II. Finding a New Upward Trajectory
^ Why were new mothers dying in the Dominican Republic despite a large network of public hospitals where most pregnant women went to give birth? Jenny Foster, an Emory midwife with a doctorate in medical anthropology, was a member of a team of nurse midwives who headed there and created a plan in conjunction with the Dominican nurses and community. Last year, the hospital that originally had requested Emory’s help reported no maternal deaths.
With a clear strategy to ensure that Emory will lead from a new resource base, we can explore further why that young freshman’s sense of enthusiasm was well founded. How has Emory remained true to its mission “to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge in the service of humanity”?
President's State of the University Address
"...Emory is an organization and a community called to serve society..."
Looking back through the past year, there has been remarkable achievement in our colleges, schools, and operating units of which we can be justifiably proud and upon which we can continue to build for the future. These accomplishments range from national recognition as an academic leader in global health to the distinction of becoming 2008 Division III national champions in women’s volleyball. An exhaustive list of accomplishments and future opportunities and challenges would be too long to present here, but a few examples will make the point.
Futurity.org
News of environmental, health, science, and cultural discoveries made at Emory
Video
College Sports at Emory: Academics + Athletics, Story of Volleyball Champs
clarifying interest and commitment
Prompted by questions raised about compensation paid by for-profit companies to medical researchers, I appointed last year an Advisory Commission on Research Integrity and Professional Conflict Management. The commission’s charge was to review our policies, practices, and culture of managing conflict of interest and conflict of commitment. Its report, issued in June, made a number of constructive recommendations. Since then, we have been working across a broad front to underscore Emory’s utmost commitment to integrity in research, to guard our research enterprise and researchers from impropriety, and to manage potential conflicts effectively.
Last July, the first phase of an electronic reporting system became operational under the aegis of the Office of Research Administration. It will tie together information from the Institutional Review Board, the Office of Sponsored Programs, and our HR and payroll systems, allowing administrators more effectively to track and manage conflict of interest by centralizing the records of disclosures and reports of outside activity. The online system, called “electronic Conflict of Interest,” or eCOI, is a ground-breaking initiative created as a result of a collaboration between our Division of University Technology Services and the Office of Research Administration, and is another instance of Emory’s leadership in addressing critical issues in higher education. We must be faithful stewards of the public’s investment in our research—whether that investment takes the form of federal grants, private gifts and pledges, or payments for patient care. I am tremendously grateful to the commission members for their hard and effective work.
points of distinction
Video
There’s Something about Oxford College
Last year, Oxford College was one of only forty-nine institutions nationwide selected to participate in the highly respected, nationally prominent Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education.
Creativity and innovation have been hallmarks of our newly named Emory College of Arts and Sciences, as the college put in place a dramatically overhauled freshman advising program. The faculty is fully involved in the program—called Pre-Major Advising and Connections at Emory, or PACE—with its emphasis on one-on-one advising. In a complementary move, student initiative and faculty responsiveness led to the establishment of a new Pre-Health Mentoring Office—a partnership among the college, the Career Center, and the Office of the Provost—to advise students who feel called to the health disciplines.
Last year was the first full year of operation of the new Center for Faculty Development and Excellence under the direction of Laurie Patton, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Religion. Offering programs and resources for faculty in all our schools, the center last year provided workshops on teaching English as a second language, on negotiation of book contracts, on civil discourse and differences in the classroom, and on pedagogy that addresses the special talents and challenges of the Millennial Generation.
Our Emory-Tibet Science Initiative has received significant media attention, and this year we have begun planning to welcome His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama back to campus in October 2010.
Our schools of theology and graduate study—although more affected among our colleges and schools by their dependence on endowment and investment income—yet were undaunted, exhibiting excellence, promise, and determination. Candler School of Theology continues to be recognized among the most eminent seminaries in the world. It added distinguished faculty to its numbers and is working to deepen its international ties and further strengthen its emphasis on practical and public theology.
^President Emeritus James T. Laney
The Graduate School has undergone a name change, as the Board of Trustees approved naming it in honor of President Emeritus James T. Laney. As the James T. Laney School for Graduate Studies, the school’s name reminds us of the impact of President Emeritus Laney’s visionary leadership across the entire University and represents Emory’s intention to emulate Laney’s example in underscoring the value of moral leadership in higher education to the larger aims of a free and civil society.
^Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law Martha A. Fineman
In the School of Law, Woodruff Professor Martha A. Fineman received the University’s Scholar/Teacher Award at Commencement this year for her path-breaking career in establishing the Feminism and Legal Theory Project as well as for her extraordinary mentoring of students. She is part of the reason that the law school moved into the top twenty law schools in the country in pursuit of its strategic goals of faculty distinction, strategic collaborations, and international engagement. The accompanying video gives a sense for the impact that she has had on students.
