Investiture remarks by Bruce R. Evans, BE’81, Board of Trust chairman
Vanderbilt University
April 9, 2022
Opening Welcome
It’s an honor to be here today and an honor to be hosting this beautiful ceremony for Chancellor Diermeier. On behalf of the Board of Trust, I’d like to welcome everyone to the chancellor’s investiture.
Daniel is only the ninth chancellor that Vanderbilt has installed in nearly 150 years—which is clear and convincing evidence that our chancellors enjoy their work! As we begin, I want to offer gratitude and welcome to the many people joining us today who make the pursuit of our mission possible.
We are fortunate to have one of our former chancellors here with us today—Nicholas S. Zeppos, who returned to Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 2020 after more than a decade as chancellor. Thank you, Chancellor Emeritus Zeppos, for your exceptional leadership of our university.
I’d also like to thank my fellow members of the Board of Trust, both current and emeritus, for their enduring commitment to this institution.
Special thanks to all the members of Vanderbilt’s faculty, staff and student bodies for their hard work, fortitude and perseverance over the last two very challenging years—which many of us would describe as “years like no other.”
Thanks as well to the leaders of the Faculty Senate, the University Staff Advisory Council and the student government organizations for their extra effort and support of our university since Chancellor Diermeier’s arrival on campus.
Thank you once again to the members of the chancellor search and search advisory committees that brought Chancellor Diermeier to Vanderbilt.
Thank you, and welcome, to the local, state and federal officials who are with us today. We greatly appreciate your counsel and support.
I’d also like to thank and welcome the delegates from other institutions who are here celebrating with us. We are honored by your presence and partnership in our mission.
I am grateful to the Blair String Quartet and Vanderbilt Chorale, who will each perform throughout the ceremony.
Thank you to our staff for their creativity and dedication in planning and executing this special event.
A very special thank you, and welcome, to our esteemed speakers today.
I also want to offer a warm welcome to the members of Chancellor Diermeier’s family and his friends, who join us today. We are very glad you are here with us.
And finally, I’d like to thank Chancellor Diermeier for taking the helm and steering Vanderbilt so adeptly. Despite the unexpected early difficulties, your leadership has been deeply invigorating in ways none of us could have envisioned.
On behalf of the entire university community, I am honored and thrilled to welcome all of you—formally—to Chancellor Diermeier’s investiture ceremony.
Investiture Remarks
Before we formally invest Daniel as chancellor, I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on how we arrived at this moment.
Installing a new chancellor for our university is not something done lightly. It is not simply a matter of tradition or bureaucratic efficiency. This is the culmination of a process led with intention, with purpose and with vision. This is the result of a deliberate process designed to align our community’s values and aspirations with the leader best suited to meet the moment.
It is essential to determine what an organization wants and needs in a leader before beginning the search for one. Both our Chancellor Search Committee and Chancellor Search Advisory Committee took this to heart.
We knew Vanderbilt needed someone who could help us connect all areas of our excellence across this university and inspire us to channel our collective strength in pursuit of excellent education, deeper knowledge and groundbreaking innovation.
We needed someone who would appreciate our diverse yet collegial community and could encourage us to bring our university’s strengths to bear in service of others.
We needed someone to challenge us to push further still in realizing our potential.
We needed someone, in short, who would not only help us grow—but dare us to grow.
We knew our next chancellor needed to be a person who was dynamic and decisive, bold but not brash, reflective but ready and, above all, someone who sees what this community is and can be and knows how to bring the best out of each and every one of us.
And it was incredibly important that our next leader not just prioritize Vanderbilt’s success, but think about Vanderbilt as part of a community—one among many influential, consequential institutions, entities, groups and individuals that make Nashville the incredible place it is.
In preparing for today, I’ve reflected quite a bit on those initial conversations we had as a search committee, and I am still astounded that we found someone as well-suited to this role as Daniel. Daniel didn’t just tick every box on our wish list. He added new boxes and ticked those too.
Daniel’s previous boss, University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer, told me Daniel is a “natural leader,” particularly well-suited for “a place that wants to be ambitious.” Another reference told me, “Daniel is a naturally optimistic and ebullient guy—and not somebody for the status quo.” His friends and colleagues told me he “forms a clear vision, is decisive and is very tenacious in terms of solving problems.” Another told me, “Daniel’s leadership model is based on opportunity, not constraint,” and, “He knows how to inspire.”
At every turn in the two years and four months since we selected Daniel as Vanderbilt’s ninth chancellor, he has continued to affirm our decision. Let me give you just a few examples.
