Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost
Strategic Planning Progress
Sampling of Successes of the Past Year
Since 2007, University faculty have been awarded one Nobel Prize and one Wolf Prize; three Guggenheim Fellowships; seven were elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science; three were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; one was elected to the Institute of Medicine.
Five students have been awarded Rhodes Scholarships since 2001, including one this fall. In fact, more University of Minnesota students have been awarded Rhodes Scholarships than students from any other public research university except one. Thirteen University of Minnesota students received Fulbright grants for 2008-09. The Fulbrights won by University of Minnesota students in 2008-09 represents an increase from an average of eight in recent years.
Last week, the University received a $40 million pledge for diabetes research from the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation. In April 2008, The Masons of Minnesota pledged $65 million, the largest gift ever given to the University of Minnesota, for support of cancer research and clinical care.
The University has invested nearly $90 million in the best and most talented faculty since 2005 to help ensure the University’s competitiveness with other top universities. In the past year alone, we have successfully retained faculty with offers from Yale, Michigan, and Berkeley.
In the fall of 2008, we brought in our first University Honors Program cohort of 611 freshmen students. These outstanding students had an average ACT composite score of 31, and 96% were in the top 10% of their high school graduating class. Sixty-three percent are from Minnesota, and 13.6% are students of color.
New world-class models of interdisciplinary research have been created: The Institute on the Environment, the Center for Integrative Leadership, the Institute for Translational Neuroscience, and the Institute for Engineering in Medicine, among others.
A unique $1.3 million annual multi-faceted initiative, "The Imagine Fund," supported in part by a generous grant from the McKnight Foundation, was created to support the creative and research activities of our arts, humanities, and design faculty university-wide.
New student learning outcomes and student development outcomes were implemented. These outcomes are being harmonized with the new Liberal Education requirements to enhance the learning and development experience for undergraduate students.
Strategic Planning: 2004-2008 Progress
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