Steven Knapp, President
The George Washington University
Address to the Faculty Assembly
September 10, 2007

I have had the privilege already of interacting with many of you. But for many weeks now, as one of the newest members of the faculty of The George Washington University, I have been looking forward to an opportunity to address my new colleagues as a body. It’s a pleasure to stand before you at last.

Last week I gave a speech at Opening Convocation that The Hatchet later dubbed a “history lesson.” As often happens with journalistic headlines, I could not tell whether this was meant as a compliment or an insult. In any event, I was glad to see that a number of you were there to greet our new students, but of course the speech was aimed at the students and their families. I know better than to lecture faculty, unless of course I am giving a lecture in my own field and by the invitation of my colleagues. If I use historical examples this afternoon, I will be doing so to illustrate a point and not under any illusion that I know as much as, let alone more than, you do about the University that I am both humbled and honored to lead.

Very soon after my appointment was announced last winter, planning was already underway for my inauguration as your 16th president—which, by coincidence, will take place on the 16th of November! Someone called to ask if there were any themes I might be planning to highlight. Without hesitation, I quickly listed three: first, the relation of GW to the District of Columbia and to the broader capital region; second, our aspirations to increase our visibility and impact as a research university; third, our need to strengthen our base of support among our alumni by deepening their sense of belonging to GW as a lifelong and worldwide community.

Those three themes were so easy to name because they so clearly define the nature of my job as I have understood it ever since I was first contacted by the presidential search committee—an understanding that has been confirmed by the numerous conversations I have had since then with trustees, alumni, the deans, and the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate, as well as by the e-mails and letters I have received from many of you. But none of the goals they entail—literally not a single one—is achievable without your support, your advice, and your direct engagement in our common effort. That’s not an attempt at collective flattery; it’s simply true. It’s the main thing I wanted to say to you on this, my earliest opportunity to address you. The rest will be, as I suggested a moment ago, illustrative. My examples are selected more or less at random and are not intended to be in any way comprehensive; again, you know much more about all these topics than I do, although I’m learning!

Let me begin, then, with the first of the three themes I mentioned: our partnerships with institutions and agencies here in Washington and in the larger capital region. Last week, I had an opportunity to tour the Folger Shakespeare Library with its director, Gail Kern Paster, who also happens to be a former member of my new department. I learned about a course for GW undergraduates who will each be assigned a rare Renaissance-era book, which he or she will spend the semester studying in all its aspects, material as well as cultural and historical.

When I meet with city officials, from the Mayor on down, I am continually reminded of the partnerships between our Graduate School of Education and Human Development and the city’s public schools. The health of the public schools is, of course, an issue of existential importance, both for the District and for this university, whose fate is intimitately connected to that of the city that is its home. City officials also point to Professor Sara Rosenbaum of our School of Public Health and Health Services, who is leading a partnership with the D.C. Department of Health. But of course our partners are everywhere in this city and its suburbs, engaging every one of our schools and departments. They include (and this selection is truly random):

the Shakespeare Theatre;
the National Trust for Historic Preservation;
the DC Water Resource Research Center;
the Food and Drug Administration;
the National Institutes of Health;
the FBI;
the Department of State;
the Drug Enforcement Administration;
the Defense Criminal Investigative Services;
the Department of Homeland Security;
the National Zoo;
National Air and Space Museum;
Montgomery County Schools; and
the Federal Forecasters Consortium.

Our partnerships are so many and so various, in fact, that one of our greatest institutional challenges is finding ways to quantify their impact and convey it to the many public and private audiences that, right now, fail to appreciate the magnitude of that impact or its importance to the District, the nation, and the broader global community.

The question of impact brings me to the second theme I mentioned: research. Part of my task will be to explain to our many constituencies (not of course to you, who already know) the many truths about research that are so widely ignored or misunderstood:

First, that research enhances rather than detracts from teaching. Nothing contributes to excellence in teaching more than the excitement of intellectual engagement at the frontiers of the discipline in question. In that connection, I was glad to read the resolution the Faculty Senate adopted last Friday to begin a review of the undergraduate curriculum across the five schools in which undergraduates are enrolled. That should provide an opportunity, among other things, to explore innovative ways of designing courses and programs that will increase the complementarity of research and instruction.

Another truth is that research occurs across all disciplines, not just in those that operate in physical laboratories. Still another is that research is not a “cash cow” for universities; in fact, sponsorship for research from federal and even more from private sources rarely if ever covers the full cost of the activity it’s intended to support. That’s one reason why universities set up centers and institutes that can attract support from multiple sources. It’s also, together with financial aid for students, the main reason why presidents and deans spend so much of their time persuading prospective donors that this is one of the most exciting and rewarding places to spend their philanthropic dollars.

