As she’s done in the past, Coleman told the board that she planned to donate the increase to student scholarships for studying abroad. Taylor joked that regents should try doubling her salary, since she ends up giving increases back to the university.

This brief was filed from the Michigan Union’s Anderson Room on the Ann Arbor campus, where regents held their September meeting.

Coleman’s salary before the raise was $570,105. Regents had awarded a 3% raise a year ago. Her compensation package also includes $75,000 in deferred compensation, a $100,000 retention bonus, $24,500 in retirement pay, and an additional $30,850 supplemental retirement payment. Her current contract goes through July 31, 2014.

At Thursday’s meeting, Coleman said she planned to donate her raise to fund scholarships for international travel.

This brief was filed from the boardroom of the Fleming administration building, on UM’s Ann Arbor campus. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

UM president Mary Sue Coleman, center, talks with some of her staff before her speech. The small, round disk protruding from the speaker's right side of the podium is a cupholder. (Photo by the writer.)

On Monday afternoon, the University of Michigan’s president, Mary Sue Coleman, gave a state-of-the-university speech, summarizing some of the institution’s recent accomplishments, challenges and new initiatives.

Highlights of her remarks are below, and the full text of the speech is posted online. The same text was handed out to the media immediately prior to her presentation. It is not, however, exactly the speech she delivered. More on that later.

The speech was widely covered: The Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, Michigan Daily, Crain’s Detroit Business and AnnArbor.com all filed stories. Ray Suarez, senior correspondent for The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, also attended the event – a crew from the PBS show is in town shooting footage and doing interviews for an upcoming segment.

Despite the press coverage, the event did not draw a large crowd to the new Blau Auditorium at the Ross School of Business – the venue seats about 500 people, and it was less than half full. For those who couldn’t make it, here’s a look at what you missed.

The Speech: Some Highlights

Though acknowledging some of the serious financial challenges posed by Michigan’s economy, Coleman was upbeat in her assessment of the university’s current condition, and its future.

Research initiatives

The university logged a record 350 inventions during its last fiscal year, Coleman said, in areas ranging from medicine to engineering. She also noted that the university hit the $1 billion mark in federal research spending for the year, and is on track to reach $2 billion in research spending by 2017 – the university’s 200th anniversary. This goal had been mentioned during the Sept. 17 UM Board of Regents meeting as well. From The Chronicle’s coverage:

In his report to regents, Stephen Forrest, UM’s vice president for research, noted that the university had crossed a major threshold by logging a record $1.016 billion in federal research funding during fiscal 2009, which ended June 30. That’s up 9.4% from the previous year, he said, and includes only a very small amount – about $130,000 – of federal stimulus funding. Stimulus dollars will show up in the report for the current fiscal year, he said. So far, university researchers have been awarded $103.2 million in stimulus grants.

He joked that it took the university 192 years to reach the $1 billion mark, but he has set the goal of reaching $2 billion in eight years. “We’re well on our way,” he said.

Faculty hiring

The university is recruiting faculty, and has a $30 million initiative to hire 100 young professors by 2012, Coleman said. So far, they’ve funded 49 positions, with the first of these new hires starting this semester. “The hiring process is somewhat more time-consuming than with a single scholar,” she said, “because we are building teams and the faculty on those teams must complement each other.”

North Campus Research Complex (NCRC)

Coleman called the former Pfizer site, which UM bought earlier this year, a “once-in-a-century opportunity to redefine academic research in critical areas.” The university is recruiting a full-time director for the complex, she said. During the Q&A portion of her presentation, Coleman also said they were launching an effort to improve transportation links between NCRC, north campus and central campus. They plan to host a transportation technology forum next semester, and include representatives from Ann Arbor and the state.

Sustainability

Concerns over climate change have “captivated” students, Coleman said. “Students want to know what we are doing to protect the environment, whether through teaching and research or in our operations as a large consumer of water, energy, food and paper. Frankly, our students exhibit a passion and an urgency that I have not seen since the space race.” [Several students spoke on the issue during the March 19, 2009 board of regents meeting.]

Coleman said the university is elevating its emphasis on sustainability. She has named Don Scavia, current director of UM’s Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute, to be her special counsel on environmental sustainability.

