February, 2017

Summary of Progress on Rutgers’ 2014 University Strategic Plan

Declaring an aspiration “to be broadly recognized as among the nation’s leading public universities: preeminent in research, excellent in teaching, and committed to community,” the University Strategic Plan approved in 2014 establishes four strategic priorities for better meeting the needs of the Rutgers community and its stakeholders. These priorities target central areas that limit the university’s success and demand institutional attention over a five-year period—Build Faculty Excellence; Transform the Student Experience; Enhance Our Public Prominence; and Envision Tomorrow’s University.

The strategic priorities are built on five foundational elements that are prerequisites of success and include a strong core of sciences and humanities; an efficient and effective infrastructure and staff; an inclusive, diverse, and cohesive culture; financial resources sufficient to fund our aspiration; and robust shared governance, academic freedom, and effective communication.

Finally, the plan identifies five integrating themes that speak to Rutgers’ unique academic strengths and potential and can be used to coordinate and integrate the plan’s varied initiatives within interdisciplinary and topically relevant areas: Cultures, Diversity, and Inequality—Local and Global; Improving the Health and Wellness of Individuals and Populations; Creating a Sustainable World through Innovation, Engineering, and Technology; Educating Involved Citizens and Effective Leaders for a Dynamic World; and Creative Expression and the Human Experience.

In the years following the strategic plan’s adoption, Rutgers has made substantial progress across the strategic priority areas and foundational elements outlined in the plan. This report summarizes some of the key efforts that have been carried out as recommended in the plan.

Strategic Priority: Faculty Excellence

New Professorships and Term Chairs. The strategic plan makes clear our need to strengthen some of our largest academic disciplines and maintain our competitive edge in our strongest disciplines, in part by recruiting outstanding faculty members in key disciplines. Immediately after the plan was approved, the University committed to a five-year plan to endow 30 new Henry Rutgers professorships for senior faculty recruitment, and create 25 new term chairs specifically designated for the recruitment, recognition, and retention of exceptional mid-career faculty. By the end of fiscal 2017, Rutgers will have filled or will be in the process of filling 18 Henry Rutgers Professorships and 13 Henry Rutgers Term Chairs. These positions span a range of disciplines that include global health, poetry, geophysics, digital film, comparative sexuality, and biomedical ethics. These areas represent strategic disciplines that will add substantial value to the University’s academic profile. In addition to these positions, the number of externally endowed chairs at Rutgers increased from 29 in 2007 to 86 in 2017 through gifts received during the billion-dollar Our Rutgers, Our Future fundraising campaign and chairs that came to Rutgers through the integration of UMDNJ.

Faculty Mentoring. Across Rutgers, chancellors and deans are building or strengthening mentoring programs to help talented young faculty become leaders in their disciplines. At Rutgers–Newark, for example, Chancellor Cantor is leading creation of P3: A Collaboratory for Pedagogy, Professional Development, and Publicly Engaged Scholarship using space being renovated on the third floor of Dana Library. RBHS formed a Faculty Mentoring Committee in 2014, held a faculty mentoring symposium in 2016, and has assigned each junior faculty member a mentor who has received or will receive training in mentorship. In New Brunswick, Provost Lily Young provided funding for development of mentoring programs for faculty in the sciences, arts, and humanities. Rutgers–Camden mentoring efforts include an 1 annual workshop series for new faculty, mentoring through the Teaching Matters and Assessment Center, the Digital Teaching Fellows program, and the Civic Engagement Faculty Fellows program.

Transition to Retirement. The strategic plan called for creative and supportive opportunities for senior faculty nearing the end of their careers to step down from full-time teaching and research. A voluntary transition program launched in 2016 for full-time tenured faculty in the Alternate Benefit Program who are 55 or older and have served 10 or more years at Rutgers. The faculty member may officially retire from the University and then be rehired for no more than 50 percent of his or her final salary and no more than half of that faculty member’s current load. Such arrangements are for periods of one to three years, and as retirees, participating faculty surrender claims of tenure or associate rights. Twelve faculty members completed applications in the first year of the program.

