Inauguration Speech

Letter from Governor

Week of Events

Hall of Presidents

About Our 14th President

Presidential Honors Scholarship

Historical Indications, Present Explorations,

Future Transformations

Beverley Byers-Pevitts, Ph.D.

President, Park University

April 12, 2002

Thank you for your presence at this Celebration in the life of Park University.

Recognition Of Dignitaries

Mr. Hershey, Members of the Board of Trustees,

Alumni, Friends and Family, Faculty and Staff,

Colleagues, Delegates from Colleges and Universities,

Delegates from Learned Societies, and other

Higher Education Boards; Distinguished Guests;

and, especially, all Students of Park University.

Introduction

            I am deeply honored to have been selected to be the President of Park University. I wish to recognize Mr. Roger Hershey and the Board of Trustees for their leadership and devotion to the University, and their dedication to fulfilling their roles as trustees. I salute them and the leadership of the past Chair, Dr. F. Marion Bishop.  Bob and I are very happy to be here and have been so graciously welcomed to this community and to the Park University family.

Park University is an innovative and well-established institution of higher learning with a rich history and diverse population of student learners. The future of Park University is centered on all our student learners, wherever they are located.  To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, “We are made wise not only (sic) by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.” Our present and future responsibility is to our learners on all of our campuses: in Downtown Kansas City, in Independence, in Parkville, which is the University’s birthplace, and for our civilian and active duty military learners from California to Texas to North Carolina; from Spokane, Washington to Washington DC; from those who learn while on Naval ships around the world; to the Air Force pilots and other students who study at nearby Whiteman Air Force Base, from where the B-2 bomber flies on 44-hour plus missions; and, to those learners who actively participate in classes Online.  Serving our students is the essence of who we are as an educational organization. Our complexity is rooted in our history.

Historical Indications

As the Fourteenth President of Park University, I have the great benefit of having a strong, expansive foundation already forged for the University by the previous thirteen presidents. Please allow me to recognize the contributions of the two immediate past presidents.  Dr. Harold L. Condit (1975-1987) instituted the Graduate School for Public Affairs, the Weekend College and the nursing program.  Under his leadership, limestone mining progressed and plans were formulated for the academic and library facilities underground, and for the commercial underground development.  Dr. Donald Breckon (1987-2001) supervised the completion of the underground Mabee Learning Center and McAfee Library; continued commercial underground development, and strengthened the athletic program.  Construction during his administration included a major laboratory addition to the Science Hall and the Breckon Sports Center.  I am pleased to follow the entrepreneurial spirit of all my predecessors, who each made distinct contributions.

Our co-Founders, Dr. John A. McAfee and Col. George S. Park-- together blended the spirits of Academic Excellence, faith and entrepreneurship, both trademarks of this learning institution.   Committed to faith and work with education, Col. Park and Rev. McAfee met in March of 1875 and agreed to found the school.  President McAfee and the first students departed Kansas by train for Parkville on today’s date, April 12, -- 127 years ago.  As established by our founders, the University has a deep and continuing commitment to access and to building a society in which economic status does not determine educational opportunity.

 These founders would find pleasure in T.S. Eliot’s lines from the Four Quartets:

                                                            V

                        What we call the beginning is often the end

                        And to make an end is to make a beginning.

                        The end is where we start from...

                         We shall not cease from exploration

                        And the end of all our exploring

                        Will be to arrive where we started

                        And know the place for the first time.

Park University was established to train students for cultural leadership to advance the Westward movement.  Park continues today to embody the same pioneering spirit as we reach students through multiple learning methodologies all around the world globe.

We have a longstanding and rich heritage with the military.  Our involvement with educating those in military service dates from 1898 with the students who trained for the Spanish American War  while continuing their education.  In 1918, the Park Student Army Training Corps demonstrated the loyalty of “Old Park to Old Glory” during World War I.  During World War II, the Parkville campus was a major training campus for the US Navy, V-12 Unit.  In 1962, we participated in the U.S. Army’s “Boot Strap” program for officer training.  We served in that capacity until 1972 when we became an education provider at military installations across the country.

