Dr. George Emert is president of Utah State University, Logan, Utah. This article is excerpted from his keynote address to the 1997 RMA annual meeting, which was held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

It is a pleasure to be here with you today in such a spectacular setting. I know that physical settings—both natural and human—do not escape your attention. Spending as much time as I do on campus, I am grateful for the work you do on my behalf and on behalf of thousands of faculty, staff, and students in the Rocky Mountain region.

It is appropriate that the Rocky Mountain Association of Physical Plant Administrators is here in such a setting, not only for rejuvenation but hopefully for inspiration and to share knowledge and ideas. As John Lubbock once said, "Earth and sky, woods and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books."

What are some of the things we can learn from this setting? I can think of at least five attributes and qualities that make Jackson Hole a special place for residents and visitors and are worth emulating on our own campuses. These characteristics are change, natural beauty, space, planning, and protection.

Change as a Constant, Natural Process

Change has been a big part of this region. A scant 150 years ago it was bare except for small bands of American Indians and a few fur trappers who lived here only during the summer and fall. Homesteaders eventually trickled in and established ranches in Jackson Hole (hole is trapper slang for a mountain valley). But its future began to take shape when some of these homesteaders realized that dudes (rancher slang for summer tourists) were easier to keep than cattle.

Today Jackson Hole has more than 3 million tourists annually and is a very different place. It is a year-round vacation destination and a gateway to such natural splendors as Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Beyond this human history, its geological history attests to even greater changes. These alterations began 5 to 9 million years ago. The western edge of Jackson Hole, the line where the valley meets the base of the Teton Range, was originally higher than the Tetons! Jackson Hole continues to sink along the Teton Fault, putting tremendous pressure on the molten layer far below. The sinking valley displaces the molten rock, which in turn pushes the Teton Range up, on the average, one inch for every four inches the valley floor drops.

The Tetons teach us that powerful change requires tenacity and flexibility. Change is not easy, and I commend you on your theme of "Leadership through Change." Indeed, effective change can only occur through strong, capable leadership.

We know that change is the one constant. Unlike geologic time, which is measured in millions of years, facilities management time is measured in months and even days. Look at your own facilities practitioners. How many of you were using pagers, e-mail, or cellular phones just ten years ago? These new technologies demonstrate that you do not fear change. This flexibility is essential on today's campuses. The July/August 1997 issue of Facilities Manager listed what's currently "in" and what's "out" in your industry:

Natural Beauty Attracts and Inspires

While Utah State University's backdrop may not match the striking beauty of the Tetons, the pristine mountain valley of northern Utah nevertheless helps make our campus one of the most beautiful in the country. Natural beauty can be found on every campus. Your challenge has always been to accentuate that beauty and do nothing to distract from it. Every season of the year you perform miracles by maintaining and presenting the beauty of our campuses. What a tough but essential task that is.

Our campuses are some of the best environments around beautiful trees, green grass, interesting architecture, and all that youthful exuberance! I can look out my office window and see a magnolia tree, which I m sure most of you know does not grow naturally in northern Utah. Someone, some time ago, planted a couple on our campus, and our physical plant people have kept them alive. For a man who spent much of his life in the South, these trees are a real treat; for the many young people from Utah who have never seen a magnolia, I like to think, as John Lubbock suggested, it's a nice addition to their book learning.

The physical plant staff not only has the awesome responsibility of making our campuses beautiful which in much of the arid West is no easy task it also has to keep them open and accessible when the cold winds and snows of winter come our way. Many of us probably take much of what you do for granted. Teachers only have to worry that they are prepared to teach, researchers only have to worry about their experiments, and students only have to worry about their next date and maybe a little about whether they completed last night's assignment.

The physical plant staff may be unheralded, but I assure you, it is not unappreciated. Every couple who has strolled hand in hand through campus appreciates your contribution to their romance, every professor who enters a warm and comfortable classroom appreciates your contribution to the students attention spans, every participant in campus activities from athletic events and dances to plays and dorm room bull sessions, knows that you are out there.

Space Symbolizes Order

The grandeur of the Teton mountain range is enhanced by the valley that spreads below a level space carpeted with silvery-green sagebrush shrubs that forms its foreground. Unlike the Teton Valley, our college campuses do not have the luxury of millions of acres but must make do with much smaller spaces. Parking at USU takes up more than 12 percent of the campus 450 acres. At the same time, enrollment has increased 5.4 percent annually for the last ten years; the square footage of space per student has declined because of the lack of funding for new space. In response, a more holistic space management approach has been attempted in the last two years, including the addition of space inventory and reporting, space utilization analysis, anticipation and planning for space needs, assignment of permanent space, and scheduling for use of space.

The space between our buildings is equally at a premium. It is no accident that memorable campuses possess a clear sense of spatial order and hierarchy. The May/June 1997 issue of Facilities Manager describes the value of well-ordered sequences of space. Proportion communicates levels of importance. Do we have definable centers to campuses, so that when one says "meet me in the center of campus," no further explanation is necessary? Or have our campuses become merely collections of unrelated spaces?

