Introduction and thanks
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. This will be my last report to the IU Board of Trustees as president. It has been an enormous privilege to have served as president of this great university for the last 14 years and to have served in senior positions here for 24 years—more than a third of my life. I am immensely proud of all that has been accomplished over the period I have been in this position. As I have said a number of times, none of what has been accomplished has been the result of the efforts of just one person, and I will make some comments in what follows about the tireless efforts of our faculty, staff and students—and, of course, our current and former trustees—who have been essential partners in all that IU has achieved in recent years.
Restart committee recommendations for fall semester 2021
In expectation of an in-person fall 2021 semester, we recently released the Restart Committee’s health and safety guidance for the upcoming semester. This included details about IU’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement for all students, faculty and staff on all IU campuses, which is similar to IU’s seasonal influenza vaccine requirement.
This decision will allow the university to lift most of the public health restrictions necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as masking and physical distancing. Classrooms, labs, housing, dining, recreation and other campus facilities will return to pre-pandemic capacities, with no physical distancing required. Classes will be held in person in typical classroom settings. And testing will be at much lower levels than has been seen this academic year.
IU’s vaccination requirement—with appropriate exemptions—continues the university's comprehensive science and public health-driven approach to the pandemic, which has been a fundamental feature of our management and mitigation of it on all our campuses. Throughout the pandemic, our paramount concern has been ensuring the health and safety of the IU community. The COVID-19 vaccine requirement will make a “return to normal” a reality for the fall semester.
Students will be required to be fully vaccinated by the time they return to campus or by August 15, whichever comes first. A form for requesting vaccination exemption for medical or religious reasons, or for an online exemption for those not present on or near campus, has been available since the beginning of the month. Exemptions details are included in the form, and exemption requests will be promptly reviewed with responses given within five business days.
I am extremely pleased to report that we are seeing an increase of a few percent a week in the overall rates of vaccination. Hence, we estimate that by the end of the month we will be close to achieving 70 percent compliance with our vaccination requirement by the whole university community, which is a level at which many experts expect herd immunity will be achieved. However, 70 percent is only a floor for us, and our goal is to achieve a much higher compliance level by August 15.
Of course, the more we communicate and promote information about the vaccine requirement and the need for students and others to receive the vaccine, the greater the number of people are who get vaccinated, and hence the safer our campuses can become. Once again then, I urge all students—and all members of the IU community—who have not already done so, to make an appointment to receive the vaccine as soon as possible.
Appointment of an IU Chief Health Officer
Over the last year of our intensive and all-consuming efforts to keep IU safe from the pandemic as well as open and functioning as close to normal as possible, the need for a more systematic university-wide approach to future public health crises as well as on-going medical and other public health issues, has become clear.
Hence, after extensive consultation with the senior leadership of the university and its medical and public health experts, I am announcing today the establishment of the position of Indiana University Chief Health Officer (CHO). This position will be responsible for leading and coordinating the university’s response to major health issues, including public health emergencies such as the present COVID-19 pandemic, and long-term concerns like mental health and wellness. A particularly important role for the CHO will be the identification of emerging health issues where IU can begin to take practical and proactive steps to prevent or mitigate these.
And I am delighted to announce the appointment of Distinguished Professor Aaron Carroll of the IU School of Medicine to this position. Dr Carroll has been a member of IU’s Medical Response Team from the outset responsible for our enormously successful mitigation testing efforts. He has played a major role in our communications efforts concerning our response to the pandemic through his highly popular “Ask Aaron” Webinar and other activities. In this regard, he has done a superb job and with the breadth of his experience and skills he is the perfect person to be the university’s first chief health officer.
Of course, thousands have contributed to the success of IU’s efforts to defeat the pandemic. I want to take this opportunity again to thank all of our students, the overwhelmingly majority of whom have embraced their responsibilities to comply with our public health policies uncomplainingly and with persistence and seriousness.
I want to thank all of our faculty for the skill and vigor with which thousands of courses were rapidly changed to an online format in difficult circumstances over the last year and for their ready adaption to the challenges of in-person instruction with all of the necessary public health precautions.
And I want to thank again all of our tireless and dedicated staff, without whom we could not have resumed on-campus operations in either instruction or research during the year. This includes our tireless senior administrators; everyone responsible for the massive task of keeping classrooms and public spaces clean; those who advise and support our students on a myriad of topics; those who keep our critical world-class IT infrastructure functioning at peak efficiency; those who have been at the front lines of our testing and public health response; and a host of others.
All of them carried out their responsibilities superbly, and our success in combating the COVID-19 pandemic is due to their collective efforts.
Preliminary announcement on IU Bloomington fall enrollment
IU’s successful and widely known efforts to keep the university community safe and functioning during the pandemic have had a very positive effect on enrolment for the fall semester at the Bloomington campus, along with a number of other factors.