“We are going to examine the academic enterprise at all levels, to offer new courses and expand existing ones,” Coleman said. “As one example, we will be doubling the enrollment of a course on sustainability and the campus. Here, students apply ecological, social and economic theory to hands-on practice, with our own campus as their living laboratory.”

The university is also establishing an Office of Campus Sustainability, to measure and improve how the university uses energy, recycles materials and builds facilities.

Economic development

Coleman said the university plays a role in supporting new and existing businesses. She noted that UM faculty have launched 83 start-up companies since 2001, including eight start-ups last year, during a tough economy. Members of the University Research Corridor – UM, Michigan State and Wayne State – have a combined economic impact of $14.5 billion, she said. They’ve just hired the first URC executive director – Jeff Mason, a former Michigan Economic Development Corp. executive – and have opened an office in Lansing.

Financial challenges: UM’s $7.5 billion endowment is down more than 20%. “No organization can absorb a 20% loss in investments and not feel it,” Coleman said, “but we are slowly recovering, because of an investment strategy that is conservative, highly diversified, and squarely focused on long-term performance.”

UM’s Michigan Difference fundraising campaign, which ended last year, raised $3.2 billion. But private donations dropped 22% during the last fiscal year, Coleman said. State funding has also declined by about $42 million, or 10%, over the past seven years.

Coleman outlined how the university has responded: “We have reduced spending by $135 million in the past seven years. We are doing everything, from reducing how many flowers we plant and re-negotiating contracts with suppliers, to streamlining information technology practices and asking employees to pay a greater share of their health benefits. By being more efficient, we have reduced natural gas consumption – and spending – for the first time ever, at the same time our space and levels of activity are growing.”

The Great Depression

Coleman concluded her speech by saying there are lessons to learn from the Great Depression of the 1930s. During that time of economic hardship, the university created new scholarships and loan programs, and built “iconic” structures like the Law Quad and Rackham. Today, they “should look at how faculty, students and staff of that era met those dark days,” Coleman said, “and draw on their dedication and resolve.”

Audience Questions

Five people asked questions before the moderator, UM business school dean Bob Dolan, called the event to a close. Here’s a summary of the questions, and Coleman’s response:

Q: You talked about sacrifices that faculty and staff have made to cut expenses, but that the university needs to redouble its efforts. Does that mean more cuts are in store?

State funding is uncertain, Coleman said, and several task forces have been formed to look at ways to cut expenses as well as to increase revenue. Here’s the relevant section from her speech:

Work already is underway by task forces of faculty and staff exploring more ways to reduce spending and increase revenue. We are looking at offering more classes in the spring and summer semesters, which makes greater use of classrooms and buildings, generates tuition income and, most important, helps students complete their education in a timely fashion.

We will explore shared staffing and more centralized services. We’ll examine the concept of offering non-traditional programs and classes. We will explore best practices for academic centers and institutes.

She also noted that they are being strategic in their decisions. They haven’t stopped hiring – in her speech, she had highlighted the fact that UM has a $30 million initiative to hire 100 young professors by 2012. Coleman also said that the only facilities projects they’ve halted were two parking structures, and that was because they’d acquired more parking with the Pfizer acquisition.

However, she concluded her answer by saying, “Everything is a moving target.”

Q: The sustainability effort sounds interesting – how can students get involved?

The goal is for students to work on real campus projects, Coleman said. The university faces a daunting challenge, she said – they’re growing, yet trying to curb their energy use and impact on the environment. The sustainability initiative is a way to create standards and practices, and actually measure their results. Students can be a part of that, she said.

Q: How is the university positioned in areas like stem cell research?

The university has benefited from last year’s ballot initiative which loosened the state’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, Coleman said. UM has started a lab that’s now producing cell lines that will be shared with other researchers nationwide. She said she expects to see this type of work flourish.

Q (asked by Ann Arbor community activist Alan Haber): You spoke about the role that the university is playing in addressing climate change. What is the university doing to address the issue of war and peace?

It’s very troubling to see the many intransigent problems in the world – and sometimes it doesn’t even seem possible to have a reasonable dialogue, Coleman said. Saying that she was speaking personally, not representing the university, Coleman said she was encouraged by President Obama’s efforts at promoting dialogue. She’s also encouraged by the work that UM’s faculty and students are engaged in, addressing global issues like poverty and health care. One of the best things the university can do for students is to teach them to think critically, engage in civic life, and challenge those in authority, Coleman said.

