Introduction
Thank you very much, Nasser.
It is truly a pleasure to be here this evening for the closing celebration of the 50th anniversary of the IUPUI campus.
I am very pleased to welcome a member of the Indiana University Board of Trustees, MaryEllen Bishop, who is here tonight with her husband, Michael. I also want to welcome former IU trustee Phil Eskew, who is here with his wife, Ann. Please join me in welcoming them.
I want to begin by extending our most sincere thanks, on behalf of Indiana University, to all of you who have helped to plan and facilitate the various events that have been part of this wonderful yearlong celebration.
Celebrating the IUPUI campus
Over the course of the last year, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends of IUPUI have celebrated a campus that has served the people of the city of Indianapolis, the state, the nation, and the world in many vitally important ways. For half a century, the campus has provided an education of the highest quality to equip its graduates with the skills most needed by this city and by our society. And members of the IUPUI campus community have been—and continue to be—engaged in research and service that contributes solutions to our society's most pressing problems.
The campus's role as a major center for the academic health sciences has allowed IU to educate the overwhelming majority of Indiana’s health sciences professionals, to provide state-of-the-art health-related services to the people of Indiana and the nation, and to conduct groundbreaking research that results in new treatments and cures.
The campus is also home to first-rate graduate and undergraduate programs in the arts and sciences, and to outstanding professional schools in business and law.
Just as the faculty, staff, students, and alumni of these programs are making vital contributions that help to transform the city of Indianapolis and the state, so too have the campus’s academic programs been transformed in recent years—in response to the needs of the city and state and the demands of students—with the establishment of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, the Fairbanks School of Public Health, the School of Health and Human Sciences, and the establishment of the IUPUI School of Education.
And of course, the tremendous history of civic engagement on the IUPUI campus has been on full display during this year of celebration. The campus’s longstanding commitment to community, service-learning, and civic engagement is one of the most powerful and visible ways the IUPUI campus contributes to the betterment of the community it serves. The campus continues to receive widespread recognition for supporting exemplary community service programs that achieve results that have impact.
You have also, during this anniversary year, celebrated the history of distinguished leadership that has contributed to the success of the IUPUI campus—a tradition that began with chancellors Maynard Hine and Glenn Irwin, continued under Gerald Bepko and Charles Bantz, and continues now under the energetic leadership of Nasser Paydar.
Conclusion
The work you have done to help the IUPUI campus celebrate the historic milestone of its 50th anniversary reminds all of us that the true strength of our great institution is its people.
Not only would this celebration and all of its related initiatives not have been possible without your dedicated efforts, but the enormous progress and growth of the IUPUI campus over the last 50 years would not have been possible without your dedication and the dedication of countless other faculty, students, staff, alumni and friends of IUPUI.As the whole of Indiana University prepares to launch its yearlong Bicentennial celebration—the beginning of which is now only 31 days away—and as IUPUI prepares to embark on another half century of success—all of us look forward to witnessing the many discoveries, innovations, and important contributions that the members of the IUPUI community will make in the decades to come.
Thank you very much.