Description of the video:
Good afternoon. I will modulate my volume. So sorry about that. You know it's always like a reunion for the first few minutes of this event every year. It's such a pleasure to see all of you here. My name is Kathy Johnson and I serve as a professor of psychology and as Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at IUPUI and it is truly my pleasure and my honor to welcome you to the tenth Annual Last Lecture at IUPUI.
The Last Lecture Series is actually sponsored by the IUPUI Senior Academy as well as the IUPUI Office of Academic Affairs and the IU Foundation. The Last Lecture is a signature element of the Senior Academy's efforts to continue to enrich the IUPUI community. The Last Lecture is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to gather as a community of scholars, to connect with each other, and with the larger world of ideas through the perspective of one of our most esteemed colleagues.
IUPUI is still a fairly young campus, even as we celebrate our Fiftieth Anniversary, and we value and appreciate our traditions and the opportunities that we have to be together; such as this event affords. So today is an opportunity to recognize a truly accomplished colleague, Professor Gene Tempel; founding dean emeritus of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and president emeritus of the IU Foundation and to hear his interpretation of The Last Lecture assignment.
Which was this: If this were your last lecture, What would you share with your colleagues and students at this moment in your life? It truly is heart warming to see so many familiar faces here today: faculty and staff, who are the backbone of our campus; students and alumni who inspire us; and members of the community who collaborate with us.
I am also happy to see many who have retired from IUPUI and are returning for today's event. I'd like to especially thank the IUPUI Senior Academy for their efforts and for taking leadership of this idea and for creating a lasting legacy for the campus. Their engagement with IUPUI continues to enhance our community for all of us to enjoy and to tell you more about the Senior Academy please welcome President of IUPUI Senior Academy, Christy Tidwell.
As she mentioned I'd like to thank you for coming, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the tenth Annual last lecture it's during the fiftieth anniversary year. I'm Christy Tidwell as she mentioned the president of the Senior Academy. For those of you who are not familiar with the Senior Academy, it's an independent association of retired faculty and staff whose members continue to contribute their expertise and experience to support educational research and service missions of IUPUI.
The Last Lecture Series at IUPUI is inspired by the idea of having distinguish senior colleagues share wisdom gleaned from their long and productive careers speaking from their hearts as well as their heads. As if they were truly giving their last lecture. The lecture series was initiated in 2009 by Dr James East who is a professor of communications, an associate dean of Liberal Arts, and a former president later of the Senior Academy.
Since its inception the Academy has taken the leadership in selecting and inviting the guest lecture. I'd like to recognize David Stocum who's with us this evening, who was one of the lectures, and was the past president of the Senior Academy and chaired the committee for the selection process.
We know this tenth lecture given in the fiftieth anniversary year will be a fitting continuation of that tradition. I'd like now to introduce Dr. Patrick Rooney professor of Economics and Philanthropic studies and the Executive Associate Dean for academic programs at the IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. He will introduce our speaker.
Good afternoon, for the Lilly Family folks I'm not taking attendance, kind of maybe. Gene asked me to do this introduction a couple weeks ago and I'm really very honored to do this and after the fact I have to say I was trying to figure out why did he choose me?
And then as they say in the N.F.L. Upon further review. I decided that Gene asked me because he and I share some well attributes. First we share the same birthday. I have to say until I met Gene, I'd never met anybody in the world with whom I shared a birthday.
and then he changed the personnel hiring preferences at the center of philanthropy and at one point we had five people with a three thirty birthday. Most of us are still there. Second both of us have wives who are far nicer people than we are and I have to say you know Mary Temple is probably one of the nicest people I've ever met, so Mary.
both of us have three sons who are smarter than their fathers. Or at least I think they are. Jonathan. Both of us have several grandkids each of whom is cuter than the others and if you don't believe me just ask either of us we've got the pictures.
Both of us love cars a lot. perhaps too much. Gene and I spend a lot of time talking about cars unfortunately. My budget can't afford the cars that I would aspire to so I have to write it in Gene's.
Both of us love fundraising grounded in the understanding that fund raising is an expression of philanthropy and an imitation to others to make an investment in a case that is an expression of one's self and their love for humankind.
We both believe in leadership by inclusion and as Gene often says social capital building. We both believe in teaching leadership by using the Socratic method not simply by lecturing or dictating. Finally we believe in each other even though we've enjoyed pushing each other over the last twenty four years of working closely together.
