As we all know, proper facilities are very helpful in education, but a quality faculty is the one essential element of a university. Students came to the original universities in medieval times because learned men were there, and today learned men and women attract the students, the research funding and the other resources essential to a great university.

For several decades, we have not had any substantial growth in the number of faculty, but now, we have the prospect of a new growth in faculty and a growth free from the burden of taking large numbers of new students. Thanks to the funding developed from the Chancellor’s plan for differential missions, we should be able to improve the size of our faculty, reduce class sizes, and support new research initiatives.

This year we are welcoming our first Francis Eppes Professors.

Transformation: Faculty: Eppes Scholars

Charles McClure	Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

The Tallahassee Democrat has called our Eppes professors "superprofessors."

Our first one, Charles McClure, comes to our School of Information Studies by way of Syracuse University. Dr. McClure is one of only eight people to have achieved distinguished professor status at Syracuse. Our second Eppes professor, I am pleased to announce, is an alumna and a Pulitzer Prize winner in music composition, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

We hope to hire as many as 11 Eppes Professors this year.

Although we will concentrate our efforts in the sciences, I hope you will be very pleased with the announcements we expect to make about scholars in the arts and humanities.

Transformation: Faculty: Eminent Scholars

In addition to our Eppes Professors, we are building our roster of Eminent Scholars (photos) and Endowed Professorships -- educators who give students exposure to the top minds in their academic disciplines, bring new research opportunities, and add prestige to the university's academic programs.

We expect to have 50 Eppes and Eminent Scholars within the next two years. These scholars join our Lawton, Flory and MacKenzie professors who have contributed so much.

Transformation: Faculty

The presence of these distinguished new faculty should help us reach the ambitious goals we have for this university. And we will work hard to remain competitive so that we can retain the excellent faculty we have. I particularly want to thank Cliff Madsen, who chairs the Eppes Professor effort and those who are working so hard in the many search committees. As you sit in meetings, poring over biographical information, spend time on the phone until your ear is sore and sit down for your tenth dinner to entertain candidates, I hope you know that you are doing the most important work to transform FSU.

Transformation: Resources

We would be unable to recruit this high level of faculty nor support our students in ways we will be discussing later without the solid resources that we've been able to build through our own staff, our wonderful alumni and other supporters.

The change in our alumni culture and more important, the change in the attitude of our deans and administrators, has led to consistent fund raising to support this university, particularly the growth of our endowment.

Transformation: Resources: Endowment

Endowment Growth

To sustain our ability to attract top faculty and provide excellent teaching and research facilities, we know we must continue to grow our endowment. The FSU endowment has seen phenomenal growth. It has climbed from $50 million in 1994 to nearly $250 million in the past five years. We have experienced a rate of growth unmatched among ACC universities during the same period.

Endowment Ranking

There is a danger in looking at our own progress without having some way to compare it with that of other institutions, and I have used our rankings among all university endowments. In the period since 1994, we have moved from 256th place to 177th place in national rankings of endowments, and in the past two years alone, we have moved up 54 places.

We expect to be in the top 150 universities this year and, if we can maintain our energy, we should be in the top 100 within the next three years.

Transformation: Resources: Research Awards

Five Year History of Research Awards

Research awards at FSU are defying national trends and going up. This year, Ray Bye reports that we topped the $100 million mark for the first time, with over $101 million in research awards.

Five Year History of Federal Research Awards

Our research awards have increased 14 per cent in the last year alone. Every year for the past five years, the numbers have risen.

For a public university to attract that kind of support without the advantage of either a medical or agricultural school is remarkable and reflects the high regard with which our researchers are held by peers and colleagues in many arenas nationwide.

Transformation: Resources: Research

We anticipate that total number of research dollars will continue to increase sharply, particularly as we build our science and medical research programs, and our School of Computational Science and Information Technology, which was established this summer.