FEATURES DEPARTMENTS |
PRESIDENT'S PERSPECTIVE
“Acting Boldly to do What Must Be Done”
by Daniel Mark Fogel, President
The University of Vermont took a historic step forward in defining its
future during the February meetings of the Board of Trustees. Discussion
centered around a document I presented to the board that described my
vision for the University in academic year 2012-13. (On April 3, I’ll
be showing the Trustees a detailed financial plan for sustaining investment
in the vision; by the second week in April, the financials will be on
the web at www.uvm.edu/president.) I’m gratified that this proposed
vision inspired the fruitful trustees’ discussion that I hoped
it would. And the wider University and state communities added their
voices when the vision was shared on campus and through the Vermont
media. In the words that follow, my intention is to widen the circle
again to the readers of Vermont Quarterly — alumni, parents,
and friends of the University of Vermont across the country and throughout
the world.
We have come to a critical moment in the history of the University of
Vermont, approaching what many of us believe to be a tipping point that
can carry us decisively and permanently into the first-rank of American
universities — but only if we understand rightly who we are, how
to define our special place within the constellation of peer institutions,
how to make the most of our resources and opportunities, and how to
be at once bold and smart, seizing the main chances, driving hard for
competitive advantage, and making investments that will yield high return
at acceptable levels of risk.
The ground that is ours to seize is lofty: the University of Vermont
is positioned to establish itself as an internationally distinguished
research university that offers undergraduates the human scale, flexibility,
and responsiveness of a liberal arts college. The hallmark of all our
endeavors must be quality — in our academic programs, in the student
experience inside and outside the classroom, and in research and scholarship.
The foundation on which the entire enterprise must rest is excellence
in undergraduate education. So we must offer outstanding programs in
first-rate facilities with first-rate faculty, and the amenities of
student life on campus must be as attractive and welcoming as they are
among our strongest competitors. I’m convinced that to compete
we must invest in faculty and staff; student scholarships; programmatic
initiatives like the Honors College; attractive residence halls that
promote community; new academic and research facilities; intercollegiate
athletics; maintenance and beautification of the campus; and instructional
technology.
These investments will require aggressive, efficient management of the
University, the accrual of private resources to support faculty, students,
programs, and facilities through the University’s development programs,
appropriate public investment, and a long-term enrollment plan that
allows us to minimize the institution’s historic economy-of-scale
challenge while building student and programmatic quality.
Now I would like to briefly paint a picture of where I think UVM can
be if we act to take the University past the tipping point. This is
neither a blueprint nor a set of specific promises. Everything that
follows is meant simply to be suggestive of a plausible, and in my view
highly desirable, set of outcomes for the University of Vermont to achieve
over the course of the next decade. Subject to contingency and offered
to stimulate aspiration and discussion, this is Dan Fogel’s vision
of what I believe UVM can achieve if we make the right moves now.
A
TEN YEAR VISION FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT
2012-2013 A Picture of the Future
Welcome
to Burlington in the fall of the 2012-2013 academic year. At UVM you’ll
see a lot of changes and a lot of continuity as well. Let’s start
with the physical campus. The Trinity Campus is the thriving home of
the College of Education and Social Services, of the Department of Geology,
and of a high technology incubator that has already graduated a number
of viable new Vermont businesses based on intellectual property generated
by University faculty.
Across Colchester Avenue, the College of Engineering and Mathematics
occupies a renovated and expanded Votey Hall and a renovated Perkins
Hall. Billings has been adapted for multi-purpose use that preserves
its historic nature, housing library special collections as well as
the highly successful Honors College, which made its debut in the 2003-2004
academic year. Williams Hall has also been renovated for Art and Anthropology.
As part of the University’s implementation of the campus master
plan, the quadrangle between Fleming and Bailey/Howe now rivals the
College Green in the beauty of its landscaping.