And I have to say Gene hired me a couple times and he hasn't yet fired me. There is one way in which we are different, I'm here and Gene everywhere. I cannot begin to capture all the things that Gene does, not only is often cited in the media, published in journals, academic journals and professional journals, books and gives talks all over the world.
But the other day I was flipping through the pages of the criterion which is the Catholic newspaper for central and southern Indiana. Now how many of you know what the criterion is? OK so there's ten or fifteen tithing members of the Catholic Church. Because that's all it takes, it's pretty you just have to belong to a church.
So, turns out one of the big stories in that week was that Gene won an award for being something like the best Catholic in the world.
That year or something like that and I have to say this you have to know Gene even begin to figure out how the hell he got that award because I don't think he really attends Mass.
Alright, I am going to read a couple thing from Gene's official bio because you know I want to be respectful to. I am going to list Gene's current official titles. Just the official titles. I know Johnathan has some unofficial titles he could share with us too. Professor of Philanthropic Studies Lily Family School of Philanthropy, founding dean emeritus, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, special assistant to the Chancellor of IUPUI.
President Emeritus Indiana University Foundation. And even though there's an emeritus attached to some of those titles I still think he digs and pokes around in those corners regularly and contributes in lots of ways. As most of you know Gene was one of the founders of the center of Philanthropy, and wrote the initial proposals to the Lilly dominant which secure its funding.
Even then, was its leader for more years than anyone before or since. Gene is the founding Dean of the Lilly family school and he's the dean emeritus still, and he's been one of the you know real innovators and thinkers in this space. Recently several generous donors established the Eugene R.
Tempel Endowed Deanship at the school to honor Gene tempel, so every time emeritus signs his name he says James name. How is that for haunting. He's an internationally recognized expert on philanthropy and the philanthropic sector. He served as IU foundations president from September one 2008 until September 30th 2012 before being named the founding dean of the Lilly School of Philanthropy.
Some of you may remember what happened shortly after September one 2008, it made Gene's job slightly more challenging during the Great Recession. Under his guidance though in spite of a tough economic campaign he completed IU Bloomington Matching the Promise campaign for 1.1 billion dollars. And during Gene's tenure, Indiana University received the second and third highest voluntary total support numbers for Indiana University ever and I think one of the years was the highest in the country for a public university.
Prior to leaving the center of Philanthropy, Gene was the Vice Chancellor for External Affairs at IUPUI. He served as Vice President of the IU Foundation and the Director of External Affairs, with IU College of Arts and Science. Gene a popular presenter, is author of numerous columns, articles, and books, and is the editor or coeditor of the book Achieving Excellence in Fund Raising second, third, and fourth editions and the co-author of the book, Fund raisers the careers stories, concerns, and accomplishments.
He's earned a bachelor's degree in English and Philosophy from St Benedict College. A master's degree in English and a doctorate from higher administration from Indiana University. Now this is something that Gene would not do but as an economist I have to do is give you Gene by the numbers.
So you go through Gene C.V. he has served on countless numbers of committees, task force, and things like that but perhaps more importantly he's been on 18 boards of directors serving as the president or the chair for six of them. He's done 142 training programs at least twelve countries, he's done almost 400 presentations including testifying to Congress and presented in countless cities and states; twelve different countries and Purdue West Lafayette, which we may or may not count as another country.
Gene taught 66 sections and numerous guest lectures. If you really want to know about Gene interest though, look at what he's taught, these titles include English composition, Literature, American literature, Poetry, Fiction, Celebrity philanthropy, Fund development which means fundraising,Philanthropy and literature. Gene has secured for IU, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, center of philanthropy 81 billion dollars, even for an economist that's a big number.
Publications, one co-authored book, three co-edited books, five refereed articles, 29 books, chapters, and 65 essays. I will say that his best papers were ones that he co-authored with me but, some of them were at least. I just want to list some of the genes honors not all of them it's too long 2017 IUPUI spirit of philanthropy award to Gina Mary.
2014 Chancellors medallion whose name two nonprofit times power and influence top fifty Hall of Fame fourteen times, I don't think anybody will ever meet or surpass that. You got the exemplary board service award for the R.T.C. you get the Henry Russell medal of lifetime achievement nothing will fund raising for the center of plant the James L.