Merit Pay. In keeping with the strategic plan, the University administration negotiated merit pay into the most recent contracts with all Rutgers’ faculty unions. The first faculty merit pay program in several years took place in 2016, with departments and deans making recommendations about increases for all tenure- track and non-tenure-track faculty. By contract, merit pay increases will be awarded every other year.

Strategic Priority: The Student Experience

Honors Colleges. Rutgers has followed through on creating, or broadening the scope of, honors colleges in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden. The Honors College at Rutgers University–Camden increased its enrollment to a record 525 students in 2016, including a select number of transfer students and rising sophomores—categories previously excluded from consideration for the program, and has begun to offer subsidies for short-term study abroad. In 2015, Rutgers University–Newark welcomed the first cohort of students for the Honors Living-Learning Community (HLLC), which relies not on indicators such as SAT scores or grade point averages but on a holistic assessment of talents and potential for thriving in college and contributing to the greater good. A residential facility is being constructed for the HLLC. Also in 2015, the New Brunswick Honors College opened, complementing honors programs already in place in New Brunswick undergraduate schools. First-year students in this program—500 students with average SAT scores 600 points above the national average—live and learn alongside faculty fellows in a new facility on Seminary Place, where they take honors seminars and a common mission course on social innovation.

Academic Advising. The strategic plan urged the revamping of academic advising to better serve students across Rutgers. The University has introduced a new advising platform, Student Success Collaborative–Campus, which uses predictive analytics based on 10 years of secure, historic student information. Armed with this data, advisors can look at current undergraduates in relation to former students with similar academic profiles in order to help them make more informed educational choices and stay on course toward a timely degree. The platform was fully implemented in January 2017.

Student Services. The Student Experience Improvement Initiative (SEII) began during the 2015-16 academic year with interviews of students, faculty, and staff about their experiences with enrollment, admissions, financial aid, student accounts, and registration in order to improve these student services. Recommendations drawn from these interviews and an examination of the processes are being implemented under the guidance of a steering committee with representation from Camden, Newark, New Brunswick, and Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences. As an initial priority, the University will bring Financial Aid and Student Accounting up to current-day standards, making sure the information systems and support staff work in tandem. Enhancements to the website will enable students to confidently use self-service options for paying term bills or checking their accounts. More self-service options will be added, and the University will create one-stop offices for financial aid, student accounting, housing, registration, and other services.

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Scheduling, Transportation, and Housing. As directed by the strategic plan, the University formed a New Brunswick-based Scheduling, Registration, Transportation, and Housing Efficiencies Task Force in 2015 to improve the way Rutgers uses teaching space, course scheduling, and housing assignments to improve the student experience by, among other things, reducing the time students spend traveling on buses. In fall 2016 the first semester using protocols that consider each of these factors to coordinate class scheduling, classroom assignment, and first-year student housing assignments, course-related student travel decreased by 8 percent. The University will adopt an entirely new scheduling system for Rutgers– New Brunswick that will further benefit students.

Synchronous Lecture Halls. To expand opportunity and convenience for students, Rutgers has embarked on a plan to establish synchronous lecture halls on all campuses. The first two have been created on Busch and Cook campuses at Rutgers–New Brunswick, with a combined seating capacity of 280. Students in either location see a live or life-size, high-definition streaming display of the instructor, as well as their fellow classmates, miles away. Spring 2017 was the first semester these classrooms were employed, with 11 courses and 1,780 students. The University is identifying space in Newark and Camden (where the law school is already using a similar form of synchronous learning) for the next two synchronous lecture halls.

