Inaugural Address
Minor Myers, Jr.

September 13, 1989

"Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." I remember that phrase well from the baptism service I heard often as a child. And for whatever reason it kept recurring to me as I thought about the events of today, and the more I thought about it, the more appropriate it seemed.

It is the opening line of the 127th Psalm. "Except the Lord build the House they labor in vain that build it." The meaning is not obvious apart from the other verses, which are not necessarily clearer. A house, or rather a family, will not prosper unless God looks upon it with divine favor. The bad news is that effort alone is not enough: "It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late."

Only providential support seems to prosper a family, but a secondary interpretation is, and here’s the hope, that a house devoted to a larger cause like the love and fear of God, has a much better chance of that providence.

There is something in this image, which explains much of the past and future of Illinois Wesleyan, though I hasten to add that I am not suggesting that the University is God’s favored college but there are some interesting parallels.

Shortly after the University was charted in 1850 the faculty and trustees adopted a document known as a constitution. Its second paragraph amounts to a mission statement: "The object of this institution shall be to provide a system of education adapted to the wants of the country and based upon the system of religion and morality revealed in the Scriptures."

The message was clear. Education at Illinois Wesleyan was to be oriented towards those larger questions, the "wants of the country."

That institution which opened in the basement of the local Methodist church now stands, almost 150 years later, in its strongest condition ever. This year it received its largest number of applicants, and admitted its most selective class ever with average SAT’s of 1163 and ACT’s of 25.8. With those numbers and with an endowment of &64.3 million for a campus population of 1720 students Illinois Wesleyan has some claim to be included among the nation’s most selective 75 smaller colleges and universities. Its numbers today surprise those who have known it well over many years.

I have a faith that those numbers today are a reflection of that constitutional commitment of 1850 which has been passed from generation to generation of faculty and students: the strength of the university has been in its willingness to pursue "a system of education adapted to the wants of the country."

Since 1850 Wesleyan has changed as public interests and needs have changed. Over the years we have added or created Schools of Music, Art, Drama, and Nursing. And over the years we have had, and discontinued, a College of Law and a School of Oratory.

If our strength has come from adaptation to public need in the past, the same pattern must be especially true in the future.

I could take this area to talk about strengths and plans in the humanities, in the social sciences and in the liberal arts generally. I could describe in some detail what is going on in our Schools of Art, Music and Drama. I could talk about plans for developing our facilities in sports, athletics and recreation, but these are topics for other times, many other times.

I shall turn instead to two areas where we are capable of making major contributions to immediate public needs. It is our duty to pursue those possibilities as vigorously as possible. There is a critical national need for more nurses, and our School of Nursing is well positioned to make an expended contribution to filling that need. We shall hear more of new curricular directions in that quarter as the year progresses.

We have heard much about the need for nurses, and we have all read articles about Intensive Care Sections being closed or diminished for want of staffing. This need is visible and dramatic. Looming just as important but not yet as visibly are the demographics of science.

College administrators across the country are studying the demographics of 18 year olds weekly, but we must be equally concerned with the demographics of our faculty for the 1990’s, and particularly of our scientists. The National Science Foundation has been studying projections on scientists with care and with alarm.

The late 1990’s will see many retirements in education and business of those who took Ph.D.s in the 1940’s, 1950’s and early 1960’s. The number of 18 year olds will increase again, and research and development efforts will generate new positions. If current trends continue, America will experience a deficit of scientists with each passing year. In the year 2004 we will likely produce 10,000 few Ph.D.’s in science, mathematics and engineering than we are projected to need. If all levels of scientific training are considered, (Bachelors, Masters and Doctors), NSF projects will be short hundreds of thousands of scientifically-trained personnel by 2006.

These are numbers, which should frighten everyone interested in the future of America, or the future of the globe.

Science has for our generations become not just a technology of discovery, but also a craft of faith and hope in an almost religious sense. My grandmother died of pneumonia in 1928, and I have lived my life in the belief that had antibiotics been perfected earlier I would have known her as a child. As a child I worried about polio. Today I am not sure our children know what it is.

The news is full of images. A child dies of hunger in the Sudan, a plane crashes with 150 people aboard because of the failure of metals, dead fish wash ashore after an oil spill, and diseases ravage a community.

