It seems to me that our task is, as the world changes, to try to find different and better ways of sustaining enduring values. This happens with each new generation of scholars and new generations of students. We are here to urge them, to mentor them, to teach them how to do it. They discover they can become all that they can be. And we also have been doing the same thing with the faculty in our scholarly and research activities.
Deans always have to make choices.
For there are so many good things that the college does, so many opportunities and so many possibilities, but there are never either the resources or the number of people or the number of students to take advantage of all these things that are so wonderful. So choices must be made, and to make them wisely is a demanding and difficult challenge. Moreover, we want to advance in relation to the competition. The deans of every college at Vanderbilt will have to try, together with their faculty colleagues, to identify those areas and initiatives to be undertaken that will permit the college and Vanderbilt as a whole to rise to the next level of visibility, so that Vanderbilt will be among the foremost colleges and universities in the United States. At the same time, we must ensure that Vanderbilt retains its own unique character.