Our historical past has molded us well for the present and points us to serve our global students. Park’s rich history and tradition direct us to our unity, as one University, which serves multiple populations.  We are building bridges of understanding for our students from our historical past to the current challenges of contemporary society.  

            The history of who we were in the past directs our vision of who we can be in the future. Scripture tells us, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)

The urge to communicate and to share our dreams is the impetus that drives theatre and that which motivates me as a leader in higher education. I am committed to the values and the vitality of the profound historical implications that press forward for exploration to inspire future transformation for this great University.

Present Explorations

It was almost 200 hundred years ago Lewis and Clark journeyed up the Missouri River on a mission of exploration.  The same spirit of exploration continues today on the bend of the Missouri River here at Park.  We are in the process of exploring, not our past, but our future as an institution of higher learning. Reports from the Institutional Assessment/Review and the President’s Transition Team provide us with important information on perceptions of Park University from all of our stakeholders and constituencies, which will help shape our future.   The results of in-depth conversations with alumni, friends, donors, staff, faculty, trustees, and students has led to our Planning and Visioning process, which will develop a guide for action for the University until 2012. 

The only solution for our complex and changing world is clarity.  Margaret Wheatley says that, “We need to be able to trust that something as simple as a clear core of values and vision, kept in motion through dialogue, can lead to order.

In our present explorations, we seek both the philosophical and historical antecedents that led to the events of this past September 11^th.  At the same time, we know our learners need guidance from a thoughtful institution in a year that has brought unprecedented grief and change to a globe where nothing will ever be the same, where everything is extraordinary.  It is not a different time; it is a changed and changing world.   We were naïve.

What is Park’s role in this changed and changing world that is experiencing a clash of cultures and civilizations?  How do we fulfill that role in this most complex world in which the United States is just a part? Former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen said, “We are the most vulnerable society in the world,” because we are the most open. 

What do we do?  What will bring peace and save humanity?  This university will remain open to the world in a country where we declare our freedom.  How much understanding do we bring to a changed world for all of our students? The question is not how do we define terrorism, but rather, it is how do we bring about peace?  It is the struggle for human rights; the struggle to understand harm to a changing globe.  We must convene the conversations, as a University and as a nation; we must build coalitions and we must prepare learners of all ages through knowledge for engagement in the peace process of global events.  We must educate students, and by extension, society, to be multicultural, multinational, and multilingual.   It is to the Arts & Sciences to which we return to make sense of war, of terrorism, and of human bombs.

The philosopher, Seneca, wrote: “While we are among human beings, let us cultivate our humanity.” World citizenship requires thinking of ourselves as human beings within a global society.  To do this we must communicate with people of cultures different from our own.  Rosabeth Moss Kanter says we must enter a global world, a world of cultural diversity and increasing globalization to solve these problems. To find solutions, we must examine issues of global culture, connected with our agriculture, our ecology, our human rights, our faith and our economics.  Issues of international business give way to an examination of effective solutions for humanity.

It is our human and civil responsibility as a University to understand and support learners in their quest for a global education.  From space as astronauts look down upon the earth, they do not see separate nations, but one world—a world that shares the same air and water as well as other resources. Globalization means new paradigms of cooperation for international growth and understanding.  It is the University, educators and our students who are the key to global understanding. Park University’s commitment is to the student learner,—faith and work—Fides ET Labor.

Universities in this country bear the responsibility for cultural engagement.  Sending students abroad for study is one way.  But enabling international students to study here also empowers discussion and dialogue.  We must get closer and closer to one another in order to convene the conversation.  Please remember that Margaret Mead said, “I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples, faraway peoples, so that Americans might better understand themselves.”

