A Framework for the Future
Draft version of the strategic planning document; final version
to be published May 11. Comments on this version may be sent until
April 17 to j-rowan@illinois.edu
When Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act in 1862, he set
in motion a process that would change the face of higher
learning not only in the United States, but in the world.
The land-grant universities were designed to open higher
education to the children of farmers and merchants; to
foster scientific, scholarly and technical research; and to
bring the fruits of that research to bear on the challenges
facing the nation in the early days of the industrial age.
Though these ambitions were not modest, they seem so in
contrast to the reality that grew out of them; for the great
public universities of the United States have opened those
doors far wider than Lincoln could have imagined, and the
benefits to society have been immeasurable. In Illinois, the
citizens embraced the challenge to build a university that
would serve their needs and aspirations - one whose students
would come from all segments of society and, with an
Illinois education, could better their lot and better the
world; one whose faculty not only would transmit knowledge
to future generations, but also would create and discover
new knowledge that would reach well beyond the borders of
the state and nation. Indeed, the land-grant movement may be
said to have been born in Illinois, with the vision of
Jonathan Baldwin Turner.
The founders of the University of Illinois interpreted the
land-grant mission as a call for excellence in all aspects
of their work. They knew that some might consider broad
excellence too lofty a goal for a public university, and
that there would be those who wished to limit the ambition
and scope of the education and scholarship undertaken here.
The first Regent, John Milton Gregory, had a ready reply:
"We repeat, then, to those who are so earnestly demanding
that education shall be made practical, What is practical?
Let us answer. Brains are practical. The most practical
thing on earth is brain power - the power to see, reason and
understand. And so that education is most practical which
most develops brain power - power to perceive, judge and
act."
Gregory and the other early leaders of this institution did
not aspire to excellence for its own sake, or out of a naive
idealism. They did so in the firm conviction that this was
the best way to fulfill their obligation to the drafters of
the Morrill Act and to the people of Illinois. As
beneficiaries and stewards of that legacy, we have a
responsibility to protect and enhance the exceptional
quality of this institution, building upon what has already
been attained for the further benefit of present and future
generations.
Few social institutions have endured as long as the
university. Few have proven as adaptable to different
environments and changing times. As we approach the year
2000, we must draw in full measure on the institutional
adaptability that has sustained us until now, for our
university and our graduates face circumstances today that
have not been encountered before. The knowledge explosion,
economic globalization, the need for an ever-more educated
citizenry, shifting demographics, new information
technologies, and a world of cultural and political
differences far more complex than had been supposed almost
certainly will require us to change, if we are to serve
future needs and generations as well as we have those past.
Change in this era is unlikely to be achieved through
expansion. Rather, we will have to refashion and refine
ourselves to be the university we want to be. We are likely
to have to find ways to do more with less. We will find
those ways through decisions made and actions taken at all
levels of the university community. As alternatives confront
us, we must make choices that move us closer to the goals we
decide upon.
Change requires courage; it requires civil and collegial
participation throughout the community; but more than
anything, it requires the "brain power" that Gregory
exhorted us to develop. We can become a stronger university,
but only if we are prepared to be the agents and initiators
of change, focusing on providing more value to society at
large, and generating resources along with ideas. If our
enterprise relies only upon its traditional sources for
financial support, we are destined to grow smaller or
weaker. The key to broadened scale and ambition is to
identify and develop new ways to meet educational and
research needs for which sectors of our society are prepared
to pay full value. We have undertaken this planning in the
spirit of Gregory's vision for the university: to see,
reason and understand; to perceive, judge and act. This
document is intended as a guide and contribution to
continuity and renewal.
The Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois
has always been responsible for educating the ablest sons
and daughters of the state. We have performed this task
successfully for well over a century; only two or three
other campuses in the nation educate as large a number of
highly qualified students as we do. Illinois students have
gone on to become leaders in civic, corporate and academic
life throughout the nation. They have headed international
corporations like General Motors and major universities like
the University of Southern California, and they have been
the architects of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation's
capital, of the United Nations headquarters in New York and
of the capital city of Canberra, Australia. Their scientific
and technical achievements are innumerable: They have done
fundamental work on the chemical nature of vitamins and the
origins of life; they have had a profound impact on the ways
we move goods and move information; they have shaped the
world of the 20th century in myriad ways. Our graduates have
earned Nobels and Pulitzers; their works hang in this
nation's great museums, and they have performed upon the
most important stages in the world. School boards, local
governments, businesses and social service agencies
throughout the land have profited from their leadership and
advice.
As a land-grant institution, the campus also has been
charged with attracting and fostering a community of faculty
capable of producing diverse kinds of research with national
and international significance. This, too, we have achieved
for more than a hundred years. By providing crucial research
support and intellectual community, by encouraging
institutional loyalty, and by offering faculty large numbers
of able students to teach, the campus has created an
atmosphere in which many highly talented faculty, with
opportunities to move elsewhere, have willingly committed
themselves to the University of Illinois at an early period
of their careers. Their work has served and continues to
serve the people of Illinois, and the wider world,
remarkably well. Illinois chemists laid the foundations 75
years ago for modern technical innovations from color
television to medical nuclear magnetic resonance imaging.
Illinois agronomists introduced the soybean to the United
States as a major economic crop. An Illinois law professor
drafted the rules of evidence enacted by Congress and
applied by all the courts in the nation. An Illinois
professor pioneered both the transistor and
superconductivity. Another wrote the first textbook on risk
management in business. Faculty in our arts and humanities
departments have done fundamental, influential work in areas
ranging from ancient Greek texts to Renaissance music to the
Ottoman Empire to the causes of the U.S. Civil War. Some of
our students work closely with faculty in the research
enterprise - a graduate student and a postdoctoral fellow
shared a professor's Nobel Prize in physics, and
undergraduate students played a pivotal role in the
development of Mosaic, the widely adopted software that has
given millions of people access to the information
superhighway.
The public benefits of research are easily grasped. At this
campus, engineers have developed ways of building earthquake-
resistant structures and more fuel-efficient vehicles;
agronomists have developed hybrids that increase both the
yield and the nutritional value of corn, soybeans and other
crops; educational psychologists have developed techniques
for measuring and improving the way children learn to read.
Innovations that improve people's lives typically rest upon
ground-breaking research carried out decades before.
Discovery, in its essence, cannot be planned; its important
and unexpected benefits are the fruit of research carried
out on long horizons. In the United States, responsibility
for research traditionally has been shared by universities,
corporations and federal laboratories. But in recent times,
both the corporate and the federal sectors have massively
shortened the horizons of their research. They are
undertaking and funding less research, and are insisting on
quicker payoffs. They, and the nation, are relying
increasingly upon universities like ours as the principal
venues for thought and investigation of the most profound
and basic sort, with longer-range implications.
Although we have never demanded an identical profile in
every faculty member, we have steadfastly refused to divide
the faculty into researchers and teachers. In all our units
that have undergraduate students, the research professor and
the undergraduate professor have been one and the same. The
benefits of this kind of faculty for undergraduates are
immense, and are not available to students from Illinois for
anything remotely like the same cost at any other
institution.
Graduate and professional education are essential elements
of our teaching mission. Graduates of colleges and
universities across the nation and around the globe compete
for the opportunity to come to Illinois for graduate study.
