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Address to the Faculty Senate
Summing Up Two-and-a-Half Years on Campus

February 3, 2011

Chancellor Robert C. Holub speaks to the Faculty Senate on Feb 3, 2011

Ernie May asked me to present to the faculty senate a summary of accomplishments during my tenure as chancellor. Many times such reviews are delivered at the close of a term of office, when an individual is stepping down or leaving a position. Unless Ernie knows something I don’t, my address today should be considered, rather, a first interim report, one that documents ongoing progress, but that promises more during the future years of my chancellorship. At least I understood his request in this vein.

I asked my senior staff to assist me in the composition of this report by summarizing for me achievements that have taken place in their various divisions over the past two-and-a-half years. In reading their brief summaries, I was rather astounded that so much has occurred, and my first order of business is to thank my senior staff, as well as the faculty, staff members, and students on campus, who have made possible this progress. My second order of business is to remind all of you that almost all worthwhile accomplishments are the result of teamwork among diverse individuals and across different units. Without buy-in, cooperation, and active collaboration toward concrete goals we can achieve nothing. As you know, our ultimate goal is well defined and has been since I began my term as chancellor: to be counted among the top tier of public research universities in the country. I find that we have made considerable progress toward that goal, and we can take pride in what we have accomplished together, but that we will have to make more progress in the coming years if we are serious about attaining that lofty status.

An important step forward for the campus was the selection and reconfiguration of the senior staff. Since 2008 I appointed a provost and senior vice chancellor (Jim Staros), a vice chancellor for student affairs and campus life (Jean Kim), a vice chancellor for development and alumni re­la­tions (Mike Leto), a deputy chancellor (Todd Diacon), a vice chancellor for research and en­gage­ment (Mike Malone), and two vice chancellors for university relations (Tom Milligan was the first), and the latter of the two, attending his first faculty senate meeting today I introduce to you now, John F. Kennedy. Susan Pearson moved over from the provost’s office to be my asso­ciate chancellor, and John Dubach, while retaining his role as Chief Information Officer, has maintained some duties under me as chief of staff. Attending senior staff meetings, which are now called the Campus Leadership Council, are three individuals I did not appoint: John McCutcheon, our athletic director; Joyce Hatch, the vice chancellor for finance and adminis­tration (and I have just recently been informed by Joyce that she will be stepping down in June); and Brian Burke from the university’s general counsel’s office. This team is outstanding: we work well together, and every individual displays a high degree of professionalism and dedica­tion to his or her job. If I have accomplished anything during the past two-and-a-half years, these individuals are to be credited with a lion’s share of these accomplishments.

When I was appointed chancellor in May of 2008, we were expecting a small increase in our state appropriation, a 3% increase in fees, and a large amount of capital expenditures owing to the recently passed bills for higher education and life sciences. Two months after I assumed the chancellorship, everything changed radically: the fee increase remained, but the increase in state appropriation had to be returned to the state along with additional funding in the mid-year cuts. The promise of funding for construction remained, but expectations were (and still are) that the release of funds will be delayed, in many cases for several years. Some projects at the end of the ten-year cycle may never be funded at all. In addition, the budget outlook for the next few years was bleak, and, indeed, although state revenues have begun to recuperate from their low point, we are still faced with significantly lower state allocations for next year.

I was barely acquainted with the campus, therefore, when I found myself confronted by the most severe financial downturn since the Great Depression. Although the overall goal remained the same, I knew that we had to move quickly to prepare the campus for several difficult years, and, in collaboration with the faculty senate and the Ad Hoc Budget Planning Task Force, the campus developed a strategy that involved three essential dimensions: (1) restructuring and streamlining the campus for maximum efficiency and flexibility; (2) reduction of base budget commitments to eliminate functions that were not absolutely essential to our operations; and (3) investment in areas to stimulate programs that would enhance campus revenues.

