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Pres. Jim Ramsey:
We can talk all afternoon about John's accomplishments and all the things
that he did during his tenure at the University of Louisville, but the broad
themes you know, and you know well, the importance of human capital,
recruiting the very best faculty and retaining the very best faculty, and
out of that in 1998 came the program that is affectionately known as
Bucks for Brains. Shumaker: We were at the World Bank
talking about higher education, and on the desk of the director
there was a little publication called *Building World Class Universities*,
and he gave us each a copy of it. And I was thumbing through
it and they were identifying model programs, exemplary programs,
dramatic programs that had actually changed the course of higher education
in several countries. And guess what? Bucks for Brains was there.
Ramsey: One of the first tests of House Bill 1; House Bill 1 had been passed
in the summer. December 24th, John will remember vividly,
J.D. Nichols going to Governor Patton and saying that UPS
intended to make their largest capital investment in their corporate history
to expand, but they were afraid they couldn't do it in Louisville because
they wouldn't have the work force they needed. And a couple of days later
John and others in this community came forth with the plan that today is
Metropolitan College. Not only did UPS stay here & invest that billion dollars,
but since then they've invested a second billion dollars in our community.
Shumaker: We did that work together. It was something that was a vision
that we constructed, it was an action plan that we had to the focus and
and discipline to lay out very clear detail. Maybe too ambitious, but
sometimes your grasp can exceed your reach, we learned that, didn't we?
(applause)