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Contact 527 Andy Holt Tower Knoxville,Tennessee Phone: 865-974-3265 Chancellor's Assistant: |
The State of the CampusRemarks to the Faculty Senate It is a pleasure to provide a brief update on the state of the campus. Although we will focus on the present, these remarks are based on my nearly five years at the University of Tennessee. These have been tumultuous times, characterized by rapid turnover in the System President’s office and too much energy consumed by unproductive political maneuvering and bureaucratic infighting. Despite this, there has been considerable progress at the Knoxville campus and there are grounds for optimism about the future. Looking at the present, it is clear that Knoxville is making progress in its pursuit of excellence. US News and World Report now ranks UT 38th among all public “national” universities, a gain of six places from the previous year’s assessment, and the Lombardi report places UT among the top 25 research universities. While we are pleased by these rankings, they are not the driving force behind our determination for excellence. Rather, two fundamental principles energize our activities. First, we place academic integrity and quality far ahead of the superficial prestige conferred by commercial rankings. Second, we maintain that higher education is not a mass-produced commodity. Rather, it is a highly individual process of remarkable complexity. Students are not consumers in the market sense of the word, and professors are not purveyors of a commodity. Rather, “education” is “produced” by a joint effort of faculty, students and staff. UT’s goal is to become a premier research university, a center of cultural and intellectual richness, an engine of economic opportunity, and an instrument of upward mobility for the people of Tennessee. The University remains true to its land grant heritage of service, teaching and research. We have articulated an institutional goal of membership in the Association of American Universities (AAU) within a decade. This is ambitious and highly political, and to reach our objective we must recruit and retain outstanding faculty, staff, students and administrators. If we do this, certain important consequences will follow:
Six Tactics to Achieve the GoalDuring the past several years, the University has pursued six tactics on our journey to becoming a premier research university. First, we have sought to enhance faculty quality and increase the numbers of faculty. Faculty numbers declined significantly during the 1990s as a consequence of budget cutbacks. Since 2001-02, that trend has been reversed and the number of regular faculty has increased by 46.43 FTE (3.9%) while the number of instructors/lecturers has declined slightly (0.40). The addition of eleven new faculty lines for next year ensures that the faculty expansion will continue. The University is blessed with excellent faculty, and the quality of their performance continues to escalate. The number of National Academy members has increased from one to four since 2001 and we expect that more will achieve that distinction in the near future. The number of faculty awards (such as Fulbright and ACLS fellowships) has increased dramatically. Last year, for example, UT faculty won six NEH research grants, which placed UT in the top three institutions nationally. That was a truly exceptional feat. Meanwhile, external grants increased by 15% in 2004-2005. New funding for recruiting distinguished scientists in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory enables the University to hire joint faculty and Governor’s Chairs who will bring additional luster to our faculty ranks. The University is committed to improving diversity among our faculty, and has implemented a program of bridge funding for diversity hires. We have made slow but steady progress in diversifying both the faculty and the administration, but much remains to be done. The new Diversity Action Plan demonstrates a campus-wide commitment to diversity in all its manifestations. Salaries continue to be a concern, as many UT departments pay faculty below peer averages. We are addressing this by hiring new faculty at nationally competitive rates and then managing compression and inversion problems as funding permits. A new salary regression study provided by Institutional Research will enable us to examine issues of equity at the department and individual levels. Inevitably, some excellent faculty will become targets of recruitment by other institutions. The existence of endowments enables us to deploy private resources in some cases to retain these faculty, and we are also committed to using institutional funds wherever possible. In the end, as Tennessee’s comprehensive research university, we must strike a healthy balance among all the great fields of learning: the arts, humanities, social sciences, engineering, the natural sciences, and professional training. There is excellence in all these areas, and there is insufficient space to describe them all. One example, though, is the department of Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management, headed by Dr. Nancy Fair. This highly ranked program places its Ph.D. graduates in peer institutions and offers exceptional outreach to the community. A culinary institute headed by Dr. John Antun, for instance, trains people from Knoxville’s empowerment zone to become first-rate chefs. The current class of nearly thirty will graduate in mid-February and students are already employed by good restaurants in the area. Such examples of research, teaching and outreach are legion on the Knoxville campus. Second, we are seeking to improve administrative