U.'s Young gets 'president' title for real

He's been presiding over the University of Utah since last August, but on Friday the U. added the appropriate pomp, formally inaugurating Michael K. Young as its 14th president.

Young, who says he postponed his official inauguration so that he could get to know the school better and help hone a shared vision, looked into the future and predicted that in 10 years the state's flagship university will be more interdisciplinary, international and diverse — and that by then the U. will have an athletic dynasty.

Young invited his audience at Kingsbury Hall to take an imaginary stroll across the university in 1915 (a time when cows grazed on campus) and in 2015. This second stroll, he said, is "a tour I take in my mind on a daily basis."

The university, he predicted, will be "profoundly different" in just 10 years. It will be more heavily supported by scholarships, will provide more undergraduate research opportunities and one-on-one mentoring, will count more women and minorities among its faculty, and will provide study-abroad opportunities for virtually all students, he said.

To those ends, Young announced the university's plans for three new institutes — a Center for Asian Studies, a Center for Latin American Studies and an Institute for Public and International Affairs — plus an incentive program to recruit more women and minorities to the faculty, and a commitment to continue to fund the Utah Opportunities Scholarship program for first-generation college students.

"Gone are the days, if they ever existed, when students could acquire a world-class education, an education that fits them to change the world, merely by sitting in class and being passive receptacles of information," Young said. He invited the U.'s deans and faculty to provide individualized learning experiences for all students, and encouraged students to get involved in research and service learning.

The education for a new millennium, he said, will require interweaving science and technology into all disciplines. Young imagined a university where law students hear lectures "as likely to focus on genetics and quantum mechanics as they are on torts and habeas corpus." He foresaw lectures on Proust and Plato that help teach students how technologies and scientific advances can "make the world a more beautiful, just and humane place."

Although relations between the university and the Legislature are sometimes strained, the mood was conciliatory and ebullient Friday, with welcoming remarks from Utah Senate President John Valentine and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. Huntsman noted that the president of Brigham Young University is a former U. of U. man and that President Young graduated from BYU. Quoting former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, he quipped that "I believe we have peace in our time."

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