, hey, if that's not right, we'll change it, and if it is right, we'll stick by it. And as a result I find great courage and resiliency and integrity across the whole fabric of this university, and it's something that makes me very proud.

What does the future hold?

So what about the future? Well, we have, I think, an excellent future. I don't know how many of you had occasion to look at the Education/Life section of the New York Times in July. There was a piece in there called "Redrawing the College Map" and what it was really talking about was which states are college hot spots. The New York Times piece drew from a Department of Education study on, of all things, the migratory patterns of students who are choosing colleges. The piece noted a nationwide bulge of high school students. Now, that's not true in Montana, in fact we're seeing a decreasing high school population. Nationwide, however, there's a bulge of college-age students, which has made college admissions much more competitive. That's true for selective private colleges as well as flagship public campuses, which are also becoming increasingly difficult to get into. But the New York Times article noted "hidden gems" around the nation and they mention two: one being the University of Oklahoma, and the other being Montana State University. And to get recognition in major studies like that, and in the New York Times just really tells me that we are hitting it right, folks. And that recognition for me was important to see because I do think that we're getting it right.

More successes: More Goldwater Scholars. And last year I reported on a young man getting a Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship out of architecture. A very rare thing - they're so highly competitive as they provide up to $50,000 per year for six years. For any school to have a student get it is a magnificent achievement. Well, I can't disclose the name yet, but we have another one this year. We've now got back-to-back. The strength of the undergraduate education here is phenomenal. So we're still doing the right things and we're doing it well.

Retention a priority

I have a number of goals and priorities as we move into this academic year. At the top of my list is student retention. I think it's critically important. We're going to see Montana's high school graduating population decrease. That, of course, means fewer students coming from Montana eligible to go to college. So the ones we get, we'd better work hard to keep here, educate and to graduate. All of us have an obligation to do what we can to make their educational experience successful.

The strengths of our campus that I often spend a lot of time bragging about are precisely the strengths that we will need to continue our future success. Our faculty are responsible for our elevation to the top tier Carnegie classification as a research university. More importantly, our faculty care about the health of our university. They continue to do things that bring honor and recognition to this university. And I don't see anything changing that. If anything, we'll see more of it as we go.

Kudos to the staff

We have a good administration and staff. We're structured as lean as we can be and shouldn't change that. I think they provide exceptional leadership within the Montana University System. In fact, I can confirm it to you. First of all, I chose to wear my badge today supporting student success. This was done by the staff of the university. The staff of the university, coming together saying, "What can we do? What message could we give out to the students and to others?" And the message they give is the message of the university: we're here to support student success. I couldn't be prouder than to think that the staff of the university thinks so well of this place that they understand they're there to help make students successful. I can tell you at the Board of Regents meetings the leaders of our various groups, whether it's CEPAC, or Professional Council, Faculty Council, ASMSU--our people provide leadership for the whole Montana University System, over and over again. The regents listen and make changes in university system policy based upon what they're hearing from here. That's pretty powerful stuff, folks. I go to the meetings and I sit there and just watch and listen and smile because our folks get it right, and I appreciate it very much.

Talented students

And then of course we have an extremely talented group of students. They're committed, they're energized. The list of student awards and national scholarships continues to grow. I will just share with you one little tidbit. I met with the ABET computer science accreditation team. They were here for an interim accreditation. And they reflected on their own campuses. One comes from the University of South Carolina, the other from the University of Alabama. And as they spent time here and met our students and met our faculty, both of them had the same observation, that there were rather significant differences between their home campuses and what they were seeing here. They noted that we have a mature and almost professional student body; that they were here to learn, they were serious about their efforts to learn, and they worked at it.

Alumni, donors and friends

And finally, our alumni, our donors, our partners and our community have stood behind Montana State for more than 100 years. And I can tell you absolutely, every day that group of supporters continues to grow and it will become an important group as we look out to the future and try to take control in bringing more resources in to the institution.

