[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 58 (Wednesday, May 2, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E697-E698]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      REMARKS DELIVERED BY THE REV. GEORGE F. LUNDY, S.J., ON HIS 
        INAUGURATION AS PRESIDENT OF WHEELING JESUIT UNIVERSITY

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. ALAN B. MOLLOHAN

                            of west virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Wednesday, May 2, 2001

  Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I recently joined the Wheeling Jesuit 
University community in celebrating the inauguration of the Rev. George 
F. Lundy, S.J., as the university's sixth president. It was a pleasure 
to help welcome this thoughtful, highly regarded educator to the 
Wheeling Jesuit campus.
  Father Lundy's leadership of Wheeling Jesuit University follows 
successful assignments at the University of Detroit Mercy, where he was 
academic vice president and provost, and at Loyola University of New 
Orleans, where his tenure included service as acting president.
  He brings to the Wheeling campus the benefits of his experience at 
these institutions, as well as personal qualities which include a high 
level of enthusiasm, a commitment to the enrichment of young minds, and 
a passion for service to the greater community.
  These qualities were evidenced in the remarks that Father Lundy 
delivered March 16 at his inauguration ceremony. His words were a 
source of insight into the challenges that face modern educational 
institutions, and the commitments that they must meet if they are to 
succeed in today's world.
  Therefore, I submit Father Lundy's inaugural speech to be included in 
the Congressional Record.
  The remarks follow:

       First, I'd like to thank all of you for taking so much time 
     out of your busy schedules to join this great celebration 
     today. Certainly, it's a personal celebration for me, but 
     even more so, I think it's a celebration for the entire 
     Wheeling Jesuit University community, the city of Wheeling, 
     and the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.
       It's very humbling, too, to think of all of the hoopla that 
     is paid when we inaugurate new presidents. I was reminded of 
     Jimmy Carter's idea when he was running for President, that 
     the teachers ought to get more pay than the principals 
     because they do the work that is so much more important, and 
     I certainly feel that way about our fine faculty here at WJU. 
     So, this is for all of us.
       It is a time when we collectively renew a number of 
     commitments that are very much a part of the fabric and the 
     genius of our history. First, we renew our commitment to all 
     of our students, to provide you with a great education in the 
     Catholic and Jesuit traditions. We challenge you to read real 
     books, to your own deep understanding of our world, its past 
     and its present, so that you can help shape it in the future. 
     We challenge you to deepen your values of justice and 
     compassion, your abilities to choose wisely, and your skills 
     to communicate with clarity and passion.
       We will continue to care deeply for each of you as a unique 
     human being and encourage you to see in every person a child 
     of God with dignity, hopes and dreams. We pray that you will 
     develop a passion for what we Jesuits call a preferential 
     option for the poor, so that you will graduate with a 
     commitment and the skills to help the least advantaged among 
     us realize their hopes and dreams.
       And, of course, it is not enough to renew that commitment 
     without sharing a few things with our visitors that you are 
     already doing. We recognize the students who went down to 
     Moorhead, Kentucky, over break to build houses, and the 
     students who live in the Mother Jones house downtown and work 
     extensively in the community, student teaching in the social 
     services centers, the soup kitchen and much more. Just a few 
     examples of the ways that our students are engaged, and we 
     believe that this kind of integral education is the kind that 
     represents our best hope for future leadership.
       Every time I talk about the high idealism of Jesuit 
     education, I am reminded of what one former Provincial said 
     at the big Jesuit higher ed gathering at Georgetown a number 
     of years ago. He said, ``you know, all this lofty stuff about 
     high idealism is great, but what you have to remember is that 
     the reason Jesuit schools got started was because there was 
     this tremendous need for somebody to take care of unruly 
     boys.''

