Office of the Chancellor

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A Strategic Vision for UMass Amherst

February 11, 2009

“May you live in interesting times” is apocryphally reported to be an ancient Chinese curse. The phrase, it seems, is actually of more recent and Western vintage. No matter what the origin is for this apothegm, we all know its meaning, and it is not difficult to understand why many people believe that we are living under this curse at present.

There are budget troubles at UMass Amherst. Like the rest of higher education, and like the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world, we have experienced this year, and will continue to experience next year, rather severe reductions in the funding we receive from the State. These reductions will in turn compel us to rethink our way of doing business.

We will continue to give our highest priority to our core mission: the teaching of our undergraduate students; the training of graduate students for academic and professional careers; research and scholarly activity; and service and outreach to the citizenry in both Western Massachusetts and the Commonwealth.

But we will no doubt have to curtail or even discontinue some of our activities. Since so many uncertainties surround the budget, we cannot say definitively what we will be doing at this point, but all indications are that the cuts will be painful and extensive.

There is another widespread misconception surrounding the Chinese language that is often invoked in thorny predicaments: the notion that the Chinese word for crisis is composed of the characters for “danger” and for “opportunity.” It seems that only the first half is correct; “opportunity” is not really present in the Chinese word for “crisis.”

And yet, in spite of the folk etymology that leads us away from linguistic fact, we must seek opportunity in the present crisis if we are going to position the campus to be stronger and more effective once tax revenues increase and operating budgets return. I can point to a number of measures we are pursuing to help us maintain our focus on the ultimate goal of moving UMass Amherst into the upper echelon of public universities in the nation.

• We are undertaking a reorganization of the campus collegiate structure. Our hope is to reduce bureaucratic costs of doing business through achieved efficiencies in operation. We estimate that we can initially save between $1M and $2M without damaging our academic core mission or disadvantaging faculty and students.
• In conjunction with this college reorganization I am simultaneously examining ways in which the central administration can eliminate duplicative efforts and support the academic mission more effectively. We have already identified more than a half million dollars in savings in the realm of the Chancellor’s and Provost’s Office, and we are establishing a working group to scrutinize work processes as they relate to academic units.
• At the same time we will be investing administrative resources in areas that lead directly to increased support of faculty and student activities and increased revenues for the campus. This shift of administrative investment is part of a general reform according to which we must consider each dollar we spend and make sure that the return on its investment is appropriate, beneficial to the future of the campus, and in accord with our overall mission and goals.
• We know that the State will not be able to provide any additional operating budget for us this year and perhaps for a few years thereafter. Indeed, we are expecting a rather significant decrease in operating budget for the coming fiscal year. In the meantime, however, we will be focusing on some of our most pressing capital needs, including a new science building to be located adjacent to Morrill Hall, and various deferred maintenance projects that will improve facilities for our faculty and students.
• In preparation for better times, and in keeping with my mantra for a strategic use of resources, we have put out a general call for proposals to the faculty. In this RFP the campus has asked faculty members to identify research and teaching areas that have the potential of being path-breaking and of establishing a reputation for the campus across the region and the country. We cannot excel in everything at UMass Amherst, so it is important to know where we have both the expertise and the leadership to become nationally prominent.

Despite the difficult economic climate we are proceeding with essential searches. The Office of Research has performed well in recent years, but most faculty across the campus agree that more effective research support will lead to additional and more lucrative contracts and grants. We have therefore moved the Office of Research out of the domain of the Provost and into its own Vice Chancellery, and are proceeding with the search for an individual to occupy this vital position.

We also recognize the enormous efforts that the campus has put into fundraising over the past decade. Despite these efforts, we lag seriously behind our peers in both annual giving and endowment funds. For this reason we believe that it is essential to seek leadership in the area of development, and we are nearing the close of a search that should secure for us an individual who will reorganize and revitalize our operations. Properly understood, fundraising is intimately related to our core mission, since its ultimate purpose is to secure funding for various initiatives involving faculty and students.

We are also seeking a dean for the Isenberg School of Management. This unit has been without permanent leadership for four years, and everyone agrees it cannot realize its considerable potential until we have a new dean in place. The alumni of the School have been tremendously supportive in assisting us with the search, both in terms of input and advice, and in establishing funds that the new dean will be able to employ to improve the effectiveness of student and faculty activities.

