On Tuesday, President Shirley Ann Jackson held a town meeting to discuss the “Renaissance at Rensselaer.” To a half filled room populated mostly by faculty, she announced that RPI is in a “transition from a historic past to a breathtaking future.”
Jackson was happy to state that the finances of the Institute are in a sound state, that its assets have grown by one third, and that gifts have more than doubled in the past year. She also announced that research awards have risen to total $64 million over the last several months. While the Rensselaer Plan called for 100 new hires, within the three years since it was adopted RPI has taken on 127 new faculty members.
Jackson also recognized that “students are at the center of the Renaissance,” and described the advancements the Institute has made with students in mind. The 43 percent increase in Ph.D. students and the 414 new graduate students entering seemed to show good progress on the advancement of the goals the Rensselaer Plan set out for the graduate program, she said.
Jackson then announced a new bill that was agreed upon by a House-Senate committee yesterday that would appropriate $750,000 to RPI to create a Center for Quantitative and Computational Bioscience. Awaiting a signature from the President, this bill, which was requested by senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, is part of an energy and water bill that puts focus on interpreting and predicting biological functions and relationships. It is hoped that with this cutting-edge research new companies will be attracted to the region and that the Center will draw on other universities and laboratories in the area to contribute to its projects.
Jackson next touched on improving student life outside of academics and spoke of the plans for field renovations and upgrades. These included returfing Harkness Field, and bringing new turf, lighting, and bleachers to the lower Renwyck Field. Also, Jackson described the new sports training facility with locker rooms, which is planned for east campus.
With the topic of sports came mention of the NCAA proposal to ban scholarships for Division I athletes in Division III schools, which Jackson addressed as the “elephant in the rope.” She said that “we will fight vigorously,” and that the Institute tries to attract the right caliber of both an athlete and student when recruiting for the men’s hockey team.
While Rensselaer is undergoing its Renaissance, Jackson mentioned that the “city of Troy is undergoing its own quiet renaissance.” Troy is growing as a center for arts, culture, and entrepreneurship. It has even been recognized as a growing city in two articles that were focused on the changes that Troy has seen recently. This led to the mention of the fact that RPI accounts for approximately a half-billion dollars of the state’s economy each year.
Students at the meeting expressed concern about Jackson’s nomination to the New York State Stock Exchange board of directors. If elected to the board she will serve until June 2004 and be up for election each June. According to the NYSE release, her responsibilities would include supervising the regulatory function of the NYSE, including “monitoring marketplace performance and competitive position; engaging with and approving strategy; hiring, firing, and paying the management [of the NYSE]; ensuring a management succession plan; and ensuring appropriate behavior.” Jackson commented that she saw being selected as “a high honor, very important,” and that she found this opportunity to be “important for our economy and our way of life,” as well as “a privilege to be asked.”
When the topic of how our presence in Washington, D.C., could be helpful to research, Jackson explained that presently many of the decisions the government makes have a direct effect on Rensselaer and its students. The Higher Education Act will be in Congress shortly, which has an effect on Pell grants and other government grants that are often used as financial aid for undergraduate students. The Patriot Act and others that effect foreign students also were mentioned as concerns. She also stated that in the way of research, being in D.C. “established a very strong presence and understanding of the [National Institutes of Health].” As we are “going down there to compete,” Jackson commented that we also need to “be on the scene to affect the scene.”
Jackson summed up the Institute’s progress and goals by quoting Michelangelo: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.”