Restructuring took various forms and is not yet complete. Several units were moved to more appropriate locations, or locations in which they could better perform their functions: e.g., the police force was moved to Administration and Finance; the admissions and financial aid offices were transferred to academic affairs. We brought science into the 21st century by eliminating the artificial barriers separating the College of Natural Resources from Natural Sciences and Mathe­matics, consolidating most laboratory sciences into synergistic relations in one college. In the process we also relocated several departments, and preserved several smaller programs by incorporating them into larger units. In the chancellor’s and provost’s office we eliminated several staff positions and coordinated service staff activities. We are still working on a larger liberal arts college, which I continue to believe will be beneficial to faculty, students, and the campus. And I still would like to see an engineering college strengthened by the addition of Polymer Science and Engineering, and Computer Science. Indeed, if we are to achieve our goal of approaching AAU status, we must resemble AAU universities in our structure as well as our practices: two or three large colleges with traditional arts and science departments sur­round­ed by four or five small professional schools is not the structure of an AAU campus, and the strengthening of the college of engineering by the addition of two departments traditionally associated with engineering would do much to enhance our profile as we move toward our ultimate goal.

The reduction in base budgets was accomplished over a period of two years, during which we eliminated close to $20 million from our ongoing commitments. These reductions were painful, but necessary since a portion of our funding since 2008 has come from one-time stimulus monies that will not be available in the future. To the credit of the campus we accomplished these reductions without eliminating departments or programs, and without decreasing the number of students we teach. I believe we have reached a point now where further base budget reductions will affect negatively either our ability to teach and conduct research, or our ability to generate revenues needed to fill the gap left by reductions in state appropriations. The question of whether we can teach the same number of students more cheaply is vacuous: it can always be answered in the affirmative. But I am convinced we cannot teach the same number of students and maintain the type of quality education one expects from a flagship campus if we experience further reductions in state allocations without offsetting increases in revenues from other sources.

Even while we were cutting budgets, we were investing in areas that promised to generate new revenues. This investment has paid off for the campus, largely because of the hard work of faculty, staff, and students. Last year we generated over $4 million by increasing the number of non-resident students on campus, and we have made significant gains in the areas of fundraising, continuing and professional education, and new degree programs. We must continue, expand, and accelerate this work in the coming years. My view is that over the next two or three decades we will see the ascension of campuses that generate significant portions of their own revenues, while those that do not will decline in prominence.

Let me proceed now to enumerate some of the accomplishments of the past two-and-a-half years. I will do so by referring to categories in the “Framework for Excellence,” the outline for strategic planning whose first version was promulgated at the end of my initial year on campus, but has since been revised.

Faculty. In a very real sense most of the items in the Framework relate to the work of our faculty: research, physical plant, development, and graduate education all refer directly to the faculty and its interests. Although we have made several advances in the area of faculty welfare, such as in our new spousal/partner employment policy and the “Parents-in-a-Pinch” program we will likely make available soon, I want to focus here on two central issues: numbers of tenure-stream faculty, and the compensation of tenure-stream faculty.

• We believe that we have a good plan to increase the number of tenure-stream faculty to around 1200 by 2020. A significant fraction of the funding for these positions will come from incentive revenues earned by Colleges and Schools with the remainder from the central campus budget. I would like to point out two things, however: the number of instructional faculty has remained fairly constant over the past two decades, and we are on an upswing, even in this economic crisis, in tenure-stream faculty since we hit bottom in the years 2002-04. This year we have over 60 active searches, and with any luck we will be close to the 1000 mark in tenure-stream faculty next year, a number we have not seen since the fall of 2001.
• I recently announced that we intend to supplement salary increases to faculty members beyond the amounts negotiated in the collective bargaining agreement.

These increases will be granted on the basis of merit and market-based considerations, and we intend to continue this merit-based program until we reach at least the average salary level for our peer institutions. Thus far the MSP has been cooperative and enthusiastic about this program, and the faculty senate has been equally supportive; we look forward to having our first increases implemented next fall.