We assume that disease, famine, crashes, almost anything we regard as a problem, can be prevented or alleviated through science if we can but pose the right research questions with adequate funds.

And each year the number of tasks assigned to science for solution grows. Vannevar Bush, that great advocate of public support for the sciences in the 1940’s, led scientific planning after the Second World War. His report on science was entitled, Science, the Endless Frontier, and what a prophetic title it was. Whether it is the intricacies of the mind, (right brain, left brain, explaining creativity) to sorting out the geology of hitherto unimagined moons of Neptune, scientists today are working on problems not even imagined when Bush wrote.

We assume there is little science cannot understand, it is, indeed, an endless frontier. But given our expectations Bush could just as easily have taken as his title Science the Endless Task

Terence, the Roman playwright of the 2nd century B.C., coined a motto for many humanists: Nihil humani generi a me alienum puto. Nothing which pertains to man is alien to me. For our era that phrase could be transformed a guide to what we expect of science: Nihil humani generi a scientiis alienum est. Nothing which pertains to humanity is alien to the sciences. In dealing with disasters and fears, other centuries prayed. We pray too, but we fund scientific research as well.

But who will undertake the endless task in fifteen years? Our scientists will be the students who are in the colleges and schools of America and the world today. Those who entered this fall will graduate in 1993, and all going well take Ph.D.’s in 1996 or 1997, a time when they will be much needed.

But we must work as communities, as cities, as nations and as a globe to increase their numbers. Let me outline the present pipeline, as the NSF calls it. To get just one new Ph.D., and the NSF estimates that in 2004 we will need 18,000 new Ph.D.’s, to get one new Ph.D., we must start with 412 high school students. Surveys show that most scientists had developed an orientation toward science by age 18, and of those 412 high school students, only 75 will show an interest in science by age 18. Thirty-five will enter college as freshmen interested in science, math or engineering, and of that number 21 will graduate with science degrees. Of that number only 7 will go on to graduate school, 5 will complete a master’s degree and one will complete a Ph.D.

The pipeline is a system, which leaks all the way. Our tasks are then to expand the pipeline and fix the leaks.

The easier task may be to fix the leaks

First, we and other colleges must enhance the quality of undergraduate education in ways, which encourage more students to go on to serious scientific study. Several years ago, Oberlin discovered that the small liberal arts institutions were as a group contributing a disproportionate share of the nation’s science talent. The reasons seemed easy to discover. Students who had a chance to engage in real research under the direction of a senior professor became converts. They wanted a lifetime of sharing in the excitement.

Some campuses are still discussing the question of faculty research. Does research belong at a teaching institution? In that context the concept of student research may seem odd, indeed.

I remember in graduate school a party to celebrate an article published by a fellow graduate student. It was then an unusual and celebratable event. Yet in the sciences today, undergraduate research and publication is well established, and students find themselves traveling with faculty to present research findings at conferences.

Such research requires several things: student interest, faculty time, research space and research equipment. We are well blessed with student interest, but here and elsewhere much must be done to enhance the other factors, which contribute to this critical senior level experience.

Second, leaks can be fixed by simply encouraging more students to go on for Ph.D.’s. Fifteen years ago a Ph.D. was good preparation for driving a taxi or waiting tables. But today things are different.

Third, we must enhance our science facilities. Laboratories are necessary for freshman teaching as well as senior research. To this end we are now engaged in planning new science facilities which will meet the needs of our students and serve the interests of the country. The experience of many campuses demonstrates that buildings tend to attract students, and good students tend to attract very good students. These will be costly, and effort will be needed to raise the funds, but it is a commitment that this generation and this era must make to those who will follow.

If we can stop a few leaks on the campus, we need also to widen the pipeline supply of those headed towards the campus. There is must said about cooperation between schools and colleges. We hear it and we read it every day, but that is still not enough. We need more students interested in science in graduate school, more in college and thus more in the schools.

