We come together today to celebrate the beginning of TCU’s 132nd year and the vibrant academic life that is at the center of our mission. Today, we also pause to recognize TCU’s founders, Addison and Randolph Clark, with our first annual Founders Celebration. Our university grew from the vision of these two brothers in the tumultuous period after the Civil War.

This was a time driven by change. A time as unpredictable as our own. A time when horned frogs still thrived on the southwestern frontier. With a bold idea for bringing education and culture to that rugged place, the Clarks defied the accepted custom and established Add-Ran Male & Female College. Their humble school, which opened with 13 students on Sept. 1, 1873, was a radical experiment, a rarity in the nation in its time. For Add-Ran Male & Female College was among the first to teach young men and young women co-educationally.

The purpose of the college was the “support and promotion of literary and scientific education.” Its departments included ancient languages, English language, mathematics, physical science, mental and moral science (such as philosophy), and history. What we would today call the liberal arts and sciences. The Clarks described their building as “sufficiently capacious to accommodate 500 students.” As I said, Addison and Randolph Clark had vision. (Though when the school moved to Waco in 1878, the enrollment numbered only 201.)

Last week, I visited Thorp Spring, the site of Add-Ran Male & Female College. All that is left of the original stone buildings is two weathered columns. Nearby is the cemetery where Addison Clark and his father, Joseph Clark, are buried. While a coeducational institution was a rarity in the late 1800s, small colleges in small Texas communities were not. In fact, there were scores of such colleges. As I stood at Thorp Spring — on TCU’s literal and figurative foundation — I could not help but wonder why destiny has been so kind to this institution. What has brought tiny Add-Ran College to the billion-dollar enterprise that it is today? Why — when so many other small colleges faltered — did TCU flourish? How did it become a nationally known university that draws more than 8,000 students each year from across the country and from across the globe?

I think there are three reasons: First, TCU’s willingness to fill the unique needs of the time. Second, TCU’s continued commitment to values and traditions reaching back to its liberal arts roots. And, finally, a clear vision for the future, along with the tenacity to make that vision a reality. So much has changed during the 131 years since TCU’s founding. But I firmly believe that our present success and our potential for future success are to be found in that same formula.

Add-Ran College filled a vital need in frontier Texas: to educate young men and women to, I quote, “secure the highest intellectual culture together with the greatest moral purity.” Today TCU is filling an equally vital mission: to educate individuals to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens in the global community. TCU is responding to the needs of our time and place with programs that can truly make a difference to our society and also prepare our students for professional achievement. Programs such as entrepreneurship, math-science education, and nurse anesthesia. With KinderFrogs School for children with Down syndrome. With an online master’s degree to educate nurses in rural communities. With the Institute of Environmental Studies — launched just this fall — to educate stewards of our environment. And we will continue to look for unique solutions to current needs.

TCU also has retained and nourished its founding liberal arts orientation. That orientation has evolved through the years to become today’s “TCU Experience.” Though the University has incorporated the intellectual rigor and research orientation of larger institutions, it also has preserved those all-important characteristics of a small liberal arts college. TCU is grounded in its heritage and an abiding sense of values. We still offer many of the subjects taught at Add-Ran College (a name that lives on today in our college of humanities and social sciences). We still value instructional excellence, and this morning will recognize one of our own with the Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. We celebrate the close mentoring relationships between professors and students. In fact, we consider the teacher-scholar model as a vital element of the foundation upon which this University rests.

Keeping what I call “the TCU Promise” is vital. That means our students learn in a challenging, yet friendly academic community where they have the opportunity to build upon on their strengths. There is no place for academic Darwinism here, and when we admit a student, we commit to doing all we can to assure that the student will graduate. Conversely, the student shares a part in the fulfillment of the “the TCU Promise.” Ours is a learning community dedicated to ethical leadership and individual spiritual freedom, reaching back to our roots in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). We recognize that everyone in the TCU community is essential to the good of the institution, and for our students to have an optimal experience, our faculty and staff must as well. To this mix, we have added in recent years an overall global perspective.

This fall’s Politics and Principles Theme Semester reflects these traditions and values. Centered on the presidential election and designed to promote responsible citizenship and ethical leadership, the theme semester will touch every member of the TCU community. We will approach this vital topic in breadth though lectures by such luminaries as political advisers Mary Matalin and James Carville and best-selling author and historian Thomas Cahill … and in depth through special classes and symposia. Then beginning next summer, the liberal arts focus will be further intensified when our new core curriculum goes into effect for incoming freshmen. This new core will be unique to TCU, in that it incorporates elements of our own heritage and values.

For all that we are — in the words of Chancellor Emeritus Bill Tucker — this university “stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before.” TCU has made extraordinary progress. But we know that there is much more to do.

Now it is our turn to shape a new vision for the next generation of students, and to have the tenacity to turn that vision into reality. Consequently, last year we launched Vision in Action (or VIA), a strategic planning effort co-chaired by Provost Nowell Donovan and Dr. Leo Munson. Through this participatory planning process, we are creating a new vision for the University’s future.

Last year was a year of discovery. We examined our progress in realizing the recommendations of The Commission on the Future of TCU, an earlier planning process that concluded its work in 2000. Provost Donovan prepared a report card on this progress. He determined that we have achieved, or have made significant progress toward achieving, approximately 70 percent of the commission’s 386 recommendations — a remarkable accomplishment indeed!

Then we examined the overall higher education environment and the challenges expected in the coming years. We carefully considered the University’s economic and other resources. Led by campus committees, we developed strategies for specific issues that are sure to impact TCU’s future, from our academic programs to our technology infrastructure. I appreciate the efforts of these committees and of all the members of the TCU community who participated in Vision in Action through a series of town hall meetings last spring.

This year will be a year of discussion as we set our agenda for the next decade and beyond, as we further define and refine the “TCU Promise.” At a conference on Saturday, some 250 Trustee, faculty, staff, student, community and alumni representatives will further examine key strategic issues. In addition, our town hall meetings proved so popular last spring that we will continue the dialogue again this semester.

We now are working on a master plan that will shape the physical campus for the coming years. And, once again, I am counting on your help and your participation. You can take part in an online discussion of campus planning issues or provide your views by responding to a campus questionnaire. Just go to the TCU home page and click on “Campus Master Plan.”

Later this semester, we will take our discussions and planning to the school and college level. Then we expect to complete our final plan of action during the spring semester.

In the early years of Add-Ran Male & Female College, Joseph Clark wrote in a letter to his son, Addison: “I shall not slack my labors for this school. It is the aim and object of my life to build up this college, and I shall not abate my energy or labor.”

I commit to you… We should do no less.