Student Recruitment. Rutgers has taken a number of steps in pursuing the strategic plan initiative to recruit top-performing students from New Jersey and other states, including more aggressive outreach to out-of-state students and their families. In 2016, after winning a competitive bidding process, Rutgers– New Brunswick hosted the annual summer meeting of International Association for College Admission Counseling, representing elite high schools in nearly 100 countries. And both Rutgers–New Brunswick and Rutgers–Newark have joined the Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success along with approximately 90 of the most elite schools in the country, including the Ivy League schools, Stanford, Cal Tech, Vassar, Vanderbilt, and flagship publics like Michigan and Virginia. Among the criteria to participate in this new application, colleges must have a six-year federal graduation rate of 70 percent. It went into effect for the entering class of Fall 2017. Only two other schools in the state qualified for the Coalition App: Princeton University and The College of New Jersey.

Strategic Priority: Public Prominence

Rutgers 250. Capitalizing on a milestone reached by only seven other U.S. universities thus far, Rutgers planned and executed a wide range of conferences, publications, and public events to celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2016 and build greater local and national awareness of its strengths and achievements. The most historic of these was the Commencement address delivered by President Barack Obama in May 2016, which drew international attention. Other highlights included three presidential symposia on the future of higher education; a highly praised short film featuring Rutgers luminaries such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Paul Robeson, and Milton Friedman; a series of ads and TV spots using the tagline “Rutgers. Revolutionary for 250 Years”; and the expansion of the annual Rutgers Day public open house to all three locations, attracting more than 100,000 visitors.

Increased Media Coverage. The University has vigorously pursued marketing and media relations opportunities to “tell the Rutgers story,” taking advantage of major developments including the integration of the former UMDNJ into Rutgers, entry into the Big Ten, and the institution’s 250th anniversary. In one year, from 2015 to 2016, the number of news stories citing Rutgers rose by 43 percent, from 503,000 to more than 880,000. The overwhelming majority of these, 92 percent, were either positive or neutral.

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Physical Master Plan. In 2015 the Board of Governors approved a comprehensive physical master plan titled Rutgers 2030, which presents transformative visions for New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden over a 15-year period. The plan, reflecting the input of thousands across the Rutgers community, seeks to enhance the student experience, in and outside the classroom and lab; address critical issues regarding transportation; and make facility and infrastructure improvements to attract outstanding faculty and administrators. The vision for Newark opens up the campus with a new college walk from Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard to Military Park, creates a new honors living-learning community, promotes artistic and community development through Express Newark, and provides a transit hub at Conklin Hall. The Camden vision adds facilities for business education and scientific research, creates a new welcome center, renovates classrooms, and continues the reinvigoration of Cooper Street and the surrounding community. The vision for New Brunswick includes a transformed College Avenue with a new dining hall, student center, and green space leading to the Raritan River, a pedestrian and bicycle bridge between the Livingston and College Avenue campuses, and major new athletic facilities. Creating a vision for RBHS includes the challenge of integrating disparate pieces among the former UMDNJ facilities and those of legacy Rutgers now part of RBHS, as well as advancing the Rutgers Health brand. The RBHS master plan will be presented to the Board of Governors in 2017.

Big Ten. The University has benefited in several ways from the Rutgers–New Brunswick athletic teams’ entry into the Big Ten Athletic Conference and its academic arm, the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The benefits include additional exposure for Rutgers’ academic programs through the Big Ten television network, which reaches 60 million homes; a sharp and sustained increase in applications from out-of-state and international students; increased athletic revenues and charitable giving to Rutgers for athletics; collaborative cancer research and shared library resources through the Big Ten Academic Alliance; and State of New Jersey support for upgrading athletic facilities through $25 million in tax credits. As the University approaches the first year it will receive a full share of Big Ten revenues in 2021, Rutgers is moving toward eliminating the institutional subsidy of the Athletics budget. A few Rutgers teams have excelled in the prestigious Big Ten, including wrestling and women’s soccer, which have been ranked among the top teams in the nation.

