Deborah Freund, vice chancellor and provost of Syracuse University, delivered the State of the University address yesterday in Grant Auditorium to an audience of about 400 people, focusing on the future of academics, diversity and research.

Freund praised the university but emphasized that improvements need to be made. She also discussed how SU would transition to incoming chancellor Nancy Cantor.

SU has succeeded in attracting higher achieving students, but Freund said the university needs to increase the difficulty of academics, increase the retention rate in students’ first two years and reach out to the community more effectively.

‘We need to make it too hard here,’ Freund said.

One of the main challenges is that academics at SU are seen as too easy, Freund said, and fail to engage students, which causes the highest achieving students to transfer out of SU, typically in their first two years. Freund encouraged more demanding courses and professors, as well as increased honors and summer programs, which would improve the quality of SU graduates.

‘We need to engage students more,’ Freund said. ‘We are on the right track, but we must do more.’

Freund revealed that the six-year graduation rate since 1997 has increased to 81 percent, but added that the rate would most likely drop back to 78 percent after this year.

Almost half of all students who leave the university have a GPA of 3.0 and above, Freund said, and that the university should focus on attrition in the first two years for students rather than toward graduation.

Freund also targeted behavior that undermines the seriousness of class time, such as unexcused absences, tardiness and distracting cell phones or reading newspapers. She told the faculty that it was not acceptable to silently tell students that it is all right not to attend class.

She centered on faculty and the critical role that they play for students, saying that faculty advising was particularly important, and that when students are satisfied with their advising experiences, they are more likely to get involved.

Another way to engage students is service learning in classes, she said, through programs like Balancing the Books, which enriches learning by taking students out of the classroom and into the community to help city youth prepare for high school.

These types of experiences help retain higher achieving students with different learning styles, Freund said. It also pushes students out of their comfort zones.

‘It is the extra work that ends up being the experience of a lifetime,’ Freund said.

Cantor’s interest in diversity on campus will help SU improve, Freund said, citing a study conducted by Cantor that found students learn more and are more satisfied with their experience at a diversified institution.

‘We must be vigilant in not lapsing into complacency,’ Freund said.

Freund said that some faculty worry that if the standards to get into SU are raised, the number of first generation college students and minority students will decrease.

‘I will not let this happen,’ she said.

She expressed concern that SU has become a place for middle and upper-class students from the suburbs, and others feel out of place.

But certain programs are approaching diversity in a more integrated way, such as the writing program, which is reforming its curriculum to instill an understanding of diversity in courses by requiring writing on the subject.

Student Association President Andrew Lederman and Vice President Travis Mason have also worked on studying diversity, and found what the writing program plans to do is much more effective than forcing the creation of a class devoted solely to the issue.

Freund said that next year she would appoint a senior faculty member to work on diversity, as well as establish a ‘Cantor Kaleidoscope engagement fund’ to recognize Cantor’s groundbreaking work in diversity and bridge SU to the community, named so to represent the effect created through a kaleidoscope, where a simple effort can bring out a variety of colors.

Freund added that students should expand their choices in destinations for study abroad, and that students would be more challenged more by studying in a non-Western European country.

Toward the end of her speech, Freund said she supported the reform of funding methods so that money is distributed to best fit the university’s research goals. By July, $1.6 million will be distributed to the schools and colleges from the reserve fund to encourage further work, Freund said.

Recently, faculty members have been doing more multi and interdisciplinary work.

‘We are going crazy and I love it,’ Freund said.

Five faculty members were honored after the speech concluded. Dan Black, professor of economics and Elizabeth Liddy, professor of information studies, were named Trustee Professors. Louise Wilkinson, professor of education, psychology and communication sciences and Jon Zubieta, professor of chemistry were named Distinguished Professors. John Palmer, professor of economics was named SU’s seventh University Professor.

People in the crowd were pleased with the speech overall.

‘(Freund) did an excellent job, I agreed with her philosophies for the most part,’ said Jozef Zwislocki, professor of neuroscience. ‘She is for quality.’

The outgoing chancellor also complimented Freund on her speech.

‘The speech was forceful, direct and spoke to issues that needed to be addressed, but she also showed humanity,’ said Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw, adding that he was excited for the future of programs at the university.

‘The best is yet to come,’ he said.

Published on March 30, 2004 at 12:00 pm