effectiveness and efficiency. To that end, we emphasize that the University exists to create and disseminate knowledge and our administrative services must support that mission. Bureaucracy is necessary for the smooth operation of a complex institution such as UT, to be sure, but it does not exist to serve itself. A key ingredient of administrative effectiveness in any strong university is a robust system of shared governance among faculty, staff and administrators. Governance organizations should play an important role in setting policies, and administrators must act promptly to implement them. The recent revision of the Faculty Handbook under the exquisite leadership of the late Marian Moffett included new provisions such as evaluation of personnel, classification of faculty, and appointment of ombudspersons, and was a superior example of shared governance at work. Dr. Moffett was a shining example of faculty statesmanship. Other examples of attempts to improve administration include the merger of four collegiate units into two in 2002, the Review and Redirection process that addressed departmental issues in 2003, the creation of a division of Finance and Administration, and the revamping of research services to include pre- and post-awards in a new facility on White Avenue. These administrative changes occurred with full engagement of the faculty and staff involved and under terms acceptable to both the Faculty Senate and the administration. Finally, under the energetic leadership of Vice Chancellor Anne Mayhew, the University has engaged in comprehensive enrollment management during the past four years. As a consequence of the effective planning of the Enrollment Management Committee, the quality of the entering class has dramatically improved, and the University has dedicated $5 million to ensure that general education courses are readily available. Third, the University has sought to enhance undergraduate and graduate student numbers, quality and diversity. The results have been outstanding:
These outcomes are a result of the lottery scholarships, judicious application of institutional financial aid, improved graduate stipends, and health insurance for graduate students. We also believe that the University’s rising academic reputation has played a role. Fourth, we have made significant improvements in the quality of undergraduate education. At the forefront of the improvements are the new requirements in general education implemented two years ago. The Senate’s Undergraduate Council under Laura Jolly’s able direction took the lead in designing the changes, which now apply to every UT undergraduate, irrespective of their major. Many departments have responded by improving their core courses. The History department, for example, by means of a PITRS (President’s Initiatives in Teaching, Research and Service) grant, redesigned the sophomore-level World Civilizations course which is now taught exclusively by regular faculty. The general education requirements are comprehensive and permit most students to change majors without losing credits, but more importantly, they prepare students for life-long learning by exposing them to all the great branches of knowledge. The Quality Enhancement Plan (the International/Intercultural Initiative) is a second important initiative directed at undergraduate education. It responds to the need to prepare UT students for citizenship in the “flattened” world of the 21st century. Today’s students must understand other cultures and languages, escape cultural isolation and ignorance, and see the world in less Manichaean terms. A wide variety of programs, ranging from conversations about world affairs to study abroad to the infusion of international/intercultural elements into the curriculum, are underway as we implement this plan. One of the advantages for students at a research extensive campus is the opportunity to work with research-active faculty. Many faculty members have worked at expanding undergraduate research through the annual research symposium and summer grants. The University Honors program continues to work at developing first-rate student experiences, as do departmental and college honors programs such as College Scholars. To meet the needs of students for “just-in-time” advice as they make their way through UT, the University established the Student Success Center this year under Ruth Darling’s direction. We expect these and other new programs to increase undergraduate retention and graduation and to enrich the undergraduate experience for our students. Fifth, leading research universities must have excellent physical facilities, and UT is no exception. Unfortunately, many years of deferred maintenance have left the University with millions of dollars of needed renovations and reconstructions. Happily, the state and private donors have recognized this need, and the result is that more than $300 million of construction is now recently completed, underway, or authorized, including the following projects:
