Last Friday morning, President Shirley Ann Jackson held RPI’s semi-annual town meeting to deliver remarks about the current state and future plans for the Institute. The presentation was given in DCC 308 before a full audience that included faculty, staff, administrators, and students.
Jackson began by praising the Institute for the increasing recognition it is receiving on the national stage. She mentioned RPI’s place on Kaplan/Newsweek’s recent list of “New Ivies,” and its rise to position 42 on the U.S. News and World Report’s list of top universities. Offering encouragement, she noted that Rensselaer is making progress in spite of trying times and that, “When we top Georgia Tech. in a couple of years, I want you to remember what I said.”
She then went on describe what RPI is doing to overcome difficulties and cited several developments, including the new $100 million supercomputing center to be built in the Rensselaer Technology Park, the recent $514 million in-kind donation from PACE, and Sean O’Sullivan’s contribution for seed money for the Center for Open Software. She also briefly touched on the progress of EMPAC and the East Campus Athletic Village.
Several new appointments were introduced to the audience: Vice President for Advancement Donald Fry, Vice President for Admissions James Nondorf, Acting Provost Robert Palazzo, and Acting Vice President for Research Wolf von Maltzahn. Jackson also said that she was very close to making an appointment for vice president for Strategic Communications and External Relations, after which point she will ask for the formation of an internal advisory committee to combat the oft-noted communication problems of the Institute.
The president then listed some facts and figures about the freshman and sophomore classes. She tied those into the progress of the undergraduate plan and its role in The Rensselaer Plan and the necessity to plan for the future, making reference to “the quiet crisis” and the growing dearth of engineering talent amongst the younger generations.
Jackson concluded her presentation with a brief discussion of employee and retirement benefits—the source of much contention last year—and the Renaissance at Rensselaer. She noted that financially, these are challenging times, but that through strategic investment such as what RPI has been doing, we can look to our future with confidence and excitement.
After finishing her own remarks, Jackson fielded questions with the help of the other members of the administration. Jeff Miner, director of the Integrated Administrative Computing Services, asked about the rising energy prices and the Institute’s plans to commit to deferred investments to cover the costs of the campus’s older buildings. Vice President for Administration Claude Rounds answered by saying that his department is in the process of conducting interviews for energy services agreements and deferred services contracts.
Chair of the Faculty Achille Messac posed a question about RPI’s relations with the City of Troy. He noted concerns about the Institute’s ability to recall a property that it has sold to private owners. Rounds countered this by saying that while RPI does reserve that right, it has never exercised it and that Rensselaer needs to work with the city more to educate residents and prospective landlords about exactly what the Institute’s stance is as a landowner.
