Supporting our Ability to Educate, Serve, and Discover
To Faculty and Staff:
As we wrap up the academic year, I am taking this opportunity to reach out and thank
you once again for a truly outstanding welcome. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you, learning more and more about FSC, becoming part of the community, and garnering
an even greater appreciation of what a special gem we have here.
At the same time, there are new headwinds facing us as educators, that I feel compelled
to address with all of you. There are almost daily "orders" emanating from Washington that target higher education’s
ability to pursue research and creative activities. While we have yet to see how the
new approaches to fund scholarship and education through federal agencies play out,
there is little doubt that our potential funding stream for research and student support
programs will be impacted. These “orders” threaten the most vulnerable and will be detrimental to many initiatives
we have become accustomed to, such as exploring new and clean energy sources, combatting
climate change, preserving a healthy environment, and efforts to ensure equity.
That is why I added my name to those of now over 600 signatures of university presidents
on put forward by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).  This
statement seeks a unified call for higher education to challenge "unprecedented government
overreach and political interference" in various corridors of higher education. How
we teach, recruit, conduct scholarship and research are the domain of expertise that
resides in higher education. Interference and major fiscal cuts to our national research
programs threaten to diminish our international leadership in an array of disciplines.
Coercive approaches to control the basics of higher education and college life are
not only inappropriate but assuredly will place limits on student success. 
At the end of the day this is about our students, our abilities to create and explore,
and our primary mandate to educate. While troubling, this all translates into the
need for ongoing, albeit different, efforts to pursue our work and support our students
in spite of new challenges. I encourage all of you who plan to generate proposals
for national funding competitions to monitor the funding streams from relevant agencies
and, where necessary, consider other paths of support from the state, regional, and corporate entities. Our
Office of Sponsored Programs Administration (OSPA) stands ready to help.
We will continue to monitor and speak out about the damage being done. This is not
a debate of political ideologies; this is a moment in time when we decide if our country
will continue to lead in a vast array of disciplines, and to grow and promote student
participation in our scholarship and creative activities, something that has historically
kept us as a model for the rest of the world.
These are complex times where we are together facing unprecedented challenges. It
is important that we reach out for clarity and assistance as needed, and that our
off-campus representatives hear our voices. Let’s continue to work together to do
what we do best and what we do on behalf of our students—educate, serve, and discover.
Robert S. Prezant, PhD
President
Professor of Biology
