In a speech to approximately 100 Rotarians at the University Club on 16th Street Wednesday, George Washington President Steven Knapp emphasized the university’s commitments to research and job creation within the District of Columbia.
Rotary International, a service organization founded in 1905 in Chicago, has clubs all over the world. The organization’s goal is to bring together civic groups to promote dialogue and the common good. Clubs provide international relief and aid as well as scholarships to help students study abroad.
Dr. Knapp was invited to speak by Davis Kennedy, a Rotarian and editor and publisher of Current Newspapers, which publishes the Northwest Current, Dupont Current, Foggy Bottom Current and Georgetown Current. Mr. Kennedy emphasized Dr. Knapp’s improvement of town-gown relations during his tenure as president, highlighting the city’s recent approval of the Science and Engineering Hall.
“The reason is very simple: It’s our speaker, President Knapp,” Mr. Kennedy said.
Dr. Knapp noted that Rotary International and GW are both celebrating centennials this year—the D.C. Rotary club of its founding in 1912, and GW of its tenure in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. He provided audience members with some university history, emphasizing that D.C. universities, including GW, provide more than $11 billion to the regional economy each year, accounting for more than 3 percent of the local economy. Universities also provide direct contributions through the 600,000 hours of service students give annually.
But though GW has long been focused on public policy, it’s more recently been exploring a new angle: research. “We’re increasingly becoming a university focused on research across all the academic fields, but with an increasing emphasis on science and engineering. That might seem surprising to people who have been in Washington, D.C. for a long time,” Dr. Knapp said.
Almost every metropolitan area has a large research university, but D.C. hasn’t yet had that, he said. GW would like to become that research institution, through its current focuses on topics like sustainability, computing, robotics, crash safety and health care. And GW is working with the mayor of the District of Columbia to encourage job-creating industries to move into the region, Dr. Knapp said.
“This area has an extraordinary concentration of research funding, a lot of which goes out of the District of Columbia into other parts of the country. We can capture that if we have strong research programs in our universities,” he said. “We’re also a strong policy-oriented school, and you can’t have credibility in today’s world in policy unless you also have credibility in science and technology. If we’re going to remain serious as a policy-oriented institution, we also have to be strong as a science and technology-oriented institution.
During a question-and-answer session, Dr. Knapp talked about the job fair GW hosted with other local universities last summer, which drew more than 1,400 local job-seekers. A Rotarian mentioned that the D.C. Rotary Club has a yearly career fair for high school students and invited GW to partner with the Rotary Club on this event.
Another Rotarian asked Dr. Knapp what GW can learn from the planned Cornell University technology campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City. Dr. Knapp called the idea for the campus “visionary” and highlighted the need for science and technology resources at the heart of cities like New York and D.C.
“We can provide the kind of talent and the intellectual resources that can attract technology companies and others to the District of Columbia,” Dr. Knapp said. “There’s something we’re dependent on here, and it’s called the federal government. It shows every sign of potential shrinkage in the coming years, so we need to diversify the economy, and that’s one reason universities are stepping up.”