Fall 1996
Dear Alumni, Parents, and Friends of Johns Hopkins, Let me begin my first letter to you by saying that I am so pleased to be back at Johns Hopkins. I am thrilled to be leading a university that is so richly endowed with human resources and so charged with the potential for growth. My experiences in the first couple of months here have confirmed my initial enthusiasm and optimism about Hopkins. Coming in, I knew that we had a stellar faculty. As I become better acquainted with people all over the university, however, I realize that quality is a constant throughout the student body and staff as well as the faculty. My wife, Wendy, and I spent a lot of time with undergraduate students during the orientation for freshmen at Homewood. The thing that impressed us the most was not only how bright but also how multidimensional our students are. Among them is a young woman who, by 17, has already published several children's books. There's a young man from Puerto Rico who is a pilot and an accomplished vocalist. As I move through the divisions, I find one outstanding student after another, each bringing a unique combination of academic and extracurricular interests to our community. One of the reasons Wendy and I are excited to be living on the Homewood campus, in Nichols House, is to come in closer contact with the students and faculty. They have an energy and a vitality that are inspiring and will well serve Johns Hopkins, the nation, and the world as we move into the next century. We are not only on the brink of a new century but also, I am convinced, on the cusp of a paradigm shift that will at least match the transformation of higher education that occurred when Hopkins was founded. I am equally convinced that Hopkins is uniquely positioned to lead the way, as it did 120 years ago. What is it about Hopkins that sets us apart and allows us to take full advantage of opportunities as they arise? Let me mention the special qualities that particularly accrue to our benefit:
The "footprint" of Hopkins--its highly diverse array of loosely interconnected divisions and centers--is unlike that of any other university in the world. We have schools found in most universities--arts and sciences, medicine, engineering, nursing. Then we also have schools that are rarely found in relatively small institutions like ours, including a conservatory of music, a public health school, and a school for the study of international affairs. Our continuing studies programs for adults who study part time are unusually large and permeate all the divisions. And there is nothing exactly like the Applied Physics Laboratory in any other university.
We are highly decentralized and have an organizational structure that is essentially flat. We lack large bureaucratic accretions that can weigh down an organization. As other universities are struggling to move from a highly centralized structure that is inadequate to cope with financial stresses, we have in many ways the model that others are beginning to adopt. A corollary of decentralization is the entrepreneurial spirit found throughout Hopkins. Departments, divisions, and faculty members enjoy authority and autonomy in their own realms with respect to their mission, funding, and activities. There is freedom to innovate as well as incentive to cultivate sources of support. And our faculty do just that. Witness the high number of research proposals that are successful in the peer-reviewed process, garnering Hopkins more extramural funding from the National Institutes of Health than any other university. As small as we are, we remain the largest recipient of federal research grants and contracts. Hopkins was the model for the research university in this country, and research is pursued here with startling intensity. This holds true not only for the faculty and graduate students, as expected, but also for our undergraduates. They are offered, and most of them take advantage of, opportunities to pursue research or independent creative work under the direction of a faculty member. We have long specialized in a very labor-intensive form of education that I like to call "hand-tooled." It is the interaction between the professor and the student, in a format other than the traditional lecture, that shapes young, fertile minds and entices the student to learn how to learn-the most important educational outcome we can produce, given the rapid pace of discovery.
We educate students for the 21st century not only by encouraging them to learn how to learn, but also by providing continuing education they can return to as the need arises in their lives and careers. Hopkins has long excelled in part-time education, which is now referred to as non-traditional but is rapidly becoming a central part of the higher education enterprise. We have one of the largest part-time graduate engineering programs in the country, and continuing education is growing throughout the other divisions, too, as are tuition revenues, which have nearly tripled in the past decade.
Education and research are becoming increasingly international, an arena in which Hopkins has been a player for most of its history. Our faculty work cooperatively with scholars and scientists around the globe and have far-flung research outposts. Hopkins has centers for education and research in Bologna, Florence, and Nanjing. I recently returned from celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, the only American university center in the People's Republic of China with the only open-stack library in that country.
At the same time we are expanding globally, Hopkins needs to build a better sense of community, both within the campuses and in our local neighborhoods. We have a uniquely symbiotic relationship with Baltimore, and we are working with the neighborhoods surrounding the Homewood and East Baltimore campuses in many ways to make them safe and vibrant.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, it was Hopkins that pioneered the notion that universities are more than just repositories and transmitters of accumulated wisdom. Hopkins was the first true research university in the United States--the first to emphasize the discovery of new knowledge through experimentation and research and the training of students in that discovery process. Our historical core missions of intensive research and individualized education will continue. Increasingly, however, we have also reached out beyond that core mission to embrace new constituencies and new goals. Initiatives in continuing education and globalization, as well as expanded and innovative uses of information technology, will accelerate. We can and will be responsive to diverse opportunities by leveraging the expertise of our talented faculty, staff, and students. We will also encourage the exploration of new linkages-between departments and divisions, between Hopkins and other universities, and also with the corporate sector. The walls that have traditionally existed between disciplines are impediments to success and must be removed through collaboration, without removing the advantages that disciplinary focus provides. There is a unique opportunity to redefine the research university for the 21st Century, and I believe that Hopkins will lead in the development of this new vision. Before concluding, let me comment on two other matters which have been much on my mind since coming back to the university. One was the appointment of my key associate, the university provost and vice president for academic affairs. Last January my predecessor, interim president Dan Nathans, asked the dean of Arts and Sciences, Steve Knapp, to serve temporarily as provost when the position became vacant. He also asked him to continue to lead the faculty of Arts and Sciences. After working with Steve for a few weeks, and after many conversations with faculty and senior administrators across Hopkins, it became clear that he was an ideal candidate to take on the position permanently. The trustees wholeheartedly agreed with my assessment, and just recently we announced his appointment. Steve is already leading the search to identify his successor in Arts and Sciences. I am looking forward to a long and productive working relationship with him. The other matter, of critical importance to me and to Hopkins, concerns Johns Hopkins Medicine, our organizational device for unifying the faculty and staff of the School of Medicine and The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System. In response to a request from both boards of trustees, I have agreed to serve as interim CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine until a permanent person is in place. Making Johns Hopkins Medicine a reality and the challenge of balancing our mission of teaching, research and patient care against the need to compete in the marketplace are the most pressing issues we face today. We are moving through the most rapid changes in the history of the health care industry, and when everything has shaken out, we want to be in a position to be the pacesetter we always have been in American medicine. We are hard at work forging strategic partnerships, reviewing our clinical centers, making changes to consolidate, streamline, and use resources more effectively. And we are institutionalizing mechanisms for ongoing strategic planning so that we can set priorities and be selective about what we aspire to do. This is a huge order. Hopkins Medicine can no longer do "business as usual." But I can assure you that Hopkins Medicine will continue to be recognized for "excellence as usual." Finally, I would like to thank my immediate predecessors, Bill Richardson and Dan Nathans, for their extraordinary efforts in strengthening Johns Hopkins. The university is in even better shape than it was six years ago, and we are all the beneficiaries of their accomplishments. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. And thank you for your continuing interest in and support of this great university. The holidays are just ahead. I hope that they are filled with good health and happiness for each of you and your families, and that the new year will bring more of the same. I look forward to corresponding with you again next year. In the meantime, if you have any reason to contact me, I hope you will do so. With warmest regards, William R. Brody
| 
