UC 21 defining the new urban research university A Technical Report from the Comprehensive Academic Planning Process, 2004 it’s all uc Table of Contents PREFACE 2 SECTION I: UC|21: AN INTRODUCTION Summary UC|21 Executive Summary 7 Chapter 1 Historical Context: The University of Cincinnati 12 Chapter 2 UC|21 in Context 16 Chapter 3 Process & Evaluation 26 SECTION II: GOALS & STRATEGIC ACTIONS Chapter 4 GOAL 1 – Place Students at the Center 36 Action Team – Students First 37 Action Team – Selectivity with Clear Opportunity Pathways 43 Action Team – UC Anytime/Anyplace 51 Chapter 5 GOAL 2 – Grow Our Research Excellence 54 Action Team – Research Excellence & Interdisciplinary Centers 55 Action Team – World-Class Faculty 59 Chapter 6 GOAL 3 – Achieve Academic Excellence 62 Action Team – Guiding Principles of Academic Programs & Cultural Competence 63 Action Team – Liberal Education at the Core 68 Action Team – Teaching Matters 75 Action Team – National Presence & Recognition 80 Chapter 7 GOAL 4 – Forge Key Relationships & Partnerships 83 Action Team – Experiential Learning & Exchange Programs 84 Action Team – Community Connections & Experts-in-Residence 88 Action Team – Seamless Transitions & Educational Preparation 93 Action Team – Healthy Cincinnati 99 Chapter 8 GOAL 5 – Establish a Sense of “Place” 104 Action Team – We’re All UC & East-West Connections 105 Chapter 9 GOAL 6 – Create Opportunity 112 Action Team – Economic Delta Force 113 Action Team – Performance-Enhanced Budgeting & Revenue Enhancement 117 SECTION III: CONCLUSION: WHAT’S NEXT Chapter 10 Next Steps 121 Chapter 11 Stretch Goals: You Get What You Measure 125 Appendix 132 preface ast October, I became the University of Cincinnati’s 25th president. One year later, I can truly say it has been a most challenging but productive first year! L This technical report focuses on one of the year’s chief accomplishments, our vision for UC’s future, UC|21: Defining the New Urban Research University. Before we delve more deeply into the details of our vision, let me underscore the opportunity we have to build on UC’s greatness: • To build on UC's comprehensive program array, and the challenge of creating more cross-disciplinary programs ... in the arts, the sciences, the humanities, the health sciences and the professional programs. • To build on UC's evolution as a “research powerhouse.” UC has exceptional intellectual capacity. And I assure you that we will continue to grow this momentum. • To build on the diversity and excellence of our student body. Let me be clear: I believe that diversity is value-added. UC is unquestionably a destination campus, a global as well as a local and regional campus, thanks in large part to our world-class co-op program and its ongoing potential. • To build on UC's profound sense of community, given the rich capacities of UC faculty, staff and students, and the resource-rich and, yes, problem-rich environment that is the Cincinnati region – to continue to commit this institution to the region's economic, social, cultural, educational and artistic future. Great universities contribute in major ways to their urban context. They also draw from the great resources that are inherent in metropolitan areas. Great cities and great universities thrive reciprocally on each other’s strengths. • To build on the energy and the excitement of UC’s rich and successful collegiate athletic tradition. I am extremely proud, honored and grateful to have been chosen for this very important leadership role. I believe that urban universities, and especially one of the stature of the University of Cincinnati, will become the prototypic 21st-century universities. I intend to invest all my energies in service to the greatness that is the University of Cincinnati. With these opportunities in mind, the top priority upon my arrival became our Comprehensive Academic Planning Process, the process that led to this technical report. I firmly believe that “vision trumps everything” and organizations are most effective when a well-articulated and ambitious vision for the future exists, reflecting the rich traditions of the past as well as our aspirations for the future. UC|21 defining the new urban research university 2 A 21st VISION It would be hard to imagine that there’s anyone in the UC family who doesn’t know that today we have formed that vision – a vision of the University of Cincinnati, leading in the 21st century. For short, we call our plan UC|21, which speaks directly to a new century and our ambitions for the future. It celebrates the dreams and aspirations of the broader UC family and commits us to a set of core values that will keep our vision focused and true to these aspirations. The values of scholarship, citizenship, stewardship, leadership, partnership and cultural competence are all qualities we strive to embed in the hearts and minds of our students, not only in their early experiences in our General Education curriculum, but