Fifty years from now, UMBC's role as an honors and research university will have grown substantially. We will continue to attract high-ability students and prepare them to be leaders in law, medicine, education, business and public service. We also will continue to attract first-rate faculty, and through their research, they will create new knowledge in science and engineering and explore questions of public policy and ethics, connections to other cultures and how we express our thoughts and feelings through the arts. Information and communications technology will be increasingly important as we work not only to probe and learn, but also to communicate our discoveries as quickly as possible.

By the year 2050, we will face far fewer boundaries of time and distance, relying on new technologies to communicate more freely. At the same time, of course, we will need to be able to communicate effectively face-to-face with people. In fact, the tension between our dependence on technology and the need for human interaction will be one of our major challenges.

Fifty years from now, human beings will continue to need support and encouragement, perhaps even more so than today because of all the anticipated advances involving technology. We will need to be challenged and inspired, and for me, it is the inspiration that is most important. Inspiration is what mentors and professors provide that a computer cannot. I am convinced that universities will always be places where people go for inspiration because the passion of the experienced learner is so contagious.