From the President

Core Value Speech

Given by President Gregory Dell’Omo, Robert Morris University
First-Year Student Convocation, August 2007

Robert Morris University gives a very special set of undergraduate, graduate and adult students opportunities and experiences that really do change their lives forever...and even more importantly, allow them to change the lives of others. We do this through a set of core values that defines our culture and distinguishes us from other schools. These values are: our track record of academic excellence, combined with a professional focus, our desire to give you a global perspective, our commitment to engaged learning, our belief that individuals matter, and our dedication to changing lives.

For almost 90 years, Robert Morris has been this region’s most trusted source of well-educated, high-performing professionals in the areas of business and finance, and now, most recently, in fields ranging from engineering and education to communications and health care. What sets us apart, though, among other great schools in this area, is the way we have been able to evolve and reshape the kind of education we deliver to meet the changing needs of the industries & society that surrounds us.

From a downtown Pittsburgh business trade school in the 1920s & ‘30s to a two-year professional school to a four-year commuter college with a second campus in Moon Township to an accredited comprehensive university in 2002, Robert Morris has consistently demonstrated its ability to transform itself in order to attract, prepare and support the kind of educated professionals our region needs most.

Most recently, we’ve focused on expanding and enriching our academic programs so that today we offer continuing education for adult students, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and doctor’s degrees ... not only in our core fields of business—the foundation of our success & reputation—but also in key disciplines where our unique approach to liberal-professional education can fill much-needed gaps. So RMU students today are choosing careers and demonstrating leadership not only in business, finance, marketing and management, but also in the areas of communications, education, engineering, health sciences, information technology and nursing.

Despite the way RMU has expanded and broadened its programs, though, some qualities have remained the same: our commitment to high-quality academics delivered by faculty who have both scholarly and professional credentials ... combined with a focus on developing strong communications skills for our students ... and giving them opportunities to learn and practice their skills outside the classroom, particularly through internships, coops and community partnerships.

This powerful combination of skills and experience is what RMU’s top employers cite again and again as the main reason they love to hire our graduates. They tell us it’s because RMU grads hit the ground running, they know how to work in teams and they know how to write and present themselves effectively on the job. We’re very proud of our successful graduates—and of our 94 percent plus placement rate—but we’re also very proud to see these accomplished graduates move into new fields and professions.

To better prepare tomorrow’s professional leaders, RMU has undergone another evolution upon becoming a comprehensive university just five years ago. Now, in addition to our long-established academics and professional focus, we realize there are other important assets we need to give you. Once of these is a global perspective.

We all know that our world is changing but at RMU we want to find the right way to help each one of you turn that platitude into a statement of purpose that will serve your own personal, career and intellectual growth. So we’ll work with you to help you open up your own worldview, to study abroad or participate in projects that allow you to interact with other nations & cultures. Perhaps you’ll work on a documentary in Germany. Perhaps you’ll travel with nursing students to Nicaragua. Perhaps you’ll do community outreach with an international organization here in western Pennsylvania. Perhaps you’ll gain most from studying with—and having fun with—students from other countries around the globe who go to school here with you. RMU offers dozens of ways for you to expand your own world—and redefine your options for the future—by giving you a global perspective as part of your experience here.

What I mean by engaged learning is the fact that no matter how profound your classroom experience may be—and it will be profound, not only because our faculty here are such experts in their fields and in the classroom, but also because we’re small enough and friendly enough that you’ll actually get to know your professors and learn from them as people, not just as scholars---but no matter how strong our academics and professional partnerships are, what brings it all to life, really, is when you get to put your own ideas, your knowledge and your skills into practice.

That’s where engaged learning can take a good student and turn you into a capable leader and a valued performer.

Engaged learning is when your curriculum extends beyond the classroom and into practical learning experiences. It’s not just about loading up on clubs or electives or activities for the sake of keeping busy.

It’s about taking your book learning about rhetoric and labor relations and then getting into project teams, working with an industry executive and actually conducting a labor negotiation that goes from 6 am Saturday morning to midnight.

It’s about collaborating with fellow students to form a band, produce a video, submit it to a national award program and then head to LA to accept your Emmy for Best College Music Video. It’s about taking your engineering expertise combined with your business and communications savvy, and getting an internship at Deloitte Touche that turns into a job offer for an entirely new practice in quality assurance assessment to counsel companies who want to acquire major manufacturing plants. It’s traveling to a third-world country with your fellow nursing professors and students and actually diagnosing and treating a family of twelve who live in a dirt-floored shack and look up to you with all the trust in the world.

So, it’s taking the “education of the head” and adding in the “education of the hand” and, in our case, the education of the “heart and soul.” These are the experiences that will make your years at Robert Morris truly unforgettable. They will show you—not tell you, but show you—that we know that individuals matter. You matter to us. We’ll take the extra time to help you get used to college life. We’ll care enough and get to know you well enough to push you when you need a push and to be there when you need a safe haven. You matter to us as individuals...but also, we want you to go forward knowing that other people matter to you.

By putting all of this together, by delivering to you academic excellence combined with a professional focus that will guarantee you career options you never dreamed of...and by ensuring that you get the “value-add” of a global perspective ...and a “second transcript” of engaged learning accomplishments...that’s how we demonstrate how individuals matter here at RMU and how we start out by changing the lives of you in this room.

But the real pay-off, the real goal here, is to enable you to go out and change the lives of others...for the better.

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