The graduate students who enroll here are chosen on the
basis of their superior academic records and exceptional
promise. Likewise, they choose Illinois over other
opportunities because of our reputation for strength in
their chosen disciplines. In fields from accountancy to
psychology to engineering, our graduate programs are among
the best in the nation, and many specializations in the
humanities, fine arts, agriculture and social sciences are
highly ranked. Graduate students are invaluable
collaborators in professors' research projects, and they
also undertake significant research of their own. At the
same time, they are teachers-in-training of high quality,
serving as teaching assistants in the discussion sections of
large lectures or as supervised instructors in small
introductory classes. As aspiring professionals they serve
as models for undergraduates. They bring a cosmopolitan
presence to the campus both through their growing
intellectual sophistication and because they come here from
diverse places, in far greater proportion than our
undergraduates. After completing their graduate work, they
fan out in jobs across the country and the world where their
work reflects their development here, creating communities
of friends to Illinois.
Our campus thus acquires its particular identity through its
mix of undergraduate and graduate students with a faculty
engaged both in teaching and in research. In the future, it
will be important to maintain this mix in something like its
current shape. To depart radically from it would be to risk
the loss of an institutional quality and character that have
proven their worth to our students, our faculty and the
citizens of Illinois.
Behind this mix, and essential to its success, are superb
support facilities on which faculty and students depend and
to which faculty expertise contributes. We have filled
recognized needs in both traditional and innovative ways.
Thus the library, beginning with a donation of 644 books and
government pamphlets, has grown to a collection of nearly 9
million volumes, and has pioneered in the use of new
technologies to provide access to further resources at sites
around the world. Its holdings make it one of the world's
premier research libraries (third in the nation among
universities), with magnificent collections in the
humanities and social sciences; its technologies make it the
most accessible university library in the world. In some
cases, when the facilities needed for an important new
undertaking did not exist, we invented and built them. In
this way, the campus in its first decades erected a chemistry
laboratory building that was extraordinary by the standards of
the day. The nation's most outstanding chemists were drawn to
work there, and the department developed on those foundations
remains among the best in the world. In the 1960s, the
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts - designed by one
alumnus and funded with a $21 million gift from another -
was created to provide a home for both study and
performance. Its Foellinger Great Hall remains one of the
world's finest performance spaces. In the mid-'80s, a $40
million gift from an alumnus enabled us to build the Beckman
Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, where
scientists and scholars from a broad range of disciplines
are redefining interdisciplinary research. In short, through
strategic investment over the past century, we have
established an exceptional array of facilities, support
personnel, equipment, and other resources that sustains a
talented and productive faculty and profoundly enhances
student life and education.
Our land-grant charter has shaped our institution in yet
another way. From our earliest days, we have rejected the
model of the university as cloister or as ivory tower. On
the contrary, we have acknowledged and embraced our
obligation to serve the broader community of which we are a
part. We contribute to the flourishing of technology,
agriculture and commerce; to the sciences, arts, humanities
and other aspects of our culture and society; and to the
life of our professions. We are problem-solvers, bringing
our expertise to bear on the full range of issues facing our
community, our state, our nation and the world at the
approach of the new millennium, as we have done throughout
our history.
We firmly believe that the principles that have served us so
well in the past should continue to inform our decisions as
we confront the challenges of the years ahead. No one can
draw a road map to the future, describing those challenges
with any precision. But we do have strong indications of
some of the factors that will combine to require changes in
the years ahead, and of the major demographic and
technological developments that will provide their context.
We know that the future will demand of our students and
faculty no less than their greatest intellectual and
creative development, if they are to respond flexibly and
intelligently to these challenges and to the further
unpredictable changes we must expect. Our institution, and
our students, must be able to deal with those factors, and
with the unanticipated. We are committed to continuing to
provide our students with a practical education, in
Gregory's sense of the word.
Consequently the following seven principles will guide our
planning for the future. Many individual recommendations and
goals are developed from them in the remainder of this
document. At the beginning of each academic year we will
assess our progress toward achievement of our principal
goals, so that this plan may steadily be refined.
FIRST, we shall invest in people.
SECOND, we shall build upon our traditional preeminence and
advantages as a center for a broad range of scholarship and
research.
THIRD, we shall accord full value to our teaching mission,
preparing our students for professional life, leadership and
citizenship in a changing world.
FOURTH, we shall invest strategically in the facilities and
environment our faculty and students need to do their work.
FIFTH, we shall intensify our exploration and use of new
teaching and information technologies, and build on our
historic strengths in information and computing.
SIXTH, in connection with the increasingly international
character of our economy and culture, we shall strengthen
our strategic engagement in international studies.
SEVENTH, we shall reinvigorate our commitment to outreach
and partnerships.
***************
FIRST, we shall invest in people.
Our enterprise consists above all in interactions between
and among faculty, students, staff, and many others beyond
the bounds of our campus. The quality of what we do depends
upon the quality of these people; and our success depends
upon the degree to which we choose them wisely and cultivate
them well, providing them with the resources and environment
they need if they are to flourish.
Faculty. Our faculty, above all, define our level of
institutional achievement and reputation. They are centrally
involved in virtually all that the university does. They
transmit knowledge to their students and colleagues; to
public and professional constituencies, and to the corporate
world through consultation. They refine human understanding
of the way the world works; they contribute new ideas to all
aspects of human endeavor. Their quality truly matters, not
only to the reputation of the university but to the return
the people of Illinois realize on their investment.
Students. Excellent undergraduate students are essential to
the quality of the institution. They stimulate and challenge
faculty, which redounds to the benefit of the entire
community. But beyond that, a large fraction of students'
learning comes from their interactions with other students.
It benefits students enormously if the caliber of their
peers is as consistently high as we can achieve. Graduate
students occupy a central place in the university as a
community of scholars. Graduate education is one of our
primary teaching responsibilities, and superior graduate
students are essential to sustaining the high quality of
research and of undergraduate instruction. In both these
aspects of our mission, our success depends to a substantial
degree on our ability to attract, sustain, and educate, to
the best of their capacities, the very best graduate
students.
Professional support. Talented staff and academic
professional personnel both on and off campus provide
support to faculty, students and citizens throughout the
state. They feed, house and counsel the students; they
provide research laboratories with equipment and technical
support; they organize and administer such massive
undertakings as admissions, telecommunications and the
physical plant; they help extend the university to every
community in the state. They are in many ways the glue that
holds the campus together. We shall do our best to provide a
working environment that enables members of this important
group of colleagues to contribute their diverse strengths
and intellectual resources to the academic community.
Diversity. The people who constitute our campus community,
at all levels, represent an increasingly diverse population,
and this is a source of institutional vigor. This diversity
is a consequence both of our determination to open our doors
in the spirit of our land-grant heritage, and of the complex
but obvious fact that the population of the state and the
nation is in transition. By the year 2020, when the children
of our current students are enrolling here, the demographics
of Illinois and the nation are projected to have shifted
dramatically from a dominant majority toward substantial and
growing minority group populations. Preparing our students
to live and work in such a society is an essential element
of our responsibility to them. Beyond that, cultural
diversity brings with it intellectual diversity, leading in
turn to competition among ideas. Diversity may challenge
accepted wisdom, and may lead to the reexamination of long-
held values. Such debates are welcome on this campus, for
they are valuable features of intellectual life. We are
committed to conducting them in ways that promote and
preserve freedom and civility of action and speech, and
provide our students, faculty and staff with an optimal
environment for work and study.
SECOND, we shall build upon our traditional preeminence and
advantages as a center for a broad range of scholarship and
research.
