Raising Expectations
“No better inheritance can be given to a child than a good education.”
- Cyrus Northrop, second President of the University of Minnesota
“It is difficult to think that an investment in our youth and our future could be better placed than in our university.”
- Elmer L. Andersen, former Governor and Chair of the Board of Regents
The need for managing strategic change at the University is urgent – and inspiring. An education of the highest quality is essential for our students, but beyond this is it is also an “inheritance” for our state, our nation, and the world. Each of us in the University community throughout the state-wide system is responsible in various ways for preserving the quality of this inheritance. As we move forward, we should keep in sight our goals and values as we align the University’s mission to each of its colleges, departments, and other academic units as well as administrative functions and units. This will entail a change of institutional culture as we move more closely to norms of continuous improvement.
To quote the November 2004 Citizen’s League report: “The University of Minnesota should continue to enhance its role and focus as a world-class public research institution, which includes graduate/professional training, and nationally selective undergraduate and liberal arts education.”15 Our University community also urged this aim, but challenged us to reach higher. Our goal, within the next decade, is to be one of the three best public research universities in the world. We should expect no less in each task and responsibility we undertake.
As we move forward we will focus on our five action strategies: (1) recruit, educate, challenge, and graduate outstanding students; (2) recruit, mentor, reward, and retain outstanding faculty and staff; (3) promote an effective organizational culture that is committed to excellence and is responsive to change; (4) enhance and effectively utilize our resources and infrastructure; and (5) effectively communicate to all our constituencies and practice responsible public engagement responsive to the public good.
To be successful, our University will need to embrace change that includes greater selectivity in programs, curricula, faculty and students; greater integration of knowledge through teaching and research and public engagement; greater focus on a diverse University community; greater investments in human capital – our faculty, staff, and students; greater sharing of intellectual ideas and resources across disciplines, and greater awareness that building excellence at every turn and every task can lift all of us at the University and throughout the state toward a better society.
These action strategies should be considered in the larger framework of our goals, mission, and values but also as part of the question: what are the attributes of a world-class public research university? We all must recognize that in holding ourselves to world-class standards and in embracing excellence we will face difficult choices and tradeoffs. Ultimately, though, we cannot as a university responsibly contribute to the public good on the world stage if what we do is mediocre and better done by others.
Now that we have advanced the need for change and outlined strategies to achieve the necessary change, how will we know if there is progress and when we have achieved our goals? We will need to measure our goals and create our own standards and benchmarks, and communicate these appropriately.16And our standards, our definition of “top three,” will change over time and according to context. Moreover, any “top three” public university cannot expect to reach, or stay at, that level of excellence and recognition without responsibly evolving through continuous improvement and managing change. Implementation details will form the next stage – a separate and later part of this strategic positioning process.
This is an exciting time. We have a compelling case. We are ready to transform the University of Minnesota into one of the world’s leading public research universities for the 21st century.
| Like the beam of the lighthouse, the University produces public goods that cannot be hoarded by any one group but are available to all. . . . By imagining the University as a lighthouse for the “ship” of our State, we can more effectively recognize its unique mission and contribution, and recommit ourselves to sustaining it for future generations.17 |
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15 Citizens League, Trouble on the Horizon, supra note 1, p. 4.
16 Work on benchmarks for achieving our goal of becoming a preeminent public research university continues. By way of example, benchmarks will include: total research expenditure; federal research expenditure; National Research Council ranking of graduate programs; National Academy and other prestigious organization memberships; national and international faculty awards; faculty salaries and compensation by discipline and rank; number of joint and cross-disciplinary faculty appointments; high school rank percentiles; median SAT/ACT scores; graduate and professional school selectivity based on UGPA and standardized test scores; number of National Merit Scholars; student retention and graduation rates (undergraduate) and time-to-degree (graduate); number of doctoral degrees awarded annually; undergraduate career placement rate and advanced study enrollment; graduate career placement and post-doctoral appointment rates; private giving and endowment value; percentage of students, staff, and faculty who are members of underrepresented populations; infrastructure investment, including library resources; and number of patents, license agreements, start-up companies.
17 University of Minnesota Instrumentalization Task Force, “A Lighthouse Built on a Rock-Solid Foundation Lighting the Way for a Bright Future – The University of Minnesota,” (September 1, 2004), p. 2, available at http://www1.umn.edu/usenate/fcc/lighthousereport.html .
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