Martha Gilliland is not a Yale man. But she is a remarkable woman of extraordinary qualities a graduate of three different universities, somebody who has held distinguished faculty positions in three more universities, a senior administrative position as Vice President in a major public research university, and who has been provost and dean of the graduate school at a major private university. A scholar in her own right, with a skill in the basic sciences and the earth sciences which she has applied to social problems of water supply and energy policy. Superbly equipped for the position to which you now appoint her. And yet these are challenging times for anyone to assume a university chancellorship.
Higher education is under pressure from every direction.
Concerns about access, concerns about cost, concerns about quality, concerns about priorities, concerns about every issue that touches the life of the campus. Yet we should be wrong to be so preoccupied with the challenges that we fail to grasp the opportunities. For in this new millennium when knowledge is the new economic capital, the university stands at the forefront of all social institutions for the advancement for human wellbeing. If knowledge is the new currency, it is here on this campus that knowledge is created. It is here that scholarship is pursued.