Fisher award for distinguished service to education presented by the council for Advancement of and support of education. William Lance Armstrong ambassador award for IU foundations. Maynard Hine medal recipient for the IU Alumni Association and he's appointed Sagamore the Wabash by the governor. One final award that is special to me and whenever my wife Lisa has counseled me on how to think and behave better as a person and at work, she's always said, "Patrick Act more like Gene".
So we introduced Gene Tempel. Or you'll be letting me know thank you very much Patrick for that introduction, I'll say more about that in a moment but, let me also thank all of you for coming this afternoon hoping that there may be some musings here that you'll at least find amusing or interesting or maybe that official I don't know but I told Patrick it was OK if he wanted to roast me as I'm much more comfortable with that in fact he could have stopped after the roasting part and you'd need to do any of the rest but Patrick you know, doesn't listen very well, And he goes rogue which is one of the reasons it's been so interesting to work with Patrick all these years.
I want to thank David Stocum and the selection committee for choosing me to deliver the last lecture ominous as that title sounds. And I consider it an honor to stand here today I know some of the other past winners are in the audience and I feel honored to stand among them, because it's a list of distinguished faculty which, needed to be in this spot but also there are so many other worthy candidates, some right here in the room who could have stood here today it's a bit humiliating in fact and I must admit I'm a bit nervous to speak before the group.
Especially since this thing is called a lecture and I don't typically lecture except to my family. I usually amend my introduction and will do so today, to say that the truth is I grew up on a farm outside St minded Indiana near the edge of the poverty in the nineteenth century at some nineteenth century not the twentieth century.
When you have, you're not going to laugh at anything. When you have no running water no electricity and some of your neighbors farm and horses that's the nineteenth century. I was tempted to entitle this talk everything I needed to know I learned on the farm and fact there's some truth to that.
Russ Mawby, the former president of the Kellogg Foundation said that "Growing up on a farm you learned at an early age that you could make a meaningful contribution to a real enterprise". I remember having to protect the hens from that from the foxes and I know that's a cartoon image but that they really did that.
I think of beans protecting their budgets so they have funds to serve future students, I think of maintaining intergenerational equity in our endowment, because some people want to spend it all now and I remember all that goes into a successful fall harvest. Filling the soil in the spring, selecting the right mix of fertilizer, choosing the right planting time preferably after the floods, waiting and hoping for the rain in July.
Cultivating and keeping the weeds down, then finally in September and October a bountiful yield. This experience from my farm life directly applies to my long career development and the engagement of perspective donors in our work. Determining the right projects or their interest, cultivating their engagement and involvement, helping them with planning and waiting for the right time for them to decide, and finally if we do it all well like the farmer yield, careful work with perspective donors results in significantly philanthropy to support our work, and on the farm we were constantly repairing fences, something there is that doesn't level a wall.
It would be years before I encountered Robert Frost mending wall that the poem that is the source of this line in a serious way in the graduate seminar but I did learn at an early age that we always needed to repair fences something there is that doesn't level wall.
The post would rot reclaimed by nature like a rotting wood in frost woodpile Gates would say the cattle didn't like fences and so they constantly work the breakthrough so two could pass the breast one section of our farm had a split rail fence those rails fell down just like the rocks on the stone wall and last fall.
When I was asked to share with you this afternoon a few thoughts about lessons learned through my life's work and higher education and the faculty member, administrator, and a development professional. But before I began I want to recognize in support of my wife Mary who enabled me to work the hours I was able to dedicate my professional life thank you Mary.
And I want to say to Jonathan who's with us today, to Jason and Zachary my three sons, I want to thank you for being understanding and supporting. You know my entire family was sometimes called in to listen to me practice just and to edit documents from time to time.
And I want to send my apologies now to all of you in the audience who may be scholars of American history, American literature, Medieval history, American organizational behavior, and anything that touches some way what I'm going to talk about today because I have oversimplified complex ideas and I have not put noted anything in this text.
But I promise to try not to publish this. Like many of you my age, I'm a first generation college graduate, I remember distinctly that cold day after just after the winter thaw when I was asked to take a shovel and fill ruts on the quarter mile rock driveway.
Bross would say they are not very tolerant of a remake of our remaking the landscape, that was the day I decided I was not going to spend my life on the farm. And of course the nuns never let me think anything but that I was going to go to college.