Just to the west of the Health Science Research Facility, where the
Hills Agricultural Sciences Building once stood, gleams a large new
life science research building serving the plant sciences and the Medical
College. The Medical College, in alliance with units across the campus,
has stepped dramatically to the next level as a center of world-class
research, a step it could not have achieved without the capacity to
accommodate high-powered scientists that the labs in the new research
building have provided. Nearby is an astonishing construction housing
both the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and the Gund Institute for
Ecological Economics, a transparent cylinder wrapped around the water
tower.
To the west, where the rugby field once lay between East Avenue and
the Sheraton Hotel, arises a ten-thousand-seat arena. While there are
multiple users of the arena, UVM is the indispensable anchor tenant,
playing both hockey and basketball here, and also co-sponsoring many
of the major concerts that the arena presents, featuring acts such as
the Boston Pops, Bruce Springsteen, and Phish. The arena rocks for UVM
hockey and basketball, with thousands of UVM students accommodated on
a regular basis to cheer on their championship teams. (UVM students
now have free entry to all athletic events, a practice that goes back
to the ’04 fiscal year, when the athletic fee was increased.) With
the ability to host mid-sized conventions, the arena has been an enormous
jolt in the arm not only for UVM but also for the entire region —
a magnet for entertainment, sports, and business activity, and a dynamic
economic driver. The arena is a public-private partnership involving
UVM and both private and governmental partners.
The Athletic renaissance continues at the old Athletic Complex. Not
only has the University retained both the Gutterson Field House and
the Patrick Gymnasium, but it has also created a new venue for soccer
and lacrosse (replacing Centennial Field), a new field for softball,
and a new one for field hockey as well.
Moving west from the Athletic Campus to the Redstone Campus, all of
the residence halls have been renovated. Most of them, like the other
residence halls across the campus, are residential colleges, rich with
programming and with faculty-student interaction. Coming back toward
the central campus, the Living and Learning Center has been renovated
and now lies at the north end of a magnificent quadrangle defined by
the four new residence halls to the west, at University Heights; by
Austin and Harris-Millis to the east; and by the Patrick Gymnasium to
the south. A wetlands water feature runs down from the University Heights
residence halls on the west side of this new quad, across the quad,
and into a pool with a fountain between Austin and Harris-Millis. The
north-south walkways along the quad cross the watercourse on arched
bridges.
But none of the additions to the physical campus have had the transformative
power of the University of Vermont Commons, a vital student union that
seethes with activity from early morning to late night. It is more than
a physical change. The Commons has rewoven the fabric of community at
UVM in ways that all agree are highly positive. It is the place to congregate,
to see and be seen. It is the locus of thousands of informal and formal
encounters daily among students, faculty, staff, alumni, prospective
students and their families, other visitors to the campus, and significant
numbers of members of the greater Vermont community.
The new student union’s attractions include a state-of-the-art
bookstore with 70,000 tradebook titles selected for the academic community,
retail services, student organization and career services offices, an
art gallery, and handsome lounge and study areas. A state-of-the-art
theatre within the Commons now serves both the campus and the community
as a major venue for theatrical and musical performances as well as
for marquee speakers. The theater is also thronged with students for
regular film screenings, one of the many examples of the enormously
enhanced student programs that draw students to UVM and help, along
with strong academics, to keep them here.
Recruiters highly covet UVMers, for the quality of the University’s
graduates is extraordinary. Credentials of entering students have soared:
30% of first-year students are in the top 10% of their high school class
(as opposed to 18% in 2002); their SAT scores range from 1160 at the
25th percentile to 1320 at the 75th percentile (as opposed to 1090 and
1230 in 2002). Admissions selectivity and yield have risen dramatically
— with 14,450 applicants for the class of 2016.
Recruiters are avid to hire UVM students for more than their academic
aptitude. They also highly value their diversity, which has risen steadily
over the past decade, from 5.8% ALANA enrollment in 2002, to 8% in 2007,
to 13% this year. And recruiters talk with great enthusiasm about the
communication skills of UVMers. The University-wide communication-across-the-curriculum
requirement (part of the advance in curricular cohesion achieved in
the last decade) has had its desired effects: UVM graduates are notable
for their excellent skills in writing and in speaking, as they are for
their strong work ethic. They continue to have much in common with earlier
generations of UVMers: personal warmth, civility, and an engaging lack
of pretense.
