for
the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts
September
27, 2002
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Finding new resources crucial, says Lombardi by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff  aking
advantage of his waning status as an "outsider," Chancellor
John Lombardi used his first appearance before the Faculty Senate
on Sept. 19 to offer an assessment of the campus. Lombardi said he has nearly completed the transformation from being an outsider to an insider on campus - looking at his watch, he estimated he had a few more days left in the process - and in addition to offering a bit of "outsider" advice, he told the assembled faculty, staff and students of the gospel he intends to preach regarding UMass Amherst. "I'm losing my external objectivity and becoming committed to the enterprise in a fundamental and an internal way, rather than an intellectual and ... analytical way," he said. "Before I lose my total objectivity, I thought I ought to tell you a little bit about how we look to the outside." Lombardi said the key to success of any major research university is the quality of its faculty and students and the staff who support them. Maintaining and increasing quality depends on two things, he said: money and the ability and commitment of faculty within each discipline "to recruit, to retain, to promote people who are better than we are so that when they succeed us, the institution will be better." The easier of the two processes to attend to is the acquisition of resources, he said. "The first thing I looked at about this university was its money," he said. "[And the] first thing I noticed is that ... this commonwealth has some difficulty in supporting this institution at a level that is required for its excellence. "At the same time, in spite of the fact that we don't get our share, we have too much dependence on the state revenue for our success." UMass Amherst gets 41 to 42 percent of its revenue from the state, he added. "Institutions with whom we compete and who have better support than we do from their state are something on the order of 30 percent or less on the state for their revenue," he said. "What it means is that they earn a whole lot more money someplace else that is contributing to the revenue that is available to support [their] quality. "The principal place we're missing the boat is that we're a generation behind in developing private fund-raising. ... And that produces a serious problem, which we will address very rapidly because time is the enemy. We wait two weeks and we'll be a generation plus two weeks [behind], so consequently we're gonna start right now. "And we're gonna do it because we have support from our system for this. They have agreed to allow us to create an independent 501C3 foundation for the UMass Amherst Foundation, an organization that allows us to collect our supporters into one place to succeed. No university that's going to be successful in fund-raising can do so without such an organization, and everyone that is successful has such an organization." Lombardi said the campus also needs to become even more competitive for grants and contracts, and that increasing the size of the faculty will allow the University to bring in more grant and contract monies, in part by expanding the range of academic work that can be done here. "Now when I say 'grants and contracts,' people often think I only mean big money stuff," he said. "They're wrong. Every single field in this University has a foundation out there, has somebody who is handing out money. So consequently everybody needs to be in the business of competing for whatever funds there are to support our enterprise because every dollar we bring in from the outside to support our enterprise is an extra dollar that is released to support some other critical need in the University." The campus faces two more fiscal challenges, he said. Unfunded contracts have left faculty and staff irate. "They have every reason to be angry," Lombardi said. He clarified his position on the contract funding by saying it is the state's obligation and he plans to continue to "lobby like mad" to get the contracts fully funded. He said he is not in favor of cannibalizing other parts of the University in order for the campus to fund its own contracts, which are "an obligation of the state," nor will he be happy with a one- or two-year funding which would require the University to "rob itself" to fund the remainder of the contracts. The other immediate fiscal challenge is the prospect of further budget cuts from the state in light of declining revenues. "This means that our battle is not only to try and deal with the issues of the unfulfilled contracts and the necessary salaries required. It is also a battle to sustain what we have, let alone add to it. So we have to be very strong in our articulation of our need. "I, as a dyed-in-the-wool tenured professor, would never tell anybody what to say or how to say it. But I'm going to give you a teeny bit of external advice before I'm totally co-opted by the University here. I've got a few more days. "In all of my battles [to get acquire funding], I've never won one by insulting those whose money I want. I've noticed that people who have money to give rarely give it to people who show up and call them names, people who insult them, people who don't appreciate what they've done even though you wanted them to do more. "I've got news for you: Nobody feels they owe us a living. Nobody out there thinks that we're so wonderful that we just ought to get some money. No. They want to know what it is we can do, ...what it is we perform. "So my job and your job, I hope, is to help persuade all of our constituents ... that this is the best place to invest money. "So I'm just givin' you a little advice: Try and figure out how to express the quality of this place, how to express the contribution of this place, how to persuade the world that we are worth the investment. People always want to be associated with folks who are proud and powerful and successful. Folks always want to be associated with enterprises that are moving, that have an agenda, that know where they're going, that have a focus. "And this ought to be easy for this place because it is already performing at a high level. It's already doing great teaching and research. It's already doing terrific stuff, and a small investment on the scale of this state would make a heck of a difference in the continued quality and the return on that investment to the state. "And I'm gonna be preaching that gospel everywhere I go. I'm gonna be talkin' it up because I think this is a terrific place. I think it's highly competitive. I think the quality of the faculty and the staff and students of this enterprise is first-rate, but I think they won't stay that way unless we can get some money..., so I'm gonna go after every bit of money I can find." Describing himself as a "romantic pragmatist," Lombardi said the campus has had plenty of planning in the past and that he's more of a doer. "This is what romantic prag-matism's about. It's about seeing a problem and fixing it. It's finding an opportunity and going after it, and it's being a true believer about the stuff that matters, which is teaching and research. And if you're a true believer about teaching and research, somehow it's not so hard to figure out what you ought to do." One thing Lombardi decided he ought to do is put $1 million into the budget of the Libraries to begin to build back the losses from the decimation of the academic libraries' earmark in the state budget, he said. "There will be subsequent steps to put more money back in the library, and we'll build back its support, year by year, step by step, item by item, until we get ... a reasonable kind of support for the Library." |
