Message from the President - 2012 SPRING - Echoes - Offices & Services

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Like any first-in-class organization, we realize that we are only as good as our people. Our reputation as a school rests squarely on the shoulders of our teachers-our professors and staff-inside the classroom and out. Two things that will never change about Rose-Hulman are our focus on what is best for our students and our dedication to the profession of teaching. In this issue, you will read about some on our faculty who have been recognized recently as great teachers. To their credit and to ours, the world has taken notice of their talent and expertise. To the benefit of our students, their focused dedication is indicative of what all of our teachers bring to Rose-Hulman.
As you will read, The Princeton Review's new book, The Best 300 Professors, has highlighted six of

our professors. We dominate the list in math and engineering with three of the 32 math professors and two of the nine engineering professors profiled in the book. Congratulations to all six of these professors. This recognition highlights our long tradition of excellence in teaching.
Through the many conversations of The "Great" Debate, our 12-month-long strategic planning process, we are becoming even more convinced that it is great teaching that will further distinguish Rose-Hulman in the future. Two years ago our commencement speaker, Bob Metcalfe (the inventor of Ethernet), explained that he believes the Internet will inevitably disrupt three major industries: energy, healthcare, and education.

We are already seeing first-hand that he is right. Changes in educational technologies are indeed rapidly changing how we teach, and also how our students learn. My recent conversations with entrepreneurs in Cambridge's innovation economy revealed that when hiring new talent, they are less interested in what a candidate knows than how a candidate learns. A premium is placed on the candidate who is comfortable with complexity, flexible in problem solving, at ease with risk taking, and who displays a strong capacity to GSD-my new favorite metric-Get Stuff Done. Interestingly, we heard almost the exact same statements from our auto industry alumni during a "Great" Debate session in Detroit!
To quote our chief academic officer, Phil Cornwell, who is among Princeton Review's The Best 300 Professors, "Newton's second law isn't going to change any time soon, but some of what we teach at Rose-Hulman changes constantly to keep our curricula current." Can it be that the pace of change in our globalized, hyper-connected, high-speed information, technology-driven world is fast enough that the importance of what we teach is rivaled by the importance of how our students learn? Surely, lifelong learning is no longer an option, it is a given. We are intently following these trends, and others, and anticipating how Rose-Hulman can best meet the challenges and opportunities of the future. We must ensure a continuously relevant educational experience for our students.
Another one of our professors listed among The Best 300 Professors, Rick Stamper, has led The "Great" Debate task force investigating how we can best integrate online learning into our toolbox of instructional technologies. Many of you want Rose-Hulman to offer more opportunities to pursue your own continuous learning. We don't need to complete our strategic planning process before we respond to

this resounding need. Our current Interim Dean of Faculty, Bill Kline, has agreed to build much more robust continuing education, distance learning, and corporate partner education offerings in his new role as Dean of Innovation and Engagement.

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In the course of our "Great" Debate thus far we have met with hundreds of alumni, parents, and friends; visited noted university peers including MIT, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Princeton, and Kanazawa Institute of Technology; taken advice from start-up emerging technology companies, large-scale manufacturing companies, patent lawyers, doctors, and consulting engineers; and we tapped the passion of students and the experience of our trustees, faculty, and staff. We have focused on our values, our vision and our mission to ensure we cultivate and protect what makes our school uniquely Rose-Hulman. We have probed our challenges and our opportunities to plumb the depth of the value we can add to the education of our students. Going forward, our campus conclaves and our "Great" Debate sessions will be focused on identifying specific strategies to guarantee that a Rose-Hulman education will continue to be the very best that it can be-a continuously relevant, constantly challenging education that leads teaching and teachers to a level that can only be called ... GREAT.
Let's make it happen. Make it fun. Let's GSD!