Office of the Chancellor

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Address to the Academic Leadership Retreat

September 1, 2011

Good morning. I’m delighted to be here this morning speaking to you about the upcoming year and the great things that are taking place on the Amherst campus. But I would like to structure my message this morning around the challenges that we must face together if we are to achieve our utmost goals.

Perhaps the most serious challenge confronting us is a familiar one: finances. Although there are some signs that we are beginning to increase state tax revenues, recent economic events indicate that we are still experiencing difficulties and will continue to do so for the next few years. Moreover, it seems unlikely that within the foreseeable future we will return to a time when state support for higher education constitutes a majority of our revenue.

We will continue to advocate for the Commonwealth to contribute to the education of its citizens and to lobby for greater state funding in the operating budget and the capital budget. But if we are going to be successful in the coming decades, we should draw on the lessons we have learned during the past few years about strategic investment and revenue generation. It is my conviction that these principles hold the key to the financial stability of institutions of higher education.

When the financial crisis struck in the fall of 2008, we undertook a number of ameliorative measures, and over the next two years we reduced base budget commitments by over $19 million. But the chief reason for our success in dealing with the budget was the generation of new revenues. I cannot emphasize enough how much the revenue-generating initiatives meant to the campus, and I cannot impress on you enough how much I believe they will continue to be essential for our fiscal wellbeing in the future. Since 2008, we have generated over $16 million in new revenues, and by the end of this year we will have netted as a campus over $22 million in new revenues. If we had not undertaken, as a campus community, the various initiatives that went into creating these new revenues, we would have to balance our books with further reductions, which would have meant a 10% to 15% decrease in your present budgets.

We were able to generate revenues because the campus acted as a team, as a community. In our most successful initiative, increasing out-of-state students, faculty, staff, and administration worked together to generate more than $4 million in each of the last two years, and we did so without decreasing the number of Commonwealth residents at UMass, and with an increase in student academic indicators every year. In continuing and professional education we realized over $6.6 million in new revenues since 2008. Again this increase was not mere happenstance, but rather involved hard work and engagement from various parts of the campus. We were effective because we brought together the right people to make important changes that resulted in positive outcomes. We have realized additional revenues from increases in indirect cost recoveries, from fundraising that can be substituted for scholarship funds, and from new programs at the Master’s level. We believe we can generate money in the coming years from increases in face-to-face enrollments in summer school, and in the implementation of five-year Master’s programs. These initiatives will be effective insofar as the campus acts collaboratively, as it has done over the past three years, to make them succeed.

The bottom line for me is that we as a campus community have worked hard and in a spirit of cooperation to mitigate a financial crisis that might have caused tremendous damage to the campus. In emerging from the financial downturn, we are coming out stronger, without any reductions in programs and without significant layoffs. We have more tenure-stream faculty members today than we had in 2008 when the crisis began. I don’t want to say yet that we’ve definitely survived the Great Recession, but we certainly have not let it detain us from moving forward. And I believe that these measures must continue if we are going to continue to prosper in future years.

A second challenge we face relates to the trade-off between renewing our physical plant and the burden that such renewal places on an already precarious operating budget. If we continue to borrow to fund building projects, we must pay an increasing amount in debt service, which means we have fewer dollars available for day-to-day operations, including hiring faculty and other necessary academic support staff.

Here too I believe that we can learn from the past few years. We should not see operating budget and capital construction as diametrically opposed, but as complementary and contributing to our overall goals for the campus. We cannot afford to allow our campus to deteriorate because our strategic plan depends on our attracting students to the campus and in providing appropriate venues for teaching and research. We invest in our physical plant because it is wise to do so, and because we believe that the investment has significant returns for us.

That’s the reason I am extremely excited about three projects we now have underway.

• The first is the two laboratory science buildings being constructed next to the Integrated Sciences Building. We leveraged $100 million from the state, adding $50 million from campus funds to double the amount of new laboratory space available for researchers. I know from the deans that the faculty members scheduled for moving into the NLSB are eagerly awaiting their completion.
• The second project is the living-learning complex for Commonwealth Honors College. It accomplishes two essential goals: it increases the bed capacity on campus by 1500, which is necessary for our increased enrollments; and it finally provides a home for CHC, which has had to make do with substandard conditions for many years.
• Finally, we are planning a new academic classroom building for the north side of the pond, to be completed and ready for occupancy in the spring semester of 2014. The faculty senate advocated strongly for this building, and I came up with a plan to leverage $20 million in campus funds to secure $65 million in state funds earlier than planned. The departments of linguistics and communications will be housed in the building, but the real excitement is the prospect of new classrooms, especially classrooms that are constructed for Team Based Learning.

These projects are necessary not just for improving the physical plant, but because they enable the campus to prosper through additional sponsored research and the ability to attract top students with outstanding living-learning facilities and innovative classroom instruction.

