It has been thirty years since I came to Chapel Hill as a freshman. Needless to say, a lot has changed. Both on campus and in the wider world, time and innovation have transformed the places and things I thought I knew.
In spite of, or more accurately because of, the enormous transformations of the past few decades, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's mission remains the same: to educate North Carolina's young people and to provide quality research and service to the state that supports us. As we stand on the brink of the twenty-first century, our foremost challenge is to figure out what we should be doing to prepare students at all levels for
success in a new kind of marketplace-the knowledge economy. Graduate education and research are, I believe, key to the University's ability to meet that challenge.
The University has contributed significantly to the development of the new information economy, pioneering virtual reality and other groundbreaking technology applications. Through our research and graduate programs, we have helped propel North Carolina ahead of most states trying to adapt to and profit from the brave new world of the information age. North Carolinians are leading the transformation from an energy-based to a knowledge-based economy largely because we have invested in the University, and because in return, the University has served the taxpayers of North Carolina well. As the shift to a knowledge economy continues, people's expectations for the University's research and public service roles will rise. To keep pace with new expectations, the University must find new ways to promote economic development.
Carolina's primary economic role until now has been to supply a high-quality, well-educated, innovative leader- and labor-force. In the future, that part of our mission will be even more important, but we will also have an additional role. That is, to transfer useful knowledge directly from our faculty, students, and labs to companies who will use it to fuel economic growth. With respect to that aspect of our mission, we must assure the public that we are making optimal use of their resources and that we have achieved the highest potential for contributing to the emerging economy.
How will Carolina contribute to a flourishing economy and at the same time sustain its preeminence in American higher education? Through graduate study and research. Our graduate programs develop the world's best professors, the foundation for an educated citizenry. We provide graduate students with the highest quality training and instill in them a strong commitment to the values of public education. College classrooms across America are where much of our economic success will be lost or gained, and our graduate students must be prepared well to take on, as researchers and teachers, the emerging challenges of post-secondary education. As teaching assistants at Carolina, graduate students receive supervised, high-quality teaching experience, and help the University provide smaller classes and better instruction in basic skills courses. Cream-of-the-crop graduate students and programs will also ensure that the University attracts and retains the nation's best faculty members, professors who push forward the established boundaries of knowledge through their research and who transmit their expertise and enthusiasm for learning to students at all levels.
Faculty research can have an immediate, tangible impact on the economy. Two particular initiatives stand out as vivid examples of Carolina's commitment to the state's economic health. First, we have recently created a new research unit dedicated to technology development and transfer. Second, we have also established a vigorous corporate partnership program to nurture visionary ideas from conception through to profitable commercialization.
Through graduate programs, the University's research activities will contribute in manifold ways to North Carolina's continued prosperity. The research of our humanities, fine arts, and social sciences faculty puts us in closer touch with the knowledge, history, and cultures of the world, giving us a deeper understanding of the philosophy, literature, arts, and conditions that give people a sense of who they are, what they want, what they might achieve, and how they might do so in broad coalitions across different kinds of boundaries: ethnic, religious, and cultural, among others.
The worldwide shift from an energy-based to a knowledge-based economy is reshuffling every deck in our society and rewriting all the rules. When economic value is created from virtually no physical raw materials-think of what can be stored on a computer disk-then brainpower becomes the thing that counts. It is a big change, and, if I have anything to do with it, UNC-Chapel Hill and its graduate and research programs will stay right at the center of the transformation. With the University as its partner, North Carolina will continue to help pave the way for the nation's future productivity and prosperity. All the while, of course, Carolina's research and teaching in the basic sciences, fine arts, humanities, and social sciences will continue to give students an essential and deeper understanding of the complex human systems within which any successful economy, including North Carolina's, operates.
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Last modified: 4/2/96