1923 Dinner

1923 Dinner Speech, Lamar University
President Jaime Taylor
April 27, 2024

Thank you very much, Juan. It's a huge honor for me to be here tonight celebrating with all of you Lamar University’s first 100 years. And I want to emphasize we're not just here celebrating a milestone; we are celebrating a legacy of leadership. Unlike the majority of the over 500 regional universities around the country, Lamar University was not founded as a normal school or a teacher's college. It was established to cultivate professionals for rapidly growing Southeast Texas. We can all look back and say the institution has absolutely achieved that goal. Our graduates are woven into the fabric of our community, serving as pillars of excellence and innovation. Since arriving here three years ago, I have met many individuals in Southeast Texas. And it's striking to me that so many judges, successful attorneys, and esteemed medical professionals proudly hail from Lamar University. Some of the nation's best attorneys are right here in Beaumont, and they received their undergraduate degrees from Lamar University. Our graduates in the field of education are employed in 252 out of 254 counties in Texas. Recently one alum was named the Texas Parent Teachers Association Superintendent of the Year, Another became chancellor at Lone Star College, one of the largest community colleges in the nation with 85,000 students. Lamar University has graduated renowned musicians, artists, actors, and athletes. The breadth of talent emerging from our institution is awe inspiring. I'd like to take a few minutes to read just a small sampling of our alumni over the last century. I won't be using names. My goal is simply to help all of you get a sense of just how remarkable Lamar University graduates are, and the impact they've had over the last 100 years.

We have one alum who designed the Panama Canal's larger expanded locks, the largest project since the canal opened in 1914. He was then named the CEO of the Canal Authority and oversaw the construction of the locks, and implemented the lock system design.
Another alumnus was recently named President and CEO of BP Energy, one of the largest energy companies in the world with over 70,000 employees—a graduate of Lamar University.
The former CEO and Chairman of the Board of the Country Music Association graduated from Lamar University.
In 1975, a Lamar University alum created a Special Education model in Texas that has become the model for special education across the country. She has served for decades as a Compliance Consultant for the Dependents Schools for the Department of Defense.
Another Lamar University alum became the President of the International Association of Defense Counsel—and I want to emphasize that—it’s the International Association of Defense Counsel, which was established in 1920. Since then, only two Texas lawyers have served as president of this organization, both of whom graduated from Lamar University.
A Lamar University alum became the youngest African American female executive at Meta (the parent company of Facebook). Before that she worked in the White House as a member of the First Lady’s staff.
One alum served for almost two decades as a CBS Sports broadcaster covering NFL, Tennis, and Golf tournaments and championships.
And one of the best-known photo artists in the U.S. graduated from Lamar University. His prints hung in the White House private presidential quarters for 8 years.
A Lamar University alum developed the modern metal detector by eliminating oscillator drift, thus creating the capacity to differentiate between metals, along with their sizes and quality. Next time you go through a security checkpoint, check for the Garrett wand—it’s that wand that detects metal—a Lamar graduate. Also, the detector you walk through, he invented those as well.
We also have an alum who is a former CEO of Lyondell Chemical, one of the world's largest energy companies and the largest licensor of polyethylene and polypropylene technologies.
A Lamar University alum is a Country Music Hall of Fame inductee who wrote hundreds of songs, 31 of which became number one songs on the Country Music charts. Phenomenal—31 number one songs.
One of the most prolific living U.S. painters is a Lamar alumnus; his art hangs in every major museum in the world.
Another alum started Jason’s Deli, one of the largest deli chains in the U.S. and the most effective franchise management and distribution company in the U.S.
A Lamar University alum created what is now one of the country’s largest auto care facilities, Precision Tune Auto Care.
And to conclude, a Lamar University alumnus founded and led the semiconductor and guidance systems division at Texas Instruments. He was instrumental in moving the company into the semiconductor industry in the mid 70s. While he was at TI, the Vice Chairman of the Board and the President of TI were also Lamar University alums.

Again, this is just a small sampling of what Lamar University graduates have done. I could literally go on all night talking about some of the many groundbreaking entrepreneurs and industry leaders that graduated from Lamar University, many who have gone on to become multi-millionaires and billionaires. The accomplishments of Lamar University Alumni are truly phenomenal!

So, what is next for Lamar University?