We share with other land-grant institutions the research
mission mandated by the Morrill Act. We are distinctive,
however, in the quality, magnitude and diversity of our
research enterprise. We understand research to comprise
basic and applied science and technology; scholarship in a
full range of social and humanistic disciplines; and
creative activity in such areas as the fine and applied
arts. In its scope, Illinois differs from the preeminent
public universities of most other states, which assigned
technical and agricultural missions to one public university
and flagship status to another. This has long been a place
where excellent people are enabled to do excellent work, and
to capitalize upon emerging opportunities. The climate for
external support of research today is in flux. As our
faculty adapt to this changing climate, we shall strive to
provide an institutional environment for research that is
both stable and flexible, and that is sensitive and
responsive to differences and changes in the needs of our
researchers in different disciplines. Graduate students
pursuing their education also conduct their own significant
research, and provide indispensable support for faculty
research. We shall bring to our campus graduate students of
the highest caliber, and provide them with outstanding
programs and support, for they play a central role in
sustaining research achievement on this campus. Further, we
shall seek new means to allow our undergraduate students to
take fuller advantage of the rich research environment of
the institution in which they have opted to pursue their
education. We also shall develop innovative mechanisms for
transferring technology developed here to the private sector
and more broadly to the citizens of our state and nation.
THIRD, we shall accord full value to our teaching mission,
preparing our students for professional life, leadership and
citizenship in a changing world.
We shall make further investments and efforts to enhance
undergraduate education, from the first year onward, beyond
as well as within the majors we offer. We shall endeavor to
sustain the means that have proven successful, while seeking
new means, to assure the quality of the educational
opportunities available to our undergraduate and graduate
students. One of the most important ways to ensure that our
undergraduates receive a superior education is to develop
and sustain excellence in our graduate and professional
programs. Talented graduate students, fully engaged in their
own advanced education and undertaking the early stages of
what will become for many of them extended careers as
university teachers and researchers, are well positioned to
provide undergraduate instruction of high caliber. Our
teaching mission further extends to the education we provide
to these graduate students. The teaching and mentoring of
graduate students constitute essential parts of the
instructional responsibilities of our faculty. Our graduate
programs prepare students for positions and careers for
which advanced education is necessary or beneficial, and
they apprentice the college and university teachers of the
future. In our teaching at all levels, it remains important
for us to heed Gregory's advice: We are here not to march
our students through a narrow set of requirements, but to
develop their brain power.
FOURTH, we shall invest strategically in the facilities and
environment our faculty and students need to do their work.
While the character of this institution is determined above
all by the quality of our people, it is the quality of
institutional support we provide, broadly defined, that
makes this a desirable place to study and to build a career.
Our physical plant, extraordinary as it is, requires
renewal, repair and replacement on an ongoing basis. Much of
the campus's instructional laboratory, classroom and study
space has been virtually unchanged for decades. Our students
deserve to be educated in state-of-the-art facilities, as
their predecessors were. It is equally important that the
organizational structure of the university be responsive to
the needs of faculty and students. Like physical structures,
organizational structures and habits affect our development.
Our organizational structures should take account of the
expertise and advice of a broad range of campus
constituencies, yet should be sufficiently flexible and open
to enable the institution to capitalize on opportunities as
they arise.
FIFTH, we shall intensify our exploration and use of new
teaching and information technologies, and build on our
historic strengths in information and computing.
Since its earliest years, Illinois has been a leader in
technological innovation, and we are committed to remaining
so in the approaching era. As new information technologies
emerge and the knowledge explosion requires rapid access to
ever more information, we shall need to update the campus's
holdings in information sources and broaden access to these
technologies, for the benefit of our students, our faculty,
and the larger community. It will be a continuing challenge
to capitalize upon the possibilities and promise of the
emerging technologies. We shall undertake to match the best
available technology to needs in teaching, research, and
outreach, and to be pioneers in the development of new
technological approaches to enhance our efforts in all these
areas.
SIXTH, in connection with the increasingly international
character of our economy and culture, we shall strategically
strengthen our engagement in international studies.
More than ever before, our graduates will have to understand
and work with people from cultures other than our own. The
speed of international electronic communication renders
isolation virtually impossible; and economic and
professional activities of many kinds are becoming
increasingly internationalized. To prepare our students for
participation in this new world, we shall create
opportunities for them to study abroad; we shall bring
international students and faculty to the campus on
exchanges; and we shall strengthen our support of faculty
whose work has international dimensions.
SEVENTH, we shall reinvigorate our commitment to outreach
and partnerships, both domestic and international,
sustaining those forms of service that remain of value and
seeking new opportunities to take part in others.
In doing so, we shall draw upon our strengths as teachers
and scholars, for these represent the most effective ways in
which we can contribute to the well-being of our society.
Our involvement through service with various segments of the
public, government and the corporate world simultaneously
informs and enriches our teaching and research. In the past,
our public service activities have been significant, but
scattered. The future requires more. We are committed to a
full partnership with the people of Illinois. New emphasis
on this alliance through a program we call "Partnership
Illinois" will include coordination of existing activities
and strategic changes that will increase our impact and
effectiveness dramatically. Illinois students, too, have a
tradition of community service; and we shall continue to
provide them with such opportunities, which can offer an
invaluable supplement to their education within our
classrooms and laboratories.
***************************
Our plans for addressing these seven principles are
described in more detail in the sections that follow.
FIRST, we shall invest in people.
Illinois should recruit and retain a first-rate faculty, and
should be second to none in supporting the work of its
faculty in teaching, research and outreach. An Illinois
education should be available to talented students from a
range of backgrounds and perspectives, and should prepare
graduates to assume positions of leadership in a society
that is culturally complex.
Goals
-------
+ Recruit the very finest faculty, primarily at the junior
level, and encourage their long-term commitment to Illinois,
while holding them to the highest standards of performance
in the classroom and on the broader professional platform.
In an age when institutional loyalty seems a thing of the
past, Illinois has been unusual in its ability to sustain
long-term faculty commitment. Many junior faculty have come
here expecting to stay a few years, but have found that
Illinois offers outstanding colleagues, excellent students,
superb facilities, administrative and support staff who are
genuinely helpful, and a congenial environment in which to
live and work. These qualities are difficult to find, and
historically they have enabled us to retain many faculty
with opportunities elsewhere, despite less-than-competitive
compensation. There are limits, however, to the degree that
our assets can continue to outweigh the liabilities of
salary competitiveness that has been on a downward slope for
a decade. Practically speaking, our ability to recruit young
faculty in the first instance will hinge upon our reputation
in their particular academic discipline, combined with the
compensation package we are able to offer. The two factors
are linked. If we are unable to regain a competitive edge in
recruitment and retention, our reputation, and the reality
upon which it is based, will inevitably decline. Our faculty
is a valuable asset to the state, and one that would be
exceedingly costly to rebuild, should it be permitted to
erode. And while faculty quality has been built gradually
over our history, it is rare, fragile and vulnerable to
destruction in a much shorter time. Faculty excellence must
be preserved.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Urge units to model their recruitment, tenure and promotion
practices and procedures on those that have proven most
successful campuswide.
* Ensure that senior faculty mentors are available to advise
and counsel all junior faculty.
* Provide development programs for junior faculty with
limited teaching experience, and ensure that they receive
adequate support for their research efforts during the years
before tenure.
* Improve mechanisms for departmental assessments of progress
for all non-tenured faculty, and ensure that departmental
expectations, policies and procedures are communicated
clearly.
* Recommend faculty hiring and tenure only when demonstrably
in the best interests of the university.
+ Achieve 100 percent salary parity with our peers by the
year 2000, in order to retain the best faculty we are able
to recruit. Faculty salaries on this campus currently stand
below 90 percent of parity with the peer group designated by
the Illinois Board of Higher Education. Our average salary
for full professors is 14 percent less than the average for
the group as a whole. Our figures also place us well below
midpoint of the 58 universities in the Association of
American Universities, the leading group of public and
private universities most like us in quality and mission,
with whom we compete for faculty and students. Over the past
decade, salary growth at this university has been
consistently the worst among our peer group, as defined by
the IBHE, and the worst in the Big Ten. This pattern, if
permitted to continue, will render it impossible to maintain
the excellence of the university; we are at higher risk
today than ever before for the loss of our best faculty, and
the erosion of the quality of the University of Illinois.