A few days ago I listened to Bob Dylan sing Phil Ochs song from the 1960's, "There But For Fortune", some of you probably know that song, I say today there but for the nuns go I. And from as long as I can remember I was going to be a teacher, teachers were the best and maybe the only professional role models I had and somehow I came to understand that education was the pathway to a different life.
I understood that higher education can transform our lives, change our social economic participation in society, enable us to have a more significant impact on the future than we might otherwise have. Now I first encountered philanthropy in a serious way when our house burned on January 30th 1954. The volunteer fire department showed up with its black shiny new fire truck that kept the fire under control all day and as Gerry Bepko used to say, "Without the volunteer fire department the house would have burned to the ground in a few hours".
That's funny.
There was no nonprofit organizations in town, there was the local parish and the monastery, and informal philanthropy from the community, from our neighbors and friends, they helped make our lives whole as they brought food and clothing and offered temporary shelter. That day is the beginning of my philanthropic autobiography, that was the beginning of my understanding that philanthropy played a large significant role in our society.
That day was the beginning of my curiosity about philanthropy, college scholarships helped expand my understanding of the scope of philanthropy and enhanced my college years. I had no idea then, that I would be able to spend my entire career in higher education, much of it related to the development and understanding of philanthropy.
I consider an honor to have been given the opportunities I have had for leadership in higher education and who have been a part of building a new national and international academic field in nonprofit and philanthropic studies. The academy has taught me a great deal and I hope I have given back to the academy as much as they have given me during my 48 years of ever changing, every challenging work.
Now I sometimes think my degrees in English help prepare me for a life in academic administration as well as any curriculum in administration or organizational behavior. In fact, I believe I could structure an entire course that administration and organizational behavior around in 1961 novel Catch-22. By the way I see the most powerful character in the novel as X Private First Class wintergreen, now just think of the symbolism in the name alone, well he controlled the mimeograph machine.
he edits orders, he decides what to communicate to whom, he had the Twitter account of his day. The author Joseph Heller understood something about the importance of organizational communication. Well this afternoon I'm going to use three Robert Frost poems to discuss perspectives on a life in the academy; Mending Wall, Storm Fear and The Road Not Taken, all three of those poems take me back to my life on the farm.
I'm going to use poetry to provide perspectives on administration, strategic planning, decision making, and perhaps even the organization of a course. John McCain in his letter to fellow Americans at his death a month ago said that "We should not build walls between each other". But I had decided on my title before then and I apologize to all of you who came expecting a political treatise.
This title comes does not come from that speech, valuable as that speech is but rather from the opening line of Robert Frost Mending Wall. Mending Wall symbolizes some of the most serious organizational issues University States and hints on how we might overcome them. Perhaps a reading of the poem will help you see my point, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that sends the frozen ground swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun; and makes gaps even two can pass abreast, the work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair where they have left not one stone on a stone, but they would have the rabbit out of hiding, to please that yelping dogs, the gaps I mean no one has seen them made or heard them made but at spring mending time we find them there, I let my neighbor know beyond the hill, and on a day we meet to walk the line, and set the wall between us once again, we keep the wall between us as we go; to each of the boulders that have fallen to each, and some are loaves and some so nearly balls, we have to use a spell to make them balance, stay where you are until our backs are turned!, We wear our fingers rough with handling them, it's just another kind of outdoor game one on the side it comes to little more.
There were it is we do not need the wall: he has all pine and I am all apple orchard, my apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him, he only says Good fences make good neighbors. Well like Patrick spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder if I could put a notion in his head: why do they make good neighbors, isn't it where there are cows; but here there are no cows, before I built the wall I'd like to know, what I was walling in our walling out, and to whom I might give offense, something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down, I could say Elves to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather he said it for himself, I see him there, bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top in each hand, like an old stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me, not of woods only and the shade trees, He will not go behind his father saying, and he likes having thought of it so well, he says again good fences make good neighbors". What is it with universities walls, not physical walls, not chain link fences but organizational walls and fences nevertheless.
Maybe the university's love of walls goes back to the Middle Ages when students could corral, plunder, and pears and then the granite diplomatic community when they returned to the safety of the university. The townspeople were not sure they love that wall, they love having university but they didn't know about the wall or maybe it's just some scholars realize because organizations get comfortable and begin focusing internal.