Research and Creative Activity. A central focus of my administration has been to enhance the status of research. I elevated the chief research officer’s position from a Vice Provost for Research to a Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement reporting to me. After appointing Mike Malone, we established an incentive-based budget process that will enable Mike’s office to secure larger budgets as research on the campus increases. Mike has done a tremendous job under difficult circumstances. He established a new office of research develop­ment to support large sponsored research initiatives, remodeled the faculty research grant pro­gram to provide greater opportunity for disciplines without access to extramural fund­ing, began a book subvention program, worked on simplifying sponsored research agree­ments to enhance pri­vate-sector engagement; and he focused special attention on compliance issues so that the cam­pus is at reduced risk in a number of crucial areas. Mike has also initiated the first comprehen­sive review of research support services, and I am looking forward to discussing the results with him this spring. Since Mike became Vice Chancellor we have collaborated well with the Wor­cester campus in the successful pursuit of the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award, and the campus has encouraged cooperation with other institutions and with private industry, in the endeavor to diversify and deepen our research portfolio. The collaboration with MIT, BU, Harvard, Northeastern, the state, and the private sector in the Green High Performance Com­puting Center is exemplary in this regard. In addition, Research and Engagement has taken over chief responsibility for federal government affairs and is working toward an Innovation Institute, which will assist us in con­ducting certain types of research and private sector engage­ment that are difficult for us at present. We all know that research has been on the upswing, as evidenced by the almost $40 million in stimulus research funding received last year. In the area of research the campus owes a special debt of gratitude to faculty who have participated in the review of sponsored research, who have served on the Research Council, and who have partici­pated in important ad hoc committees.

Graduate Education.  In several departments we did quite well when the National Research Council’s study of graduate programs was finally promulgated last fall. As many of you know, in cooperation with faculty and staff, we are currently conducting a campus-wide study of graduate programs, and we will be looking to implement changes on the basis of that study and the NRC results. We know that we must make graduate stipends more competitive, and that we must increase the number of certificate degree programs and professional Masters programs to support PhD training. With regard to postdoctoral appointments, many of the reforms that we wished to undertake must now be held in abeyance while we negotiate with the postdoc union.

Undergraduate Education. We have achieved real progress in the recent past, thanks to the combined efforts of academic affairs, student affairs, and the faculty senate, in moving UMass Amherst to a more nationally competitive position in undergraduate education. Numerically we granted the largest number of baccalaureate degrees in our history last spring (4851) and had the best retention rate for first-year students this fall (88.7%). Our graduation rate in May was 68.9%, only .1% less than our record from two years ago.

Part of our success with our first-year students has to do with our focus on first-year pro­grams. Currently 60% of new freshmen participate in a living-learning community, and we are increasing these opportunities for future cohorts. The residential programs (RAPs and TAPs) continue to be extremely popular, and we have added faculty first-year seminars, of which there were more than 40 this past fall.

The other area in which we have made substantial progress is in general education. The campus altered the credit values for most gen ed courses, and the faculty senate recently passed an exciting Integrated Experience requirement that promises to put this campus in the forefront for general education in the country.

Residential Life and Student Affairs. The Office of Student Affairs and Campus Life has contributed to various types of campus activity, including housing, community relations, and academic programs. But some of its signal accomplishments during the past three years merit special mention.

• We continue to be recognized for our exemplary alcohol screening and intervention program by the federal government and peer reviewers, garnering funding and awards for our achievements.
• Student Affairs was chiefly responsible for our tremendous response to the earth­quake in Haiti.
• Due largely to efforts in Student Affairs we were recognized as a Veterans Friendly School and ranked #8 by Newsweek in their list of “25 Best Gay-Friendly Schools.”
• Several important organizational changes were implemented recently:
• The first online SGA elections took place with a record number of student voters.
• The Office of Religious and Spiritual Life was created to address broader campus needs.
• The Center for Multicultural Advancement and Student Success (CMASS) opened, providing greater service for ALANA students across the campus.

Although there was no rubric for intercollegiate athletics in the framework document, that department has been working hard to contribute to campus goals. Like other units, athletics has sought ways to reduce operational costs and generate revenues. It has reorganized its operations, brought on a new lead development officer, and issued an RFP to enhance its revenues from marketing. In addition, as has been reported in the media, we are considering moving our football program from FCS (formerly Division 1AA) to FBS (formerly Division 1A) status, which we estimate will save money in the long run in operating expenses and at the same time provide a higher profile for athletics and the campus. I also note here that most public AAU universities play football at the FBS level. On the field we have met with a great deal of success, garnering a dozen league championships since I arrived. We have lost coaches, but replaced them with superb individuals who understand that we want our student athletes to be winners on the field, in the classroom, and as representatives of the campus. On average close to a hundred student athletes have been named to the Atlantic-10 Commissioner’s Honor Roll since fall 2008. Our athletics web site ranks among the top 50 nationally in web traffic.

