Below is a transcript of Linda Katehi's 2009 Fall Convocation speech:

Thank you, Kevin, for the gracious introduction and for being our master of ceremonies today.

My thanks, as well, to Clare and Bob for their inspiring remarks and to Christian, Teresa and the Symphony Orchestra for this morning’s uplifting music.

They helped to provide a warm welcome to our newest campus community members and to inspire us all as we begin this new year together.

I would especially like to welcome our new students. This is a great time in your life as you pursue your dreams and aspirations. We take great pride in being a part of your present and your future. And we will do everything we can to ensure you receive a world-class education.

Thank you all for being here today — faculty, staff, students, alumni, community leaders and special friends of UC Davis.

It is YOU who are responsible for this university’s great past and YOU who will give it an even greater future.

With your continued help, this great future will be not only sustainable but transformative.

In the past month, I’ve met and spoken with many of you about your hopes and aspirations for our university.

What I have heard so far is that:

Our aspirations run high, but we feel unsure about the difficulties ahead.

We think we are ready to take our university to the next level, but we do not have the strategies that will take us there yet.

Despite our fears and our uncertainties, I say, with absolute conviction, that we are ready to take the next big step.

Despite today’s extraordinary challenges that have driven us all into making some very difficult decisions, there is no better time than now to regroup, to overcome our fears and to march ahead.

The process to solidify our vision and define our strategies for moving forward has started already:

For example, our Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors, including Academic Senate Chair Bob Powell, met just last week for a full day of discussions about the future goals and attributes of our university.

In the next few weeks, these thoughts will be vetted with all of you through campus-wide discussions and through Dateline and the Web.

And your views will be important in this UC Davis-wide dialogue.

We need your support and participation in these conversations, so together we need to do three things:

First, we need to reexamine what we do.

Second, we need to creatively reinvent how we do things.

And, finally, we need to develop the strategies to aggressively pursue new opportunities.

These conversations have started with two questions:

Where do we see UC Davis 10 or 20 years from now?

And how are we going to get there?

Our answers to these questions will guide us on how to address the problems of today so we can best achieve the goals for tomorrow.

If you and I have already had a chance to chat, you know by now my aspirations for UC Davis….

…I believe that we can become one of the nation’s top 5 public research universities.

Yes, it will take time to get there but we can make it happen.

We deserve to be among the top 5 public universities because we have many things that others do not.

I will name five attributes that speak to the unique qualities and potential of our university:

1) We have excellent people and programs

…We have been known for our unique strengths in many disciplinary and interdisciplinary efforts…

….Yet, I believe we have considerable opportunity to build upon our strengths and advantages and strategically transform ourselves into one of the world’s leading universities.

…Despite our current financial challenges, we must continue to invest in outstanding people who will bring excellence to the campus.

With your guidance, we will establish a program for excellent senior hires, to recruit and hire the best and most recognized faculty and researchers to our campus.

2) We are a relatively new campus

Even though we’re a century old, we only became a comprehensive UC campus 50 years ago….

…Relatively young, we have a greater ability to think in innovative ways that are not constrained by history….

So, with your guidance, we will form a task force and engage all of our constituencies to help us think in innovative ways about our present and future opportunities.

3) We have led the nation in multidisciplinary research

The breadth of our programs and our collaborative spirit provide us with greater opportunity to inspire innovation at the intersections of disciplines.

…Our research funding has shown exceptional promise….

…Consider that this year it climbed to a record 620 million dollars, nearly double what was awarded in 2002….

….By reforming our processes, we can bring this to 900 million or even a billion dollars a year, thus better representing our capacity and capability.

With your guidance and participation, we will initiate a process to transform our research enterprise. We will enable our faculty and students to excel in research and scholarship. We will translate new knowledge into products, processes and services to improve the quality of life. And, in partnership with our cities of Davis and Sacramento, we will become the engine of innovation and economic development in the region, the state, the nation and the world.

