UW annual presidential address

Emmert focuses on environment

by Nikolaj Lasbo

In his annual presidential address Mark Emmert is looking to a greener future for the UW, while reflecting on the dark financial crisis today. He said UW is looking to create a prerogative to research environmental issues—and must be done despite mounting credit woes over the next biennium.

He specifically mentioned the importance of creating the College of the Environment to make sure that the university is competitive as an institution nationwide and globally.

Emmert said the success of the university during the past 20 years has stemmed from being a prominent research institution geared toward medicine and health sciences. Now we must now look forward to the next couple decades—past the two-year budget—and decide what the UW will focus on, he said. Issues concerning the environment will be the most salient and will become the UW’s focus.

"We need to be at the front of the parade,” Emmert said. “We need to figure out how the College of the Environment will work and not let this opportunity slip through our fingers.”

Emmert quoted Yogi Berra, saying that that it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. For the UW this means deciding what trends will be important to society. With the president, provost, faculty and students talking about the environment, the UW looks to have predicted that environmental issues are important and this what the university should focus on.

"You have to both lucky and good,” Emmert said, comparing the UW’s strategy to be one like a running back in a football game. “You have to be lucky in choosing the right route to receive the ball but also good in preparing to catch it.”

Emmert thought this simile to be relevant to the university because the UW will have to be lucky in choosing environmental issues as the right issue to focus on during the coming decades but also because the university will have to be good by being competitive compared to other institutions.

He went on to elaborate on other world issues, such as mass urbanization, transportation and global health issues will also need to be addressed in the coming decades.

While Emmert stressed these issues as the most important he spent the most time with formalities, introducing new faculty and deanships to the near-packed 700-occupency room in Kane Hall. He acknowledged students that had distinguished themselves during the past year, telling an anecdote about UW scholar Jeff Eaton who unselfishly turned down a Rhodes Scholarship so someone else could have it.

The president also thanked the more than 300,000 donors who continue to support the university financially.

"You have to see it as a stunning vote of confidence that contributions were so high,” Emmert said. “It gives me an enormous sense of responsibility to not let these 300,000 people down.”

"And if we take these facts for granted, it’s a crime,” Emmert added. “We have to stop and think and begin to start looking forward to the future of the university.”