Despite the talk recent levels of collaboration are not always good across the nation. Last year I heard Herman Blake, the former President of Tougaloo, which I repeat here. A large black family had gathered for Thanksgiving. Many in the family were educators at different levels and naturally the table talk turned to business. The college professor began and commented that the colleges could make little headway because the students were so little prepared in high school, which the high school teacher countered that the high schools could be expected to do little with what the grade schools were turning out. Before an answer could be given the wise old grandmother stuck her head out of the kitchen and reported that she had been against the marriage from the first. There is great wisdom in that story.

There was a time when collaboration would not have been a problem, for the same faculty taught both school and college. That was true in the first days of Wesleyan, and Tom Wallace, President at our neighbor and friend, Illinois State University might remind us that ISU still has a full integrated school system on its campus – that today is an exception.

We have one unusual feature of our academic procession today; one, which I hope, will be repeated on many campuses. We have invited the superintendents and principals of local schools to be present and to march in our procession. We do this as a symbol of that educational partnership, which we much build at all, levels. If we can explore the moons of Neptune close up, we can produce more scientists by encouraging more students, particularly women and minorities, to develop an interest in scientific work.

The newly announced Eisenhower program of school college collaboration allows us to begin thinking of ways we can begin planning to work together almost immediately.

In thinking about new directions the example of John Wesley himself may be a model to keep in mind. Wesley, of course, was the founder of the Methodist denomination, which gave rise to the university.

What has Wesley to do with science? Need filler? I shall reassure you I will not go on so long as President Fallows who spoke for one hour and fifty minutes on this occasion in 1874.

I do not mean to discuss here Wesley’s interest in medicine and his labors in establishing a hospital facility in London. Nor do I suggest his doctrinal ideas. Indeed, Wesley could stand as a personal model to an atheist.

Wesley was a man blessed with three gifts.
1. his devotion to doing good.
2. his boundless energy in doing it.
3. his unnerving joy in doing it.

Wesley thought his work began in America during the three years he and his brother spent in Savannah, Georgia. In the classic manner of the liberal arts, there he translated from the French, Spanish and German, and published a hymnal in Charleston, thus setting the tone of the interest of the church and the family in music. But his real work was not translating, or singing, but teaching those not normally taught, exhorting them to think of the first and most important questions.

By his own account he traveled some 5,000 miles a year on horseback, rose at 4:00 a.m. every day, preached for the first time at 5:00 a.m. every day, an average of twice a day, and he followed such a schedule almost until his death at age 88. He made a lot of money from many activities, gave it to the needy and disciplined himself to live on L28 a year.

His efforts were unremitting throughout a lifetime, yet one friend said of his old age, "So fine a man I never saw. The happiness of his mind beamed forth in his countenance. Every look showed how fully he enjoyed ‘the gay remembrance of a life well spent.’ Wherever Wesley went, he diffused a portion of his own felicity."

All this was easy for him because he sensed he was a person with a mission. He had survived a childhood fire, which should have killed him, and he came to think he had been saved for a purpose.

But the real moment of conviction came on Wednesday, May 24, 1738. He was then 35. That afternoon he had attended St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, and in the evening he went to a religious meeting, as he noted "very unwillingly". At this session one of Martin Luther’s tracts was being read. He must have been bored. Wesley recorded what happened in his journal. "About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed." In these simple words Wesley records his religious rebirth, the moment of his conversion. His life was never the same. His mind had been put in the mood for that deep feeling by the music he heard at St. Paul’s, and documents show that the music he heard that memorable day was certainly William Croft’s "Out of the Deep," based on Psalm 130 which we have just heard.

Why do I speak of Wesley? Here I am a non-Methodist talking about science, and it sounds like a sermon. That is the whole point.

Wesley’s was a voice, which moved a country. More than a historian has thought that had there been a French Wesley the French Revolution of 1789 might have taken a different turn. Wesley, through heroic personal efforts reached thousands. When he and George Whitfield preached to miners who had hitherto been ignored, many stood with tears streaming down their coal-blackened faces. Someone heard and someone touched their souls and their lives, and England’s life was never the same.

It is precisely that evangelical enthusiasm which gave rise to the Methodist Church and this university. And it is precisely that kind of evangelical spirit, which is needed by American science today.