Restoring faculty salary competitiveness is our highest
priority.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Press the case for differential state support for
universities with different missions, and support salary
programs that are consistently larger than those of our
peers until salary parity is achieved.
* Hold all administrative levels responsible for their
decisions affecting faculty salaries relative to faculty
size and infrastructure support. Units that sacrifice
salaries or support to preserve faculty lines should not be
held harmless.
* Reallocate where possible, at all administrative levels,
from lower priorities to salary improvement.
* Give a salary improvement program first standing among uses
for revenue that may be realized from future tuition
increases. Such increases should be carefully planned,
widely discussed and linked to demonstrated needs.
* Increase to 100 the number of endowed chairs and named
professorships to support senior faculty. At the beginning
of the 1994-95 academic year, Illinois had just 44 endowed
chairs, fewer than any other university of comparable
quality. This situation both makes us vulnerable to faculty
losses through recruitment by other institutions, and makes
it difficult for us to recruit senior faculty when that is
in our interest.
+ Recruit the best graduate students in all disciplines in
which we offer graduate degrees.
As students, as researchers and as teachers, our graduate
students occupy a central place in the university as a
community of scholars. Their excellence is critical to our
research, much of which is undertaken together with them. It
also is crucial to the provision of undergraduate
instruction, in which they play a significant role. Success
in attracting superior graduate students provides benefits
that extend to virtually every educational program on this
campus.
+ Move as quickly as possible toward competitive stipends for
graduate assistants.
Recent comparisons of compensation rates for graduate
assistants indicate that Illinois has the lowest stipends in
the Big Ten. This has a negative impact upon our students,
and on the recruitment of new graduate students. It is
important for us to remedy this situation, and to offer
support packages that are competitive.
Steps that will help us achieve these goals:
* Achieve competitive assistantship and fellowship total
support packages, taking into account both campuswide
standards and discipline-based market issues.
* Create an expanded fellowship program based on merit, with
emphasis on substantial fellowships to beginning graduate
students and those at dissertation stage.
* Structure fellowship, research assistantship and teaching
assistantship support and duties to aid in recruiting and
retaining excellent students and to complement and enhance
their educational experience.
* Provide competitive benefits packages that take account of
the life circumstances of graduate students.
+ Make this campus a good place for staff and academic
professional personnel to work, so that students and faculty
can benefit from the talents, experience, loyalty and
dedication of this important segment of our community.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Monitor the progress toward competitive staff salaries.
* Eliminate institutional barriers to the advancement of
staff and academic professional personnel.
* Provide financial and logistical support for professional
development of support personnel.
* Provide opportunities for learning the use of new
technologies in the work place.
* Encourage units to involve staff and academic professional
personnel in developing operational policies and procedures -
particularly those that affect them directly.
+ Bring the size of the faculty, the graduate student
population and the undergraduate student body into
appropriate balance.
The campus is proud of its efficiency in delivering a high-
quality education. We spend a smaller fraction of our budget
on administrative costs than any other public university in
Illinois, by a wide margin, and few other universities in
the nation provide as much for as modest a public
investment. The past seven years have taken a heavy toll,
however, and the tenure-track faculty has lost 169 positions
- a reduction of 8.4 percent - while the size of the student
body has remained constant. It is clear that the relative
sizes of the faculty and of the undergraduate and graduate
student populations are deeply interrelated, and that no
simple formula can prescribe the best balance. It is equally
clear that the priority of bringing faculty salaries to a
competitive level may restrict any significant growth in
faculty size, and that this will limit options in our
efforts to achieve balance. Nonetheless, precisely because
adjustments in any one of these sectors have repercussions
for all, we must undertake a careful and thorough analysis
to identify the best course of action.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Develop a mechanism for determining the appropriate
relative sizes of the faculty and graduate and undergraduate
segments of the student body. Any such mechanism would have
to take into account disciplinary differences, and should be
implemented unit by unit.
* Enhance unit autonomy in budget decision-making, subject to
appropriate cost and revenue accounting and to college,
campus and system policies.
* Evaluate the proportion of out-of-state students at this
campus relative to comparable institutions. The proportion
of students paying out-of-state versus in-state tuition has
an impact on the affordability of our educational
environment, including faculty size.
+ Serve the increasingly diverse population of Illinois by
recruiting promising undergraduate, graduate and
professional students from underrepresented groups, and by
significantly narrowing the gap in graduation rates by the
year 2000.
While Illinois has enrolled students of many racial and
ethnic backgrounds throughout its history, the numbers of
minority students have been small. It has only been within
the past half-dozen years that African-American and Latino
undergraduate enrollment at our campus has reached 10
percent. In keeping with our land-grant mission, we aspire
to a major role in the education of the most promising
students from the diverse groups that constitute the
population of Illinois. As the composition of the student
body changes, climate issues both inside and outside the
classroom grow increasingly pressing. Often, they bring us
face to face with competing values. So, for example, we
believe strongly in the right of faculty members to decide
what to teach, and how to teach it; but we also believe in
the right of students to an educational environment that is
free of bigotry and discriminatory treatment, and is as
conducive as possible to learning.
We affirm the right of students to associate freely with
those of their choosing and to build personal connections
within the larger community that offer the comfort of the
familiar as well as the challenge of the new; but we also
believe in creating an environment where individuals from
different backgrounds interact in an atmosphere of mutual
respect and understanding. These values create a continuing
challenge requiring time, thought, effort and good will. As
we rise to this challenge, we are committed to fostering
freedom and civility of speech and action, the bedrock of a
culture devoted to academic inquiry and learning.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Address inclusiveness in development programs for faculty,
teaching assistants, staff, and administrative officers.
* Encourage units to model their recruitment practices and
retention programs for minority students on those on the
campus that have proven most successful.
* Provide academic counseling and support that meets the
needs of minority students, at both campus and unit levels.
* Utilize significant merit-based scholarship and fellowship
awards to help attract to the campus exceptionally talented
students from underrepresented minority groups.
* Implement a study of the factors that impede the academic
progress of minority students, and take steps to address
them.
* Provide colleges with annual reports on progress in
graduation rates and on programs designed to enhance it.
+ Diversify the disciplinary representation of graduate
students from underrepresented minority groups.
The future health of our enterprise depends in part upon our
ability to build stable, strong minority faculty
representation in a whole faculty. Clusters of strength in a
limited number of traditional academic units will not
suffice. It is incumbent upon us do our part to enrich the
pool in a broad range of disciplines.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Utilize significant merit-based fellowship awards to help
attract to graduate programs across the campus exceptionally
talented students from underrepresented minority groups.
* Encourage the most talented minority undergraduate students
to consider graduate school, and provide them with
experiences like the Summer Research Opportunity Program to
help them make informed decisions.
+ Build a faculty and administration that includes women and
members of minority groups at all levels, making significant
progress by the year 2000.
The challenge of diversifying the faculty and administration
has been daunting. Because all of our peer institutions are
engaged in the same pursuit, and the pool of candidates in
many disciplines is still relatively small, removing any
discriminatory obstacles that may be present is only one
step in the right direction.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Encourage units to model their recruitment practices and
retention programs for women and minority faculty on those
that have proven most successful campuswide.
* Assess departmental recruiting efforts, and assist
departments in their efforts to take advantage of
opportunities they may discover.
* Increase opportunities for women and minority group members
to advance through the ranks of mid-level management in both
staff and academic professional positions.
