Convocation 2024: Our Future in Focus, President's Remarks
September 17, 2024
Good afternoon!
Welcome to fall term 2024 and what I would like us to consider to be the beginning of Portland State University’s next great era.
We stand on the edge of tremendous potential — our students have never needed PSU more, our city has never needed PSU more, we have never needed each other more.
As a nation, as a city and as a university community, we are facing unprecedented levels of uncertainty and adversity. Injustice and war continue unabated in many areas of the world, the city we love is still finding its footing, and our students, who will be arriving on these blocks in a few days, are going to be starting fall term — several thousand of them for the first time — as the entire country plunges into a high-stakes election season.
At the same time, we at Portland State will continue to wrestle with our future as an institution, recommitting to our core values, assessing with clear eyes the needs of our students and focusing on redefining the institution as an enduring force for positive change for them, their families, our employees and our region.
I am pleased to share with you today that in a few days we will present the Board of Trustees with our strategic plan, designed with input from all of you to put PSU’s Future in Focus. With Our Future in Focus, we express our unwavering purpose: to support learners to follow their dreams and achieve their goals for a better life for their families and communities.
The plan is driven by our guiding commitments — foundational promises that we make to ourselves and to the world and that we hold each other accountable to.
I want to spend some time with those commitments today because they comprise the core of who we are and who we want to become as a university community.
1. First and foremost, PSU promises to provide equitable access to quality education
We commit to offering students accessible pathways to high-impact learning experiences, degrees, and credentials for meaningful careers, social and economic mobility, and thriving into the future.
2. Second, PSU will welcome and support ALL learners
We commit to nurturing and championing a diverse and dynamic community of learners seeking to make a difference in their own lives and the lives of their families and communities through excellent, responsive teaching and comprehensive, culturally affirming student services.
These first two guiding commitments are the very essence of our enterprise and we cannot lose sight of these imperatives no matter the distractions we face. The service of students is our north star — we must be aligned in that mission through every step of this transformative year.
3. Third, PSU is consciously working toward a community ethos of care and well-being.
We commit to establishing, nourishing, and maintaining an ethos of connection, care, and well-being for and among our campus community, including students, staff, faculty, administrators, and trustees.
A true culture of care is an absolute must for PSU’s thriving future and requires commitment from me, from all university leaders, from all of us. I look forward to listening and learning together how we can make not just surviving but thriving the norm on our campus.
4. Fourth, PSU commits to continuing to co-create the Future of Our Region.
We commit to working collaboratively through trust-based, reciprocal, equitable partnerships to make life better for the individuals and communities in our region through community-engaged learning, teaching, research, and service.
This is PSU committing to continuing its role as an anchor institution for the region, but also promising to show up BETTER for our partners.
5. And Finally, PSU will model Responsible Stewardship.
We commit to carefully managing our financial, natural, and cultural resources to achieve our aspirations and continue our important work for our students and communities long into the future.
As PSU faces the daunting task of closing an $18 million dollar budget deficit this year, it is imperative that we change the way that we operate in order to best serve our students — today, tomorrow and well into the future. This requires us to be stewards of all of our resources for sustainability that doesn’t just address our natural environment, but also ensures equity and long-term fiscal strength.
Now these five commitments inform our 2030 vision while the Strategic Imperatives of the Future in Focus Strategic Plan draw a map to how we achieve that vision.
Our vision has PSU thriving in 2030 as Oregon’s urban research university where EVERY student develops the skills they need to successfully engage in careers and the world. We are a national leader for social mobility through higher education and a driving force for Portland’s success.
That vision also calls for PSU to be a dynamic workplace that supports the professional development and well-being of all employees. We harness our academic excellence, innovative research, strategic partnerships, and community engagement to address local, regional, and global challenges.
There are four simple but profound imperatives we’ve mapped out to achieve this vision.
They include:
No. 1. Creating clear pathways for our region’s learners to achieve their educational goals and provide a strong return on investment.
This imperative was joyfully boosted last month with the announcement of a $7.8 million Department of Education Grant to make it easier for transfer students from Mount Hood and Clackamas Community Colleges to find their way to PSU and to succeed once they enroll.
Second imperative: We will lead the Pacific Northwest in serving minoritized students and boost the college success rate.
Collectively we have spent many hours over the past few years focused on how PSU can become the leading MSI — or minority serving university — in the Northwest. Last year we heard from other school presidents about their best practices and I am so impressed with the commitment of staff and faculty on emphasizing service, how do we truly SERVE students.
I hope you will join me in participating in a two-part symposium this fall presented by Global Diversity and Inclusion to reflect on the opportunities to excel as a majority BIPOC institution. I also urge us as a community to review and embrace the recommendations of the Building Community Task Force which will be released to campus next month.
Third imperative: We will build efficient structures that support and empower our employees and operations.
I’ve learned many lessons in my first year as your president and one of them is that PSU sometimes makes it hard to love to work here. Whether it’s inefficient systems, ineffective communication, or inconsistent support, we don’t always get it right.
This imperative will drive improved administrative functioning by making decisions based on data, values and with the needs of our community at the forefront.