As we experience extensive facilities work in the coming years, we all need to be patient with the inevitable disruptions of our normal routines and to look forward to the enhancements to our built environment. Our challenge is to ensure that the new construction is “green” and that our buildings address the need for informal learning spaces that new technology affords our students. Sixth, we must take care to preserve the best of our campus culture while simultaneously looking to the creation of a new environment. In particular, we must take pride in the accomplishments of our students, faculty and staff. UT is a very good university, and getting better by the day. Let us take our lights out from under our bushels and celebrate the good work occurring daily at this institution. We also must strive to fill in the “mineshafts” that typify not only UT but most large research universities. The prevailing paradigm in scholarly investigation is reductionism, whereby we explore deeper and deeper aspects of our sub-disciplines, learning, as one wag has put it, more and more about less and less. We must look up from our mineshafts, climb out occasionally, and see what others are doing that might enrich our own work. Our teaching, research and service will profit from such interdisciplinary interactions. Is Our Goal Realizable or Hallucinatory?We have great ambitions, and we are making progress toward them. Our success, however, depends upon improving UT’s financial situation, reducing administrative complexity, and engaging five key challenges. Great universities enjoy significant financial support. UT must take advantage of all available financial resources, including state and federal support, tuition and fees (and UT is still a great bargain compared to our peers), auxiliary revenues, the University and Research Foundations, and the $l billion capital campaign now being planned. Securing the needed resources must be a top priority for all of us. We must also reduce administrative complexity. President Petersen and I agree that the campus must be administratively responsible. To do so, the campus must have delegated authority over most academic and administrative decisions. Leading research institutions that operate within state-wide systems succeed to the extent that they enjoy this kind of authority. Finally, as we look ahead, we need to pay attention to five underlying trends that Daniel Yankelovich described in the November 25, 2005, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. The first is the fact of changing life cycles. The current college-going generation, aged 18-30, is not the same as in previous generations. Many of us rushed through college and graduate school, eager to get on with our careers and families. Many of today’s youth prolong their college years, combining education, training and work before they settle into an occupation. We need to address how our curricula and expectations relate to this trend. At the other end of the spectrum, people aged 55-75 are seeking fulfillment that they might not have experienced as they hurried through life. They typically turn to arts, humanities and social science faculty for assistance, and this may open a whole new world of opportunity for our faculty. Second, it is obvious that the United States is increasingly vulnerable in science and technology. The federal government under prodding from Senator Lamar Alexander and others has awakened to the need to focus anew on these areas. The statistics are daunting: 66% of all Japanese college graduates major in science and technology, 59% of Chinese students, and only 32% of Americans. The causes of this are many and complex, including teaching issues in K-12 schools, outmoded teaching approaches in universities, and lack of financial support for graduate study. A recent analysis by the National Academies, Rising above the Gathering Storm; Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (2005) details the crisis and suggests remedies. Third, Americans must develop a fuller understanding of other cultures and languages. We need more cultural experts, particularly in areas such as the Middle East, but we must also reduce the cultural isolation and ignorance that characterize too many Americans. We must revive and strengthen our interdisciplinary area studies programs and seek to counteract the dominant pressure toward specialization and separatism that prevents us from understanding cultures in all their complexity. Globalization, the “flattening” of the world, does not appear to be reducing regional differences. Instead, it seems to be exacerbating them. This highlights the importance of UT’s Quality Enhancement Plan. Fourth, it is vital that we maintain our long-time commitment to social mobility. Americans tend to accept large differences in economic and social status so long as there is the hope that every individual will have equal access to higher education. This is the principle behind UT’s new “Tennessee Pledge” program that guarantees that the “mandatory” costs (tuition and fees, room and board) will be provided through grants and scholarships to every student whose families have incomes at 150% of the federal poverty level or below. Fifth, universities have typically acknowledged that there are many ways of knowing, many “truth models,” and we must continue to do so. One of today’s paradoxes is that as scientific knowledge becomes ever more powerful, the public has become more skeptical of it. Many people appear to believe that while science can unlock many secrets of the natural world, it alone can not provide answers to life’s perennial and perplexing problems. The current debate over “intelligent design” is only the most visible evidence of this skepticism. It is vital that UT acknowledge and even celebrate non-scientific ways of knowing, even as we push the boundaries of scientific investigation. We should recognize and clarify the strengths and limitations of the first in relationship to the second. Given all that is before us, can the University succeed in attaining its highest goals? I believe we can, if we will combine objective, empirical science with the rational discourse of the humanities. We can and must succeed in our institutional ambition of entering the top tier of public research universities, and we must also meet our responsibilities as an exponent of rationality and an engine of opportunity. |