like threads through a cloth, we hope to use every educational opportunity to inculcate these values among our students. Each fall, we raise our Just Community quilt, woven at the hands of our entering freshmen and suspended three stories high to remind us of these core values. UC|21 also lays out an ambitious set of goals and actions to define the role of the new urban research university in this dynamic new century, both by building on our capacity to serve and to lead. The pages of this report will contain more information on each of our six goals: • Placing students at the center of our universe and becoming a destination campus for student success; • Growing our research capacity, building on our greatness as innovators and inventors, creators and designers. While today we reside among the nation’s top 25 public research institutions, we aspire to ever-better standing; • Achieving increased academic prominence, boasting distinguished programs. We plan to fuel our program excellence by placing liberal education at the core of both our academic and professional programs, prioritizing programmatic investments to maintain and expand academic excellence; • Forging key relationships and partnerships, and applying our knowledge and best practice to the highest community priorities, seeking to create a front door to UC resources and expertise in reciprocal partnerships with the region, the state and beyond; • Establishing a sense of place on our Uptown campus and beyond, having engaged in a major physical renaissance, now transforming our institution into one that is truly “UC anytime, anyplace,” with 24/7 services and activities; and, • Creating opportunity, not only for students with potential, once nurtured, who can blossom into successful graduates, but also serving as a vital economic engine for our local and global economy. We have also put in place some benchmarks – what I’ve called “stretch goals” – that will define our activities going forward, including changing the mix of students who study at UC, from more diverse geographic locales, more cultural and international orientations, and more students from the higher-performing quartiles of their high schools (see Chapter 11). We seek UC|21 defining the new urban research university 3 more opportunities to recruit distinguished faculty, more external research funds, expanded technologies that create the innovative instructional and laboratory environments needed on our campus. And yes, we intend a direct assault on the national rankings milieu. Vision, I believe, is something that is derived not at the lone hands of a leader, but at the hands of many. Our visioning process took on a scope some say has never been seen before on this campus – over 240 individuals from both campus and community worked together in a series of Town Hall Meetings; 2,400 more attended over 90 input sessions at early and intermediate stages of our planning; over 300 people voiced opinions online; and over 24,000 viewings accrued to our UC|21 Web site. UC|21 is in every sense of the word our vision; crafted at our hands; with our imprint on every value, goal or strategy. Chapter 3 will tell you full details of the process we used to accomplish this. We also know that collective vision can only derive from collective action. Since the announcement of UC|21 to the broader community at my inauguration on May 21, 2004, many people have worked tirelessly to develop our strategy for moving forward. Our “What’s Next” Section (Section III) toward the end of this book will tell you more about this, making it patently clear that we are moving to implement as many aspects of UC|21 as there are creative ideas therein, and we are moving to assure that we have the needed resources – the pocketbook to match our aspirations. A ‘NEW’ UNIVERSITY The people who participated in our academic planning process know that we struggled mightily over the so-called “tag line” for UC|21. Each word in the after-the-colon debate mattered to someone. In the end, we agreed to the phrase, “Defining the New Urban Research University.” It is no coincidence that we began our planning process with a bibliography, distributing business cards with references to recent books on the topic of higher education in the 21st century. Based on that reading list, I am convinced that with UC|21a new day is dawning in higher education. One of the authors on our list, former university president Frank Rhodes (The Creation of the Future: The Role of the American University, 2001), reminds us that the “new” university will be one that is: • increasingly privately supported but increasingly publicly accountable and socially committed, • campus-rooted but internationally oriented, • knowledge-based but student centered, • research-driven but learning focused, • technologically sophisticated but community dependent, • committed to quality and cost effectiveness • and professionally attuned while reinventing the liberal arts.