Fourth imperative: We will drive Portland’s economic, social, and cultural resurgence.
Now this one comes naturally to Portland State. This university has shaped so much of what this city is and we will continue to shape what it will become, but we can amplify our impact through innovative research partnerships, placemaking initiatives and continuing to educate the smartest, most diverse and change-embracing workforce that this region could ever desire.
Last week, we announced that Congressman Earl Blumenauer will join PSU as a Presidential Fellow working with the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies within our College of Urban and Public Affairs. Congressman Blumenauer’s top goal is to ensure that PSU does everything it can to bring about Portland’s renaissance while raising CUPA’s profile as the civic leader it has always been for this city.
This is good news for PSU and great news for Portland. There is no doubt that Portland’s damaged reputation has taken its toll on this university and our enrollment. It’s time to turn that tide and I’m optimistic that Congressman Blumenauer will help us achieve that.
Now I want to tell a story about Portland State that takes place well beyond what we can see from where we sit on this beautiful fall day on the Park Blocks. Even further out than our 2030 Vision takes us.
Decades from now — let’s say 2064 — students, staff and faculty will not remember this day and what we say here today, they won’t remember Fall Convocation 2024, our Future in Focus theme, or the strategic plan we’ll be rolling out this year.
But I want us to visit this future PSU together because it relies on the hopes, dreams, hard work and imaginations of everyone here today and many others who aren’t present.
Students on this future PSU campus will have chosen to come here to pursue study in fields that excite them.
A majority of them will still come from across the great state of Oregon and — once on our beautiful 60-acre urban campus (we’ll have grown just a bit by then) — they’ll be mingling with students from a variety of backgrounds, states, and countries.
At Future PSU, these students will get to partake in the extraordinary arts culture that has blossomed across the city.
Because Portland looks very different than it does today. Many innovative companies are clamoring to move their headquarters to Portland and the downtown core no longer has the reputation of a hollowed out central business district.
Our houseless neighbors have been transitioned into permanent housing and treatment facilities provide safe havens for those who are struggling with addiction.
Our beloved city has leaned into its identity as a vibrant hub for living, playing, working and learning — and Portland State University is its bright, beating heart.
This future PSU — which, by the way, is on to it’s fourth or fifth woman-identified president by now — is still Letting Knowledge Serve the City, the State and the World.
There are…
- Active hubs for innovation in climate adaptation technology,
- Public health consortia tackling issues in partnership with writers, artists and historians.
- There are interdisciplinary programs on Art and Artificial Intelligence.
- And a partnership between PSU, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT focused on refining next-generation autonomous vehicles — with electric jetpacks instead of wheels.
- Not to mention the hundreds of community relationships that have blossomed over decades and deepened our roots in our great city.
All this to say PSU’s urban research enterprise is strong and only getting stronger in this future — fueled by industry partnerships and federal grants targeting the toughest issues, biggest opportunities and greatest challenges.
PSU is woven throughout the region with hubs in every neighborhood, helping residents solve hyperlocal problems and enhance the quality of life while introducing young people to PSU and guiding their path into college.
Our people are thriving, our communities are strong, old wounds have been repaired, and we are unyieldingly optimistic about the future of PSU and its students.
It is essential that we dream big about Portland’s State’s future because it must be — it WILL be — as bright and compelling as its history. The university that was created to educate former soldiers and shipbuilders after World War 2 is the same school that will propel Portland and Oregon into its next era.
Just as university founders found a way to relocate the school after floodwaters erased Vanport City from the map, so will PSU persevere through current challenges to serve the many brilliant students who are yet to pass through this campus. That’s the promise of the Portland future that energizes me every day!
When the Portland State Extension Center’s Lincoln Hall home finally opened on the Park Blocks in 1952, Portland was the only city of its size in the country without a public four-year college. PSU fixed that — and over the decades PSU has and will continue to animate the city.
The future we imagine together won’t come into focus without friction, without competition, without tenacity.
This is the year for answering the big questions we face: How can we structure our offerings in a way that ensures that we can thrive together as a university community — serving students, meeting the needs of faculty, nurturing our research enterprise, and streamlining our operations for the benefit of all?
I am incredibly optimistic about the outcomes we will achieve together, I am also acknowledging that this will likely be a challenging year.
Thank you for being a part of PSU’s success. I want to invite you to dream big with our students and to dream big together. I invite you to bring our future into focus.
Now I’d like to introduce you to our talented and hardworking leadership team and I ask them to please stand:
You’ve already met our Interim Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs: Shelly Chabon — and I would like to formally announce that we will be dropping the “Interim” from her title as I have asked her to stay on in her current role for this academic year and the academic year that follows.
On to the rest of the team, please stand as I introduce you.
Andria Johnson, Vice President of Finance and Administration
Chuck Knepfle, Vice President of Enrollment Management
Ame Lambert, Vice President of Global Diversity and Inclusion
Sheila Martin, Vice President of Public Affairs and Chief of Staff
Cindy Starke, General Counsel
Rick Tankersly, Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies
Thank you again for joining us today. Go Viks!