Enrollment is up along with quality and diversity. The 7,601 undergraduates
of 2002-2003 had grown to 8,601 by 2008-2009, and this year, 2012-2013,
undergraduate enrollment is approaching 9,600, the target for steady-state
enrollment. The proportion of Vermonters in the first-year class has
risen significantly, to 35%, for UVM is increasingly the school of choice
for highly capable and academically motivated Vermont high school graduates;
overall, Vermonters are now 47% of the total enrollment, up from 44%
in 2002.
At
the same time, graduate student enrollment has grown as well. Graduate
and professional enrollment stands at 2,390, or 20% of the total (compared
to 14.5% in 2002-2003). The largest increases have been in the doctoral
programs, along with selected master’s programs.
UVM’s distinction as a center of research and graduate education
has risen steadily, led by superb programs in biomedical sciences and
environmental sciences and studies. The number of post-docs has tripled
since 2002-2003, and among the faculty there are now twelve members
of the national academies, a four-fold increase since the turn of the
century. Research funding has grown at a steady clip, rising from $103
million in ’02-’03 to just under $170 million in 2012-2013.
The faculty regularly garner major national fellowships and awards.
Some 280 of them hold endowed chairs and professorships. Faculty and
staff are more diverse than they were a decade ago; for example, the
number of African American tenure-track faculty has nearly tripled,
from 15 to 41.
The
University is in the midst of its third comprehensive campaign, which
was launched quietly in 2009, two years after the close of the very
successful second comprehensive campaign. The goal this time, for completion
by 2016, is $500 million. When it has been achieved, the University
endowment will stand at approximately $1.2 billion, generating $54 million
in spendable earnings on endowment annually, or 20% of the general fund
budget of $270 million (compared to $9 million in spendable earnings
on endowment in 2003, or 5.2% of the general fund budget).
Indeed, it is the steady growth in private resources, including increased
annual giving as well as giving to endowment, that has allowed the University
to stabilize its enrollment after a decade of driving budget growth
with rising numbers of fee-paying students augmented by increases in
tuition and fees that have averaged, annually, at just about half the
national average.
UVM tuition is still high by public university standards, low by the
standards of elite private institutions, but resident tuition is now
only 110% of the median for its public peers (as opposed to 195%, or
nearly twice the median, in 2002). The decisive turn, manifest in the
high quality of annual record-breaking applicant pools, is that the
value-price equation has shifted decisively in favor of value.
Students and families want to invest in a UVM education. Donors make
their gifts to UVM with confidence that quality will be sustained and
built over the long haul. Employers seek out UVM graduates, and the
networks among UVM alumni are strong and highly beneficial to those
who participate actively in them. In the scientific and scholarly world,
UVM has a luster that is the envy of all but a handful of the other
elite public flagship institutions. It is a premier center of biomedical
research, and is widely acknowledged as the nation’s premier environmental
university. Everything that the Board of Trustees planned for in the
early years of the new century has been brought to fruition.
The plausibility of this bold vision rests on our recognizing the strategic
moment, the tipping point at which we now stand, and acting boldly to
do what must be done if we are not to fall back but to move upward —
our recognition and our commitment to action being the absolutely essential
and enabling premise of this vision. This is a tide that we can take
at the full. Or, to cite John Keats’s favorite line in Shakespeare,
from King Lear, “ripeness is all.” We’ve come
to the moment of ripeness at UVM: let’s enthusiastically seize
it.
I look forward to the thoughtful discussions that I hope these ideas
will promote.
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ADD YOUR VOICE As
the University of Vermont defines its future, President Fogel
welcomes other perspectives and reactions to his vision for the
University ten years in the future. Ever the English professor,
Fogel has created five discussion questions to inspire and focus
response. Readers may send their thoughts to President Fogel by
addressing them to: president@uvm.edu
or |
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QUESTIONS FOR UVM'S FUTURE 1.
Do you agree that UVM is at a “tipping point” from which
it must advance or risk mediocrity? |