Inauguration

Prepared Text of Timothy P. White's Inauguration Speech

Thank you for gathering today, many here in person and others connected virtually from afar. To Chairman Dick Blum and the Regents of the University of California; to President Mark Yudof and officers of the University; to the students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the University of California, Riverside; to leaders of the Academic Senate and the UCR campus; to the Chancellors of the campuses of the greatest public research University in the world; to members of our vast and supportive community; to our elected officials; to my colleagues and friends, including former UCR Chancellor Bob Grey, who provided important leadership during a time of transition at UCR, and to my family — thank you.

The notion of promise is important to me. The importance of living the promise is even more so, as this requires action and expects high levels of achievement.

Living the promise means realizing the potential in each of us and for all of us, and solving the issues of tomorrow through knowledge — its communication, discovery, translation, application, and preservation.

I am inspired by the opportunities before us, sobered by the importance and complexity of the issues that confront us, comforted by the brilliance, aspiration and support of the people around me, and humbled by the opportunity to serve each of you as Chancellor of this wonderful place at this important time.

I stand with you today like many in this hall — an immigrant (in my case from Argentina), the first in my family to earn a college degree, and a product of California's Master Plan for higher education. Thank you, Mom and Dad, as you look down upon today, hopefully with satisfaction that your courageous decision to emigrate — and take me with you — was as worthy as I believe it was.

Who would have thought when I graduated last century from Pleasant Hill High School that I would spend the balance of my life at college? Surely not me, nor my lifelong friends from that early time, Rick and Yvonne Millington. I am grateful they are here with us today.

Indeed, education has enabled me to live the promise, paralleling on a much humbler scale the remarkable journey of our newly elected president, Barack Obama. Paraphrasing generously from his victory speech of November 4, 2008, and making a few adjustments for today, "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of living the promise of education, today is your answer."

As a student at Diablo Valley College, Cal State Fresno, Cal State East Bay, and then UC Berkeley, I was given training and the opportunity to live my promise — although no one promised me a living. I am grateful that many individuals helped me along the way, including:

• George Brooks from UC Berkeley's department of Integrative Biology, who spoke earlier today, is the professor who initially mentored me as a Ph.D. student, and who is now my colleague and friend,
• John Faulkner and Dee Edington at the University of Michigan, who guided me through my post-doc and then the academic ranks, along with early opportunities in academic leadership,
• Chancellor Chang Lin Tien, who appointed me to UC Berkeley's faculty some 15 years after earning my Ph.D. there,
• Dr. Ken and Dot Johnson, friends and leaders of the Corvallis community, who are here today and who supported me during my 9 years at Oregon State University, which was made possible by Roy Arnold, John Byrne and Paul Risser, and
• Happy Watkins, whom you also met earlier, and who helped me in unexpected and wonderful ways during my Presidency of the University of Idaho.

This past summer I came home for the third time to the University of California, where — and this is a plea to the President and Regents — I plan to finish my career many years hence.

Who would have thought, save for the hope and promise of education, that I would be the first in my family to go to college — and apparently the last to leave? Well, as it turns out Logan, our youngest son now at age 5, has had something to say about that. He now will be the last to leave. Moreover, our other boys Randy, Tim and Alex have all found their paths to be guided by the experience of college. I am grateful that Tim, Alex and Logan are able to join us today, along with my wife Karen, who so ably serves this University and community and who provides me with inspiration, guidance, support and love during the good times and the tough ones.

The University of California, Riverside is an incredible place, from its historic and enduring strengths in the science and practice of agriculture, to its bright future in scientific fields such as nanotechnology, environmental sustainability, and stem cell biology. From its inspiring activities in the performing and creative arts, to stimulating the emergence of the human mind and soul through the humanities. From its role as a major economic driver in the region, to finding sustainable solutions to the profound challenges that confront us in education, engineering, business, management, environment, society, healthcare, and energy. And this is only the beginning.

UCR is at that place and time in its development where we can both celebrate our past and look forward to the promise of our aspirational and strategic future. The past is prologue at UCR. The time is now, and we are the people who must pave the way for those who are yet to pass through these great halls. We have an unprecedented opportunity, a deep and enduring obligation, and upon each of us is a profound expectation. UCR is moving from prominent to preeminent. Good isn't acceptable, for it neither invites nor inspires students, faculty, staff, or philanthropists. Indeed, we must sharpen our focus and redouble our efforts as we strive for even higher levels of achievement and impact.

This legacy is within our grasp, because:

• We have people with passion, courage, brilliance and experience.
• We have a vision that will become better understood and focused with our aspirational strategic plan.
• We have magnificent alumni... none better!
• We have a community that is encouraging, supportive, and helpful.
• We have — by any criterion — terrific faculty, staff, and students.

Living the Promise... at UCR we grow, learn and discover with an expectation of success, improvement and excellence embodied in self and in community, the hope of a peaceful and sustainable future through knowledge. Through our mission we develop diverse leaders who inspire, create, and enrich the economic, social, cultural, and environmental outlook, not only for California, but for this nation and world.

