Innovation and Transformation Video Description and Transcript

Video Descriptions:

Montage, President Meehan drives around his hometown of Lowell to visit the house he grew up in. Footage of a boy riding a bike while carrying and tossing a sack filled with newspapers. Text: Innovation and Transformation: President Martin T. Meehan Charts the Course. Text: President Martin T. Meehan. Photos appear from President Meehan's Congressional Career. Text: Congressman John Lewis, Civil rights leader, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. Text: Victor Woolridge, Chairman, UMass Board of Trustees. Montage of Campus research facilities, biotechnology, and laboratories. Text: Samantha Giffen, Goldwater Scholar, UMass Amherst. Text: Professor Kathrine Luzuriaga, Leading HIV/AIDS Researcher, TIME Magazine 100 most influential People, 2013, UMass Chan Medical School. Text: Jacob Miller, Truman Scholar, Student Trustee, UMass Dartmouth. Text: Professor Wilmore Webley, Fulbright Scholar, Director of Pre-Med Advising, UMass Amherst. Text: Amanda Robinson, Student Trustee, UMass Lowell. Text: Aijan Isakova, MBA, UMass Boston. President Meehan stands on his old little league baseball field on a summer day. Text: Kumble R. Subbaswamy, Chancellor, UMass Amherst. Text: Martin T. Meehan. 27th President. University of Massachusetts. Text: University of Massachusetts logo, Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, Medical School, UMass Law, UMass Online.

Transcript:

This is the area where I grew up in Lowell. It's always great to be back in the old neighborhood. This is Kilby. Live there? I'm Warren lived there. Irene Bertrand, great neighbor, lived there. I delivered papers to to everyone in this neighborhood. I had 95 papers. I could barely carry the papers, but it was great. I mean, you know, I'm eight years old and I'm making $18 a week.

My father worked at the old son for 43 years, worked in a composing room, and basically they put together the newspaper. There is no one who made it clear to me that an education was critically important. In order to achieve whatever you want to achieve in your life.

I'm not sure what I would have done if I didn't have the University of Massachusetts Lowell, if I didn't have a university right in my hometown that I could attend. I saw fundamentally how important that institution was, allowing people to achieve what they wanted to achieve for themselves.

I was in the Congress, had a successful career in the Congress, but I left the Congress because I felt that I could have a more significant impact by going to my alma mater at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. And I feel that in eight years we've made a difference.

Some people come to Congress and they just sort of occupy space. Mighty men created space in his very being, in his core. He has this commitment to what is best for all of our people. I see Marty as a down to earth kind of person. He's he hasn't really forgotten anything about his past, where he's come from, who he is, and the connection to his community.

So he brings that all with him into the job and and into the people that he interacts with. I believe the University of Massachusetts is the most important institution to Massachusetts in terms of social mobility, in terms of making the economy stronger. I mean, you look at the research, the faculty. This is a great institution, and I'm going to work as hard as I can, number one, to make sure everyone knows how great it is.

And number two, to help make it even better. I think UMass, having as much research as it does, really inspires an generation of students like me to want to go out and continue that work. The goal is to help the global community understand a disease, or a mechanism, or a pathway, or the way that something works in hopes of making things better for people around the world.

There's incredible science taking place not only at the medical school campus, but across the five campuses. Marty provided very critical support. He helped us to think more broadly about not only the traditional funding agencies, but really creating partnerships with industry philanthropy, people like venture capitalists, angel investors that we as a university could bring into the equation. I think a public university is really the catalyst for opportunity.

UMass, as a system more broadly, really produces so many great things for the Commonwealth. It's basically where the American dream comes alive. And I think that President Meehan has been a has been emblematic of that idea, too. You now have somebody who understands that dream and is willing to support that dream. I think that's very special. In many ways, I feel as though I've spent my whole life preparing for this job, because everything that I've done, sort of in my mind, leads up to this job at this time and place.

I think it makes everything in the world seem possible. The fact that we have a leader in such an incredible position who was once one of our students, it's really inspirational and it makes students feel like they can do everything. He's really striving for excellence, excellence in everything, I think. UMass system in general. They were looking for someone like this for a while and I think they'd like to have him.

Innovation comes when you have a great environment to think and to act on the things that you've developed in your mind. UMass took me in at a time when I wasn't even sure where I wanted to go, and it allowed me to excel to heights that I never dreamed. As I look back over my own life and I look at where I'm coming from.

What we need are people like Marty. We need people who look at you and see you for who you are.

I can remember playing Little League baseball here. My sons played on this exact field, which is really kind of neat. Actually, both my boys are better baseball players than I was in the two years that I've been trustee. I really got to know Marty. Meanwhile, he's a true inspiration. He is somebody who illustrates the transformative nature of education and higher education and public higher education at that.

It's great that Marty Meehan, being an alumnus of the university, is able to come back as president. I think it's really reflective of the community here at UMass. I think the way President Meehan looks at public higher education is through the lens of his own experience. What it did for him is what he would like to see happen to all the families that send their children to the various campuses of UMass.

Students always ask me why. I think it makes a difference to be an alum of UMass. And I always say to them, because I was exactly where you are.

President man believes in what a university system is about. It's about training and equipping the very best that we have in our country and in the world. And I'm excited to see how he's expanding this to the entire UMass system now. Marty, you know, not only has this tremendous sense of social obligation and service, but he also understands the power of science and how that can be used to transform.

And so having someone like that at the helm of UMass ensures that we continue to have UMass be the forefront of every innovation in our state. Marty. Mr. president, my friend, my brother, my colleague, I wish for you the very best. I know you will continue to speak up and speak out. You will continue to lead. Wish you well.

This is a university that literally transforms people's lives and that's how I feel. I'm a steward. I'm a protector of this university. I'm going to fight for this university. I'm a long, long way from 22 London Street. And with that comes a deep responsibility to be a great president. I have to make this university great with every fiber, with every ounce of energy that I have.

And I take that responsibility very seriously.