We recognize that we have an enduring obligation to undergraduate education, and in the coming years we will be seeking ways to improve student satisfaction both inside and outside the classroom. One example of our commitment: next year we will be introducing a program of first-year seminars. These one-credit courses, taught by tenure-stream faculty from across the campus, will enroll fewer than twenty students per section and will focus on topics of interest to faculty and student participants. In their first year on campus, when many freshmen are enrolled in large, impersonal lecture courses, the first-year seminar will provide them with an alternative: they will be able to take a small enrollment course, get to know one of our faculty, and discuss important issues in a small seminar setting.

These first-year seminars will be supplemented in coming years with programming in the academic realm, as well as initiatives in student affairs, that aim at enhancing the first-year experience and enabling students to be better integrated into the life of the campus and the community. Among our prospective initiatives are increased research opportunities for undergraduates as a form of capstone experience, and the integration of student life and community service with curricular offerings.

One of the greatest challenges in the next decade is to situate UMass Amherst in a more stable funding environment. While we will continue to press for our fair share of state appropriations, we must move toward other revenue sources that will guarantee the high quality of classroom instruction and research that we all desire. Our movement forward in the Office of Research and our renewed focus on development are two parts of this future-oriented strategy. But we will also be reexamining our student population, the fee structure, and our financial aid policies. Among the changes we are contemplating are the following:

• An increase in the overall student population at both the undergraduate and graduate level. We will have to work strategically with these increases. Some programs have excess capacity already. Others can expand their capacity without significantly increasing costs by dealing creatively with the delivery of instruction. Some programs that offer professional degrees may want to increase differentially their fees. By building the campus through quality programs, we will be able to ensure a steady source of revenue.
• A move toward a model of moderate fees and restructured financial aid. The costs currently borne by students for their education at UMass Amherst is a fraction of what their peers pay for education at private institutions in the state, and the quality is every bit as good. By raising tuition and fees moderately for the student body as a whole, and returning a more significant portion of the revenues to financial aid, we can continue our obligation to educate anyone who merits admission based on accomplishment and promise, while at the same time maintaining a quality education for everyone.
• We will also be seeking to attract more international and out-of-state students. While we will maintain our student numbers for the citizens of the Commonwealth, we will want to provide them with exposure to students with a great variety of experiences in terms of cultural background, geographical location, and intellectual interests. The shift in admissions orientation will have the dual benefit of securing additional resources for the institution and exposing students to a greater diversity.

One final aspect of our plans that I would like to mention: communications. Despite the budget crisis, we are in some ways better positioned today than we have very been. We have a faculty that ranks in the top twenty public research universities in the country in terms of faculty awards, and we have appointed in recent years a cohort that promises to contribute additional preeminence to an already distinguished group. We have attracted more student applications in the past two years than in any other years in the history of the campus, and as a result we currently have the best incoming class in terms of numerical indicators. We are finishing off a $760M capital campaign that has produced several new, state-of-the-art buildings and refurbished many others; and we look forward to significant gains in the coming years from the capital construction bill and the life science bill passed in the last session of the legislature.

We need to communicate the truly remarkable accomplishments of the campus and let people across the state and the region know that UMass Amherst is the university of big opportunities and big ideas. We have plans to do just that, involving a redesigned web presence and strategy, a new program of alumni communications, and a novel approach to branding the campus based on our strengths. Our goal is to have UMass Amherst revealed to be one of the best kept secrets in higher education: a great campus located in a region that is unusual for the density of colleges and students, with a faculty acknowledged as among the best by peers across the country, and a diverse and accomplished student body achieving at the highest levels.

Amid the doom and gloom of the current recession I am resolutely optimistic about the future of UMass Amherst. We start out from an advantageous position, as New England’s foremost public research institution, and if we proceed with deliberate prudence, we will soon be poised, despite financial woes, to move into the top tier of public universities.

Let me close with another Chinese proverb, one that is evidently actually Chinese in origin. “Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.” The campus will not grow at the rate I had anticipated when I was first named Chancellor back in May of 2008. We will experience some delays in what we want to do, and we will have to retrench in some areas. But with the help of our faculty, students, and staff; with a strategy that focuses us on our strengths and goals; and with the support of our alumni and our many friends in the community and across the state we will surely grow into the university we want to be and that the citizens of the Commonwealth deserve.