* Explore options for providing convenient child care.
* Collaborate with the local community, other universities
and the state in the development of dual-career
opportunities.
* Recruit from the broadest possible base, including, where
appropriate, non-traditional sources such as government,
industry and service organizations.
------
SECOND, we shall build upon our traditional
preeminence and advantages as a center for a
broad range of scholarship and research.
Illinois should protect and enhance its strengths as a major
center for scholarship, research, technology development and
creative activities.
Goals
-------
+ Emphasize and reinforce the ties between teaching and
research.
There are those who contend that research and teaching are
conflicting missions. At Illinois, these missions are
intentionally and productively intertwined. Our research
mission contributes to our ability to provide outstanding
undergraduate as well as graduate education. Because of our
research mission, our undergraduate students have access to
extraordinary resources, facilities and experiences.
+ Promote the transfer of knowledge to and from the society
of which we are a part.
The relationship between the public and university scholars
benefits both. Knowledge gained through research makes
possible practical improvements in the daily lives of
citizens; and research programs are shaped and new insights
gained through observations faculty make in the course of
fulfilling their outreach mission.
+ Bring research into the classroom through active learning.
The best way for undergraduates to learn about the latest
developments in a discipline is for them to learn actively
from people involved in ongoing research in these
disciplines. No other setting permits this as effectively as
a research university.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Dedicate a segment of the Instructional Development Awards
program to active learning.
* Encourage faculty to build Discovery courses and capstone
courses upon the foundations of their own research, to give
undergraduates at all levels an opportunity to develop a
grasp of the characteristic features of this activity.
+ Capitalize on research involvement as a teaching tool.
Involvement in a research program is the principal tool for
graduate education in some disciplines. It can serve a
similar function for undergraduates who are sufficiently
motivated and engaged, provided their involvement is
carefully planned and supervised. Likewise, faculty members
frequently gain new insights through teaching and explaining
their work.
+ Provide central support for research facilities of a
collective nature.
A large measure of our strength as a setting for academic
careers derives from our success at providing and
maintaining centrally supported facilities for broad use by
investigators in a range of disciplines. From the Library to
supercomputing and from facilities for biotechnology to the
costume shop of Krannert Center, these resources operate at
a scale and level of quality that would be impossible for
individual research teams to develop for their own use.
+ Assure that the work of faculty is supported with adequate
office, laboratory and studio space, and that appropriate
institutional support of other kinds is provided.
Research support and environment needs vary widely among
disciplines - the needs of a microbiologist differ from
those of a musicologist; those of an engineer, from those of
an English professor. They further may differ for faculty
within a single discipline with different types of research
programs. The levels and forms of support the campus
provides to faculty members should be sensitive to these
needs and differences.
+ Secure the highest possible measure of institutional
flexibility.
Illinois has achieved preeminence as a research institution
largely as a result of its success in providing faculty with
the means to capitalize effectively on opportunities, to
pursue good ideas, and to work unconstrained by artificial
boundaries and institutional red tape. These characteristics
will remain indispensable in the years ahead. In the current
fiscal climate, it also is particularly important that we
ensure that our efforts to obtain non-state funding do not
compromise our institutional autonomy.
Steps that will help us achieve these goals:
* Develop a Critical Research Initiatives Fund to provide
financial support for innovative and promising work in its
early stages. Each award from this fund should include plans
for evaluation and a sunset provision.
* Develop an explicit, well-defined and open process for
program proposal evaluation.
* Provide better means of assessing grant and contract
conditions for their compatibility with institutional
interests.
* Develop review mechanisms to maximize effectiveness of
centrally held facilities.
+ Preserve and enhance the Library, and lead in the design
and implementation of the Library of the future.
Our Library houses one of the world's most extensive and
accessible collections. Its presence here has played a
significant role in the ability of faculty in many
disciplines to do their work, making it desirable for them
to remain here for a professional lifetime. The Library of
the future will differ in significant ways from that of the
past; but its continued excellence is essential.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Maintain, preserve and house the existing collections,
which are an irreplaceable resource; make them accessible at
times that serve the needs of faculty and students; and
provide professional support to help users of both
specialized collections and electronic resources.
* Develop an institutional policy on intellectual property in
an electronic environment. The growth of digital
technologies as a primary communication tool has profound
implications for universities as generators and consumers of
scholarly and technical information.
* Work with other universities and associations to develop
new options that provide rigorous quality control for low-
cost dissemination of scientific and technical information.
* Maintain and increase access to foreign-language materials,
through a digital network, cooperative collection
development and increased use of remote access.
* Provide adequate funding for the strategic acquisition of
new materials.
+ Encourage interdisciplinary efforts to explore the meaning
for society of the new computing and communication
technologies.
Units throughout the campus are preeminent in research and
teaching about these converging areas. Illinois is well
positioned to lead in the study of the design, use and
social impact of these technologies.
------
THIRD, we shall accord full value to our
teaching mission, preparing our students
for professional life, leadership and
citizenship in a changing world.
An Illinois education should bring undergraduate students
together in meaningful intellectual interaction with
faculty, with graduate students and with one another, in and
beyond the classroom and laboratory. Illinois should attract
and support the most promising students in the full range of
our graduate and professional disciplines, and should
provide these students with superb disciplinary training and
with the skills, knowledge and flexibility they will need to
be successful throughout their careers in positions and
callings for which advanced education is necessary or
beneficial.
Goals
-------
+ Create mechanisms to enable and encourage students and
faculty to take full advantage of their time together at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
This campus has an extraordinary array of faculty,
facilities and
resources. If our undergraduates are to receive full benefit
of an Illinois education, they must be encouraged to draw
upon these resources; faculty must be available; and
creative ways must be found to involve students from the
very beginnings of their academic careers in the
intellectual work of the community.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
*Develop a convocation program to bring new students
together with faculty during the first week of the fall
semester, for the purpose of communicating the character and
meaning of an Illinois undergraduate education.
*Expand the First-Year Discovery Program. Close contact with
a faculty member in a small group setting can contribute
importantly to the academic success and well being of new
undergraduates.
*Encourage units to engage undergraduate students in the
scholarly and scientific enterprise of the institution at
the earliest appropriate moment. The opportunity to
participate directly in the discovery and development of
knowledge is uniquely available to undergraduates at the
nation's major research universities; it is an opportunity
that they should not miss.
*Enhance the quality of opportunities within majors, in
general education and in elective options. Our courses
should provide students with ample opportunities to develop
their writing abilities, to engage in discussion, to develop
quantitative skills and to participate in laboratory
experiences.
*Develop capstone experiences for undergraduate majors, to
enable students to consolidate their educational gains and
to deepen their relationships with faculty closest to their
academic interests.
*Limit the number of very large courses. Class size at this
campus and at other major universities has tended to be
determined by a combination of student demand and classroom
space availability. Instead, we will determine and apply
more appropriate means and principles for setting section
size. These may include availability of appropriate
technology in lecture halls, quality of teaching, and
faculty judgment of effective class size.
*Support large-lecture format courses through the use of
discussion sections, technological aids, faculty
development, and other appropriate means that promote active
learning. Some courses are well suited to the large-lecture
format, which is an essential mode of instruction if large
numbers of undergraduates are to be taught by a modestly
sized faculty. Ultimately, the success of such classes must
be gauged by experienced faculty who know what it is
possible to accomplish in such contexts, and by the ability
of serious students to take from them a solid foundation for
future undertakings.
*Explore new living-learning opportunities for
undergraduates. Bringing academic advising, tutoring,
learning resource assistance and faculty contact to the
residence halls, especially for first-year students, would
help address access, space, bureaucratic and transportation
problems for students and staff.