They're more comfortable generally operating as a closed system and like to think we control our own destinies but something there is that doesn't level all. Some even day brings the university to recognize that it must recruit students from the larger world, excuse me. That it must depend on the larger civic nonprofit commercial world where it's graduates to find meaningful ways and to find ways to develop meaningful lives.
That parents, students, and the state legislature can impact our physical health, able to understand better today the university's responsibility to the public as a core reason for our existence. Civic engagement has helped us build two way relationships with our communities for the sake of both parties. Something there is that doesn't love a wall.
Maybe it was academic freedom that cost us to be concerned about the outside world and say good fences, make it good neighbors, but before I built a wall, I'd like to know what I was wallowing in our walling out, kind of like this part that I use in my speeches all the time, the other side, my god the water supposed to be on the other side.
Well you laughed at that. I was fortunate to spend the first 10 years of my academic life in community colleges where someone was always knocking down the walls between the institution and the community. In fact there were for interacting with the local community. So I was delighted when during my time at IU Bloomington I learned about IUPUI and equally excited in 1993 I had an opportunity to move here by the way Bloomington has some of stone walls spelled out in the poem.
In fact I can remember as a student seeing workers restack and stone just like the few farmers in the poem, but apparently the university prior to that cemented the stones together there's no more mending wall. But there are no external fences here at IUPUI to symbolize the beginning and the end of the campus or the city.
And faculty and students are engaged with the city and now we have to even have two major two way boulevards running through that campus. I don't think any university today will find it willing community to help rebuild the wall and meet with us to walk the line and set the wall between us once again.
Those days are gone for most universities. But just because we discovered that something there is that doesn't love a wall between the campus and the community, today doesn't mean that we in the university and haven't fallen into thinking that good fences make good neighbors inside the institution. Inside the institution we build walls among disciplined schools between administration and faculty, between fundraising and finance, between student senate ministries and often without realizing it we as administrators and faculty leaders are constantly mending the wall.
Why do we think, Good fences, make good neighbors? There was a time when colleges universities only plot subjects and even its latest Wimmera Lapland grant let's offer to Indiana University it was rejected by the faculty because quote engineering in agriculture are inappropriate subjects not disciplines or through university.
But perhaps the shift disciplines in the latter half of the 19th century changed all that and perhaps academic freedom made us want to build walls around our disciplines, to protect academic integrity from the likes of Mrs Leland Stanford or even as in the recent case at St Louis University, from donors of the etiology.
However it happened by the time we came to think of a school bit of philanthropy, I realized how significant our internal fences were. As I said earlier my curiosity about philanthropy began with the volunteer fire department that stunted me in 1954. I have been involved in developing philanthropy in colleges and universities all my professional life.
But I could not find scholars inside the academy that saw the study of philanthropy fund raising and nonprofit organizations as part of their discipline or who were it's curious about it as I was. Now higher education and philanthropy are in inexorably linked from at least a twelfth century beginning with the endowment of calls in Paris to students of ordinary means could attend university.
Harvard college was founded in 1636 a name for the Reverend John Harvard based on the contribution of his library and half of this estate. 382 years, higher education in the United States has been supported by philanthropy. Without philanthropy for scholarships, fellowships, faculty support, research funds both private and public institutions would not be what they are today and certainly society would not be where it is today.
But many at colleges and universities see philanthropy as something unseemly that happens at the edges of the institution, sometimes we viewed it as less than legitimate source of funds. We have viewed it sometimes as something that enters the institution by stealth at night, we see philanthropy kind of like the money that just appears in this cartoon.
Who was that masked man? I wanted to thank him. But nowhere in the academy was there serious study of philanthropy even when Hugh Peter and Thomas Well went to England in 1643 to raise money for the young Harvard College. They carry the carefully crafted document. Is said to be the first case for support written in the United States, it carefully touches on the values of those who were to be asked and support the institution and demonstrates good stewardship of the resources already entrusted to Harvard.
Both of these factors we know today from our research influence individuals decisions to make a gift, here's a brief passage from that document. Over the college master Dunster place this president alerted constable and industrious man, my apologies because in the colonies there were women who did not have places of power yet.
A learned constable industrious man who hath so trained up his pupils in the tongues and hearts and so seasoned them with the principles of divinity and Christianity that we have to our comfort and in truth beyond our hopes beheld their progress in learning and godliness also. The former of these that appeared in their public declaration said Latin and Greek and disputations logical and philosophical which they have been won before.