Right now, if you have read the newspapers and looked around, there's a credibility issue in higher ed. People around the country are looking at it, saying, You know, is this really worth the cost to these students? There are also many institutions that are struggling financially. Our provost has a stack of papers in his office about this high of all the institutions that are running huge deficits and wondering if they're going to survive. Lamar University is not in either one of those categories. We have credibility. Our graduates get jobs. They move out and do the things that they're supposed to do, and the university is doing the things that it’s supposed to do.

What I want to do now is talk about, how do we keep it that way? What's going to happen over the next 100 years here at Lamar University? What we're going to do is, we're going to double down on what we've done over the last 100 years. We're going to stay true to what Lamar University was founded to do and what it has done for Southeast Texas. To keep us on that track, we have developed a strategic plan with four guiding principles, and a vision and mission statement that I'd like to review very rapidly tonight. And let me first emphasize that that strategic plan is not going to be something that sits on a shelf and nobody uses. We talk about that--what's in that plan--every Monday morning, and I know people get tired of hearing me talk about it. But I’m keeping it in front of everybody, and we are making our decisions based on what's in that strategic plan.

So first of all, the four guiding principles: the first one is who we are. What is Lamar University and what have we done? We produce things that are valuable for Southeast Texas. I think that's about as simple as you can put it. Our mission statement says this: “Lamar University strives to educate leaders, demonstrate excellence in student learning and career readiness, and pursue research with relevance.” So what does that mean? What it means on career readiness, and I'll use myself as an example--I started off as a physics/math student. Great stuff, loved it, it’s kind of hard to find a job doing it. So I went to graduate school, and I went into engineering. And so that's very practical. To me that career readiness is right in the middle. The stuff that you learn now, or the stuff that you'll be doing, that our students will be doing in 10 to 20 years, maybe even five years, doesn't even exist right now. So not only do they have to have a skill set that gets them their first job, but they have to have the ability to continue to learn so in 20 years, they'll still be at the forefront of learning and still have that ability to –like, just like artificial intelligence. I met some people in here tonight talking about that. You know, when I was in graduate school in the early 90s, that stuff didn't really exist. Artificial intelligence was radically different than what it is now; it was logic. In the 2000s, it turned into soft computing and biologically inspired algorithms. If people didn't have the ability to learn, they couldn’t have shifted in that direction. But at the same time, you have to have that skill set to get you in the door and get that first job. So that's our first guiding principle.

Second, we're all about our students. We're going to focus on our students. Every single individual at this institution, and everybody that supports this institution, I want to be able to draw a direct line between what they're doing and how that relates to the students in the classroom. I always talk about our dining hall. You know: how important is that? Well, if you're hungry, and you go to the classroom, it's pretty hard to learn. All you’re doing is worrying about your stomach, and sometimes it makes some noises. But if you eat, if you have a nice campus, you get support outside the classroom that makes what happens in the classroom that much more effective.

The third guiding principle is teamwork. Anybody that knows me--and if you're on this campus fairly often, or even a little bit--you'll hear me talk about the importance of teamwork. Teamwork is a force multiplier. I grew up around the military. We talked about it a lot there. You get four individuals working together--it's not additive; it's multiplicative. It radically changes your ability to get things done. And I can tell you right now, we have a very strong leadership team on this campus. This is the best group of individuals I've ever had the opportunity to work with. And you're going to see some things starting to really happen here at Lamar University in the next couple years.

The last item is managing our resources. All those other institutions that are struggling out there in higher ed across the nation, we are not going to be in that position. And in a minute, I'm going to talk to you about what that means about managing resources and setting priorities.

So the last two things I'm going to talk about—and I'll talk about how these things apply a little bit—I’m first going to talk about the graduate education here at Lamar University and then the undergraduate. Our graduate education here at Lamar is very unique. Over half of the students who go to Lamar University are in the graduate school. There's no other institution I know of in the nation that is like that. We have over 8000 graduate students, meaning that every two years, we have to—you know, they're going out the door, we’ve got more coming in. We're going to graduate over 5000 individuals this year, which is just an unbelievable number. And with that, this is one of the reasons why we were number one in the funding formula. Some of you have probably heard: in the first legislative session I was a part of, Lamar University came out on top of all 38 institutions in the state in our [enrollment] percentage increase. Only seven were positive. And the reason for that is, we put some effort into our graduate programs, and most of our graduate programs are in very applied fields, in STEM areas. And guess what? The funding formula rewards that. The funding formula really rewards those programs that are valuable to Texas. And that's what Lamar University does. We put out graduates that are valuable to Texas. We have the largest graduate college of education in Texas, right here at Lamar University.

