Looking back, toward the future

Photo: Peter Morenus

UConn President Philip E. Austin in the William Benton Museum of Art.

By the time you get this issue of UConn Traditions , the University will be more than halfway through our year-long 125th anniversary celebration.

Multiple events, including the publication of Professor Emeritus Bruce Stave's history of UConn, remind us that we are building a 21st-century institution on a strong foundation established by thousands of faculty, students, public officials and friends.

There has been a natural tendency to focus on themes that link past and present.

Many are obvious: a commitment to public service, as strong in today's information technology age as it was when agriculture dominated the state; a belief in access for academically qualified students of all backgrounds and income levels; and support for the linkage between research and teaching.

Others are less immediately apparent but no less significant: pursuit of collaborations with other major Connecticut institutions, including public agencies, major businesses, not-for-profit organizations, and K-12 education; an understanding that education takes place not just in the classroom, laboratory or library but also in less formal settings that come under the general heading of "student life"; and ongoing pursuit of just the right mix of general education with training of a more vocational orientation - including but not limited to excellent training at the graduate and professional school level.

Significant as these "commonalities" are, we should recognize that the present is not always the past writ large.

Yes, we try to hold true to basic principles, and for the most part change is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

But in a few key areas, UConn, like other great universities, has made some significant, rapid leaps into new and challenging territory.

One good example is the commitment we made in the 1990s to become a leader in research and teaching in the field of human rights. Another is our engagement in the promising but complex field of embryonic stem cell research.

A third, undertaken some time ago but expanded over the years, is our program in education of the gifted and talented.

I cite these commitments not because they are unique - there are other examples I could cite as well-but because they demonstrate with special clarity that ours is a dynamic institution that contributes to exploration of topics significant not just to Connecticut but also to our nation and world.

As we continue this celebratory year, this is something in which our faculty, our students and, I hope, our alumni can take special pride. Like other great institutions of higher education, UConn sets high aspirations, and takes occasional risks to fulfill them.

If the past is, in fact, prologue, that is an attitude that will continue to serve us well in the next century and a quarter, as it has in the 125 years just past.

125th Web site: www.uconn.edu/125