Provost and Executive Vice President Fatma Mili Presented before Faculty/Staff Picnic

Greetings, President Mantella, fellow faculty and staff, and all honorable guests.

It fills me with great humility to be here, with all of you, to follow on the steps of very distinguished leaders and to work alongside our president and her team, our team, and all GVSU faculty and staff to continue to answer the call and serve our students, our state, and our communities at large.

This is my second month serving in this position. I continue to be in awe, admiration, and pride, with every new Laker encounter and every new fact I learn about GVSU.

Professor Ngassa started today by inviting us to reflect on our identity and mission and has emphasized the key importance of shared governance. President Mantella’s remarks have the theme of collaborative work weaved in throughout. I want to express my strongest agreement with both of them. We cannot possibly overemphasize the critical importance of the culture of collaboration, mutual appreciation, and mutual respect in our work. Universities are privileged by the fact that they assemble within their ranks, the most highly educated, the most highly committed people. No other institution on earth comes even close to the intellectual wealth of universities. No other institution on earth assembles the diversity of expertise that universities do. Shared governance is not only the right thing to do; it is the smart thing to do.  

This university has more than 1,100 tenure track, affiliate, and visiting faculty who reached the highest level of scholarship in their discipline, and who have committed their careers and lives to serving future generations and serving their disciplines. We all know that faculty join the rank of universities, not because that’s what they do, but because that’s who they are. It is not a job; it’s a vocation. I have the highest respect for your commitment, the highest recognition for the assets you bring to the table, and the highest gratitude for the very hard work that you do every day.

I want to highlight something unique about our work together: We are cathedral thinkers and cathedral builders. Rick Antonson coined the phrase cathedral thinking to characterize meaningful work that has long-lasting outcomes, work whose goals are not achieved in our lifetimes. The expression makes reference to the way cathedrals were built in the middle ages. Their designers, architects, builders, and artisans all contributed to spiritually meaningful work whose outcome they do not see during their lifetimes.  

Antonson gives a striking example of illustrate cathedral thinking.  In 1379, a new college was built as part of Oxford. It had a beautiful room with big thick oak beams. The oak beams were an integral part of the design and the room had a key role in the college.  In the early 1900, these beams were deteriorating; they were being eaten by beetles. The architect in charge of restoring them went to the college forester and asked: “do you happen to have any oaks of the right size that we can possibly use?” The forester responded “We have exactly what you need. In 1379, that grove of oaks over there was planted for this specific purpose. We were waiting for you to come by. You will find that the oaks grew over the last 530 years and are now ripe and ready.” That is cathedral thinking.

When we educate students, we do much more than granting them credentials, we prepare them for a lifetime of impact that goes beyond their own lifetime. We graduate the journalists, the engineers, the nurses, the teachers, and the politicians who will go and shape their world and our future. We equip them with the GVSU values and the love of learning and desire to do good in society. That is cathedral building.

When our scientists and researchers make new discoveries, develop new protocols, and discover new insights, we may or may not see the impact of their work during our lifetime; we treasure their work for its intrinsic value and for its long term impact. That is cathedral thinking.

When our researchers at the Annis Water Resources Institute discover new ways in which human activities modify aquatic ecosystems, their work results in tangible impacts within our lifetimes. For example:  the removal of Muskegon Lake from being one of 43 Areas of Concern in the Great Lakes, resulting in a healthy lake and revitalized community. AWRI contributes new knowledge that will enlighten human thinking and guide human behavior for this and future generations. That is Cathedral Thinking.

When a faculty member decides to work with their students, form a new musical ensemble to capture, through original compositions, human contemporary experience of nature including Lake Michigan and National Parks, that is Cathedral thinking.

When a graduate from the College of Engineering partners with an MD to found a radiopharmacy, molecular diagnostics and therapy center that revolutionizes how cancer patients are treated, that is cathedral thinking.

As faculty, as universities, as GVSU, we need to maintain the cathedral thinking approach. We must never lose sight of this privilege and accountability that we have towards our work, towards our communities, and towards future generations.

We are possibly the only profession, besides supreme court judges, who is granted job security for life in the form of tenure. Tenure is there to free us from the tyranny of short-termism. Tenure sets the expectation that we aim big, take risks, and focus on the most significant issues humanity faces.

Tenure sets the expectation that we think cathedrals and build cathedrals.

There is another equally important aspect of our work. I will introduce it through William Butler Yeats’ poem.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

I am deeply touched every time i read this poem because it speaks to the educator in me, it speaks about the dreams of our students. When they apply to GVSU, when they come to GVSU, they are spreading their dreams under our feet. They are trusting us with their dreams. We, faculty and staff, interact with them every day.

Any and every interaction has the potential to build up dreams and to crush dreams. We must never lose sight of this. We have this power, we have this privilege, and we have this responsibility to tread lightly.

Let us all ready ourselves for our Lakers. Let us, together, think cathedrals, build cathedrals, while treading with love, and compassion for, and faith in everyone of our students.

I am Laker Ready. Are you?