And trying to build a new field of study to better understand the effectiveness of the England first fruits and many other topics related to philanthropy, I discovered that the missional disciplines decided that good fences make good neighbors. The walls have been frequently repaired making it difficult for new studies to enter the academy and bring in the fundraising school to join the academy in 1986, I began to understand that every spring with an ending waltz.
In building the field of philanthropic and nonprofit studies, I learned new lessons about how academic institutions function the role of faculty in governance, managing change and both the pension, and importance of building it building interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary programs. Perhaps I was naïve but, then my favorite organizational behavior scholar Carl White says "That the most innovative things an organization, are discovered by people who are too naïve to know it won't work".
Or maybe it was that as Frost wrote this spring has mischief than me and I wonder why do they make good neighbors something there is that doesn't level all that once it down but it's not it helps Exactly. Bringing this study of philanthropy fundraising and nonprofit management to the university meant introducing change and even for a young interim entrepreneurial campus like IUPUI, that wasn't easy.
But like Herman Wells, we were lucky we had a chance for Jerry Bepko who had taken a class from John Simon at Yale who later started a program on nonprofit organizations at Yale. We had a dean of faculty, Howard Schaller who had worked for the Ford Foundation a new philanthropy from that perspective and we had interested persons at the Lilly Endowment Charles Johnson and Jim Morris.
Howard Schaller had a great suggested he had many great suggestions and Bill played and I often remember some of Howard's favorite sayings to each other, sayings like keep your own score and it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, I especially liked that. When after we receive the external funding, we decided to organize and open the center of philanthropy in 1987, Howard suggested that instead of locating the center within the school that we located instead in the dean of faculty office.
He knew something about walls, his fear was that locating it within a school might restrict its growth and development as an interdisciplinary program, and because of the resources the center had received, the school might be leery of having funds escape through the fence through the wall but developing a new field had to depend on existing discipline.
Building a new field means bringing change to an institution, how to begin? Well another Robert Frost poem, Storm Fear is a guidance for strategic planning during times of change and in general during interesting times. Storm fear "When the wind that works against us in the dark and pelts the snow, the lower chamber window on the east, and whispers with a sort stifled bark, the beast, come out!
come out!, It costs no inward struggle not to go, no. I count our strength, two and a child, those of us not asleep, subdued to mark, how the cold creeps as the fire dies at length, how drifts are piled, dooryard and road ungraded, till even the comforting barn grows far away, and my heart owns a doubt, whether tis in us to arise with day, and save ourselves unaided".
The beginning and ending of this poem hinge on the middle lines, I count our strength two and a child, well I was a child I needed adults and certain faculty, adults who might understand the importance of the study of philanthropy fundraising and non-profit management within the academy. Adults who would help send frozen to frozen ground swell under the wall and helped topple it.
Adults who would play the role of the beast calling us out of the academic challenge, we found two very adult faculty members at IUPUI and one in blooming to help us through the storm. Jan shipps a person who once stood in this spot that delivered a last lecture was an historian and American Studies scholar, who was a national expert on Mormonism.
She studied the philanthropic habits of Mormons, another where the legendary Larry Jegen who is a tax professor in the McKinney School of Law and who understood that the U.S. tax code as it related to philanthropy. In Bloomington we found Jim Wood, a sociologist, who is interested in leadership in religious organizations and one of the few original of voluntary action scholars.
Jim told stories of a small group of scholars from different disciplines getting together once a year to talk about the voluntary sector, those were the voluntary action scholars, that organization by the way was nurtured by the center of philanthropy in Barnova. I think I did most of the work on that, an international organization with approximately 1,300 members today, headquartered here in Indianapolis with a serious academic journal and a major international conference.
These three factors members from different disciplines and different campuses actually helped engage faculty in different schools breaking down walls making gaps even through capacity. Turns out there were interesting ideas that faculty from different disciplines could study and discuss the search and publish about, and we had money for courses development, research, and doctoral dissertations, money and ideas don't like walls and many faculty were willing to get outside their disciplines to encounter the storm.
For years we operated like this they, and build our faculty expertise in the distributed way at IUPUI and IU Bloomington. The center operated on the fringes of the academic empire kind of reminds me of how philanthropy once operated on the fringes of the institution and we engage faculty by using resources and ideas.