            About a month after our national tragedy of September 11, Park University proudly received the Committee on Military Education and Training’s International Award for Excellence in Military Education. 

            I am pleased to announce that Park University has established the Homefront Military Spouse Scholarship to provide tuition assistance for spouses, both male and female, of our military students.  This scholarship is in response to, and in memory of those, who died on September 11 and in honor of our active duty military. 

        The University is also providing, with our partner V-Campus, the “Homefront Project,” free Internet short-course modules to assist our military families with deployment issues.  Since September, the University has conducted a symposium on Biological Hazards:  The Theoretical to the Practical for students and the community and co-hosted the Community Awareness Summit on Terrorism with Missouri Congressman Sam Graves.  We have the freedom to seek, to learn, to understand, that which makes a difference in our lives. We shall not cease from that exploration.

I am pleased to announce today that because of our successful history in quality delivery of Online programs, Park University has received the authority from our accrediting body, to deliver Online Masters programs in the areas in which we offer undergraduate degrees.

Park University Enterprises, Incorporated, an affiliate of Park University, recently acquired Fred Pryor Seminarsä, Career Trackä, and Evelyn Woods Reading Dynamicsä.  This acquisition further fulfills our mission to provide lifelong learning to adult learners.

Future Transformations

We, at Park University, in the words of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, ”…look to the future, not just to be a part of it, but to shape it.” We will remain one University—a community of scholars and learners concerned for others.  We will participate in Community and Global Partnerships. We will actively engage in Educational Leadership, joining in partnership with Community and Business Leadership.  We will deepen our engagement in World-class Leadership.  As MacArthur genius grantee and artist Gomez-Pena says, “We are falling toward a borderless society.”

Dream with me of new realities, new capabilities, and new global horizons for all our learners.  We will maximize our creative, our educational, our spiritual, and our entrepreneurial potential.  Imagine a Center for Global Culture, Economics, and Understanding.  We will prepare all of our learners for a global marketplace, for cultural awareness with the ability to lead, to communicate and to conduct business.  Our learners will participate in International Study Programs and Internships. We will increase our partnerships with Global agencies and corporations.  Our students will bring about a new culture of peace through their interaction.

Envision a Center for Technology and Student Services that is a virtual and physical space for all learners of Park University.   Our undergraduate and graduate enrollments in Online learning and at our physical campuses will increase. We will continue to build Education programs for Early Childhood and Secondary students, and in graduate administrative and public affairs programs emphasizing the preparation for leaders and teachers within the Urban Core. 

We will seek partnerships with federal and state agencies to benefit learners, kindergarten through college, to explore and invigorate the rich heritage of the Natural Sciences at Park University.  In fact, we may even create a simulated moon base in the Park University Commercial Underground, to replicate the living environment on the moon, which will be underground. There, students can catch a glimpse of their future.

To accomplish all this, we need your investment. All of us here today have the power to change the world by how we invest our resources and ourselves.  There is no greater investment than knowledge through education.  Please assist us in investing in all of our futures.

Conclusion

You have my promise that Park University will continue to serve all of our learners wherever they are, as they continue to serve this country—and through their call to civil and military duty.

            We are Park University in Parkville; we are the University of the Northland; we are Park University in campuses around the country.  We are an innovative liberal arts residential college within the University.  We are Online offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs; we are offering liberal learning, which prepares individuals for lifelong learning.  We have not invented the phrase “lifelong learning,”--we have perfected it.

My message to our student learners lies in these words of unity from the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and novelist, William Saroyan, in his preface to The Time of Your Life.

“Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. …In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

I am deeply honored to be President of this innovative, complex, and diverse institution named Park University. I will do all that I can to help Park University reach for the stars, and in so doing, always touch the future.  Please join me in our dreams as we continue our exploration and entrepreneurial transformations serving learners through higher education.

Thank you.

Founders Day Inaugural Gala

Inaugural Gala Highlights

History of Park

Committee Members

History of Founders Day

Maps