In March 2020, a few days after COVID arrived and Vanderbilt’s campus was closed, I wrote to Daniel—three months before he was scheduled to arrive on campus as our new chancellor: “Would you please agree to serve on the Board of Trust COVID Emergency Subcommittee?”
“Absolutely. Happy to,” was Daniel’s reply. Right away he was fully engaged in the crisis, working hard with Interim Chancellor Susan R. Wente and her team to complete a suddenly remote school year. And then, with a running start, newly arrived Daniel and his experienced team pivoted hard to the process of safely reopening.
On January 25, 2021, The Vanderbilt Hustler, Vanderbilt’s student newspaper, wrote an article under the headline “Thank You Vanderbilt.” The students wrote: “Last fall, Vanderbilt was one out of only four of the nation’s top fifteen universities that invited all interested undergraduate students back to campus. The decision was not an easy journey—as expressed in a letter from Chancellor Diermeier. Despite it being easier to suspend in-person classes, Vanderbilt labored over how to make the fall semester feasible and ultimately sided with this more difficult and uncertain option.”
On May 1 and 2, 2021, Vanderbilt held an in-person commencement ceremony for the class of 2020 in Vanderbilt Stadium—roughly 70 percent of the undergraduate class and their families attended. Two weeks later, the class of 2021 commencement was similarly held.
The gratitude from the graduates and their parents was tremendous. They had looked forward to this moment for most of their lives, and, after the deep challenges of the pandemic, many had been afraid it wouldn’t be possible. Chancellor Diermeier rallied the Vanderbilt community to make sure we did whatever it took to make it happen, proving that when we work together as One Vanderbilt, we can accomplish anything. When he told the graduates: “This is a proud moment,” he was speaking to every member of our community.
Another moment that stands out for me was in October 2020. Daniel called together the trustees for his first strategy session. Part two of those meetings was labeled “Strategy and Plan for Action.” The top bullet under that label said “Deepen and Accelerate.”
During the subsequent 18 months, all of us have grown to appreciate Daniel’s version of “Accelerate.” Since his arrival, in what must be an all-time pre-investiture record of leadership accomplishment, the university has:
- Weathered the pandemic and returned to normalcy
- Maintained and built financial strength in support of our mission
- Invigorated the university’s fundraising, exceeding its annual objectives and initiating significant new capital fundraising initiatives
- Launched Destination Vanderbilt to recruit more world-class faculty to our campus
- Appointed our groundbreaking alumna Candice Lee as our athletic director and launched Vandy United to upgrade our athletics facilities and support the success of Vanderbilt’s student-athletes.
- Refined and accelerated our undergraduate residential college building project, including the soon-to-open Rothschild College.
- Improved the academic buildings in several of our graduate schools and launched construction of our graduate student village.
- Invested in telling our story and sharpening our identity both within our community and far beyond.
It makes me proud (and sort of tired) to think about all that has been accomplished in Daniel’s short tenure as Vanderbilt’s chancellor.
As we approach our 150th anniversary in 2023, each passing day affirms that Daniel was the right leader for Vanderbilt during the darkest days of the pandemic, that he is the right leader for Vanderbilt today and will be the right leader for Vanderbilt tomorrow.
And now, Chancellor Diermeier, I’m honored to present you with the symbols of the office you’ve held so capably since the summer of 2020.
Presenting the Symbols of Office
Chancellor, I ask you to join me at the podium so we may officially pass the torch to you—with anticipation, excitement and complete faith in your continued leadership of this institution.
On behalf of the Board of Trust of Vanderbilt University, at this time it is my distinct honor and high privilege to present to you our compliments and best wishes; to convey to you our pride, satisfaction and confidence in the leadership you have shown upon your accession to this office; and to declare you now, in the presence of this assembly, formally invested as the ninth chancellor of Vanderbilt University.
We place the leadership of this university into your hands.
We place the symbol of that leadership on your shoulders, with the chain of office for this university. Let it be a constant reminder to you of our mission to bring out the best in humanity, our purpose in creating unity and our charge to lead with excellence.
May you also lead with the confidence, the boldness and the courage expressed in the motto—our first—that we have chosen to accompany the newly redesigned seal of Vanderbilt University: Crescere aude. Dare to grow. Let your leadership be a model for inspiring this community to embrace its future.
Use the authority which this chain symbolizes with wisdom, with grace, with goodness—and daring—for the benefit of Vanderbilt and for all of humanity.
Crescere aude.
Ladies and gentlemen, the ninth chancellor of Vanderbilt University: Daniel Diermeier.