State of the University Address 2008-2009 - page 1

Harvey Perlman, Chancellor

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Conclusion

A university is a community of individuals designed to discover, train, nourish and mentor the future talent that our society will require. Our society's future leaders, professionals, innovators, artists and entrepreneurs are among the students who currently populate our classrooms, energize the campus with their games, their activities, and their questions, and who often astound us with their growth and achievement. As I prepare to give you my impression of the state of our university, I thought it appropriate that we pause and enjoy a short example, representative of the talent of our student body. I am pleased to introduce Denis Plutalov. Denis is an award-winning pianist who is currently finishing his doctoral studies at the UNL School of Music under Dr. Mark Clinton. He holds his master's degree and artist diploma from the North Carolina School of the Arts, and his bachelor's from the Gnessins Academy of Music. He will be playing Rachmaninoff's Prelude in B flat major, opus 23 no. 2. Denis Plutalov.

Introduction

The State of the University address is the opportunity to review the past year and to focus our attention on the future. As I reflect on the past year, I am reminded of one of my student teaching evaluations which I have shared with you before: The one that read "If a doctor told me I had only an hour to live I would want to spend it in your class." The student subsequently explained that this was because an hour in my class seemed like an eternity. Frankly, that is how I think of last year - it seemed more like a decade than a year. We had our share of challenges: The transition in the athletic department and the football program, the upheaval in our Alumni Association, the changes at the Lied Center and the Sheldon Museum of Art, the debates over State Fair Park and Innovation Campus, and, no doubt, the hundreds of challenges, large and small, that we all faced as we tried to advance the missions of the university.