President William Perry addressed teachers and teaching assistants at the first faculty luncheon of the school year Wednesday.

Lynne Curry, professor of history and chairperson of the Faculty Senate opened and thanked the senate and the offices of the president and of academic affairs for sponsoring the event.

Blair Lord, provost and vice president of academic affairs welcomed Perry to the stage. Perry then commenced to address the faculty present on his 60th day in office.

In his 10-minute speech, Perry said his primary reason to come to Eastern was because of the academics. He sees what people are doing here and the high quality performance in everything the faculty does.

“I have hope in the unseen and in the unseen future,” he said. He was happy with the “rich and honored past.a past I want to honor.”

He stated Eastern honors three things: service, excellence and the transformation of society.

Perry said he hopes to accomplish a couple things in order to “honor the past, and embrace the future.”

The first step is life-long learning, he said, where a series of meetings will be held with faculty, staff and students in order to hear the people of Eastern. His second goal is to make Eastern a place where the faculty can have fulfilled career, a first choice for staff.

Perry also believes in building student relationships, as he thinks it is “the first step in guiding students in our democracy.”

He urged all faculty and staff to set goals to help see this accomplished.

Through these steps, Perry hopes to find out what investments need to be made in order to see that Eastern is an investment that will pay off.

Perry can be found on the campus to hear what students think. He wishes all the people to be “frank and candid to make progress that needs to be made.”