Strategic Priority: Tomorrow’s University

Instructional Technology. The Committee on the Near- and Long-Term Impact of Instructional Technology, whose creation was announced in the strategic plan, has provided recommendations in three key areas: instructional advancement, teaching and learning spaces, and organizational accountability. Key efforts recommended in the committee report, released in 2017, include the following:  Establish the Rutgers Academic Discovery and Innovation Institute, a marquee institute to establish Rutgers as a leader in instructional technology innovation;  Focus institutional resources to increase the effectiveness of Learning Management Systems, to increase connectivity across Rutgers, to support hybrid and online courses, and to encourage instructional technology innovations;  Maximize instructional space through better scheduling, planning, design, use, renovation, creation, and upkeep of these spaces across Rutgers;  Concentrate leadership for instructional technology at the campus level, create an Office of Teaching and Learning in New Brunswick, and create a Teaching and Learning Advisory Council for all locations.

Academic Unit Organization. A second committee announced in the strategic plan examined how best to organize Rutgers to respond to evolving demands and thrive in the 21st century landscape of higher education. The Committee on Academic Unit Organization’s report, released in 2017, includes recommendations for:

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 a pan-university School of Global Studies and International Affairs, capitalizing on existing strengths in these areas;  a broadening of Rutgers’ community outreach mission through a Rutgers Council for Engagement and Outreach and expansion of the Cooperative Extension program to become a university-wide unit;  the New Brunswick Gateway, a non-degree-granting administrative unit through which nearly all newly enrolled New Brunswick undergraduate students would take general education courses and prerequisites toward intended majors before transferring to the New Brunswick schools housing the intended major;  Rutgers Design, a pan-university entity that would offer novel opportunities to study design- related disciplines, develop academic and research collaborations, and provide consultative services;  Virtual University, an online clearinghouse to facilitate cross-unit collaborations in teaching, research, and service;  University College New Brunswick, an academically rigorous alternative to the existing traditional degree programs, emphasizing scheduling flexibility and novel majors focused on workforce training;  Program for Self-Directed Education, a pilot program to enable students to create customized, rigorous courses of study personalized to their interests. The committee also recommended for future consideration the reorganization of the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.

Foundational Element: Core of Sciences and Humanities

Humanities Task Force. A task force appointed in 2015 has recommended strategies for supporting and enhancing the humanities at Rutgers and to ensure the humanities retain their traditional strength and viability as the University grows. Acting on the report, issued in fall 2016, the University has committed $10 million over five years to help the University’s strongest humanities department continue to recruit distinguished faculty and excellent doctoral students, and to allocate additional Henry Rutgers Term Chairs to attract and retain the best junior faculty to Rutgers’ top-ranked humanities disciplines. The commitment includes additional funding for creative writing programs at Newark and Camden.

Academic Buildings and Research Computing. To provide the physical spaces to enable tomorrow’s research and education, Rutgers has pursued construction or expansion of state-of-the art academic facilities across Rutgers, including a new Nursing and Science Building in Camden, expansion of the Life Sciences Building in Newark, expansion of the School of Pharmacy facility in Piscataway, construction of new Chemistry and Engineering buildings on the Busch Campus, and a new Academic Building on the College Avenue Campus—the first built on that campus in a half-century. In addition, Rutgers has dramatically enhanced its computing capabilities. With $10 million in state funding, the University acquired a large-scale computational platform, called Caliburn, that more than doubles Rutgers’ computing power and has been ranked as the 8th most powerful supercomputer at any U.S. university.

Foundational Element: University Infrastructure

Cornerstone. One of the top priorities identified in the strategic plan, especially in light of the integration of the former UMDNJ into Rutgers, was the need for a detailed and immediate analysis of Rutgers’ administrative information technology platform and a full refresh of the institution’s enterprise resource planning platform. This initiative, titled Cornerstone and led by Executive Vice President Michael Gower and Senior Vice President Michele Norin, initially focused on moving RBHS employees into the same employee administrative system used for legacy Rutgers employees, creating a new University chart of

5 accounts, and implementing a better suite of online tools for financial reporting, budgeting, and budget planning. In 2016, the initiative established new and vastly improved administrative information systems for procurement, financial management, grant management, expense reimbursement, human resources, and payroll. The University has moved to a cloud-based system for e-mail, calendaring, and file storage. Further components of the initiative to be completed in the next phase include upgrading the Human Resources system to a more sophisticated platform and selecting and implementing a new Student Information System.