4) We have truly dedicated alumni and friends

Our philanthropic partners are extraordinarily committed.

They will give us confidence to announce a bold goal for our first comprehensive campaign.

We have the capacity to expand philanthropic support for our teaching, research, service and patient care mission.

We will announce our first comprehensive campaign in a bold and aggressive way. We will succeed in raising an endowment to support our students, our faculty and our programs.

5) We are leading in diversity and internationalization

Our diversity is a competitive advantage.

We offer a culturally richer and more vibrant learning environment than most other universities, and yet we want to make greater strides.

As well, we are No. 4 in the nation in attracting international scholars, with the intention to draw more undergraduates from around the world.

Our competitive advantage will only grow as we increase our diversity efforts.

We will remain a leader in promoting diversity as a measure of quality. And we will strengthen our international programs and international visibility. We will become the place of choice for students, faculty and staff from the U.S. and around the world who want to receive a broader education or professional experience deepened by a uniquely rich perspective.

But what is most important to remember is that we are not alone, left to our own devices:

The UC Regents and the President, despite significant financial challenges, will NOT compromise quality or access to the University of California.

They are deeply committed to finding a long-term sustainable solution so UC is no longer at the mercy of the state’s financial instability.

A new UC Commission on the Future, created by UC Board Chair Russell Gould, will soon send its working group chairs to all the campuses.

They want our best ideas about the right size and shape of UC…

…about ways to deliver education that will maintain quality and improve efficiency…

…and about how to maximize both traditional and alternative revenues.

So now you see the reasons I’m so optimistic.

But we need to remember that to be an international leader in higher education, we need to think and act differently.

We need to leap ahead of others.

We need to be recognized as the place where discovery and education are tightly intertwined…

…where excellence brings pride to all and where excellence is what we strive for every day from the smallest daily task to the biggest ground-breaking work…

…where being on the cutting edge is cherished and where bold actions are celebrated…

…where failure is the means to learn…

…where being intentionally visible is expected….

It is not sufficient that only we know the caliber of our people and the impact of their work.

The world should know as well.

Toward that end, we will establish the Chancellor’s Awards Committee to help us promote the nomination of UC Davis faculty, students and staff for major national and international awards that appropriately recognize their outstanding accomplishments.

And we must invest to keep diversifying and increasing our sources of revenue….

…Investing strategically is absolutely critical.

You may have heard about “disruptive” technologies as the driver of new markets and new economies.

In that same sense, we need “disruptive” thinking to move ahead in a visible way.

Copying others will not make us leaders. We need to think anew.

We will need to tackle all of today’s challenges in fundamental and strategic ways.

We can only do so by working together, having vibrant discussions and envisioning a future of our own making.

As we move ahead, I ask for your help and your engagement.

I encourage you…

…to support each other and especially our students through these times of constraint…

…to embrace change and innovation as we move forward…

…and to think expansively about how we are to manage these difficult times and emerge a stronger and more capable university.

History tells us that emerging stronger is not only possible but inevitable for those individuals and those institutions who, in the face of challenge, summon up creative innovation and excellence.

In his book Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America, author Kurt Andersen reminds us that we’ve been down this path before.

The national mood in the 1970s was despondent, he says. The country was dealing with an oil crisis, a terrible recession and declining productivity.

“And yet at that very dispirited moment,” he writes, “Federal Express, Microsoft and Apple were all founded…

…Even now Apple and Amazon and Google have been doing better than the rest of the economy.

…The next transformative, moneymaking technologies and businesses are coming soon to a garage near you.

Our garages are our laboratories and our classrooms.

They are filled with people of creative vision and spark, who will help lead the state and nation’s recovery and reinvention.

That capacity to reinvent and to reform will set us apart and will propel us to an even greater leadership position among the world’s universities.

I am convinced we can do this.

And if we do, we will ensure UC Davis’ second century will be not only sustainable but truly transformative.

Thank you very much.