UofL Focusing on Students, Future

By James R. Ramsey
President, University of Louisville

Recently, a long-time friend and supporter of the University of Louisville asked me why the university’s leadership has been conspicuously silent throughout the barrage of negative editorials in the Courier-Journal. My response was two-fold.

First, we have been busy -- busy doing the work assigned to us by the people of Kentucky through the General Assembly.

• We have been busy welcoming to campus for the fall semester the best freshman class in the university’s history as measured by ACT scores and grade point averages.
• We have been busy preparing for application to the prestigious academic association Phi Beta Kappa.
• We have been busy developing unit and campus-wide diversity plans to ensure that the University of Louisville is open, accessible and diverse.
• We have been busy reviewing and updating our Challenge for Excellence to ensure that we continue to be single-mindedly focused on achieving the goals set for us by the Kentucky General Assembly and the Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997. These goals include focus on improving retention and graduation rates so that we can achieve the state’s mandate of increasing the number of college graduates.
• We have been busy putting in place the structure for our collaborative partnership with Jewish Hospital, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and the federal government to create a world-class Cardiovascular Innovation Institute in Louisville. The incidence of heart disease in our state far exceeds the national average, and we are committed to doing something about this through the work of our clinicians and researchers affiliated with this institute.
• We have been busy reaching out to communities in our metropolitan area and across the state rallying support for higher education ¾ and all of education ¾ from our alumni, the business community and others. We have visited Glasgow, Bowling Green, Paducah, Madisonville, Hazard, Shelby County, Elizabethtown, Oldham County, Owensboro and Northern Kentucky.
• We have been busy dealing with the prospect of yet another round of state budget cuts, as reflected in the most recent downward revision of the Consensus Forecast Group. These possible cuts have the potential to erode the progress we have made improving all levels of education in our state.
• We have been focused on discussions regarding Conference USA and the Big East, evaluating options based not only on whether they are in the best interest of our athletics program and student athletes, but on whether they also ensure that we are affiliated with schools that share our commitment to academic excellence and quality.
• We have been busy continuing to build a world-class cancer center in Louisville so the people in this community can find nationally recognized cancer treatments close to home.
• We have been busy recruiting and supporting world-class faculty as a result of Bucks for Brains.
• We have been busy planning for important projects on campus, including our new natatorium, the library expansion, and the development of the Shelby Campus.
• We have been busy developing partnerships with the new merged government, as witnessed by the recent successful recruitment of the Louisville and Jefferson County director of public health, who is a member of our faculty.
• We have been busy strengthening our partnership with K-12 educational providers, especially the Jefferson County Public Schools, which their commitment to providing excellent educational opportunities to young people in this community.
• We have been busy building our partnerships with the University of Kentucky and other universities.

The second reason we have not responded to the on-going flow of editorials is that, as is often said, one should not get into arguments with those who buy ink by the barrel. This is probably particularly true when the purchasers of the ink are heavily invested in a lawsuit related to the very subject upon which they are editorializing. In short, we do not see any benefit in fully engaging the Courier on its own editorial pages.

I assured my friend, a long-time supporter and friend of the University of Louisville, that I prefer to maintain our focus on our mission serving students and the state. As a native of this county, as an individual whose parents were public school teachers in this community, and as someone who was intimately involved in the development of House Bill 1, the Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997, I am committed to the people of Louisville and our state.

We will not be distracted from our day-to-day focus on educating students and improving economic opportunity and the quality of life in our community and across the Commonwealth of Kentucky.