And, in fact, research at GW should not be a hard sell. This faculty is distinguished by a history of research accomplishments that will be matched and even exceeded, I am confident, by the achievements of its future. Here again, my examples are random and could easily be multiplied:

In 1955, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Vincent du Vigneaud for what the citation called “his work on biochemically important sulfur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone”—work he had done at GW in the 1930s.

In 1970, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was shared by GW lecturer Julius Axelrod for his work on humoral transmitters.

Samuel Flagg Bemis, chair of our History Department, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1926 for that year’s best book in American history.

Physicist George Gamow (whose name was given to the chair now occupied, as you know, by Dr. Lehman) worked here from 1934 to 1956; early on he predicted the theory of the “genetic code” (later confirmed by DNA studies) and the “big bang theory” (later confirmed by scientists at Bell Labs). Edward Teller was also on our faculty for part of that same period, from 1935 to 1945.

The entire field of public contract law was essentially invented by two GW professors, John Cibinic and Ralph Nash. And the history of medicine in the last century was significantly shaped by faculty in our Medical Center, including Major Walter Reed, who identified the mosquito as the carrier of yellow fever, and Dr. Frederick Russell who introduced the typhoid vaccine to the United States Army.

Those efforts, of course, were in the fairly distant past. A list of current examples would no doubt include:

Chemistry Professor Akos Vertes, who is developing a microscope that will enable researchers to see for the first time how proteins interact with living tissue;

Peter Hotez, who is working on a vaccine for hookworm, a parasitic disease affecting one in eight people in the world;

Gene Cohen, a pioneer in the field of aging, who is uncovering important links between creative pursuits and mental agility;

Liliana Florea, who received the 2006 Sloan Research Fellowship for her work on computational techniques for solving biological and medical problems;

Bernard Wood, University Professor of Human Origins, internationally recognized for his work in paleoanthropology; and

our newest University Professor, Dr. Vanessa Gamble, a renowned scholar in medical humanities, who brings with her a body of work on racial disparities in health care and bioethics.

One of the great pleasures of joining a new institution is learning about faculty achievements like the ones I just sampled. Another is finding out about new ideas and initiatives that are just emerging from the energy and imagination of one’s colleagues. Those I’ve encountered so far reflect an astonishing array of departments and programs—an array made more complex and difficult to sample by the fact that many of the newer areas involve the intersection of multiple disciplines. I’ll simply note some of the new and growing subject areas under which these innovations fall:

remote sensing;
nanotechnology;
energy and fuel technologies;
addiction and substance abuse;
aging and neurodegenerative diseases;
the development of innovative curricula for teaching math and science; and
the international and cultural dimensions of homeland security.

These are not my ideas, but things I’ve read and heard that you are interested in. The last thing I want to do as President is tell you, my colleagues, what interests you ought to have! My job is to understand what interests you, and why, so I can remove any roadblocks to your pursuing those interests; and also so I can convey to potential partners and supporters the impact that your doing so is likely to have. Together, we can build the pre-eminence in research that GW aspires and deserves to enjoy.

The third theme I mentioned was our need to strengthen a sense among alumni—starting, in fact, from their earliest days as pre-alumni or, in other words, students!—that GW really is a lifelong and worldwide community that can open doors for them throughout their lives and that provides their most important means of enjoying—once again, throughout their lives—the rich and exciting worlds of knowledge and intellect. I have already heard from many alumni who seek a deeper and stronger connection with what is traditionally called their alma mater, but what I would prefer to call, simply, their university.

If I learned anything in my administrative roles at my former institution, it was how eager alumni were to reconnect, not so much with the university as an abstract entity, but with faculty in particular. The most interesting and enjoyable events I participated in over the course of 13 years in two extended fund-raising campaigns were those in which I witnessed that reconnection: events in which alumni once again experienced what it had been like to participate in some measure in the intellectual adventure of faculty who were advancing the frontiers of their disciplines. I look forward to repeating those experiences here, in the company of many in this room.

To this point, I have focused on the strengths of this University, actual and potential. That focus reflects my sense of the great privilege that I have been granted to lead this institution into the next phase of its distinguished history. It does not mean, however, that I wish in any way to ignore or to downplay the challenges we face. Our financial resources and, particularly for scientific and technological fields, our facilities are currently inadequate to support the aspirations that I have described and that I am utterly committed to achieving. In many fields, our faculty salaries are lower than they need to be if we are to compete effectively with what the current jargon would term our “aspirational peers.” Our efforts to recruit the best young minds in each of our fields face a significant challenge in the cost of housing. And we suffer from the lingering prejudice that the nation’s capital, because it is the seat of national power, is not the center of culture and intellect that you and I know it to be—not least because of this great University that lies at its heart! Those challenges remain despite the remarkable progress that occurred under the leadership of my predecessors. And they remain despite the many successes that you have had in garnering external support and gaining visibility for your vitally important work.

I would not have taken this job if I thought those challenges were insurmountable. I look forward to taking them on—as I can only do, once again, with your advice and support. Thank you.