Speakers have all but worn out audience patience about science demographics. Some in this community may even be embarrassed that I am speaking on such a passé topic. Yet what has been the effect of that rhetoric?

Yesterday I reviewed some recent trends with Dr. Betty Vetter, the Executive Director of the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology in Washington generally regarded as the best headcounter on science.

Here’s the report card. The reports for 1987 are just out. After several years of public discussion, the number of bachelors, master’s and doctorates in science are down. And she expects that trend to continue for at least three years. On international standardized tests, American 17 year old scored 12 out of 13 countries in biology, 11th out of13 in chemistry and 13th out of 13 in physics. More countries were compared in math where we were 17th out of 17. Japan is probably now producing more science graduates than we are each year, and the Soviet Union is producing about twice as many.

Our task here, as in every institution, is not to dwell on what is wrong, but to build on what is right. There are many outstanding programs and as universities, schools and corporations we need to build on constructively on what is good. We can have hopes. Our Jeff, age 8, was asked to write about the "habitat" of a hamster, and he began to see his pets in a new light. Minor, age 11, last week was sorting out amoebas, paramecia and eugiena, work with which for me came in 10th grade. I was much impressed with the work Mrs. Fisher was demanding, and getting, from her class.

In Bedford, New York there is a magnetic high school teacher named Steven Kluge. I learned about him from a perspective student, and went to visit. He teaches geoscience at Fox Lane High School, and his classroom must be regarded as an American natural resource. His students work hard, they go on field trips, they go on mapping trips, asking at the high school level original research questions. His students work hard, they go on field trips, they go on mapping trips, asking at the high school level original research questions. Their eyes beamed as they described how their mapping of striae reveal paths of Pleistocene glaciers. Kluge has to throw the kids out of the lab at the end of the day. He has taught them to make rock sections for microanaysis and at least two of them were making them for fun.

America needs John Wesley’s of science. They are out there. We all know out own lists, just as Steven Kluge is on mine. These are the people at every educational level who can expand the science pipeline.

If Wesley reached new groups left out of earlier religions, efforts on scientific Wesley’s need to follow that model too. We need talent wherever we can find it. Women are now entering most science and engineering fields, but not all, in encouraging numbers. But minorities have a lot of progress to make before they are fully in the fold. Five states already have a majority of minority population; New Mexico, Alabama, Texas, Hawaii and Mississippi. California becomes a minority – majority state this year, and Illinois does next year. We need their talents, and right now it is not clear they are in the pipelines.

We all see the shortage of nurses. A closed ICU says it all. But subtle problems are easily ignored.

This room represents a partnership. It is a partnership of the student, faculty and administration and trustees of IWU, but it also represents the partnership of higher education through space and time – from Oxford in 1243, Wesley’s own college, to the last decades, from the states of America, and the provinces of Canada, to the countries of Europe and Asia. A procession initially represented the faculties of universities, but I am pleased to say that many of the delegates here are alumni, that buddy which brings strength to every campus today. And many are from the business community, leaders of industry, banking and commerce. Let me point to one man as symbolic of the whole of science, of the world community of learning. Yoshi Nakane is with us today, a graduate of Nogoya University in Japan and head of the Chrysler/Mitsubishi Diamond Star Plant in Bloomington/Normal. He is one of five Nogoya graduates in Bloomington/Normal.

Wesley saw religion without national boundaries, and so too science is an international venture in the same mode. Each country looks to science as the economic base, yet all countries must work at science as their global hope. Problems of technology transfer may plague problems of cooperation, but as Nakane – Japan knows every continent now sees the need for more science.

Our task is to work unremittingly to build the cause of science and support the scientific community for the betterment of the human constituency. And our task as liberal arts institutions is never to let science forget the humanistic and humane setting in which it must take place.

Except the Lord build a house, they labor in vain that build it. Wesley had no doubt what he was doing. He got up at 4:00 a.m. and proceeded with every assurance, building his community aimed at the good of the country. So too, like Wesley before us, we must work with determination of public purpose.

Mr. Henning, I accept your charge with humility and anticipation. I shall do my part to tend that house which is IWU – ever mindful that it is passed to us as students and faculty, even as we shall pass it changed yet strengthened to other generations, "for the wants of the country."