As Michael Lane was sworn in as Emporia State University’s 15th president Saturday, he insisted it was the campus that deserved to be honored.
“One immediate goal I had for this week-long celebration is that this celebration is about the university,” Lane told the audience at Albert Taylor Hall. “It’s not about me. ... And I think we’ve achieved that goal. It’s been an extraordinary week.”
Lane’s inauguration speech reflected the same aim, with much of it spent praising the accomplishments of the university’s staff and students. The list went on and on, from the Teachers College citation as one of four model programs in the nation to the American Chemical Society award earned by graduate Bruce Koel.
There’s a lot to brag about, Lane said, but ESU’s “insiders” don’t always take advantage of that.
“Maybe it’s Midwestern humility,” he said. “But we need to get over it.”
On Saturday afternoon, almost everyone else was ready to brag about Lane himself or welcome him or wish him well. Delegates from 22 colleges and universities across the nation joined ESU’s faculty and staff and the Kansas Board of Regents in welcoming Lane aboard.
The delegates included Chancellor Paul Beran of the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, where Lane last served as provost.
“I’d like to say I taught him everything I know,” Beran said, smiling. “But the truth is that after five months, I think he’d learned everything I had to teach and was ready to move on to this position.”
Several ESU students also took part in the ceremony, some in the traditional dress of the countries that have sent students to the campus. Middle Eastern robes could be seen not far from Middle European lederhosen, with both marching near a Canadian student with a maple-leaf badge.
Lane has served as president since November. His predecessor, Kay Schallenkamp, led ESU from 1997 until 2006. Lane is only the fifth president ESU has had since 1953.
His wife, Peggy Lane, a lecturer at ESU’s business school, said Emporia had been more than welcoming to them.
“I would use the word embracing,” she said. “We have been embraced by everyone — the students, the community. It’s home.”
Shortly after coming to campus, Lane put out a “stakeholder’s survey” to see what issues ESU will need to deal with when it creates its strategic plan this fall. Funding, unsurprisingly, was at the top of the list.
In addition to finding money for postponed repairs — a major legislative issue this year — Lane said the campus also needs to find more money for its staff and faculty. ESU’s pay is at 93.6 percent of the regional average, he said.
Getting that money, he said, won’t be easy. He said that ESU would need to seek out more private endowments, especially given the state of public funding.
“State funding of higher education is not going to go up,” he said in a press conference following his address. “The regents asked for a 6 percent increase and it looks like we might get 4.9. It really is, in my view, the job of all of us in higher education to ask people to step back and see what we do for the state. There are long-term solutions for poverty. There are long-term solutions for crime. They’re all in education.”
Lane urged the ESU students in the audience to be ready for a changing world.
“When I was in grammar school, nearly 50 years ago, we used to have drills,” he said. “We had to get under our desks and put our heads down on our knees to protect ourselves against nuclear attack.”
“I know you think I’m making that up,” he said as several people in the audience laughed. “Will everyone who had to do that please stand?”
Several did.
Since those Cold War days, Lane said, he had the opportunity to visit both Russia and China and see what had become of those once-feared enemies. He’d seen McDonalds in Russia, Baskin Robbins in China and an increasingly familiar climate in cultures once considered alien.
Someday, he said, an ESU student might see the same transformation in Baghdad or elsewhere.
“The world will continue to change and the opportunities you have at ESU can help you — if you take advantage of them,” Lane said.