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Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco Honors Sloan Foundation For Post Hurricane education continuity

by Sloan-C Team

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco Honors Sloan Foundation For Post Hurricane education continuity

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Remarks of Governor Kathleen B. Blanco of Louisiana, SREB Board Chair
On Presenting the SREB Exceptional Service Award to the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Dr. A. Frank Mayadas

SREB Annual Meeting
June 25, 2006

Tonight, I am delighted that we will highlight how SREB and its member states joined forces to give our college students a critical lifeboat that kept their educational pursuits afloat in the immediate aftermath of the hurricanes.   It is a chance for us to say thank you to a special foundation for that effort.   

“Too often we fail to recognize and pay tribute to the creative spirit.”

That quote, from Alfred P. Sloan Jr., greets visitors to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Web site. 
It serves as the mission statement for a foundation that, since 1934, has made generous contributions to higher education.  From the world’s first university-based executive-education program — the Sloan Fellows — to the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and the support of our very own SREB-State Doctoral Scholars Program, the Sloan Foundation has honored the creative spirit. 

Tonight, we turn the tables on the foundation and recognize and pay tribute to its assistance to SREB states, and particularly to our students along the Gulf Coast last fall.

For more than 10 years, Sloan has supported efforts to make high quality online learning available “on-demand” — anytime and anywhere.  They’ve supported online learning with major grants for research to expand the availability of programs and to promote quality.  They’ve worked with colleges and universities to advance online learning, nationwide and in our states. They’ve reported on SREB state’s progress showing that the South — once again — was leading the way in both recognition of the importance of online learning and in utilization of this critical learning tool.  

For all of those reasons, the Sloan Foundation is worthy of our recognition tonight.

But they’ve done more. We are honoring them for a more creative effort: helping our students displaced by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma last fall.  Those storms forced some of our institutions to close for several weeks.  Others were shuttered for the entire fall term.  Students and their families needed help.  The Sloan Semester provided support in a truly unique and creative way. 

The idea, to build a “bridge” for students to their home institutions by using online learning, was brilliant.  It provided students with an option to continue their studies and to find some sense of normalcy in the most abnormal circumstances we could imagine.  Further, a $1.1 million grant from Sloan made sure those online courses and a host of services, from academic counseling to financial aid, were provided FREE of charge.

You’ll hear more in a few minutes about the success of the initiative — but what you won’t hear is that the concept for Sloan Semester was developed in less than two hours. A grant application was at the Sloan offices in four hours.  The award was made within two days.  Even more remarkably, the foundation President, Ralph Gomory, approved the award while recuperating from knee surgery. 

So, we recognize the “can-do” attitude of SREB and Sloan for pulling this together and we say a special thank you to the 150 institutions that participated.  

The work of Sloan’s program director — Dr. A. Frank Mayadas — calls for special recognition.

A grant this size made with lightning speed could not have been accomplished without Dr. Mayadas.  Tonight we honor the efforts of Frank and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation with The SREB Exceptional Service Award. 

Dave Spence and Bruce Chaloux, would you join me in making this presentation?

The plaque reads:  “The SREB Exceptional Service Award is presented to The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Dr. A. Frank Mayadas, Program Director, for support of the Sloan Semester online initiative, an outstanding contribution to the Gulf Coast region in the aftermath of the storms of 2005.”
 
Frank, on behalf of the Board, our states, and the entire SREB community, please accept this award as a token of our appreciation and the appreciation of the thousands of students whose lives you have touched as we pay tribute to YOUR creative spirit.

We appreciate you and the Sloan Foundation. SREB looks forward to a close working relationship with the Sloan Foundation in the future.