A third challenge for us is our geography. When I was interviewed after I was appointed chancellor, but before I started the position, I was asked what I thought about being located 90 miles outside of Boston. I responded that it could be a disadvantage, but I could imagine that at times it might be salutary. Over the past three years, I have come to recognize that we must be an institution that is both anchored in Western Massachusetts, but extensive in its scope and reach. If we are going to be the Commonwealth’s flagship institution, we have to act like the flagship, embracing the activities and responsibilities of a statewide, not merely a regional campus. If we are going to be successful in the future, we must expand the initiatives we have undertken over the past few years:

• We established a Boston office at 225 Franklin Street staffed by a development officer and our state relations director. I can foresee a time when we might have someone from admissions located there, or someone from our alumni affairs staff, or even a person specializing in research to take advantage of industry connections in the Eastern part of the Commonwealth.
• We continue to support various other activities East of 495. The Small Business Development Center assists entrepreneurs in all parts of the state, and our Cranberry Station provides needed research and assistance for a vital agricultural industry. This past spring we also staged a successful forum on the economy in partnership with the Boston Globe in the Kennedy Library.
• We have actively engaged athletics in our endeavor to be the State’s flagship campus. For the past three years we have played a basketball game in the Boston Garden, in addition to contests in Springfield. Next year we will play a hockey game in Fenway Park. Last year and this year we have scheduled a football game against rival New Hampshire in what we have dubbed the “Colonial Clash.” And, as most of you know, we are in the process of transitioning from the Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision, joining the Mid-American Conference and playing our home contests in Gillette Stadium in 2012 and 2013. Playing football in Gillette will not only give us necessary exposure in the eastern part of the state, it will also make financial sense, reducing the general funds contribution to football by 2015. Make no mistake, however, academics is still the primary concern of this campus. But if we are going to gain the reputation we deserve from all corners of the State, we need to resemble in all areas – including in athletics – the great flagship institutions from across the nation.

These initiatives alone will not achieve everything we want for the campus. But they set a direction that will help us realize our flagship status and provide us, I believe, with the resources and profile we need to rise to the next level.

To become more self-sufficient financially, we must also count more on fundraising. We have built a great foundation in our office of development and alumni relations, and I am excited about what we have accomplished, and what lies ahead. In the last two years we have had more success in fundraising than at any time in our history. We broke the all-time fundraising total in 2010, and last year we set a record for cash gifts. Over the past two years we have received our first two eight-figure gifts. As most of you know, we are in the silent phase of a capital campaign, and we have a Foundation Board that is geared up to help us with fundraising and friend-raising. We don’t want to be Pollyannish about our prospects in the near term, however. Successful fundraising requires consistent leadership, and by this time next year the Amherst campus will have had six different chancellors in a dozen years. Moreover, a small but vocal portion of our campus community has too frequently disparaged the campus, its policies, and the leadership of the University in public statements. Donors are repelled by frequent changes in leadership and a campus that does not appear to pull together. But in the long term, especially if we have longer-serving leaders and evoke a sense of community and common goals, I think we will do well in raising funds. I am confident because we have professionalized our fund­raising operation and now function with nationally recognized benchmarks. In the area of alumni relations we are working to align the alumni association more closely with campus priorities. Having an alumni association and alumni who will be advocates for the campus, help with recruiting students, and assist us with fund­raising will be an enormous boost for the campus for years to come.

To be counted among the great public institutions in the country, we also need to meet the challenge of increasing our research productivity. We aim to reduce the amount of time faculty have to devote to bureaucratic details and allow them to focus on what they do best: research and discovery. The establishment of a unit for research development will assist faculty and the campus to compete more effectively for larger, interdisciplinary grants. Compliance, which had been too often neglected in the past, is now developed to a point where we are at significantly less risk than we were even a short time ago. Finally, the introduction of an innovation institute, UMII, should allow us to broaden our research profile and deal more easily with industrial partners. I might mention here that we set a campus record for research grants in 2010, and that we have continued to increase research expenditures steadily over my tenure as chancellor. If we are going to succeed, we have to continue to add to our research profile.

This campus is often noted for its contentiousness and adversarial culture. But I have found in my tenure here that when faculty and administration work together – and they often do – we can accomplish great things for our students and for education. As an illustration, consider the ongoing pilot program for teaching sciences in a new and creative way. Integrated Concentration in Science (iCons) provides science instruction based on case studies and real-world examples. Now in its second year, iCons signals the wave of the future, and if we are serious about increasing our STEM graduates, we must invest in programs like iCons that will attract students to science and engineering. A second example of creativity and cooperation is embodied in our new general education requirement, which was championed by the faculty senate in conjunction with academic affairs. The centerpiece of the new program, the highly innovative integrative experience requirement, is gradually being phased in across campus and will soon be a proud part of a UMass education.

There are so many positive impulses on the campus coming from colleges and departments, from faculty working with the administration and staff, that I couldn’t possibly list all of them in these opening remarks. The existence of these initiatives and programs, however, is exciting and suggests to me that the campus is experiencing a sense of optimism and a confident feeling that we are an institution on the rise. It also suggests that we are most accomplished when we collaborate and face the challenges in our educational mission together.

In the central administration we have various priorities for this year to which we must attend. We will need to implement the proposal the faculty voted on last spring granting special salary increases to outstanding faculty members based on merit and market considerations. We need to continue to make progress on our ambitious building program. Our transition to FBS football is something we must accomplish successfully, because we only get one shot at it. We will need to continue introducing revenue-generating degree pro­grams to mitigate a still poor state allocation, and continue to do a good job in enrollment management. We must push forward with improvements in the office of research, especially the innovation institute, and with fundraising efforts, even in the face of challenges. We must continue to recruit great students with ever increasing academic indicators. It is important that we pay attention to our Boston strategy and make sure we have an expanded presence for the large number of alumni and donors in that part of the State. And we must partner effectively with Amherst, Springfield and other localities in Western Massachusetts, maintaining our status as a good and cooperative neighbor.

But our chief priority is always to meet the larger challenges we face as a campus community and to continue to find new and innovative ways to deal with them. I know that you will have a full agenda in your colleges, schools, and departments, just as we have in the central administration. We should be proud of what we have accomplished together over the past three years, and I’d like to express now how much I have enjoyed working with you and how much I appreciate your support and cooperation. I look forward to the coming year, in which I believe we will achieve even more and secure a trajectory toward the greatness we desire and deserve.