Action Strategies: Reshaping the University : Transforming the U

Sections

Download (PDF)
Strategic Positioning Report
(416 KB)

To respond to the challenges facing us today and to reach our goal to be one of the top three public research universities in the world, we must be strategic in repositioning, rebalancing, and reshaping the University. We must be responsive to change to fully realize our goals of high academic quality and institutional effectiveness. We must hold ourselves to world-class standards in recruiting and retaining faculty, students, and staff. Our “public good” responsibilities imply that we more than keep pace with others; if we fail to achieve excellence in what we do we are actually failing, in the long run, to contribute to the public good. We will need to promote a nimble organizational culture committed to excellence and responsive to change. And we must make extra efforts to communicate our bold goal, our important mission, and our progress as a University to all our constituencies. We must be prepared to take action. The following action strategies will be key to achieving our aims.

Preparing the state’s future leaders and citizens through rigorous undergraduate, graduate, and professional education is a cornerstone of land grant universities. Of special note are the unique learning opportunities a public land grant research university offers its undergraduate students. “To learn from cutting-edge researchers who bring their latest discoveries into their classroom, to share the joy of discovery with scholars who are leading their fields, to learn the possibilities and limitations of inquiry by being an apprentice researcher in a faculty lab – these are added values that the research university brings to undergraduate education.”¹² At the University we are committed to integrating research and research methodology into the undergraduate curriculum. The exposure to the research enterprise and the possibilities of further education spurs many undergraduates to pursue graduate or professional education. All great universities place a high priority on attracting, retaining, and graduating outstanding students. Research I universities rely on strong undergraduate programs as an important source of graduate and professional students. Indeed, as the Citizen’s League recommends in its November 2004 report, the University should be nationally selective in its undergraduate admissions policy.¹³

As academic standards for admission – especially those at the Twin Cities campus – continue to rise, the University should do all it can to set clear expectations for admission. The University should inform prospective students, their parents, and guidance counselors that “access” as an important University value does not imply immediate admission to students who are not academically ready for the University or who have underperformed in high school. A student is ill-served by the University if the student is ill-prepared for the curriculum that the University offers. Such students should be advised to prepare for the University and to demonstrate their capability to succeed here by successfully completing studies at another two- or four-year institution before transfer to the University. The University does not contribute to the public good by enrolling poorly prepared or poorly motivated students. To do so affects the learning of all students by affecting the quality of classroom interactions as well as interactions outside the classroom. Students learn directly from each other, so an engaged and primed student community is essential.

Maintaining a highly motivated and prepared student body also is essential if Minnesota is to retain its brightest and most highly motivated youth. Excellence attracts excellence; without excellence throughout the student body many of the best and brightest will leave the state to go elsewhere – and frequently fail to return. To insure future prosperity for the state, the University must remain a magnet for talent.

To maintain its status as a talent magnet, and in accordance with its obligations as a public institution, the University must provide access to talented and qualified students from all walks of life, including diverse racial, ethnic, economic and social backgrounds. Student talent, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, is not distributed on the basis of economic or social class and, therefore, public universities have an especially important role to: “avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.”¹⁴ It is extremely important for the University to do all it can to bring bright, diverse, well-prepared students here. We cannot be a great university without recognizing that promoting access based on talent and potential – and not income or other social advantages – is a crucial aspect of our mission. If we are to prepare students for roles in a multiracial, multicultural environment, then we need to provide that environment at this University. That is, we must ensure that we fully understand as a public university that diversity and excellence are intertwined.

We expect that our University will provide strong disciplinary and interdisciplinary research and teaching. We must offer exceptional professional and graduate programs and a distinguished, challenging undergraduate education. University of Minnesota students should be intellectually curious, ambitious, motivated to learn, prepared to achieve in a challenging academic environment, and they should expect to graduate in a timely fashion. Students graduating from the University should be able to research and evaluate information, think critically, solve problems, master knowledge, understand the roots of civilization in a global society, communicate effectively both orally and through written expression, and understand research methodologies. They should be equipped to make ethically responsible decisions in an increasingly complex society and world, and they should be prepared to become engaged global citizens and life-long learners.

The University does not contribute to the public good if the access it offers is to a mediocre institution. Rather, access is valuable and meaningful only if it is access to a University of high quality and excellence throughout – we should expect no less from any member of our University community. To encourage more outstanding students to attend the University we should: attract outstanding students from the state, across the country and around the world; recognize the importance of high quality students to the entire academic enterprise; promote international education and experience in a global world; develop additional private support for students’ education; and continue aggressive efforts to improve retention and graduation rates.

The quality of a university comes first and foremost from the achievements of its faculty. They are the catalysts of a great research university. They design the curriculum and teach classes. They inspire and mentor students – undergraduate, graduate, and professional. Their research discoveries and scholarship expand scientific knowledge, produce new scholarship in the arts and humanities, and contribute to economic vitality.