Diversity. Student, faculty, and staff diversity continues to be a central focus for the campus. For the fall of 2010, the number of ALANA students in the undergraduate population was nearly 300 greater than in any previous year, which included an increase in Hispanic/Latino students of over 180. The percentage of ALANA students on campus this fall was 21.1%, the highest in the school’s history and an increase of 2.7% since the fall of 2007. Incoming first-year ALANA students continued to be over one-fifth of the entering class. The provost has placed special emphasis on diversity in faculty hiring, devoting a large portion of his academic leadership retreat in September to this topic.

Facilities and Physical Plant.  Despite difficult economic times we have made excellent progress in this vital area. We celebrated the opening of several important buildings: the Studio Arts Building, the Integrated Sciences Building, the Transit Facility, the New Power Plant, the Recreation Center, and the renovated Skinner Hall. And we will be completing the construction of the George M. Parks Minuteman Marching Band Building and the Police Station this spring. We have three major projects in various phases of design and construction: two new laboratory science buildings located adjacent to the ISB; an academic classroom building at the north end of the pond; and a Commonwealth Honors College living-learning complex that is sited between Boyden Gym and the new Recreation Center. In addition several minor projects that provide better space and improved aesthetics have been completed or are in design.

To rationalize further investments in our facilities, we have been involved extensively in planning, completing a comprehensive science and engineering study as well as an academic classroom study in the past two years. And we have engaged a master planner who will supervise the production of a new master plan. The faculty is integrated into the planning process and into all major building projects, and has been of great assistance to the campus.

I should add here some of the outstanding accomplishments in IT and related areas. As most of you know, we now have a fully operational emergency notification system, and we will soon have a content management system up and running. We have improved network security and now have a campus security officer in IT. Wireless is spreading to most academic buildings, and is now in half of the dorms; the remaining residence halls will be outfitted this coming summer. Our data warehouse has been installed; document imaging for key offices is in place; and we have campus site licenses for selected Microsoft products and for the major Adobe product suite.

I should also mention briefly efforts in sustainability. We completed a Climate Action Plan, thus satisfying one of the obligations to the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. The ACCUPCC target was to reduce our carbon footprint by 2400 tons per year (8.5%), and we have exceeded our goal in each of the last two years. The student-run Eco-rep program is one of the largest and most successful in the nation, and is a model for other cam­puses. And last fall the state recognized us with a “Leading by Example” Award from Energy and Environ­mental Affairs for sustainability and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Finally, under the able leadership of Susan Pearson, we have formed the Committee on Poli­cy and Process Review, a task force examining work processes on campus. We have already made significant progress in several areas: physical plant, classroom scheduling, and staff posi­tion levels assigned in Human Resources, and plan to retain this committee as a permanent fix­ture to assure that our work processes are efficient and responsive to the people who use them.

State Support. Although we recognize a decade-long decline in state appropriations and a state budget deficit of over $1 billion in FY2012, we are redoubling our efforts to secure funding from the Commonwealth. While we make preparations to raise our own revenues, we believe that we must continue to remind Massachusetts legislators and citizens of the value of public higher education. In order to be more effective in our efforts, we have established an office in Boston and staffed that office with an individual with great experience in the State House. We will continue to develop our advocacy network for students, alumni, and friends of the Univer­sity. And we are strengthening and broadening our contacts with Western Massachusetts elected officials who are our best and most trusted advocates.

Enrollment and Demographics. A key strategy we have adopted calls for managing our enrollment to matriculate the type of class we want in terms of academic qualifications, diversity, and revenues. As I mentioned earlier, we seek to increase the number and percentage of non-resident undergraduates to obtain the funds we need to reach our goals. Our success in increasing the number of out-of-state students, while maintaining the level of Massachusetts students, has not meant a sacrifice in quality. On the contrary, the cohort of non-resident students enrolled this past fall has SAT scores almost 30 points higher than the cohort from the previous year. Since I arrived on campus, the average SAT scores of undergraduate students have increased by over 15 points and the high school GPA has risen from 3.48 to 3.61, and we are working on increasing the academic indicators for our undergraduates further in future years.

At the same time we recognize we must continue to be the pathway of opportunity for first-generation college students and for minorities. We established last year a program in coop­eration with Chelsea High School to attract students to the campus, and we are working on simi­lar pipe­line programs in Springfield and in other communities in Western Massachusetts and throughout the state. We will be announcing shortly a program we call the UMass Amherst Com­munity College Connection, which will devote special attention and opportunities to successful commu­nity college graduates who wish to complete their undergraduate education on our campus.