Tom Richman, in the October 1995 issue of Marketing Higher Education, also discusses campus space. He writes that the gateway between acceptance and denial for prospective students is the entrance exam an exercise on which students expend a great effort to ensure they perform well, knowing that it will make a difference in which institution they attend.

Richman believes that there is also another kind of entrance exam the examination that prospective applicants make when they visit our campuses. Writes Richman, "Often prospects will tour a series of institutions, traveling hundreds or thousands of miles with the entire family in tow, to see their short list of favored schools firsthand. And just like prospective house hunters entering a driveway, these institution hunters drive up to the entrance of the campus and immediately form their first and strongest impression."

Do our institutions pass this other entrance exam? Richman suggests that universities design entryways from the public street to the campus in such a way that they create a passage from the realm of commerce to the realm of ideas. "This passage is an opportunity to express your institution's unique character and charm," he writes. Whether or not such suggestions are physically and economically feasible, it is instructive to consider the tremendous ramifications of space usage decisions. Entryways that lead to parking lots and not to the heart of campus certainly communicate a message. Likewise, the spacing of buildings and use of green space sends other messages to students and visitors that cannot be ignored or discounted.

Planning and Protecting our Environment

The heart and soul of facilities administration is anticipating the future physical needs of our campuses and protecting our interests. It was the future that the first Jackson Hole visitors had in mind when vast tracts of land were set aside. Protecting requires planning. Although Grand Teton National Park was originally established to protect the Teton Range and six of the piedmont lakes, Jackson Hole Valley was later included in the national park designation. National park status signifies that a place is special and contains unique scenery or wildlife that deserves perpetual preservation.

Our state legislators have bestowed similar status to our campuses, for they too are unique and deserve perpetual preservation. You are the ones assigned to be ever vigilant, to assure that this preservation process continues. A congressional mandate is not enough to ensure this preservation continues, even for a region with as much natural beauty as Jackson Hole. It requires concerned people joining together and making a plan. In 1980, such a group of people began meeting in Jackson Hole, and, soon after, the nonprofit Jackson Hole Trust was founded. Its mission is both grand and simple: protecting Jackson Hole and preserving forever its open spaces, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats, and ranching heritage. Since its founding, the trust has protected more than 7,000 acres comprising extraordinary views, critical wildlife habitats and nearly five miles of Snake River riparian zone. Despite these successes, the trust still has much work ahead as looming real estate taxes and the high demand for real estate subject ranchers and landowners to development pressure.

Our campuses are threatened by similar forces. At Utah State University, for example, almost one-third of the building space (1 million square feet) is more than 40 years old and has never undergone major renovation. Major remodeling is needed for at least 8 percent of our buildings.

While President Clinton may not have used the term "deferred maintenance" when he outlined his ten major focal points for education, he understands its effect when he called it "a serious national concern." In higher education, it is a concern of 3,600 institutions affecting more than 14.5 million students each year. APPA's recent report, A Foundation to Uphold, stated, "The estimated $26 billion in total costs to eliminate deferred maintenance, of which $5.7 billion is urgent needs, represents a threat for higher education's facilities to support college and university missions." The autèor cited a study that identified five factors that significantly influence campus success in combating accumulated deferred maintenance. These five influences, and their success ranking, are 1) priorities of top administrators (80 percent); 2) support of trustees or legislators (73 percent); 3) budgetary and/or financial strategies (59 percent); 4) financial condition of the institution (47 percent); and 5)state appropriations (24 percent).

Bear these factors in mind as you address deferred maintenance. Prioritize and communicate your needs to top administrators. Let them go to bat for you. This is how USU successfully convinced our legislators to fund the design and construction of a new chemistry building. We are planning major renovations for all our outdated science laboratories and have included them in the capital development and improvement lists. Projects of this magnitude must be funded by the state and will occur as the legislature responds to the continual requests of the university the top administrators and regents.

The USU plant staff continue to be a leading influence in focusing on operations and maintenance funding as state priority. Facilities managers have set a statewide precedent by including operating costs in any new facilities funding. This past year, the concept was finally accepted by the Utah Board of Regents and legislature. We must now gain the legislators recognition of the accrual of the deferred maintenance and motivate them to address the problem.

These advances cannot occur without strategic planning. Facilities administrators are the planners, which makes you the vanguards of our campuses. This concept of planning for, and perpetually preserving, that which is unique be it Jackson Hole Valley or our college or university campuses is an integral part of our civilized life.

Yet such goals do not come easily or quickly. It takes time but in the process yields meaningful and even spectacular results. Remember the Tetons it took some 9 million years to get them where they are today. Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters. They teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books. I would add campus grounds and buildings to this list (and include cleanliness, lighting, sound systems, heating and cooling, and landscaping). In this way, you contribute to our young people's education every bit as much as a teacher does. Without you the education would be much slower. And it would be a lot plainer without the beautiful grounds and buildings you provide.