*Explore the expansion of the First Year Impact program, to
provide an extended orientation in the fall semester for
first-year students, building a stronger sense of community
in the residence halls.
*Create a Teaching Advancement Board.
The Teaching Advancement Board, reporting to the Provost and
Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, will serve as a focus
for the campus's initiatives in instructional development
and enhancement of teaching. Like the Research Board, it
will draw upon faculty expertise to guide the campus toward
realization of its full potential in a fundamental mission.
Appointments to the Teaching Advancement Board will be made
by the Provost from among the most distinguished faculty on
the campus. The Board will be a vehicle for private gifts,
and it will administer a grants program, serve in an
advisory capacity on instructional resources, and work with
the Council on Undergraduate Education to enhance the
undergraduate experience on the campus.
*Improve academic advising.
Undergraduate students - even those as bright and as
independent as ours - cannot take full advantage of the
possibilities of this university without consistent,
substantive and well-informed advice throughout their
undergraduate years. Individual and small-group advising may
be provided through a combination of personal interaction
and electronic communication by professional staff, graduate
teaching assistants, fellow undergraduate students, and
faculty members. Students also bear responsibility in the
advising relationship. It falls to them to take the
initiative of seeking advice when they need it, to raise
questions when they have them, and to communicate clearly
with their advisers about their problems, plans and
aspirations. The responsibility for listening intelligently
is shared by students and advisers; even the best question
must be heard and considered with care to receive a helpful
answer, and even the best advice will have no value unless
it is heeded.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
*Undertake a detailed examination of advising across campus,
in order to develop consistent and appropriate standards.
*Create systems ensuring that students receive accurate and
timely information to enable them to plan their
undergraduate progress; provide on-line degree audits to
enable students to obtain current information about their
progress toward graduation.
*Make professional staff advisers available to provide
technical advice about course availability, requirements,
and the like, and develop peer advising systems to enable
undergraduates to provide advice to their fellow students.
*Ensure that every student has access to faculty advice
throughout the undergraduate experience, beginning with the
freshman year. Faculty are best suited to introduce students
to the intellectual life of the community, and to guide
their intellectual development. This aspect of advising
should rest in faculty hands.
*Enhance TA training and supervision.
Graduate teaching assistants are essential to the delivery
of undergraduate teaching at universities where the number
of undergraduates is large and the size of the faculty is
small enough to be affordable. For maximum effectiveness,
graduate teaching assistants must have clearly defined
roles, appropriate training and proper faculty supervision.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
*Move toward a model of universal training of teaching
assistants, including special training that takes account of
the differing responsibilities the TAs will have.
*Increase the frequency and availability of TA testing and
evaluation, and monitor the effectiveness of these tools.
*Ensure ongoing monitoring of TA performance by faculty with
oversight responsibilities.
*Reward teaching excellence more effectively.
Excellent teaching stands at the core of the undergraduate
experience. The sorts of recognition and honors that
currently accrue to our best teachers tend to be limited in
scope. Very few national awards recognize teaching at the
university level, and campus, college and departmental
awards have tended to be less prestigious than comparable
recognition for achievements in scholarship and research.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
*Reaffirm teaching as a major factor in decisions about
salary, promotion and tenure.
*Increase and give greater prominence to awards honoring
exceptional teaching by TAs and faculty.
*Seek private support of teaching recognition, including
endowed professorships and chairs.
*Develop mechanisms to ensure consistently high quality of
graduate programs across the campus.
The strength of our graduate programs is central to the
quality of the campus as a whole,and has an impact on the
performance level of both faculty research and undergraduate
education.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
*Undertake a review of the most appropriate roles for the
Graduate College, the Provost's Office and the Deans in
achieving consistently high standards for graduate programs.
A panel appointed by the Chancellor will be responsible for
this review.
*Make policies affecting graduate program quality subject to
a second-level review. A wide variety of strategic practices
and policies influence the reputation and effectiveness of
graduate programs. In colleges with departments, the Dean is
responsible for maintaining program standards across the
college, by whatever mechanisms are deemed most effective.
In colleges that are not subdivided, oversight is a joint
responsibility of the Dean of the Graduate College and the
Provost.
*Develop information to help monitor and maintain the
quality of graduate programs, including data on applicant
qualifications, proportion of applicants admitted,
proportion of admitted applicants who enroll, attrition and
length of time to degree, and employability of advanced
degree recipients.
*Develop appropriate mechanisms for monitoring departmental
graduate program size, policies for assistantship
appointment percentages, and tuition and fee waiver
policies. Policies and practices governing such factors
should be designed to promote program quality, taking
account of the diverse nature of graduate education in
different disciplines.
FOURTH, we shall invest in our facilities and organizational
environment.
The Illinois campus is a living monument to the generations
of civic and political leaders, taxpayers and private
benefactors who built it. It is a treasure of equal value to
the students and faculty of our campus. We hold it in trust
for future generations, and we have an obligation to protect
it and care for it so that teaching and scholarship at
Illinois may continue to take place within outstanding
facilities. Our organizational structure has evolved so that
shared governance between faculty and administration vests
authority and responsibility at many levels. We have an
obligation not only to exercise that authority and fulfill
those responsibilities wisely, but also to refine the
organizational shape when it is in the institutional
interest to do so.
Goals
------
+ Secure the plant in the long term with judicious financing
of life-cycle costs in all buildings.
Until recent years, the state of Illinois provided funds for
the operation and maintenance of new buildings, regardless
of the source of construction funds. Now, when we build a
new facility with gift funds, typically we must fund
operation and maintenance costs ourselves. And when we build
with state dollars, O&M costs come from the state only in
competition with program dollars and salary pools. While the
facilities we are supporting in this way are important to
us, when we build in the future it will be essential for us
to consider all the costs in relation to all of our needs.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Include estimated operation and maintenance costs, and the
source of funding to cover these costs, in the financial
plans for all new facilities.
* Initiate a systematic program to cover operation and
maintenance costs for existing facilities.
+ Improve the use and condition of instructional space.
Our classrooms, teaching laboratories and libraries should
be designed and maintained to enhance the interactions that
occur within them.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Renew, rehabilitate and equip classrooms throughout the
campus to serve the needs of the faculty and students of the
21st century.
* Improve and expand teaching laboratories and computer
laboratories.
* Develop more flexible classroom space. Many central campus
classrooms were built to meet an earlier concept of optimal
class size and teaching styles, at a time when the student
population was approximately half the size it is today. For
faculty to have the greatest impact, classroom space should
be both readily available and adaptable to a variety of
class sizes and instructional formats.
* Upgrade and maintain selected classrooms to fit them with a
full range of multimedia capabilities, including computer
network accessibility.
+ Increase and improve the space devoted to student
activities outside the classroom.
Significant learning and personal development occurs outside
of the classroom, and it is important for us to provide
attractive and well-maintained space for living, study,
counseling, recreation and extracurricular activities.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Improve student residential living space.
* Provide improved space for international student services.
* Provide improved space for career services including
counseling, job search strategies, and externship and
internship opportunities.
* Increase the number and quality of study spaces available
to students.
* Plan and budget for the upkeep and renewal of campus
recreational and entertainment facilities used by students
and the wider community.
+ Ensure the smooth and efficient operation of the university
in the fulfillment of its missions.
We are entering a period in which our ability to adapt will
be paramount. Too often, our processes seem to get in the
way of our productivity, instead of enhancing it. We require
organizational and administrative structures that permit us
to change while protecting those aspects of our university
that are of lasting value.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Engage in a joint review of business procedures with the
Central Administration to ensure that they are as effective
as possible.
* Reduce the flow of paper throughout the university,
encouraging "paperless transactions" wherever possible.