But in 2000, we issued the first white paper on the organization of the school to bring all the distributed assets to remain at the philanthropy and non-profits together in one unit. People started mending wall. Even proposed a virtual school, after all we were now in the digital age and many things operated without physical boundaries and the early medieval universities were a bargain where organizations of students and masters, not buildings.
But the virtual school concept was something there is that doesn't love a wall running smack dab into good fences and good neighbor. Culture fences one, so eventually the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy was organized more like a traditional school, but it does have three institutes and the fundraising school to reach out beyond the walls of the campus into the local national and built global community and across school lines and includes a large group of affiliate back members from IUPUI and IU Bloomington and other campuses who are part of the larger academic community, helping at the reach beyond the internal walls to form partnerships with other schools and programs.
Five of our own core faculty members of the school have joined appointments with other schools, one of the schools and endowed shareholders, is in SPEA. Quietly the School of Philanthropy is proving that something there is that doesn't love a wall. When we were trying to organize our civic determine how we would organize ourselves as a multi disciplinary- interdisciplinary school we had to determine what as a fact, what role our colleagues in other schools would play in the governance of the Lilly Family School, now we were not one mind.
My favorite moment took place during a lively debate about the weight of the vote factory located outside the school relative to the core faculty in who were located inside the school. The speaker arguing for limiting the power of outside faculty and they were those appointed primarily inside the Lilly Family School said after all good fences make good neighbors.
Now I've probably been waiting my entire career to address that line with something there is, that doesn't love a wall. In the process of the bell in this school and the experiences I've had in my 48 year career, Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken has provided an overarching guide, the best reminder to me about decision making and here we have a cartoon of the young Robert Frost discovering the fork in the road.
There he is, look ma the road not taken, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both, and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth; then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear; though as for the that the passing there, had worn them really about the same, and both that morning equally lay in leaves no step at trodden black, I kept the first for another day, yet knowing how way leads on the way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh. Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood and I- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference". Perhaps all of us that found ourselves at the fork in the road like this young Frost traveler.
Forced to make a decision when the alternatives are not clearly differentiated, the poem is often used at commencements in the spring with a focus on the last two lines, I took the last one less traveled by and that has made all the difference. Graduates are often counseled to choose the more difficult path, to not follow the crowd, to challenge themselves to find success, in fact they are counseled to become the heroes and heroines of their successful lives.
But this advice ignores the few stanzas the person who stands of the poem, perhaps the most telling lines are for that close and open, the two stanzas in the middle of the poem and as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same. And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step in trodden black.
And then crossed its with this, I kept the first for another day, yet knowing how way he leads on the way, I doubted if I should ever come back. What my colleagues have taught me, what a life of experience and higher education administration has taught me, what I have learned by being bold and knocked down, by being naïve and schooled on a thing or two, to organizing the Lilly Family School of philanthropy by establishing the constituent based development program at Indian University, by reorganizing the foundation board is that no one path forward generally the best.
Sometimes it's a compromise that makes things work, sometimes it takes the attempt that two or three different paths before climbing success. Frost point is that we often head down one path thinking we have found The one true path, we believe the challenges we face are the trials we are expected endure.
We don't go back to the fork in the road and ask, if we were to start over would we choose this path again? Perhaps the road not taken is not the difficult road we have chosen but rather it is a really difficult road back to reconsideration to a new beginning.
Perhaps it's a bidding that the direction we have chosen, is not working that there maybe there a better solution, perhaps it's getting more wrong, it seems to me the road not taken also helps us understand the need for humility. Though it's been for the Lilly School of Philanthropy, it was the right choice what is required corrections along the way and it has required humility to accept the changes and improvements others are made to be original ideas.
Humility also requires that I recognize all those who travel on this road with me, been on the journey with me at different times; I can't name you all here but I know that I may have sometimes been a difficult traveling companion and so I thank you for your contributions, your patients and for staying with me.
I have learned many lessons in my life and academia and I hope that you have found some new perspectives in the things that I have shared. I hope my comments will stimulate it some thinking about the ways we organize and how universities work. At a minimum I hope you'll want to read a bit more of Robert Frost poetry, or read or re-read Catch-22.