To illustrate this point, consider the stories of Lourdes Alberto and John Escovedo, whose future careers as professors of English were launched in the first undergraduate course taught by UCR Associate Professor Tiffany Ana Lopez. Tiffany, whose own life story is profoundly inspiring, believes UCR is in a unique position to fulfill the promise of diversifying academia. The promise Tiffany made to Lourdes and John is that academia is a large table at which there is a place for their distinctive visions and voices, and that teaching from a position of cultural specificity is about more than teaching tolerance; it is about challenging and expanding our critical methods and valuing multiple perspectives on problem solving and engagement.

So when we live the promise, it is everyone's individual promise and journey, conforming only to the standard of excellence for which the University of California is the world's flagship. It is also the collective promise, in terms of bettering our world, a world we are borrowing from those yet to come.

The promise of the land grant university was articulated by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, with the signing of the Morrill Act. Lincoln said, "The land grant university system is being built on behalf of the people, who have invested in these public universities their hopes, their support, and their confidence."

Thus "giving back" to our region is an integral aspect of our long-standing land grant heritage, and is yet another way in which we live the promise. Some inspiring examples:

• Our faculty gives back by developing research at the frontiers of knowledge, discovering solutions to society's most important and persistent issues. Note Professor Peter Atkinson, who is developing genetic tools to manipulate the genes of mosquitoes to prevent them from transmitting malaria, a disease that kills one million people per year, most of them children.
• Our faculty's creative work inspires international acclaim, and their personal journeys inspire. Take Christopher Abani, Professor of Creative Writing, who began to form his early works of poetry in prison, because Nigeria's military regime did not care for his published story on a military coup.
• Our alumni are civically engaged — living, working, competing and prospering in the increasingly interdependent, competitive, and multicultural world economy. Consider Rector William Greenlaw, class of '65, who founded a soup kitchen in New York City that serves 1,000 of the needy each day, the largest operation of its kind.
• Our students are giving back through service learning: a transformative experience of discovery, understanding, and global citizenship that is engaged with, and responsive to, our larger communities. Applaud-and consider hiring-senior Samantha Wilson, who was recently honored by the Clinton Global Initiative for her work educating youth in rural India.
• Our staff give back every day through their commitment to fulfill the mission of this institution and by serving our community. Admire Dave Stevens, a member of the carpentry shop, who has devoted hundreds of hours to youth in our community — including those with emotional, learning and physical disabilities — and shares his home with a neighboring family of six whose home became uninhabitable after slipping off its foundation.

The campus gives back in other ways as well:

• Through the performing arts and athletics, UCR is bringing recognition to individuals and the university through higher levels of accomplishment that build pride in the community and among our alumni.
• The ideas and discoveries germinated in UCR's laboratories and agricultural fields are taking root in the market, as evidenced by the tasty, seedless Gold Nugget mandarin as well as efforts to commercialize a method for turning municipal and other waste streams into fuel.

• One day soon, a UCR School of Medicine will train and place a diverse and multi-culturally competent workforce of physicians, while developing innovative research and health care delivery programs that will improve the health of the people in our region.

Finally, and yet firstly, our enduring promise is to our students, for whom UCR has become an accessible and residential campus of choice.

For them, we promise a campus characterized by pride, excellence, integrity, innovation, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a passion for learning and discovery.

For them, we promise a welcoming, supportive and inclusive academic community that is student-centered, and which achieves excellence through a diversity of people, ideas, and areas of study — but is also a virtual cauldron that challenges new ideas, long-held dogmas, apparent truths, and conventional approaches.

For our students, we promise a campus of choice and access. Already 94 percent of our students make UCR their campus of choice; for the remainder, we are fulfilling our commitment to the California Master Plan. Already nearly 45 percent — more than any other UC campus — receive Pell grants, and almost half will be, like me, the first in their families to earn a degree.

Our students epitomize the face of California and its future. They are passionate. They are imaginative. They are energetic. They are diverse. They are concerned. Some come from privilege; others from poverty. Their slopes of achievement to meet the exacting and uncompromising UC standard differ because of their backgrounds, but we are proud that the value we add is among the best in the nation. Every student is a gift; every one has promise, and every one deserves an opportunity to succeed.

This brings us back to Abraham Lincoln's vision of the land grant university as the "people's" university. It is these students, and the people of California that UCR serves. Because of that, I envisaged today as a people's inauguration.

Indeed, I have tried, without much success, to focus this inauguration not on me as the incoming Chancellor, but on the people — you, the students, faculty, staff, alums and community... the 8th "new beginning" of this resilient, aspirational, and wonderful campus of the University of California. I must express my deep gratitude to the many people of the Office of the President and the Riverside campus who have worked tirelessly to enable this inaugural celebration today.

Please know that I accept any recognition today with deep humility, resolve, pride, commitment and, above all, a promise to each of you to do something productive everyday that promotes and improves this great campus of the University of California.

I promise nothing more. I certainly promise nothing less.

But to succeed, I need your help:

• Advice — solicited or not.
• Forbearance — hopefully on not too many occasions.
• Encouragement — every day.
• Ideas — to expand and improve upon my own, or to replace them.
• Innovations — because we must innovate to be competitive.
• And inspiration — which has occurred naturally and will continue to do so as I visit with current and potential students, alumni, and our brilliant faculty and staff.

Let me close by reminding us our legacy will be the destiny we sow. From William Jennings Bryan, we know that destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

So my promise is to live the promise. I promise.

Visit Chancellor Timothy White's Web site.