I am extremely pleased to announce that based on present figures, we are projecting that the IU Bloomington campus will see record freshmen enrolment of around 9,300 students for the Fall semester (compared to around 8,000 last Fall semester), smashing nearly all the previous enrolment records for the campus. The beginner class in Bloomington is expected to include a record number of Indiana residents and a record numbers of underrepresented minority students. And international numbers are set to increase again after having declined significantly due to the pandemic. Had it not been for the impact of the mold issue of a few years ago on enrolment on the campus, we expect we would have been able to welcome a beginner class close to 10,000 next semester, and we are very confident that we will achieve this number in the next few years.
Overall enrollment is projected to be 45,000; a record, and four percent growth over last year. Undergraduate enrollment in total is expected to be 35,000 or six percent higher than 2020. We anticipate that nearly 6,000 underrepresented minority students will be enrolled at IU Bloomington in the fall, which would also be a record.
Executive Vice President and Provost Lauren Robel, and all her outstanding and dedicated staff, are to be congratulated on what is expected to be a spectacular achievement this fall.
On other campuses we are seeing some of the effects of the demographic decline on the university-ready student population in the state that I mentioned in my recent State of the University address, as well as, of course, the impact of the pandemic. But though these campuses may see some declines in enrolment, all are on target to meet their budgets.
Preliminary announcement of FY21 external research funding
I am also pleased to announce that, again based on preliminary numbers, we also expect to achieve a new record for external funding for the university of $960 million for the current fiscal year. If achieved, this will be about a 15 percent increase over last year and set yet another new record. This total depends on the timing of funds IU will be receiving from the Federal Government’s Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund. But even if these finds are not received this fiscal year, the level of funding for external research and other activities IU received in Fiscal Year 2021 will be a near record, which is all the more noteworthy in light of the extraordinary circumstances under which IU researchers have worked during the last 15 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This will also mean that in the last 14 years over $8 billion in funding from external sources has been awarded to IU for research and other activities. The enormous success IU faculty have had in competing for sponsored awards is a testament to the extraordinary range and quality of our faculty and students and their work. Their research and scholarship, in turn, results in the generation of innovative new ideas, new intellectual works, and discoveries that cure disease, protect our environment, help secure our nation, grow the economy, and advance art and culture in our communities. This success also points to the substantial impact of the numerous high-quality and productive faculty members recruited in recent years. And we should not forget the vital importance of all of the outstanding staff members, whose excellent work in support of these efforts is a vital part of them.
Former U.S. Senators Bayh and Coats joining IU
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I was very pleased to announce earlier this week that former U.S. Senator and Indiana Governor Evan Bayh and former Director of National Intelligence and U.S. Senator Daniel R. Coats are joining Indiana University at the Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, respectively.
Senator Bayh will be appointed to the university as distinguished scholar and executive at large, while Director Coats will serve as distinguished scholar and ambassador at large. They will assume these roles in schools that include some of the country's most respected scholars, educators, researchers, policymakers and professionals.
Former senators Bayh and Coats are two of Indiana's and our nation's most accomplished and distinguished public servants and two of IU's most renowned alumni. Both have had lengthy and productive careers in the public sector, and both have served as bipartisan leaders at the highest levels of government, where they have consistently championed the causes of education, civic responsibility, community service, and global engagement. Both also remain highly influential voices on the most critical issues facing our nation and our world and, as such, will further enhance IU's mission to educate the next generation of leaders to confront our most pressing challenges.
We are extremely pleased to welcome these two prominent Hoosier leaders to IU and look forward to the positive impact they will have on educating our students and further elevating the reputation of the O'Neill School and Hamilton Lugar School.
Conclusion
As I said earlier, Mr. Chairman, this will be my final report to the IU Board of Trustees. I estimate I have given nearly 100 of these, including at the tuition forums. Some of these reports have allowed me to make statements on some of the more difficult and serious issues that have faced the university community during that period. But most have allowed me to illuminate all the immense progress we have made at IU over the last 14 years in our pursuit of our principles of excellence as well as the outstanding achievements of our faculty, students and staff.
As I said in my concluding remarks to my last State of the University address, I am extremely confident that Indiana University is well positioned to leverage the strengths of its schools, its outstanding faculty, the dedication of its staff, its academic centers, indeed, all of its assets, so that it’s enormous success over more than 200 years can be sustained and built upon. As I said at the outset, the scale and success of all that has been achieved over the last 14 years has prepared Indiana University well to take the next bold step forward to join the very top ranks of America’s greatest universities.
It has been an enormous honor to serve our great university. I am immensely indebted to all my colleagues in the senior leadership of the university, all the faculty and staff, all the alumni and other supporters, and my own personal staff, for all that they do every day that has been so vital to our university’s continued success and progress.
In closing, I will again quote my close friend the late Myles Brand, the 16th president of Indiana University and one of its finest, when he said that leading Indiana University is a hallowed trust that one is privileged to have but for a fleeting moment. He went on to say, though, that what was important was to try to leave it a better place when you left it. I hope that when I depart from this role on June 30 that you and others will judge that we left it a better place.
Thank you very much.