I've spent time discussing some of the ways we do things in universities but it's equally important for us to respect the history of the traditions and the culture of the institution of higher education, where we have spent our professional lives. Remember universities and monasteries were the only two major institutions that survived the dark ages, When I hear us remember the life of a lost colleague in Faculty Council, I am reminded that the first rule of a master of the University of Paris was that he had to attend the funeral of a fellow master.
When I see student activism or find students wanting to have a larger voice in the institution. I remember it wasn't until Napoleon invaded Italy in 1796 that someone other than a student was in charge of a university they belong there. Think of that. I sometimes wonder if those split rails on our farm have all toppled down and been reclaimed by nature maybe those who came after us stop mending fences.
I take some satisfaction and I reflect on how we have broken down so many of the walls inside the university today and I like to think that the study of philanthropy was at least partially responsible. I'm grateful that we have been able to move philanthropy from the margins of the university into positions of serious study inside the Lily Family School of Philanthropy, inside SPEA at IU Bloomington and IUPUI, and more than 300 other colleges and universities across the United States and around the world.
Courses on nonprofit management, nonprofit studies of philanthropy are available everywhere. I think back to the beginning of my philanthropic autobiography, to the day our house burned in 1954, when my curiosity about philanthropy began, and I realized how far my curiosity has taken me. Thanks to the many scholars from History, Literature, Philosophy, Economics, Sociology, Law, Public Administration, Organizational Behavior, Higher Education, Public Health, Social Work, and many more.
Colleagues who have extended a hand across school in departmental line, create what is now a field of study. It all gets me back to Mending Wall and Storm Fear something called us out beyond the on the walls, something calls us into closer contact with our fellow humans. It seems we are hardwired, engaged with others and to be engaged with each other, Sara Konrath of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy is one of a group of scholars whose work is documenting that giving and volunteering are good for us physically and emotionally as the following cartoon illustrates, "It feels good when you volunteer to help others that's why I talked some poor elbonians into mowing our lawn for free, I want them to feel the joy of giving, All I'm feeling is tired, well try doing it faster.
Connecting to others is good for us, caring for others and engaging with others provides us positive health outcomes, then we have to question at all levels of physical and organizational walls whether good fences who make good neighbors, As Frost reminds us something there is, doesn't love a wall that wants it down, thank you.
I thought Jonathan might ask me to explain the great nosh, which is one of the lectures I give time to time, to all the students I meet and everyone else I make contact with, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
Thank you Christi, Good afternoon everyone.
It is truly a pleasure and a privilege to be here today, Dr. Tempel. While your reflections have truly captured the spirit and essence of The Last Lecture, it has been your leadership as the Executive Director of the Center of Philanthropy and later as the founding Dean of the Lilly family School of Philanthropy, which has served to create the pathway for those of us who aspire to become professionals in the field of development and fundraising before there was a formal path.
We are truly indebted to you. Through your tenacity, creativity, passion and at times asking for forgiveness rather than permission. You have helped to engineer the road that although, it was once less traveled has now paved the way to create generations of highly skilled ethically minded and donor centric development professionals; not only in this country but internationally who will embark on many different roads and will help to change the world.
What a remarkable legacy you have created. And for those of us who have had the incredible good fortune to work with and for you, your leadership, your guidance, coaching, and mentorship have left IUPUI and the Indiana University Foundation a far better and more enlightened place than you found it.
On behalf of the IU foundation, I am so honored to support your lecture this afternoon and to recognize this prestige occasion with this honorarium. Before we applause, applaud rather Gene has, you should be aware Gene has very graciously decided he would return this honorarium to the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy to support the research work of serenades and who is in the school.
THANK YOU. At this time I would ask Christie well no, not Christie, Christie you're already up here, I would ask the IUPUI Senior Academy to join us on stage for a special recognition. The senior academy would like to present you, with this plaque commemorating today with our sincere thanks for your reflection.
I'd like to thank the people who helped make this afternoon possible, the IUPUI Office of Academic Affairs, the IU foundation and the IU Senior Academy. I would like to call your attention to an upcoming special event sponsored by the Senior Academy as part of the spirit in place festival that's coming in November.
The event is entitled "Bridging the divide, finding common ground" and it will use collaborative art, hands on art, and conversation to encourage personal reflection on this topic. A flyer is available at the table outside we would once again like to thank Professor Tempel and invite you all to a reception in the lobby, thanks for coming.
