During his inauguration speech on Friday, Chancellor Kent Syverud highlighted four essential areas he would like to see Syracuse University improve in.

This past weekend was the official inauguration of Syverud as the 12th chancellor of the university. In his speech to the SU community, Syverud said he hopes to enhance the undergraduate education and experience; empower research excellence at SU; embrace change at the university and take risks; and once again become the best place for veterans to gain a college education and be given opportunities.

Strengthening the undergraduate experience begins with “building an unrivaled” College of Arts and Sciences, Syverud said. Since a large number of SU students are enrolled in Arts and Sciences, he said, it’s important that the college offers a “distinctive, broad and deep education in liberal arts and sciences.”

“We want the best, unentitled, scrappy, engaged students in the world to want to come here,” Syverud said. “And when they come here, we want them to have opportunities and experiences that are so distinctive that forever after they graduate they will be even more distinctive to the world as the product of a Syracuse education.”

In addition to bettering Arts and Sciences, Syverud added that other aspects of college life need to be better addressed, such as where students live, eat, work and study. This can be done, Syverud said, by everyone at SU working together.

The second point Syverud emphasized was to empower research excellence at SU. In order to do this, everyone at the university must make it easy to talk about how to improve university research.

“We cannot view research as something that is confined to one department, to one school or to a particular faculty or discipline. Great research today is so collaborative, by drawing graduates and undergraduates and faculty from here and elsewhere,” he said. “Great research is interdisciplinary and not determined by the question ‘What’s in it for my department and my school?’ But rather by the question, ‘What can we all do with all of the resources from every part of this great university, and all that surrounds it?’”

Great research benefits from university-wide investments, as well as from graduate programs that are carefully and strategically designed, he said. SU will improve in research, Syverud said, because the university has done it before and can do it again.

For his third point, Syverud stressed the importance of the university embracing change, instead of trying to avoid or deny it. This mentality, he said, stems from the idea that change doesn’t always bring improvement.

“To get better, we need to take risks,” he said. “We need to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit that animates so many parts of this campus and we need to move nimbly.”

The university won’t get better and “leap frog” other peer institutions, Syverud said, if it isn’t able to try new things other universities “can’t even imagine.” SU’s history is evident of this, he said, with examples of the university embracing global studies, data and information and veterans.

“These instances, and so many others, show that Syracuse gets ahead by embracing the right change and nimbly pursuing it,” he said. “I will be asking us to do this in the future. I will be hoping to learn what those changes are from you.”

Syverud’s final suggestion was to once again become the best resource for veterans. The university, he said, has the opportunity to become the best in the world to provide opportunity and empowerment to veterans in the armed forces and their families.

While SU already has a great presence in that area, he hopes to further invest in research and opportunities for military families.

“We have an unrivaled capacity to bring to bear our expertise in the professions, in disabilities, in entrepreneurship, in information, in arts and sciences, to the benefit of our university and to help those who have worn the battle and their families. So let’s just do it.”

If these four ideas could be integrated into the goals of the university for the next 10 years, Syverud said he believes the university can become much better.

“I believe we will become a greater university, and on the way, we will enhance all of the communities that matter to us and to the world,” he said. “The greatest contribution this university can make to this city and to this region, which is so important to us, is to be a great, thriving and engaged international research university.”

Published on April 14, 2014 at 1:52 am

Contact Meredith: mhnewman@syr.edu | @MerNewman93