Annual Addresses

Annual Addresses

Each September, President McCormick presented an Annual Address to the University Community at a meeting of the Rutgers University Senate at the Rutgers Student Center on College Avenue in New Brunswick. He often used the occasion to introduce new initiatives to advance Rutgers’ mission of teaching, research, and service. His speeches also outlined plans to address budgetary challenges, explained the merits of major changes such as the reorganization of undergraduate education, advocated for legislative actions to benefit Rutgers, and highlighted achievements of Rutgers students, faculty, and staff. These addresses set the agenda for the academic year ahead.

2011 Annual Address: A Great State Must Have a Great State University
2011 Annual Address"Together, we can create those characteristics of a great university—discoveries and knowledge that advance humankind; global influence and impact; and the resources to achieve them. If we do these things, we won’t have to worry about the support of New Jersey, because it will be there."

2010 Annual Address: Our Rutgers, Our Future
"Everything we undertake, every goal we set must be academically sound and be consistent with the missions of Rutgers and with its highest standards. But in the new era we are entering, our goals simply cannot neglect or ignore efficiency, strategy, and revenue."

Our Rutgers Our Future

2009 Annual Address: A Reprieve, Not a Pass
"To achieve our goals, we must be smarter and tougher and harder working than ever. In particular, we need more of what Rutgers has accomplished already: greater efficiencies, shared sacrifice, good management, hard choices, and above all, new revenues."

2008 Annual Address: A Place Called Rutgers
2008 Annual Address"Becoming truly great—gaining the world-class distinction in multiple areas of teaching and research that our students and the people of New Jersey deserve—requires us to venture beyond the funding streams we have relied on in the past. We can and must control our own destiny by undertaking a comprehensive, multipronged effort to expand Rutgers' resources."

2007 Annual Address: Jersey Roots, Global Reach
"Our faculty members across multiple disciplines are seeking solutions to some of the most significant challenges of a global society. It is exciting work, captured in the simple phrase you will see again and again in Rutgers communications: Jersey Roots, Global Reach."

Jersey Roots, Global Reach

2006 Annual Address: Dealing with Adversity, Declaring Our Ambitions
"When money is tight, it is natural for people to hunker down and maintain the status quo. But I don’t subscribe to that way of thinking, and I don’t think you do either. While we have to deal with the challenges at hand, this is also a time for big dreams and a time to come together as a university on behalf of our most ambitious goals for Rutgers."

2005 Annual Address: A Year of Transformation
2005 Annual Address"This is a momentous time for Rutgers. Not in a quarter century have we had such a far-reaching discussion of the future of our university. The hard issues are all on the table… How can we best support our first mission of undergraduate education, in an age when other missions seem to bring more academic prestige?"

2004 Annual Address: A Special Class of Academic Opportunities
2004 Annual Address"So what is the vision here? It’s about breathtaking research and teaching in our core academic fields, about boundary crossings between disciplines and between the university and society, about our students’ engagement in research and other forms of experiential learning, and about the conscious propulsion of our discoveries and our learning to wherever they can be useful, starting right here in New Jersey."

2003 Annual Address: Turning Challenges into Opportunities
"I do not know when, or even if, we will go ahead with the ambitious plan to restructure the system of public research universities in New Jersey. But either way, the process of thinking about the university’s mission, organization, and relation to sister institutions already has opened exciting opportunities. It has encouraged creative thinking about where we are and where we want to be."

Inaugural Address 2003: Affirming Our Values—Serving Our State
Inaugural Address 2003"Rutgers will be your state university. We will work with you to meet the needs of the people of our state, to provide an outstanding education to our students, to discover and apply new knowledge, and to serve.  And we, in turn, will expect you to help us and to support us with adequate funding. Rutgers and New Jersey are not going anywhere, except with each other. Neither of us can let the other down."