Goizueta Business School unveiled a progressive new MBA curriculum and leadership programming, as well as an open commitment to a new phase of growth in reputation, student quality, and faculty research (for example, the school opened the new Emory Center for Alternative Investments). Especially satisfying and fun was the national visibility that the school enjoyed with the New York Stock Exchange Euronext Summit held in early September, culminating in members of the school remotely ringing the bell on the trading floor at the conclusion of the trading day. Two of the school’s programs once again have been ranked in the top ten—the BBA program (ranked ninth by BusinessWeek) and the Executive MBA program (ranked tenth by U.S. News & World Report).
Dean McCauley’s Punch List
- Recruit faculty
- Start new programs of research, perhaps in palliative care or mental health
- Expand the Lillian Carter C enter for International Nursing
- Increase the number of doctoral students
- Increase clinical placement opportunities and partnerships
In the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, there is excitement and expectation following the May arrival of Linda McCauley to serve as dean.
The Rollins School of Public Health certainly is an example of a component of Emory on the move, as the number of applicants to its MPH program swelled, with more qualified students than ever contributing to the matriculation of its largest class of first-year students.
And, under the delightful heading “Not Every Source of Revenue Is Down This Year,” the School of Medicine led the sponsored-programs segment of our enterprise, growing our research base to an unprecedented level. In FY2008 the University exceeded $400 million in research awards for the first time, hitting the mark of $411 million; this year saw that number skyrocket to $484 million, with only $13 million of that coming from economic stimulus funds in FY2009. (An additional $40 million has been added to the stimulus money so far in FY2010.)
In health care, Emory enjoyed an increase in the number of top-rated specialties (climbing to eleven), opened a new orthopaedics and spine hospital, and rebranded our Emory Midtown campus to give it greater visibility in the Atlanta community and greater synergy with our Druid Hills campus clinical operations. The partnership with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta is growing with new vigor, and new contract negotiations with Grady Memorial Hospital also lend a further sense of promise to the new year.
The Michael C. Carlos Museum, after helping to sponsor Atlanta’s exhibition of the King Tut treasures last year, is hosting an exhibit of Flemish and Dutch masterworks of biblical illustrations while at the same time collaborating with other museums to send part of our own treasures for exhibit around the world.
Video
Alice Walker Archives Open
The libraries opened the archives of Alice Walker and plan an opening in February 2010 of the archives of Salman Rushdie. Administratively, the leadership of the libraries is taking bold and creative steps to position this superb, essential core facility more advantageously for the digital age.
During the past year, Emory’s overall positive visibility was on the rise. We were identified by the Global Language Monitor as being among the top universities for media momentum. In fact, U.S. News & World Report agreed with our new freshman that Emory belongs among the top “Up-and-Coming National Universities.”
Video
The Spirit of Service at Emory
In February 2009, Emory was selected as one of only three institutions from a field of 635 nominees to be placed on the 2008 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for “general community service.” According to the website of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which sponsors the honor roll program, “President Obama has pledged to make service a central cause of his administration and wishes to commemorate the significant role that higher institutions, their students, staff, and faculty play in helping to solve pressing social problems in the nation’s communities.”
plaudits: to be continued
Still more commendations could be handed out. In fact, at each meeting of our Board of Trustees and its executive committee we provide a list of distinctions that must be reduced to only twenty-five or so to fit the available space. As you can see even from this abbreviated account, our colleges, schools, and other operating units have not been distracted during the past year from their pursuits of excellence. (To learn more on this score, see Emory’s Rankings and Successes section of its website.)
campaign update
To continue to fuel our progress, we launched at this time last year the public phase of Campaign Emory to raise $1.6 billion. The long-planned public announcement of the campaign came just as the national economy was beginning its free fall. But this odd convergence underscored the imperative of meeting our goal in order to keep the implementation of our strategic plan moving forward. Since announcing our campaign in September 2008, when we already had reached the halfway mark toward our $1.6 billion goal, we have continued to climb beyond $1 billion, making Emory the first institution in the state of Georgia to raise that much money in a single campaign.
