Page 11 - Racing To Excellence

Introductory Address · Bowie State

University

I see a very bright future ahead for Bowie Over the course of the next few months, I
State University because we are building on will be meeting with groups across the
strength—strength and excellence in our campus to discuss shared governance and
academic programs, our history, our listening – listening to your ideas and your
outstanding faculty, students, alumni and thoughts about how we can work together to
the community; but it’s going to take each achieve the mission and propel us forward.
and every one of us working as a team And I’m going to listen to how you think we
together, doing what we can to make us together can remain resilient in the face of
stronger together. And I want you to know these changing times. We have much to do
that I fully embrace shared governance for on behalf of our students, and they deserve
our future success—that all-important it. But we need to work together.
bedrock of higher education and the work
that lies ahead for us as a campus
community.

For those of you who may have read recently
Thomas Friedman’s new book, “Thank You
for Being Late.” Anyone in the audience
reading that? It’s a great read. It’s “An
Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of
Accelerations.” While not specifically
talking about shared governance, Thomas
Friedman spoke to the concept when
discussing organizations and how effective
organizations function. What he said is: “If
you want to solve a big problem, you need to
go from taking credit, to sharing credit, to
multiplying credit. The systems that all
work, they multiply credit. Multiplying credit
is just another way of making everyone feel
a part of the system,” feeling a part of that
ownership in that system. “And the
byproduct,” as he goes on to say, “is
resilience and propulsion.”

Introductory Address · Bowie State University