Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost
Building Excellence Through a Coherent Vision
| August 3, 2004 E. Thomas Sullivan Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost As the new Provost of the University of Minnesota, many people ask my thoughts about the future of this University. Before sharing those thoughts, I want to extend appreciation to President Robert Bruininks for his confidence in selecting me for this challenging new position. It is a privilege to serve in the role of the University’s chief academic officer. The Provost of the University must advance academic excellence throughout the University, ensuring that the University’s core teaching, research, and public outreach missions, both in undergraduate and graduate programs, are among the very best in the country. We need a coherent vision of the future of this University, one that will continue to build excellence through enhanced quality in our teaching and research. We now confront fiscal realities quite different from but a few years ago, including lower state support (together with an eroding tax base) and higher health costs. It is now clear that incremental changes or marginal cuts are no longer viable or sufficient to sustain our future. We have entered a transformative era for higher education in the country and in Minnesota. There is a certain urgency for fundamental changes. We can start by ensuring that each decision aligns resources, whether from public or private sources, with the academic and intellectual priorities of the University. This necessary alignment is a precondition to building a coherent focus on excellence. To ensure that we stay focused, we need to engage in careful strategic thinking and planning so that we are able to maintain a coherent institutional vision and implement it in an efficient and effective way. Because Minnesota and other states are under great financial pressures, which are being passed to our public universities, we must find the right balance between necessary investments in public higher education and other state responsibilities. To achieve this right balance, I believe the University must engage in far more strategic thinking and planning for us to ensure that there is a coherent, focused institutional vision and mission. Strategic thinking and planning imply that priorities will be set. In setting academic priorities, a focus on quality is the most important measure, along with 1) examining how each program relates to and is central to the mission of the University and 2) whether we have a comparative or unique advantage by supporting or enhancing particular programs. If we are to be successful in building excellence at each task within our mission, we need to evaluate carefully the balance between capacity and demand. This will help us identify where there are efficiencies, economies of scale, and ultimately effectiveness. In the end, this process should inform our decisions and validate our actions. To achieve a coherent focus, one must start with the fundamental question of how a first-class research university is defined. What are its characteristics, and how is such an institution financially supported? The first characteristic we must remember is that the University of Minnesota is a public university. As such, it is a public good. This aspect of the university is often taken for granted, if not ignored. Although a university education is a direct private benefit to any student who receives this experience, a public education is also without question an inherent good or a public good, the benefits of which are enjoyed by society as a whole, not just by the individual receiving the education. There is a direct relationship between education and the common good. Within the last two decades more than 80 percent of America’s college students have attended public institutions. At the same time, the percentage of state support for education across the United States has declined significantly. Just as higher education clearly has become more important to the state economic welfare, the state has retrenched substantially from its investment in public higher education. To make matters worse, in Minnesota the decline in state revenue for public higher education in the last 25 years has exceeded the decline in other states. We must recommit to the notion that there is a long-term consequence to the state in investing in public higher education: Education creates positive benefits for society, and for the individual being educated. From the individual’s perspective, access to quality public education increases his or her productivity, wealth, and buying power through acquisition of knowledge and skills. Society benefits, along with the individual, when the state invests in human capital through public education. As the individual prospers and contributes to society as a well-informed citizen, he/she has increased consumer buying power and a direct effect on the economy. A well-educated citizen is a vital economic participant in a market economy. An individual’s preferences and chances in life are expanded through higher education. As the individual does better in life, value is added to the public welfare. Consequently, the private gain the individual receives complements the public good. In addition, a well-educated individual is a more informed citizen who can contribute decision-making and leadership in our democratic society. The university experience helps prepare citizens for a full, productive life in society. Undoubtedly, democracy depends on a well-educated, engaged citizenry. Public universities are important economic organizations that not only educate and train individuals for civic leadership and civic responsibility in a democratic society, but they also: (1) invest in research that creates new products, services, technology, innovations and startup companies; (2) expand intellectual capital that provides for new jobs that, in turn, can attract new talent and a qualified work force for the state’s economic growth; (3) attract new business from outside the state because of experience within the University and