Despite the economy, this work has gone better than might have been expected. Although the Dow Jones Industrial Average had a year-to-year drop of 46 percent at one point during FY2009, the campaign cash receipts during that same period were down only 13.6 percent from the previous year and the number of gifts down only 1.5 percent. We still have a long way to go before we can be certain of declaring the campaign a success when it concludes in December 2012, but we have superb leadership in our Development and Alumni Relations Division; we have dedicated staff, alumni, and volunteer leaders; and, most important of all, we have a mission that is worthy of support from every quarter.
strategic plan update
Emory has been guided on the path to eminence by its strategic plan, “Where Courageous Inquiry Leads.” This past year, the Strategic Implementation Advisory Committee—working with the deans, initiative leaders, and many faculty and staff members—measured the degree of our success in implementing the ten-year plan we unveiled four years ago. The review helped us to sharpen our vision, strengthen our core, and focus on the areas of excellence that will place the University in a position of strength well into the future through continued investment in a world-class faculty, the best and brightest students, and high-quality staff. (The September 28, 2009, issue of Emory Report carries a full update of the results of the strategic plan review.)
physical plant: pacing ourselves
Although our plans for new facilities remain intact, we will not move ahead at the same rate as we have in the past. Nonetheless, we recently have completed several projects and will finish others this year. In September 2008, we dedicated the new building for Candler School of Theology. That building also provides a home for our Center for Ethics, to support its mission of reaching into every one of our schools and colleges to enrich academic programs. Just down the block from the theology building is the beautiful and spacious new Psychology and Interdisciplinary Sciences Building, which is already facilitating work among that department and other sciences and social sciences, affording an opportunity for new collaborations and greater discovery.
^ A schematic for the North Oxford Road Building, which will be a new front door for admission prospects
At the gateway to campus, we completed the new main entrance to campus and are nearing completion of the North Oxford Road Building, which will provide a magnificent “front door” welcoming space for our admission prospects, a new home for our bookstore that will be fully accessible to the entire community, and a coffee shop that will provide yet another gathering spot for those caffeine-fueled conversations that seem indispensable to intellectual life.
Across campus, we also are finishing phase three in our freshman residential village, which is intended to provide a coherent environment for each new entering class to experience the first year of Emory more richly as a community. Farther yet across campus, the Claudia Nance Rollins Building has been topped off; when it opens in summer 2010, it will round out a complex of buildings that includes both the Rollins School of Public Health and the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, which are just down the street from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Important and vital synergy is taking place on that stretch of Clifton Road, as in so many quarters of Emory.
As we think about residence halls and public health, I must pause for a moment to remark on the foresight and leadership of our multidisciplinary teams in both Emory University and Emory Healthcare who have helped us prepare for the flu season. In September the New York Times along with a number of television and online news outlets featured the story of the dorm we set aside for our students. It was a happy coincidence that we had taken Turman South Residence Hall offline last year in preparation for razing it. We therefore had the luxury of opting to leave it up for an additional year as a site for ill students. We can be thankful for the hard work and planning of our staff in Campus Life, Student Health and Counseling Services, and the Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, which actually was created in anticipation of the prospect of a flu pandemic several years ago. Because of them, we were able to manage well the first waves of the flu season.
Having reviewed the impact of the economy and having recounted some of the accomplishments of the past year, I conclude by issuing a challenge, perhaps even a kind of warning.
What the New York Times Said
(June 29, 2009)
“Tibetan monks and nuns spend their lives studying the inner world of the mind rather than the physical world of matter. Yet for one month this spring a group of 91 monastics devoted themselves to the corporeal realm of science. . . .
“Many in the group, whose ages ranged from the 20s to 40s, had never learned science and math. In Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, the curriculum has remained unchanged for centuries.
“To add to the challenge, some monastics have limited English and relied on Tibetan translators to absorb the four-week crash course in physics, biology, neuroscience, and math and logic taught by teachers from Emory University in Atlanta. . . .
“ ‘The 21st century is here. Everybody is influenced by science. We want to know what it is,’ said Tenzin Lhadron, a forthright 34-year-old nun enrolled in this summer’s science program.
“She does not have formal schooling in spite of 19 years studying at a nunnery in Dharamsala. Math is difficult for her; fractions and percentages are completely new. ‘But I will try,’ she promised.
“The Emory-Tibet Science Initiative, of which this session was part, is now in its second year. It was preceded by the ‘Science for Monks’ program, which started in 2001 with support from Bobby Sager, a Boston philanthropist. At the behest of the Dalai Lama, the earlier program brought science teachers from various American universities to teach Tibetan monks in India.”
iTunes U: 1 Year, 1 Million Downloads (and Up and Up)
“Imagine having access to learn from the best minds at Emory whenever you like. Combine that with a larger site that aggregates and provides access to the brightest minds from top institutions around the world. That is iTunes U,” said Emory’s iTunes U system administrator Shannon O’Daniel in October 2008, the month that Emory’s site went live. The site has been a phenomenal success—in one year achieving one million downloads; four months after that, two million; and, in another two months, three million. You dare not turn this page without the number changing. Languages have proven to be some of Emory’s most popular content, especially more obscure languages such as Twi, Urdu, Amharic, and Cherokee.