* Support the Urbana-Champaign Senate in its streamlining
efforts.
* Encourage academic department and administrative units to
eliminate unnecessary bureaucratic steps, and to make it as
easy as possible for students, parents, faculty, staff and
other constituencies to achieve what they set out to do.
* Support further enhancements to U of I Direct, the new on-
line registration system, to improve its efficiency and
convenience.
* Support the development of systems for on-line graduate
admissions, electronic filing of admissions applications,
electronic transmittal of transcripts, and financial aid
management software.
* Encourage use of interactive video technology and the World
Wide Web to disseminate information to prospective students,
current students, faculty and staff.
------
FIFTH, we shall intensify our
exploration and use of new
teaching and information
technologies, and build on
our historic strengths in
information and computing.
Illinois should draw upon its technological expertise to
provide its students, faculty and other constituents with
the full advantages of communication in the information age.
Goals
-------
+ Move toward universal access to high-speed networks for
faculty, students and staff.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Explore and develop modes for providing network access for
faculty, students and staff from off-campus locations.
* Improve the campus's practices for budgeting and financing
our technological support structure. This has become a major
recurring expense and should be treated as such.
+ Take full advantage of existing and new learning
technologies in delivering instruction.
This campus was a pioneer in the development of interactive
computer-based education. The exploration and development of
new technologies for undergraduate instruction afford
continuing opportunities to capitalize on the strength of
this tradition and the expertise of the faculty to reach
large numbers of our own undergraduates, while providing a
model that would be capable of replication in other settings
around the nation.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Offer opportunities for faculty to improve their skills in
using emerging technologies, to benefit their teaching,
research and outreach activities.
* Recognize technological innovations in campus award
programs for outstanding teaching, research, outreach and
staff achievements.
* Encourage faculty to become adept at using the new
technologies, and make it as easy as possible for them to do
so by offering training at convenient times and in
departmental settings.
* Build support services to which faculty can turn for
instruction and support in classroom uses of the new
technologies.
* Expand programs of the Library, CCSO and individual
departments that teach new users how to make best use of
electronic resources.
+ Optimize coordination of electronic resources across
campus.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Establish a Coordinating Committee on Computing and
Technology to define campuswide standards, maintain data
security, link academic and administrative computing
networks, and coordinate the allocation of resources.
* Develop ways to bridge the gap between large-scale
computing organizations such as the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications and the Computing and
Communications Services Office, at one end of the spectrum,
and the individual faculty member, at the other.
* Create mechanisms, including need-based financial support,
to facilitate student ownership of computers; provide
convenient campuswide hookups to more sophisticated
computing capabilities.
------
SIXTH, we shall strengthen our
strategic engagement in
international studies throughout
the institution.
Illinois should foster international study and scholarship
strategically, building on strength and encouraging students
to gain understanding of other cultures both through study
abroad and through work and social activity with faculty,
students and visitors from other nations.
Goals
-------
+ Build upon our strength as a center for international
scholarship.
The internationalization of virtually every aspect of the
modern world is accelerating. From science and scholarship
to economic and cultural life, leadership requires a global
perspective. International involvements on the part of our
faculty and many units are already extensive, and will need
to expand markedly to keep pace with these developments. Our
strengths in international scholarship in a number of
academic departments can serve us well in this connection,
and their enhancement will be of increasing importance.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Create a Council on International Programs to foster and
coordinate international initiatives on the part of faculty,
graduate students and undergraduates.
* Identify our areas of greatest strength in international
scholarship, and focus future development upon them.
* Bring together the members of the community from across the
campus who are most directly involved in international work,
for the purpose of identifying ways to improve our
institutional response to opportunities for leadership in
international studies.
* Create an international scholar-in-residence program and
facilitate faculty exchanges.
+ Encourage our undergraduate students to broaden the skills
and perspectives that will permit them to flourish in an
increasingly international world.
Steps that will help us achieve these goals:
* Provide expanded opportunities for our undergraduate
students to interact with fellow students from other parts
of the world.
* Expand our study-abroad programs, broadening their
geographic scope and participation base and seeking private
support for student financial aid.
* Develop short-term exchange programs to increase the number
of international undergraduate students on campus.
* Devise means and opportunities for undergraduates and
international graduate students and faculty to interact.
* Encourage language learning. The General Education
requirement for languages will go a long way toward
achieving this; it is important for us to find creative ways
to implement it as soon as possible.
* Internationalize study and scholarship. While the campus
already offers a large number of courses with a global
perspective, and a substantial amount of faculty scholarship
has international dimensions, we should remain alert to the
need to foster such opportunities.
------
SEVENTH, we shall reinvigorate
our commitment to outreach and
partnerships.
The land-grant mandate to make the expert knowledge of
Illinois faculty available to serve the people of Illinois
and the broader society is central to our institution. Not
only does this arrangement work to the benefit of the
citizenry at large, but it also serves the campus's interest
in focusing teaching and research on contemporary issues in
appropriate disciplines: the knowledge and insights faculty
gain while engaged in outreach are imported to the classroom
and laboratory, where they inform teaching and research.
Goals
-------
+ Establish Partnership Illinois, a new initiative to bring
faculty expertise to bear on the educational, technological,
economic, social and cultural challenges facing Illinois and
the broader society.
We have a great tradition of partnership with the people of
Illinois. Throughout our history, and to the present day,
this partnership has manifested itself in programs that
touch the lives of people throughout the state and beyond.
It is time to rededicate ourselves to our land-grant
heritage and to reinvigorate our partnerships with the
public, at all levels of the university.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Establish the Partnership Illinois Council to coordinate
and oversee our outreach activities for maximum impact.
Appointments will be made by the Chancellor and will include
individuals from those units most heavily engaged in
interaction with off-campus constituencies. The Council will
be responsible for incorporating advice from those
constituencies to help shape Partnership Illinois.
* Work cooperatively with the other public campuses of
Illinois, including the University of Illinois at Chicago
and at Springfield, the Illinois Board of Higher Education,
and all the universities, colleges and community colleges of
the state. It is only by working together that the diverse
institutions that constitute public higher education in
Illinois can fully serve the needs and aspirations of the
state.
* Work with the public schools from preschool through high
school, in the local community and throughout the state and
nation. The reformation of public education is one of the
most important, and most daunting, challenges facing our
nation. By deepening our understanding of the problems
facing the schools, we can help devise creative approaches
to solutions, including test beds for interconnecting all
levels of education in Illinois through the new
technologies. Important campus partners will include the
College of Education, the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications and the Cooperative Extension Service.
* Strengthen our mechanisms for technology transfer. The
rapid transfer of new information and technologies from our
laboratories to the marketplace will aid in the economic
development of the state and region. We can expand our
contribution by creating an effective Research Technology
Management Office, by making judicious use of corporate
partnerships and by refining institutional guidelines for
managing the conflicts inherent in expanded relationships
between the campus and the private sector. Important campus
partners will include the College of Engineering and its
Outreach programs, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences;
the College of Agriculture and its Cooperative Extension
Service; the College of Commerce and Business Administration
and its Bureau of Economic and Business Research, and the
Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
* Sustain our strong relationship with the food and fiber
industries of Illinois and of the nation. The agriculturally
based food and fiber sector accounts for more than $50
billion annually in the Illinois economy and some 17 percent
of our nation's gross domestic product. By providing
research services, education and expert counsel to
manufacturers, service providers and farmers, we can
contribute to this vital segment of the economy. Important
campus partners will include the College of Agriculture and
its Cooperative Extension Service, and Colleges of
Veterinary Medicine, Engineering, Liberal Arts and Sciences,
and Commerce and Business Administration.