Great universities rely heavily on talented and motivated staff in order to support the increasingly complex and specialized work of faculty, as well as the educational experience of students, and the University’s engagement with the broader community. Without dedicated staff support, faculty will not flourish and students will not adequately be served. We must recognize and reward the contributions of staff at all levels.

About half of the faculty of the University of Minnesota is of an age likely to retire within the next decade. This represents one of the University’s greatest challenges and one of its greatest opportunities. The opportunities are clear. In the coming decade, the University has the opportunity to identify, attract, mentor, inspire, reward, and retain faculty of the highest quality. It has the opportunity to build on and greatly increase the strengths of existing programs and to pursue emerging opportunities in new areas. The teaching, scholarship, and public engagement of a well-chosen new faculty member can invigorate our students and other faculty. Each search for a new faculty member is an opportunity to bring to the University an individual who can identify and pursue the most fundamental issues of a discipline using the most recent techniques and technologies. The challenge is to choose top new faculty wisely, to successfully attract them to Minnesota, to provide an environment that continually challenges, mentors and inspires them, and then to retain and reward them successfully in the face of offers from our competitors. Our University should be a place where faculty are excited and inspired to do their best path-breaking work. We must maintain our reputation for being on the cutting edge of exciting new research, innovation, and teaching.

The future of the University of Minnesota as a major research university rests on a wise balance of its strengths with its breadth. Although our breadth has been a great strength in the past, given the environment of increasingly scarce resources the university faces, our ability to meet each of these challenges will depend critically on selecting the right balance between breath and depth. We must focus on seeking faculty and staff of higher quality, including diversity, rather than simply a higher quantity. We must opportunistically build areas of strength rather than retaining or building broad but inadequately funded programs. To be attractive to the highest quality faculty and staff will require that we offer salaries, benefits, and programmatic support and support for graduate students comparable to other top universities. Such selective investments are central to retaining the University’s current strengths and to building additional strengths. There are four key strategies: identify and attract scholars and teachers of the highest quality and potential; encourage and promote greater diversity of faculty background and of ideas; inspire, challenge, mentor, retain, develop and reward faculty and staff; and establish and enforce at each opportunity University-wide standards for faculty excellence in tenure and promotion decisions.

Promote an effective organizational culture that is committed to excellence and responsive to change.

Universities, as institutions steeped in tradition, can be resistant to change. At the same time, a great research university is constantly creating cutting-edge work that redefines and transforms human understanding. So, the notion of revising and revisiting our settled views – and recognition of the need to experiment – are the very heart of the research university. All great universities have supported – and promoted – change at various stages in their histories. The university of 100 years ago was a very different place for faculty, for students, and for staff than the university of today. A great university must manage and direct change and seek innovation and continuous improvement in response to new opportunities, conditions, and needs.

Well-prepared, fully engaged faculty and staff represent the most important asset the University has in times of change. The skills, knowledge, creativity, dedication and motivation they bring to their work are the core of the institution’s competitive advantage. Maintaining that advantage during change requires the constant renewal of skills and talents, an unrelenting focus on innovation, and deep support for agility at all levels. The very greatest universities encourage responsible change and innovation, and courageously confront mediocrity and stasis.

To be committed to excellence as an organization implies that we must exercise responsible stewardship by setting priorities, and enhancing and effectively utilizing our resources and infrastructure. We need to explore new models for developing, supporting, and sustaining resources to support teaching, learning, research, and outreach. We need to reduce system-wide barriers to interdisciplinary research, teaching, and study. We need to explore new ways of ensuring that our long-term revenues are competitive with peer institutions. We need to explore new ways of increasing our productivity and recognizing and rewarding faculty and staff who are productive, creative, and responsible.

Communicate clearly and credibly with all our constituencies and practice public engagement responsive to the public good.

In many ways, the University exists to communicate. Its core mission – to discover, interpret and transmit knowledge, to foster the exchange of ideas, to sustain research and creative activity, and to encourage a culture of inquiry – lies at the heart of everything we hold dear. The society that founded the University as a land grant institution desires, and indeed demands, the fruits of this intellectual labor. In the current changing environment, we must engage in conversations on campus and beyond to clarify the University’s ideals for ourselves and for our supporting constituencies.

We can hope to sustain engagement and to hone the definition of our mutual purpose as a research and discovery university only if we find ways to talk to each other across – and about – our diversity. This effort will help to define common values and common cause in a changed academic environment.

Beyond the conversation that the University needs to have with itself to foster a strengthened sense of purpose and solidarity, we must continue to refine and deepen our communications efforts aimed at Minnesota’s various communities and constituencies, reminding them of the many benefits they derive from the University’s work. Our broader communications efforts must be dynamic and responsive to the needs of Minnesota – a dialogue that helps inform the University’s choices and priorities. We know, for example, that the University’s unique status as the state’s only research university is frequently not fully understood. We must build on this distinction and make clear the value, consequences, and impact on people in the state of breakthrough research and discovery that occurs at the University.