because of the quality of educational opportunities available to the work force; and (4) attract external financing support that can have a multiplier effect through leveraging of resources. A comprehensive public research university, like the University of Minnesota, makes investments in our community because there are important dynamics between research, teaching, and the creative arts that enhance the research and enrich the teaching. We know that a great public university, one that excels in teaching and research, will be able to keep the best and brightest students within the state and will attract additional talented students from outside the state who, in turn, will attract employers and new employment opportunities, resulting in an expanded economy. These cycles raise the quality of life for all of our citizens. The welfare gains produced by this public university, both the private (personal) as well as the public, creating productivity, efficiencies, and democratic values, comprise significant resources for the entire state. Unquestionably, the result is a higher quality of life educationally, economically, and culturally. In sum, when an individual is well educated, he/she has the capacity to be a good citizen and the opportunity to prosper. As a University, we have a tripartite mission of research, teaching, and public service. To be an exceptional institution of higher education, we need to define carefully the core mission of the University through each of its colleges and departments. We need to ask what the essential support for that core needs to be, what activities we can continue in terms of public service and outreach that are related to our teaching and research mission, and we need to be honest about which programs do not fit within our goals and reasonable expectations. For each decision, we should ask how the decision will move us closer to building excellence through quality. If this standard is not met, perhaps we should not engage or continue to engage in that activity. We also must ask what our comparative advantages are in continuing or expanding in certain areas. In continuing to build excellence as one of America’s premier research universities, we can accept no less as we advance the frontiers of knowledge to address our most significant needs and to help solve society’s pressing problems. In addition, we must provide exceptional teaching and instruction for professional, graduate, and undergraduate education. To do this, we must recruit and retain a most distinguished and creative faculty of gifted teachers, scholars, and mentors who will inspire students and other colleagues in our University community. Furthermore, we cannot succeed unless we are great stewards of the precious resources, both public and private, that come to the University; this requires us to be more responsible and accountable. We must be able to build better partnerships and relationships between and among the University’s varied constituencies so that in the end, we will achieve efficiency and effectiveness in our goal to be first rate in research, teaching, and public service. Mindful of these aspirations, first principles suggest that we must invest much more in human capital, our faculty and students. This means that identifying greater resources for compensation to retain the very best faculty and staff must be a priority. A corollary is that we must increase substantially financial aid, fellowships, and scholarships for both graduate and undergraduate students to ensure that we recruit and retain the most highly qualified students—those who are intellectually curious and ambitious. Second, we must increase support for internal core institutions, such as the libraries that are the centerpiece of our research, discovery, and learning. Third, as we have done with the undergraduate program, we need to enhance the graduate programs so that the University of Minnesota continues to be a leading, worldwide center of graduate education and research. Fourth, we must ensure support for interdisciplinary teaching and research across the University so that our students can see the dynamic interconnections in discovering new knowledge. Fifth, we must continue to reevaluate the totality of the student experience to ensurethat each student receives a first-rate academic experience, along with high quality advising and mentoring. As the new Provost, I see my role as attempting to lead and manage the academic expectations of the University, including moving the University forward in its national recognition and ranking. To succeed, we need to set clear academic priorities through a reflective and careful deliberation of our core mission and values. We then need to very carefully implement these policies and values in a way that ensures their efficiency and effectiveness. In order to develop a coherent institutional mission and focused strategic objectives, I will ask each dean and department head, together with the faculty and others within the collegiate units, to review within their units these key questions: 1) what is your core mission? 2) what support is essential for this core? 3) what is the appropriate public outreach that relates to our teaching and research mission? and finally, 4) what is it that we are engaged in that does not directly relate to these three categories? Building excellence through quality is a goal that should continue, even though resources are more constrained. In sum, the President and I ask you to join us in a partnership that will challenge each of us to think and act creatively to address the new realities and challenges confronting our University. I am confident that this partnership will be stimulating and rewarding for our University. If this public university is to continue to be a public good for the citizens of Minnesota, we must recommit to the notion that we should be engaged only in teaching, research, and public service that adds significant value and quality to our state and the country. This will require difficult choices, but with choices there are new opportunities. |
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