Faculty Greetings
Jan. 25, 2005
To Members of the MU Faculty:
We begin a new semester as we honor the birth, the contributions and the vision of Martin Luther King Jr. This is my first opportunity to greet you at the beginning of a semester as chancellor of MU, and I want to use this opportunity to invite you to reflect with me on the value of diversity to our University community and to the unique learning and discovery community we seek to build.
As we strive to provide “the best education from the heart of the nation” to our talented students, so too must we enrich our paths of intellectual discovery by drawing on diverse ideas, disciplines and life experiences.
The New Year 2005 will bring new challenges of financial stress, war, peace, security and justice that will demand our best thinking in science, artistic expression, and humanistic and social insight. Martin Luther King Jr. himself offered the following warning and challenge: — “our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”
As faculty members, you hold enormous responsibility and opportunity with every student you meet in this new semester. A vibrant exchange of diverse ideas and insights should characterize our learning environment. Faculty and students alike should welcome these challenges as opportunities to advance our scholarship while further enriching undergraduate and graduate education and global outreach.
The diversity of academic programs and research tools at MU are among the richest in the nation. We will build the foundations of the next frontier of knowledge by combining selected strands of interdisciplinary scholarship within and across the arts and the sciences. Our successes in these interdisciplinary pathways are becoming widely recognized, and our extramural funds from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation reflect such recognition. Successful initiatives in several areas of life sciences, comparative medicine, literary arts, and math and science education attest to the vibrancy of MU's special approach.
Over the holidays, I was introduced to the work of one of our own faculty members, Dr. Carol Anderson, whose book Eyes Off the Prize, reveals the power of fresh and innovative inquiry into the global perspectives of civil rights leaders. She reveals the strong international tensions that fed and were fed by the civil rights struggles in the United States. In doing so, Dr. Anderson honors the global international understanding that is so fundamental in shaping changes in domestic affairs. At the same time, she honors the human rights commitment of Martin Luther King Jr. and many others whose understanding and dedication to change in our own society helped elevate the human condition of other parts of the globe.
As faculty, you belong to a select class of people to whom society has granted the responsibility to help shape the future of its citizenry through ideas, values and learning experiences. Each MU student provides an unparalleled opportunity for you to carry out that responsibility in a unique way. What could be more challenging?
As chancellor, I intend to contribute to our voyage of discovery by holding regular open forums on special topics that cut across the interests of the MU family, including the broader Columbia community. I will ask selected members to serve as panelists, bringing their experiences and insights into the discussion.
Our first session, scheduled for 4 p.m. Feb. 17, 2005, in Ellis Library Auditorium, will focus on the recent cataclysmic effects of the earthquake and tsunamis in Asia. (Our campus memorial service is scheduled today at noon at the Columns.) I hope we will gain a better understanding of how such events shape our history, identify the multiple layers of impact that call out for further study, and hear about the effects on members of our own community and how the Mizzou family has responded to ease the suffering of fellow human beings. I also hope you will share ideas for future topics with me.
Brady J. Deaton
Chancellor