Q: Can you talk about your commitment to the Michigan Healthy Community Initiative?

This effort started about five years ago, Coleman said, as a way to deal with the escalation of health care costs. It’s another example of using the university as a test case – trying different approaches, then measuring outcomes. She cited the example of eliminating co-pays for certain medications for chronic diseases, such as diabetes. The overall initiative is one of the things she’s most proud of, Coleman said.

Text of Mary Sue Coleman's speech, used for the teleprompter. (Photo by the writer.)

What Else Happened: A Few Vignettes

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Teleprompter glitch

During the Q&A, Coleman noted that the speech she delivered differed slightly from the one that had been distributed to the media (and which was subsequently posted online). An older version had been mistakenly used for the teleprompter, she said. It reminded her of the time when something similar happened to Bill Clinton: “But he’s a lot brighter than I am because he did it extemporaneously.”

Coleman brought this up because the speech she gave didn’t include a section about efforts to improve transportation between the north and central campuses. As the north campus becomes more densely populated because of UM’s recent acquisition of the former Pfizer site, they’ll need to figure out a better way to move people between the different locations, she said. To that end, the university is planning a transportation technology forum next semester, Coleman said.

American Sign Language

Coleman’s speech was translated into American Sign Language by Jill Rice, UM coordinator of services for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Rice is also responsible for finding signers to interpret during events like this, and interprets at some of the events herself. She told The Chronicle that she assigned herself to Coleman’s speech because she wanted to be part of it. She got a copy of the text in advance, to help her prepare.

Jill Rice, coordinator of services for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, translated UM president Mary Sue Coleman's speech into American Sign Language. (Photo by the writer.)

When asked whether words like “explosion” and “bombardment” were written into the speech especially for their rather dramatic ASL flare, Rice said that they weren’t, although she acknowledged that they were fun words to sign. [For those readers who are interested in context, the words were used in these sentences: "Think about the explosion of digital information and information sharing in recent years." and "Our job as educators is to give students the skills to interpret this bombardment of information, analyze its meaning and credibility, and understand how it affects individuals and communities."]

Media instructions, sort of

Prior to the speech, there was a bit of negotiation between the university’s public relations staff and photographers representing various media outlets. The PR folks wanted the shooters – specifically, anyone using “clicky cameras,” as one staff member put it – to stand at the back of the auditorium, so as not to be a distraction during Coleman’s speech. The photographers said that they couldn’t get decent shots from that vantage point. The Chronicle didn’t hear the end of those negotiations, but did witness the outcome: Several photographers took shots from the front and sides of the auditorium, with no apparent restrictions on their movements.

Pre-speech prep

Coleman arrived about 30 minutes prior to the start of her speech, when the auditorium was virtually empty. She talked with some of her staff about how the two teleprompters would work, and was outfitted with a lavaliere microphone.

Good afternoon!

It’s always a pleasure to be with you. I want to share some thoughts with you, and then I look forward to your feedback. As always, there is a lot happening at the University and I’m sure you have ideas and questions to share.

I want to begin today with three recent rankings that paint a strong picture of our university. We certainly have our reservations about the various rankings that appear with some regularity, but these three are very telling.

The first comes from the Chronicle of Higher Education, which over the summer placed the University high among its “Best Colleges to Work For.” We received strong marks in a number of categories, including: healthy relations between faculty and the administration; compensation and benefits; facilities and security; and job satisfaction.

I am particularly pleased with this ranking because it is based on a survey of faculty and staff. We should all be proud of this accomplishment, because a strong workplace occurs only because of the contributions and engagement of dedicated people like you.

The second list comes from London, where the Times Higher Education recently published its World University Rankings. The Times’ list is important because it is based, in part, on how employers feel about the preparation of our graduates.

So it was particularly gratifying when our university was ranked the best public university in the country – let me repeat that: the best – and the 18th best institution in the world. It is satisfying to know employers feel our students are so well prepared for today’s challenges.

The third set of rankings came out last week, when the U.S. State Department told us UM once again leads the nation in the number of students receiving Fulbright scholarships. Thirty-one of our students have designed programs for themselves, and with the support of the Fulbright program will study in such diverse settings as Ecuador, Oman, Finland and Nepal.

This is a tremendous accomplishment on the part of our students.

