• Total enrollment
  
• Graduate enrollment
  
• Graduate enrollment as % of total enrollment
  Science & engineering post-doctoral enrollment
  
• Number of doctoral degrees awarded in one year
  
• Number of academic (non-professional) doctoral degrees awarded in one year
  
• Number of professional doctoral degrees awarded in one year
  
• Number of doctoral level programs
  
• Number of academic (non-professional) doctoral level programs
  
• Number of professional doctoral level programs
  
• Number of programs rated in the National Research Councils Assessment of Research Doctorate Programs in the United States
• Number of programs rated among the top 20 based on the basis of faculty quality in the NRCs Assessment
• Number of programs rated among the top 20 based on one or more dimensions in the NRCs Assessment
• Total research and development expenditures for a given year
• Federal research and development expenditures for a given year
• Memberships in national academies
• Number of faculty awarded Guggenheim grants in a given three-year period
• Number of faculty receiving Presidential Young Investigator Awards within a four-year period
• Number of faculty receiving Fulbright Awards in a given three-year period
• Number of volumes in library
• Number of current serial subscriptions in the library for a given year
• Total operating expenditures in the library for a given year
• Market value of endowment
• Average salary of full professors

• Amherst would fall in the top quartile in the following areas:
  --total enrollment
  -- graduate enrollment
  -- faculty receiving Fullbright awards
• It would fall within the AAU mid-range (40-60%) in the following categories:
  -- number of academic doctorates awarded
  -- number of doctoral programs offered
  -- number of programs rated in the NRC Assessment
  -- number of programs rated among the top 20 in the Assessment
  -- number of faculty receiving PYI awards
  -- average salary of full professors
• In the following categories, the campus would fall below the mid-range but above the lowest quartile:
  -- graduate enrollment as % of total enrollment
  -- number of faculty receiving Guggenheim awards (1984-87)
  -- number of volumes in the library
  -- total operating (education & general) expenditures
• In the following categories, the campus would fall in the lowest quartile of AAU institutions:
  -- science and engineering post-doctoral enrollment
  -- total research and development expenditures
  -- federal research and development expenditures
  -- memberships in national academies
  -- number of serial subscriptions in the library
  -- market value of endowment.

To embark on a course of improving our rankings on any or all of these parameters will serve the University well, regardless of whether or not we actually attain membership in the AAU, and provided we do not lose sight of our continuing evolution as a Land Grant University. The combined characteristics, including those that may characterize excellent institutions of the future, are related to the principles I have set forth in this paper. We must keep in mind, however, that gaining membership in AAU traditionally calls for influence at the federal level, reflected in grants and contracts particularly in science and engineering. From that perspective, the items where we rank in the lowest quartile are particularly important. For example, in 1994, a comparison of reported total federal research and development support awarded to AAU Land Grant institutions revealed that all but one campus without a medical school fared better than UMass Amherst. Peer institutions such as Penn State, Rutgers and Maryland (College Park) all fared better, both in total federal research support and in federal research support per faculty member.

There are other characteristics of Universities that are Land Grant and AAU. Our strategic approach must assess critically many indicators. Recently a goal has been set by the Presidents Action Plan to improve average SAT scores of the entering freshmen. We have set a five year goal of 1060. We also know that SAT scores are not always a reliable measure of human creativity and potential. A quality institution of the future will dedicate itself to creating winners, not only to becoming more adept at attracting winners.

To become an AAU University means embarking on a path--to improve our research funding, to improve our Library, to increase the number of students with prestigious awards, e.g., Rhodes Scholars, National Merit Scholars. This path will call for investments in departments which are already excellent in research and in fulfilling the role of a Land Grant University. It will mean investment in honors programs, information technology and infrastructure. We must be careful, however, to look ahead at what the nature of excellent Land Grant-AAU Institutions will be a decade from now. To improve the Library according to traditional criteria of a certain number of books and periodicals per FTE faculty or student (a criterion in which we currently rank poorly) could result in our discovering, upon reaching that target in a decade, that the quality of libraries is being measured more by its ability to provide access to information, wherever the information may be located.

The goal of becoming an AAU Institution, if combined in creative ways with our role as a Land-Grant University, has the potential to act as a focusing and shaping force in our desire to be a distinctive global University, using knowledge and its application in all areas to create a better and a wiser world more rapidly.

Above all, the key to developing as a distinctive Land-Grant-AAU Institution resides in the quality of new faculty and to keep the external funding on the path we need for the rest of the century. As an illustration, Figure 7 shows the contribution of existing and new faculty for FY89- 95 in the generation of new funding in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. With this funding comes the new forefront ideas that are crucial to the intellectual atmosphere of a Land-Grant Research University. Approximately 25% of the research funding is generated by faculty hired since 1989, some 10% of the total faculty. Similar statistics are likely to apply in other areas of the University, and a similar philosophy applies to all scholarship, even if external funds are not involved in the same way.