Letter from UO President Frohnmayer to the UO Community March 25, 1999

March 25, 1999

Dear Colleagues:

The renewal of spring is evident again on our campus, from the beautiful camellias blooming along our walks to the quickening pace as hundreds of seniors and graduate students begin making plans for commencement and beyond. The yellows and greens of spring and the pastel beauty of azaleasÑharbingers of an idyllic season to comeÑare a welcome relief after a winter that made me feel as much like a sponge as a Duck.

I sense something else on campus, however, that causes me concern. Amid the general increase in tempo, do I also detect more voices raised in anger? A greater reluctance to extend a hand across barriers of race, ethnicity, ideology or age? A fraying of common civility?

I hope not. We are a community of scholars here, faculty, students and staff alike, and it is part of our job to take the extra moments needed to express reason over anger, calm over shrillness, wit over insult. I have no solutions to what is increasingly a society-wide problem, but I can offer a relevant quote from Robert Frost (himself the object of some recent revisionist biographical work): "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing either your temper or your self-confidence." These are useful words, perhaps, as we head into spring.

I have been thinking about another matter as well. The Chancellor of our Oregon University System has asked me and other campus presidents to consider the question of our institution's optimal size. I have begun discussing the issue with the Faculty Advisory Council and Council of Deans.

But all of us have a stake in this. How big do we want our university to be? How big should it be? This involves everything from academic quality, residence hall space, parking, and physical plant requirements to student recruitment and retention, the goals of individual departments and schools, and the sizes of our libraries and laboratories. Pushing the issue is the emergence of the "baby boom echo," the increasing number of Oregon graduating high school students that is expected to peak early in the next century. The new OUS funding model favors larger enrollments, but concerns about quality might move us in a different direction.

I seek your advice. I plan to make the issue of optimal size the topic of an open meeting for our campus this spring, a chance for everyone to make his or her voice heard. Or, as always, e-mail me with your thoughts.

Many of the concerns I have just mentioned are also being addressed through the careful planning of our Process for Change. Look for continued reports as our implementation groups narrow their focus to the most exciting and important proposals generated by our faculty, staff and students. You can keep abreast of the progress by looking at the website at .

Depending on when you read this, you might already have participated in higher education's Lobby Day at the Capitol on March 31. I am grateful to those who did take time to make certain that our state's public universities are considered as high a priority as any other sector of our government. And if you happen to be reading this before March 31, please arrange your time in appropriate ways to go to Salem and join hundreds of other supporters of the work we do. Call our Legislative Relations office at 346-5020 for more information.

It is hard for me to believe that I am now in my fifth year of service as President of the University of Oregon. I have taken the opportunity to continue teaching through that time, and this winter had the revitalizing experience of teaching an undergraduate class on leadership. One of my guest speakers was an old friendÑa University of Oregon graduate and highly successful leader in public and private callings. In the course of his presentation, he told my students that a major outcome to be sought by any organization was to allow its people to "do more than they dream they can, and become more than they are."

I am proud to say that I see this on our campus every day. This is a gift we give our students. This is, if we are doing our job well, the gift we receive in turn as faculty and staff. This is our goal: to bring about magical but very real experiences that allow people to go beyond the ordinary, to take an extra step, to exceed even their highest expectations of achievement.

I look forward as always to hearing from you in person, or through e-mail at pres@oregon.uoregon.edu.

Best wishes for a rich and rewarding spring.

Warm regards,

Dave Frohnmayer President