More importantly, all of these rankings – best college to work for, best public university in the country, Fulbright leaders – all of these achievements are a reflection on you, our faculty, and your contributions to this astonishing environment we call the University of Michigan.

Working together, we must continue to accelerate these strengths – strengths that reflect our passion for great students, our support of extraordinary faculty, and our nurturing of a culture we know as the Michigan Difference.

Earlier this year, I heard from Thomas Zurbuchen, a professor of space science and aerospace engineering and the director of the College of Engineering’s Center for Entrepreneurship.

He had just finished a year of working with 24 graduate students in space system designs. Their mission was to bring the power of the Internet to rural Africa, where only 5 percent of the population has access. To put that in context, more people in New York City have Internet access than the whole of Africa. Our students wanted to change that.

They devised a satellite system using existing technologies, and developed power systems that run on solar energy to operate the user stations. They met with African experts throughout the University to learn about the needs and challenges of the region. They also created a business model and developed industry collaborations, and proposed ways to set up this system in six different countries whose climates range from barren desert to deep rainforests. And they did this all at extremely low cost, which is essential when bringing technology to the world’s poorest continent.

Google is paying close attention to this work. They’ve already flown several of our students to California to hear firsthand about such an exciting and entrepreneurial enterprise.

Professor Zurbuchen reports that just last week, three satellite stations were shipped to Africa, and three of our Engineering students are headed in the same direction to set them up and train others how to use them.

Our students’ ideas and theories are becoming reality.

You might think this venture is a transformative experience for our students, and it is. They are learning the value of crossing disciplinary borders, and of taking risks to test one’s ideas. They are also making lifelong friendships with their classmates.

But the person who seems to be enjoying this most is Professor Zurbuchen himself. He told me how incredibly moving this work has been for him, and how proud he is to be associated with these students. “It’s these students,” he said, “that make it so much fun to teach at the University of Michigan!”

That’s what makes my job so rewarding, because my job as president is to ensure an invigorating climate for the level of teaching, research and service demonstrated by Professor Zurbuchen and his students.

Academic excellence embodies our university. It is what attracts and inspires students and faculty, and is what gives our graduates power and prestige as they move into business, government, the academy, and countless other institutions.

Central to that excellence is our financial strength. The past several weeks have been tumultuous for any institution, be it your family, your employer or your favorite charity. We have felt the uncertainty of the financial markets as much as any organization, but because of prudent, conservative management, we are weathering this crisis. Our cash flow is sound, our bond rating continues to be the highest possible, and our capital projects are moving forward. Our endowment continues to support student aid, faculty salaries, and countless programs across the University.

It’s not uncommon for people to tell me we should run the University more like a business. Well, when I look at what’s happening on Wall Street, I am very happy we run our university like a university, and I am grateful for the leadership shown by our regents and by our financial team. The strength of our finances is the backbone of our excellence in teaching and research, and because of that, we will be here forever.

Of course, we continue to be challenged. Our state appropriations remain flat, but we are committed to providing attractive salaries, excellent facilities, and strong financial aid packages for our students. We also continually look to reduce our expenses. Working together, we have cut costs of nearly $96 million in the last four years alone, and I thank you for those sacrifices.

We also continue to look to our donors, because philanthropy is integral to our excellence. The Michigan Difference campaign has been a remarkable success, and we still have two months to go.

I confess that when the leadership in our Development office told me in 2004 that the campaign goal would be $2.5 billion, I had my reservations. But we have raised it, and more. We will learn the final amount in a few weeks, but I know we have passed the $3 billion mark, and will be the first public university in the country to realize such an accomplishment.

In addition to being happily overwhelmed by this level of support, I am incredibly grateful to the many faculty and staff who not only give their time and talent to Michigan, but also contribute financially. More than 16,000 faculty, staff and retirees have made campaign gifts totaling nearly $155 million, and I thank you for believing so strongly in the University. Making a financial gift, in addition to your many other contributions, is an extraordinary gesture.

On the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 14, we will gather at Hill Auditorium for a campus-wide convocation to showcase the many successes of the campaign, and I hope you will be there.

We are also advancing our academic excellence by attracting the best students and recruiting and retaining the best faculty.

One facet of our fundraising campaign has been to increase the number of endowed fellowships for graduate and professional students. One lesson we have learned from the Michigan Difference campaign is that our donors love matching gift programs. We put forward a challenge to our donors and said if you support graduate fellowships, we will provide a matching gift.