* Coordinate the campus outreach efforts in improving the
competitiveness of Illinois's manufacturing and services
industry sectors. We can enhance this segment of the state's
economy by providing access to digital information services
and to the latest ideas in technical approaches to
addressing problems. Important campus partners will include
the College of Engineering, National Center for
Supercomputing Applications, Graduate School of Library and
Information Science and College of Commerce and Business
Administration.
* Work with those involved in, or preparing for, government
service at all levels, to assure access to the most current
ideas and technology for the benefit of citizens and public
programs. Government agencies and elected officials often
are assigned responsibility for addressing public problems
of both a collective and an individual nature. We can help
by re-establishing our master's program in Public
Administration, by creating an Executive Master of Public
Administration program and by providing thoughtful analyses
and white papers. Important campus partners will include the
departments of Agricultural Economics, Economics, Urban and
Regional Planning and Political Science, Institute of Labor
and Industrial Relations, School of Social Work and Colleges
of Education, Law and Communications.
* Help government, schools and citizens throughout the state
gain access to the information superhighway. The digital era
brings with it unprecedented growth in the amount of
information that is available. We can contribute by leading
in the development of models for the publishers and
libraries of the future to distribute and house image, sound
and text archives and resource materials; by developing and
disseminating the technologies that will give people access
to digitally stored information and by teaching people how
to use these technologies. Important campus partners will
include the Library, Graduate School of Library and
Information Science, National Center for Supercomputing
Applications and Colleges of Engineering, Communications and
Education.
* Extend the cultural and artistic resources of the
university to the people of Illinois and beyond, enhancing
and enriching their lives. As a significant cultural center,
we have the capacity and responsibility to enable people of
all ages to engage in the creative and performing arts and
in the life of the mind, both as active participants and as
observers and listeners. Our programs take place on the
campus and in schoolrooms, in our own museums and in
galleries throughout the nation; in theaters and concert
halls large and small. Important campus partners will
include the College of Fine and Applied Arts and its
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and Krannert Art
Museum; College of Communications and WILL-AM-FM-TV; College
of Education, and the Office of Continuing Education and
Public Service.
* Utilize multiple distance education strategies to extend
the university's resources to students and organizations in
Illinois and around the world. The great promise of distance
education is to connect individuals with the university
without regard to limitations of time and place. By
inventing new mechanisms for distance education, and taking
advantage of existing mechanisms that increase our reach, we
will be able to play a role in the education, training and
networking of people throughout Illinois and beyond its
borders. Important campus partners will include the Colleges
of Commerce and Business Administration, Education, and
Engineering and the Office of Continuing Education and
Public Service.
+ Keep the public fully informed about developments on the
campus.
As a public land-grant university, we have an obligation to
maintain a free and open exchange of information with the
citizens of Illinois. We are fully committed to doing so.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Establish a Chancellor's Advisory Council of leaders from
throughout Illinois to provide a clearly articulated view
from outside the campus.
* Achieve a greater presence for the Urbana-Champaign campus
in Chicago and its suburbs, home to more than 50 percent of
our undergraduate students and about a third of our alumni.
The city draws deeply from the ranks of our graduates for
the leadership of its corporate and cultural community. Our
campus is of critical importance to Chicago and the collar
counties as well as to the state as a whole.
* Create a forum of corporate leaders to meet regularly with
representatives of the campus for the exchange of
information and advice.
* Establish a clearinghouse to field inquiries from public.
The programmatic sweep of the campus is sufficiently broad
that citizens may have difficulty knowing how to gain
access. The clearinghouse would offer a single point of
entry for those who need it.
+ Enhance our cooperation with other institutions and
organizations both independently and through a variety of
consortia and associations.
No university in isolation can successfully meet the many
challenges we face. However, as a member in long standing of
the nation's most important alliances in higher education,
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign can make
important contributions in concert with other institutions.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Participate actively in the Association for American
Universities. The AAU provides this campus, as a founding
member, with important opportunities to collaborate with
peer universities engaged in research.
* Provide leadership within the Committee on Institutional
Cooperation. As the academic partnership linking us with the
ten other Big Ten campuses and the University of Chicago,
the CIC provides us with opportunities to work jointly on
issues ranging from the acquisition of library materials to
academic and leadership programs.
* Work with the National Association of State Universities
and Land-Grant Colleges to address problems and issues
confronting the nation's public institutions of higher
learning. NASULGC brings together institutions of widely
varying character, size and history who share many goals and
challenges. The Association provides an ideal forum for
undertaking joint efforts in addressing public funding and
public service issues.
* Provide leadership within the Midwest Universities
Consortium for International Activities. MUCIA joins
institutions in this region that share an international
mission. Partnerships with other MUCIA members provide
opportunities for joint projects and initiatives.
+ Employ a range of strategies to build bridges between the
campus and the world.
New technologies permit us to extend our reach farther then
ever before. Maps of land and air routes may show us to be
at some remove from the major centers of commerce, culture
and transportation, but our place in the intellectual
history of the 20th century is significant and maps of the
virtual world of the information superhighway place us
squarely at the center.
Steps that will help us achieve this goal:
* Capitalize upon the World Wide Web to make information
about the campus widely available throughout the state and
beyond. While some units already have begun to take
advantage of this opportunity, a more concerted and unified
approach would work to our benefit.
* Improve satellite uplink capability. Currently the only
uplink available to the campus is cumbersome to use and
frequently unavailable. When this is rectified, people and
programs from the campus will become more readily accessible
to educational consumers and other publics both throughout
Illinois and throughout the nation.
***********************
The planning exercise that has led to A Framework for the
Future involved a large segment of the campus community. The
members of the ten Work Groups, those with whom they spoke
in developing their reports, and others who offered their
insights and advice in response to the Work Group drafts all
contributed significantly to this report. Some clear
impressions emerged during the course of the Strategic Plan
Committee's work:
* Members of this community share a strong sense of the
history and of the excellence of the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign.
* The end of the 20th century is widely felt to be a time of
change and uncertainty. Two aspects of our situation are
taken to be of particular importance: the exponential growth
of information and communication technology, and the shift
away from a majority ethnic or racial population.
* Partnerships between the campus and a wide range of
* nstitutions, organizations and individuals will be
increasingly important in the future.
* The fundamental land-grant missions of teaching, research
and outreach are so intricately and productively braided at
this campus that it is difficult for most of us to speak of
any one of them without invoking its relationship to the
others.
* A sense pervades that we are at a critical juncture, and
that much of what has been built here is at serious risk
unless we can find ways to compensate for the deficient
funding patterns of recent years.
The $700 million Urbana-Champaign campus component of
Campaign Illinois, the systemwide private support effort,
offers us one way to attempt to redress the shortfall in
public dollars, but it will make a difference only at the
margin, and only to the degree that we are strategic in our
investment of these resources. We clearly also will have to
develop a long-range tuition program and continue the
reallocation of dollars from lower priorities to higher ones
for the foreseeable future.
Against all odds, the vision for the University of Illinois
that John Milton Gregory sketched at its inception still
fits. This is a tribute to Gregory's foresight and acumen,
to his grasp of the times in which he lived and to his
leadership in the formative years of the institution. But
all of that would not have been sufficient, had the people
of Illinois failed to meet the challenge he posed. Gregory's
vision would have meant little today, had the people of the
University of Illinois lost sight over the years of the
principles he articulated, or lost confidence in the
institutional character he helped define.
It has been the challenge and responsibility of each
generation since Gregory's time to preserve and enhance the
quality of this institution. This challenge and this
responsibility are now ours. We can and will rise to them.
UIUC -- Inside Illinois -- 1995/04-06-95