Development. The chief challenges we faced in development over the past two-and-a-half years were establishing a bona fide and professional structure for our fundraising efforts and infusing the values and practices of fundraising throughout the campus, especially in our aca­demic units. Mike Leto has done an admirable job with these two tasks, and we are beginning to see the types of fundraising returns one would expect from a flagship institution. Last year we set a fundraising record for the campus ($57.2 million), and we received the first two eight-figure gifts in our history during the past twelve months. Gift revenues have increased in both FY2010 and FY2011; cash gifts for our endowment were up by 20% last year and are up by 27% this year, as of the second quarter. We have also placed a special focus on planning giving, which reached a total of $5.6 million last year, the highest number in four years, and which has already been surpassed for the current year. We have added a permanent staff member in our Boston office and several key fundraising professionals here in Amherst. We are currently in the silent phase of a major, multi-year capital campaign, which will go public in the next 12 or 18 months.

      Outreach. As the flagship institution for the Commonwealth we have an obligation that we embrace to have a presence throughout the state, but particularly in Western Massachusetts and its largest city, Springfield. I have already mentioned that our Boston office allows us access to citizens and alumni in the eastern part of the Commonwealth, and we will increase the number of events in that part of the state, whether they be intercollegiate athletic contests, faculty lectures and forums, or visits by campus officials for the purpose of recruitment and public relations.

On the local front we will continue working with the town of Amherst in an endeavor to find areas of mutual benefit for the town and the university. We are actively working on neighbor friendly policies to reduce noise and disruption in adjacent neighborhoods. We are contributing members of the Amherst Business Improvement District (BID), and we are pursuing possibilities for a Gateway development that will provide much needed tax revenues for Amherst and a great look for the entrance to the campus on North Pleasant Street. I’ve been told that our relationship with town leadership is better now than it’s ever been in the past.

We have made great progress in our relationship with the city of Springfield. In the fall of 2008 we signed an MOU that pledged future collaboration in a number of areas, and in 2009 I appointed John Mullin to lead our efforts. We now have the UMass Design Center located at 5-7 Elm Street working on eight projects; an art exhibition space on the ground floor of One Financial Plaza; and two renovated and occupied store fronts for other projects on Court Square. One of our employees is now the director of the incubator at Springfield Technical Community College, and a company started by a UMass faculty member is located there. We continue to work with Baystate on the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute; WFCR will relocate the bulk of its operations in the city; and we again sponsored the highly successful Clean Energy Conference last fall. We have received grants for a quarter of a million dollars to help fund our various initiatives, and, as I already mentioned, we are actively pursuing a pipeline project with the Springfield school district.

We are proud that in January of 2009 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching named UMass Amherst a “community engaged university.”

Communications and University Relations. We had no office of University Relations until the fall of 2008, when it was established to unite our disparate attempts at marketing, branding, media relations, community and state relations, and event planning. As our chief office for external and internal relations, it has been an essential participant in many of the initiatives I have already mentioned today. Since 2008 it has produced over 850 publications and managed almost 60 events, including visits by the Governor and the creation of Founders Day. It has redesigned our commencement weekend; it has established a large presence in cyberspace with Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and YouTube; it has developed an iPhone application, UMass Guide; and it has reconfigured our web site. Finally, it has established two branding campaigns: “UMass Amherst NEXT” and the recently launched “wicked campaign.”

I’d like to note that our efforts have not been unnoticed by various groups outside the campus. Besides the “Leading by Example” Award the campus received last fall, I have been designated a Difference-Maker by Business West for our work in economic development in the Pioneer Valley; the American Lung Association gave us an award for our research, education, and advocacy efforts around air quality; and the Bostonians for Youth recognized us for our educational efforts in the Chelsea initiative.

I have not included all initiatives and achievements since I began as chancellor, but I think the items I have mentioned give you an idea of what we have done and the direction we have taken as a campus. The upward trajectory as well as the vision for the future is clear. I am proud of my first years as chancellor, but must continue to remind you and myself that the advances we have made are always the product of many individuals working as a team toward a common goal. I thank, in particular, the faculty senate for its support, and look forward to many productive years of collaboration in the future. Working together, I am confident that no goal we have envisioned is out of reach.