Now, what are we going to be doing as we move forward? One of the examples I like to give: When I came here, they were working on developing several PhD programs. One of them was a Ph. D program in business. And so I started talking to individuals. I said, You know, if we could pull this off, and we could do a great job—an excellent job--we could maybe be the fifth best PhD program in business in the state. We're just not going to beat UT Austin with a PhD in business, or Texas A & M, or Texas Tech, or University of Dallas. But on the other hand, if we stay true to who we are, and we develop a Doctor of Business Administration, one that’s more applied, one that’s more focused on doing things in industry, and we emphasize energy management, we could be the best in the nation, maybe the best in the world. And that's who we are. And so that’s just one example of some of the things we’ll be doing. I used to like to talk about--when I was at Marshall University--we had the number one forensics program in the nation. And so I told people, I said, Okay, if you want to do forensics, the school I was at before, the chemistry department had five options. One of those buried options in there had a couple of forensics courses. So are you going to go to that chemistry department that has three or four forensics courses that are spread out and it’s kind of mediocre? Or are you going to go to the number one forensics program in the nation? So that's the type of things we're going to be doing here at Lamar University. We're going to be focusing on those things that we’re the best at. We're going to be pulling back on the things we're not so good at so we can put those resources and truly be the best at things and develop a national reputation. Along with the graduate programs, we're in the process of developing an alternate teacher licensure program. This is a program where if you have a bachelor's degree in something like biology or physics or math, and you decide you want to teach, you can now pick up a master's degree and develop the skill set to teach and be prepared to go in the classroom. I actually sent some students to do this at another school I was at, and they didn't get the classroom management skills that they needed. And so what happened was, after three or four years of teaching, they just dropped out of that profession. What we're going to do is make this program very strong. It's going to be on the ground. These students are going to get in the classroom. And we have nearly 20,000 graduates all across the State of Texas in the education industry. And we're going to use those as mentors for these students to help make sure that they're successful. We're also working on a masters in psychiatric mental health practitioner.

So undergraduate education. This is where we're now starting to put our emphasis. About half of our students are at the undergraduate level. We want to increase the number of those that come on our campus. First of all, we'll be emphasizing student activities. Last night, I don’t know how many people went to the baseball game, but it was a pretty full group there. The football game was packed. And then we had a concert right after that. There was also a dance recital—a performance. All of those were full. Students were everywhere on this campus. Every activity was something that students wanted to be at, and that they enjoy. We're in the process of building an intramural field right in the center of campus right outside the dorms. And this is one of the first things when I came here--I found out students just didn't feel like they had much to do on campus. We're absolutely going to change that. A lot of the learning takes place out of the classroom. If you can keep them on campus, you'll keep them working together, and they'll end up studying, and that's how they’re going to be successful. Student success—we’re going to be putting more effort into that, making sure that our students get through their undergraduate degree and they graduate. We’re putting the emphasis on our Honors College. One of the things that I've noticed over the years with our pre-law, pre-med, engineering and other areas is, there has been some outstanding, excellent students that have come out of Lamar University. We want to make sure that the best students in Southeast Texas choose Lamar University first, and go through those programs here.

The last item is our athletics. This is something that I think is important to an institution and is important to Lamar University. And we're now starting to turn the corner on athletics. This last year with football, they had a winning season. That's moving forward. And from what I saw last night, I think we're going to have a great season next year. Our women's soccer program hasn't lost a Southland game in two years. They've won both the regular season championship and the tournament championship. Women's basketball won the conference championship this year. Track won the conference championship last year, and cross country won the championship this year. Last year, we won the [Women’s All Sports] Trophy in the Southland for the first time ever in our history with the Southland. And we took second in the Commissioner's Cup, which is overall athletics. And I'm convinced that we should win the [Women’s All Sports] Trophy again. And hopefully we could pull off the Commissioner's Cup. We're in a tight race right now for first place. But these are some of the things we're doing to make sure we keep our students on our campus. And we're going to grow our undergraduate enrollment because I feel like we can beat the trend that's happening nationally. And if we do these things, I think we'll have a very clear mission. And we can develop that national reputation that Lamar should have. Again, I appreciate all your support. Thanks for coming out and helping us celebrate a hundred years, and I hope the next hundred years is just as exciting as those first hundred years. Thank you.