Access to higher ed

There's one other element that I want to talk about that I find very encouraging about our future. Our governor and the Board of Regents, I feel, have made a clear public statement, a commitment to maintaining access to higher education for the people of Montana. In supporting the Regents' priority on affordability, the governor has proposed, and will propose to the upcoming legislature, an increase of $50 million in base funding to go to the university system for the next biennium. Now that's a two-year period of time, so that's about $25 million per year. That turns out to be the estimated amount needed for the whole system to cover the fixed cost increases the system will incur in the next biennium.

The difficult subject of salaries

In there are a couple of incredibly important pieces. One would be an increase in the state's share of the projected pay plan. There are only two kinds of money: state money and student money. We've had to turn to increased tuition to pay the salary increases that were authorized by the state. For the first time in a decade, maybe longer than that, the governor's proposing to shift that balance to that the state. For the next salary increase, the state would pick up 80 percent of that salary increase, which relieves the university from having to pass those costs on to the students.

In this whole discussion, another good thing has come about. When I first got to this state the Regents were reluctant to talk about salary. One, they seemed to be reluctant, and two, they didn't seem to be using any normalized national data to decide if we had a real salary problem or not. They are now using nationalized, standardized data. The CUPA base will become the basis for us, and what they're discovering is that in all categories of employees, including commissioners, presidents, faculty, professionals, we're low. But now that they have standardized comparators, we have an opportunity of working with them to slowly start moving up the ladder. And that, from my perspective, is very good news.

Holding the line on tuition

Our part of the bargain for having this money put on the table is that we'll hold in-state tuition at current levels for the next two years across all campuses of the university system. So for in-state students there would be a 0 percent tuition increase in the next two years, each year of the biennium. Our resident tuition levels have crept up over time, and at least for our campus, our resident tuition is now above our peer average. And while that alone isn't critical, if we look at that in relationship to the average personal income in the state of Montana, it drives huge concerns for affordability because it's not just the tuition amount, but also the fact that the people in this state don't earn much.

Ten years from now, we will look back at that as a single, unique event that made a profound difference in the future of higher education. What's interesting is that I hope we're going to see more Montana students choose to come to school. When you look at states that have made substantial investments in higher education, there's a clear return and the return. Such states see a decrease in corrections, a decrease in reliance on health and human services. It has such a positive, beneficial affect on a state. So to stop some of the huge outflows in corrections and other areas, what you need to do is to educate people. And I think that we're seeing a trajectory that will be helpful for us and for the state of Montana.

Now there's more good news hiding in the bushes on this. We tracked every graduate and for the last graduating class that we were able to track can, 59 percent of our graduates were able to find employment in the state of Montana. What's more, for the first time since I've been here the average starting salary for the students choosing to take employment in Montana almost equaled the average starting salary if they had gone out of state. This means that somewhere in Montana, people are paying better and that's very good news for our students. But more importantly, if we have any hope of moving the state forward economically, we have to help move the personal income quotient, which means it's not just having trained work force, it's having a trained employer force. Getting people out there who can start businesses that are paying more, so I think there's some good news.

Bold plans for the future

I started with kind of a personal retrospective, but it was important for me to do that because I felt, coming out of summer, that we had all kind of weathered some tough spells. When I look back at the history of the university, it's replete with tough spells. In fact, I just recently read something from 1909. It was internal correspondence from the president to the community and there are problems there. We always have problems. The beautiful thing is that we also have pinnacles of great success and together we've solved virtually everything that's been there. In all times, I think we've remained focuses and adaptable. I think that as a community we've been courageous in looking at ourselves and looking forward and we have, I think, bold plans for our future. So, when it's all said and done, I continue to be incredibly optimistic. I chose to do a little less cheerleading and maybe a little more reflective discussion, but inside, the cheerleader is still there. This is an incredibly productive place with wonderful people and I will just tell you, I think it's a great time to be at Montana State University, so thank you all very much.