It has been wildly successful. In the past year, we have created 350 new fellowships. The deans are in love with this program, as you might imagine, because it allows them to build strong financial packages for attracting the best graduate students. And the best graduate students create a rewarding and stimulating environment for you as faculty.

We are also moving forward with our $30 million plan to hire 100 new tenure-track faculty who have interdisciplinary interests. It was a year ago that I announced this program, and since then we have received nearly 40 proposals for new positions. The Provost’s Office has awarded funding for the first 25 positions, and we expect to see these new faculty join our community beginning next fall.

The hiring program continues for another four years, and the Provost’s Office currently is accepting proposals for the next round of funding.

I strongly encourage you to explore the possibilities of this new venture, and all other opportunities for interdisciplinary work. We have such fertile ground here for crossing academic boundaries, and I can’t think of another university that provides such a breadth and depth of opportunity for faculty to work at the fringes of their disciplines.

Interdisciplinary work is what sets us apart, and I urge you to seek out fellow faculty members and take your work in unfamiliar directions. When we face the great challenges of our time – complex issues such as climate change, global HIV/AIDS, poverty, and threats to national security – there is no stronger tool at hand than our collective intellectual creativity.

This means taking risks, and I know the rewards of risk-taking can be long in the waiting. David Potter likes to tell the story of one of his predecessors in the classics, Professor Francis Kelsey, whose name is on our archaeology museum. In the 1920s, Professor Kelsey unearthed hundreds of pieces of papyrus during a dig in Egypt, because he felt it was important that such artifacts be held by scholarly institutions such as Michigan. Many of those pieces then sat untouched in boxes for decades. But today, our papyrus collection is preserved, digitized, and recognized as one of the most extraordinary in the world.

So risk has its rewards.

As we look for the best ways to support your work and the work of our students, we continue to have a strong partner in the federal government. This past year, our research expenditures reached a record-level of nearly $876 million, much of it in federal support. And while that federal funding grew slightly, the real growth in research dollars came in industry sponsorships, which climbed 11 percent from the previous year.

I want us to look more to industry to support our work. We should always proceed cautiously and work in the best interests of our institution. But just as we have built synergies with interdisciplinary work, we have opportunities to find strong partners in industry for addressing profound challenges in our world.

When we talk about advancing our academic excellence, we should also work to promote our colleagues’ achievements. We are a competitive institution, but also a collegial one. I want us to re-dedicate ourselves to identifying our best and brightest faculty, and seeing that they are recognized at the national level. Michigan faculty are among the finest in higher education, and working with you and our deans and department chairs, I want to see that we receive greater recognition from the various academies.

I also want us to blow our horn a little louder about our hometown, which is a tremendous asset when recruiting and retaining faculty. I spoke earlier about rankings, and if there is any community that places high in rankings, it is Ann Arbor. This community is among the best in the nation: the best for healthy living, the best for families, the best for retirement, the best for walking, and on and on.

The energy that infuses our downtowns, our schools, and our neighborhoods fuels the excellence of the University. I always impress upon prospective faculty and students just how vibrant our community is, and I hope you do the same.

At the start of my talk I shared the story of Thomas Zurbuchen and his entrepreneurial engineering students. I want to close with the graduates of the Class of 2008.

Before leaving us last spring, these students answered a survey to tell us about their time at Michigan. It was the first time in a dozen years that we’d engaged our seniors this way, and the results were fascinating and encouraging. Graduates told us about their accomplishments, their frustrations, their suggestions, and their plans for the future.

When asked about their professors and the skills they learned, students gave high marks to being prepared to think analytically, apply they knowledge they gained, and acquire knowledge on their own.

Two descriptors of our faculty appeared repeatedly: “amazing” and “changed my life.”

I want to highlight one student’s assessment in particular. This student wrote that several faculty “allowed me to evaluate myself, better myself as a person, and greatly assisted me in making choices in my life which were vital to my progress and path in life.”

That is the work of good professors – faculty who believe in the promise of our students, and who contribute to one of the world’s great academic enterprises. Your work makes the University a success.

Pushing forward, together, with deeper collaborations, new sources of support, and greater appreciation for all that we offer will magnify the impact of our university and strengthen our ability to serve the state, the nation, and the world.

Thank you.