[[Page E698]]

       Of course, now it's boys and girls and for the most part, 
     not unruly at all, but very impressive young men and women.
       Today, we are proud also to renew our commitment to the 
     Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and the Diocese of 
     Steubenville, Ohio, which includes all of the area just to 
     our west. We are committed to partner with Catholic 
     communities all across the region to help as creatively and 
     effectively as we can, in the ministries of Catholic 
     education and leadership development. I am so proud of the 
     many, many ways that so many of our faculty and staff are 
     already involved
       Bishop Schmitt, just last year, completed a very successful 
     synod planning process that focused the goals of the Diocese 
     very clearly, and we're very proud to be involved with the 
     follow-up to that process to help make sure that this renewed 
     vision actually happens.
       Today, we also renew our commitment to our local and 
     regional communities, to be a good institutional citizen and 
     to participate in the activities of our area. I am 
     continually amazed and edified when I hear from so many of 
     you how appreciative you are of the many ways that the 
     members of this Wheeling Jesuit community participate in 
     service to your organizations in so many different ways. We 
     are proud to join with Mayor Sparachane in contributing to 
     the city's economic development efforts. We are proud to join 
     hands with our fellow religious congregations of every 
     denomination and tradition in the Hopeful City coalition. We 
     are equally proud to be involved in the community renewal 
     efforts of the Chamber of Commerce, the Ohio Valley 
     Industrial and Business Development Corporation, and through 
     our membership in Project Best, which assures that collective 
     bargaining is involved in all of our construction projects.
       Today we renew our commitment to our public partners at the 
     federal, state and local levels. New technologies reflect 
     much human creativity, and we have the opportunity to help 
     translate that creativity into new visions for a better life 
     and a stronger economy in our post-industrial, increasingly 
     knowledge-based economy. In the coming months and years we 
     will translate these opportunities into new economic vitality 
     here in our own region.
       We shall also do our part to continue improving education 
     by developing new curricula for students in our K-12 schools, 
     and by helping teachers use technology more effectively to 
     help students learn. Congressman Mollohan made the remark 
     that there are probably no other universities this size in 
     America that have been entrusted with so much responsibility 
     in terms of fulfilling the public purpose.
       I get questions about what goes on in those shiny glass and 
     brick buildings on campus. I think it is worth it for all of 
     us to reflect on a couple of the big points regarding those 
     federal projects. The story goes that when Lyndon Johnson was 
     president, he turned one day to an aide and said, ``Son, all 
     of this money that we are spending on research, how much of 
     it ever benefits the taxpayers in economic development?'' And 
     the answer was, ``Well, none of it Mr. President because all 
     federally funded research is in the public domain. It can't 
     be privately owned and therefore it doesn't have any 
     commercial value.''
       And so, several successive presidents worked on that 
     problem and in 1980, laws were passed that enable the 
     benefits of federally funded research to go back to the 
     taxpayers in the form of commercially developable 
     intellectual property. So this research can be copyrighted, 
     it can be patented, it can be, therefore, used in business 
     development.
       And that is the main thing that happens in that big 
     building you see that says ``Robert C. Byrd National 
     Technology Transfer Center.'' That is their big job--getting 
     that research back out to people that can use it for business 
     development.
       The other center that we have, the Erma Ora Byrd Center for 
     Educational Technologies, produces educational software for 
     use in teaching mostly math and science to students in the K-
     12 schools. They have several award-winning products and they 
     also do on-campus training of teachers in the whole area of 
     what they call problem-based learning.
       Problem-based learning places learners in a specific 
     situation and requires them to draw on everything they know 
     from many disciplines to solve a problem. The CET also works 
     closely with our Challenger Learning Center. You may have 
     noticed that we always have a few buses on this campus. We 
     have school groups coming in to fly the Challenger missions. 
     Those are space mission simulations. Some of the kids are in 
     the control room and some of the kids are up in the cockpit 
     of the rocket and they encounter certain kinds of problems 
     with the flights and they analyze certain kinds of satellite 
     data about what they see on the Earth.
       There again, in that sort of simulated environment, they 
     have to solve a whole bunch of problems that draw upon their 
     knowledge of math and science and other disciplines. It's a 
     great way of learning and our studies have shown that the 
     learning outcomes are just fabulous if you can teach in these 
     kinds of simulated environments. So, we are moving that whole 
     product into distance delivery. They are going to do 180 of 
     those this year over the Internet and we believe that we are 
     refining something that could be a very forceful new national 
     model in improving education for our younger students.
       So as I have told Senator Byrd and Congressman Mollohan on 
     previous occasions, the opportunities represented by these 
     technology centers for economic development and the 
     improvement of American education, were part of the reason 
     that I was grateful to accept the Board's invitation to come 
     here as your new president. I have thoroughly enjoyed the 
     faculty, the staff, and the students. This is a very 
     friendly, a very caring, community and I am proud to be among 
     your number.

     

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