Foundational Element: Diversity and Inclusion

Faculty Diversity. A reorganization of institutional diversity and inclusion led to the establishment of a new Diversity and Inclusion Office under the purview of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. In 2015, Rutgers embarked on a five-year plan to invest nearly $22 million to recruit, retain, and mentor diverse faculty. The plan includes resources for departments to create diverse candidate pools for faculty recruitment, an annual symposium on diversity, an inclusion and diversity research portal, and a mentoring program that will aid in faculty retention. The first year of the diversity hiring program resulted in the addition of 25 new faculty members who are from underrepresented populations.

Diversity Committees. New chancellor-assembled committees have studied various aspects of diversity within each community. At Rutgers University–Newark, the Commission on Diversity and Transformation, composed of faculty, students, and staff, is generating knowledge and suggestions regarding curriculum, scholarships, initiatives, and spaces for both intragroup solidarity and inter-cultural engagement. At Rutgers University–Camden, a Committee on Institutional Equity and Diversity— composed primarily of faculty members—engages in research, advocates for various constituencies, acts as a resource for faculty hiring, and advises the chancellor on ways to improve faculty diversity. At Rutgers University–New Brunswick, the Task Force on Inclusion and Community Values, comprising students, faculty members, and senior administrators, was charged to solicit student viewpoints regarding the climate of inclusion and racial discourse, to define core values for creating a safe and inclusive community, and to recommend changes reflecting these values.

Access and Affordability. In 2016, Rutgers University–Camden and Rutgers University–Newark launched tuition programs targeted to lower-income families. Camden’s “Bridging the Gap” program offers grants to families with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $60,000 or less, covering all tuition and general campus fees not already covered by federal and/or state grants. Families with an AGI of $60,001 to $100,000 receive a grant covering 50 percent of their remaining tuition and the general campus fee after any other need-based federal and/or state grants are applied. Newark’s “RU-N to the TOP” program covers tuition and fees for Newark residents who are accepted at Rutgers–Newark and have a household income of $60,000 or less. This program also provides that same offer to low-income students statewide who transfer to Rutgers–Newark after earning an associate's degree from one of the state's community colleges. In addition, all students admitted to Rutgers–Newark’s Honors Living-Learning Community receive 100 percent residential scholarships covering the full cost of room and board. Enrollment of first- year students increased significantly at both Newark and Camden through these programs in the first year of the programs (at Rutgers–Camden, enrollment of low-income students increased by 70 percent).

Foundational Element: Financial Resources

Responsibility Center Management. Shortly after President Barchi began his tenure, Rutgers began planning to switch to the Responsibility Center Management budgeting model, a system that places both the resources and expenses with each responsibility unit and encourages entrepreneurial business decisions by academic leaders and staff managers. The University began fulling running under this

6 budgeting model on July 1, 2015, although some work has remained in disentangling some centrally provided services from those provided to a single location.

Program Review. Rutgers is undertaking strategic reviews of centers, institutes, and centrally funded programs to assess their ongoing relevance, progress, and productivity. Those entities that no longer demonstrate progress will be restructured or phased out in order to ensure the effective use of University resources.

Enrollment Growth. The University has increased enrollment in targeted areas where there is room for growth without compromising the quality of the student experience. Special, targeted efforts have been made to increase out-of-state enrollment. In addition, as noted above, Rutgers University–Newark and Rutgers University–Camden have expanded enrollment with the help of new tuition programs.

Foundational Element: Shared Governance

Academic Freedom. President Barchi placed a statement reiterating and affirming the University’s commitment to academic freedom as a permanent link from the president’s home page. The statement notes that academic freedom—the right of faculty in the discharge of their duties to express their ideas and to challenge the ideas of others without fear of retribution—is a cornerstone of American higher education. The statement also refers to First Amendment rights, declaring that faculty members, as private citizens, enjoy the same freedoms of speech and expression as any private citizen and shall be free from institutional discipline in the exercise of these rights.

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