VI. Concluding Perspective

This Strategic Action plan is the culmination of several planning efforts over the last three years. Nevertheless it does not represent an end, but rather an end to the beginning. The planning tools and processes have been developed. Over the years the plans in each unit will be refined and focused in concert with the overall directions of the University. They in turn will be synthesized in each Vice Chancellor and Deputy Chancellor area, a process which will then refine upon the overall directions charted. Strategic Thinking, Planning and Action must be cyclical, iterative and convergent. In parallel, various efforts are underway to make the University more responsive, effective, efficient and caring. Administrative Restructuring, Redesign, Academic and Academic Support Unit reviews must all result in higher quality, improved service, enhanced excellence. At times it is, perhaps, difficult to see how the various components connect. I attempt to do so in the following illustration (Figure12). As a result of external and internal driving forces, we are reinventing the Land Grant-Research University for the 21st Century. In 20 years we expect that people will be able to look at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst as a model that has been reproduced, to look at our plans and efforts today as the first steps in building something important for the future.

The impact of vision, values and culture will occupy a great deal of organizational attention in the years ahead. In the end strategic thinking, planning and action are like an invisible force that orders space and behavior. At its best it is a force that propels connections. Gradually the institution begins to assume its shape and character in response to the combined work of all individuals involved in the process. The work of the last three years has led to significant change. But there will always be perturbing external forces that work to reshape the pattern. The institution must necessarily bend and change in response to those forces as well. The function of the administration, then, is like that of a gyroscope--to aid navigation by creating a restoring force and a creative tension in the direction of the pull.

At the close of this century we are at a hinge of history, at the cusp of transformation to an information-driven society. As a community we must continue to work toward defining just what an excellent, global Land Grant-Research University must be in the next century. Many components of this definition reside in the ideas of the various planning Task Forces and Working Groups and, hopefully, in this paper. A number of these ideas will be implemented over the next decade. And for those that are not, their very discussion will have constituted a focusing and a shaping force.

Over the next decade, Universities are likely to undergo a major transformation comparable to the great transformations that led to the creation of Land-Grant universities in the last century and to research-intensive universities in this century. As a result of these transformations, universities changed in nature by broadening their missions and portfolio of responsibilities. The past transformations, in essence, mirrored changes in society, just as the future transformation of scholarship must reflect a new set of expectations and needs. Prior to the first transformation, when universities focused mainly on teaching, society was largely agrarian, and the economy was locally oriented. The agrarian base of the economy of several American states, however, became instrumental in the Land-Grant transformation of the universities. As the service mission of those universities emerged, the potential of universities to contribute to the demands of yet other transformations--the industrial revolution and the rise of a national economy-- became evident. The full realization of this potential called for another transformation of universities through a broadly based research capacity. Now the industrial revolution is giving way to the information revolution, itself in great part the result of developments in research and scholarship throughout this century. By its very nature, this new revolution calls for new linkages and connectivity.

The past revolutions and transformations certainly led to fundamental changes in the nature of universities and of scholarship. In our increasingly interconnected world there is a need to understand the implosions as well as the explosions of knowledge and for our universities to find approaches to integrative scholarship in teaching, research, and service as they prepare an educated citizenry to function in a global environment.

There are clear signs that the transformation is under way. A common vocabulary is surfacing to describe the future through the reinvention of universities, business, education, industry, health, and social structures. It is a language that speaks of community, connectivity, overlap, multi-dimensionality, pluralism, multiculturalism, transculturalism, syncretism, and synergy. It is a language that describes a globally linked and interconnected world. In responding to this world the University, through its transforming scholarship, has a more crucial role to play than at any time in our history. This role will be comparable to that of the Land- Grant Universities in the last quarter of the 19th century, whose creation brought about three fundamental changes in the nature of education and scholarship: a transformation in access to higher education of quality; a transformation in the nature of education that melded liberal learning and professional training; and a transformation in the nature of scholarship so that it no longer existed in isolation from the society and the world beyond the Universities. Through the bold concept of the Land-Grant University three barriers were struck down simultaneously.

Curiously, the challenges facing the University today are similar in nature, but they exist in a much more complex milieu. The transformation parallel to expanded access must be the creation of a transcultural community, made possible intellectually and practically only through the earlier removal of the barriers to access. It must also reach out to alumni, business and industry, to government and to citizens in search of lifelong learning. The melding of liberal learning and professional training must evolve into truly transdisciplinary and integrative study, redefining the meaning of university education for the information age. The modes of research and the applications of research must be transformed into new approaches to inquiry that may modify the current stronghold of empiricism and replace the philosophy of knowledge with the philosophy of wisdom--a wisdom whose goal will be the building of a better world, and of creating ever more complete human beings. In so doing, we shall be reinventing the dream of the role of education for the future of our society, a dream that was our foundation as a Land Grant University. It is customary these days to speak of reinventing government, health care, American business, our institutions, even society. But perhaps more important than any of them, we need to reinvent the dream that defines and directs our purpose.

As we think about the future of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the year 2013 has a special significance. In that year, children born now may be thinking of coming to our university. It will also be the year when we celebrate our sesquicentennial. Thousands of alumni will return to reflect on 150 years of history of a University which has endured through good times and hard times, through periods of growth and decline, through ecstasy and agony, and through the evolution from our origin as a Land Grant College to a modern Research University, harnessing its scholarship to a diverse array of outreach activities in the service of society. As new students and former students converge on the campus in 2013, we need to envision what kind of University we would wish them to encounter. Our strategic thinking, planning and action have begun, and will continue unceasingly to ensure that when the new generation arrives they will find in its most tangible forms the excellence and quality that is our dream.

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