PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 15, Feb. 16, 2006

Herman releases five-year Strategic Plan for Urbana campus

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@uiuc.edu

Establish the UI as the premier public university recognized for comprehensive excellence.

That is Chancellor Richard Herman’s vision for the Urbana campus, which he delineated in a recently released draft of the campus Strategic Plan. The plan comprises five broad strategic goals for the next five years: strengthen academic excellence in disciplines critical to national stature; ensure excellence in academic programs and services for undergraduates, and in graduate education; foster an inclusive campus community; and enhance the campus work environment.

“Our goal is to become the indisputable leader among public research institutions. This plan is designed to achieve that,” Herman said.

Herman plans to strengthen academic programs in disciplines critical to national stature through strategic hiring decisions, for example, by appointing three senior faculty members in each area over the next five years; by replacing departing faculty members with high-impact senior positions; and by clustering appointments.

 Herman plans to increase the number of undergraduate class sections with fewer than 20 students in gateway math, science and writing courses; and use blended learning models – weekly combinations of lectures/discussions with online and Web-based learning enhancements – to improve large-lecture courses.

The plan also calls for reducing the ratio of students to academic advisers from 450-to-1 to 350-to-1, and repositioning the College of Law and the College of Business among the top 20 in national rankings.

In addition, the plan calls for reducing student enrollment by 1,000 to 2,000 students during the next five years to protect academic quality, decreasing the size of the freshman class while balancing this with a larger transfer population of transfer students.

In graduate education, the campus will increase degree completion rates and decrease time-to-degree rates by 10 percent each, and implement review processes for degree programs with high attrition rates. Graduate teaching assistants will receive higher stipends to cover living costs, and medical insurance coverage will be improved for graduate assistants and fellows. Prototype professional master’s degree programs will be developed in the life sciences, the social sciences and the humanities on a cost-recovery basis.

The plan also calls for increasing diversity – among faculty and staff members as well as among students – by boosting recruitment of exceptional underrepresented, international and domestic majority graduate students, by increasing the number of African-American, Latina/o and Native American faculty members, and by requiring campus units to develop plans for faculty/staff diversification and the creation of a more inclusive environment.

Workplace initiatives include partnering with the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District and the Research Park to establish a new child-care facility that will contain space for 200 children, in addition to the 136 full-time and 56 part-time infants and toddlers served by the Child Development Laboratory. Another high priority is improving the competitiveness of faculty salaries to elevate Illinois to the mid-point among its peer group within five years and to the top third of the group within 10 years.

The plan also aims to connect with emerging state initiatives in pressing areas. “We hope that some of our initiatives will be compelling for state needs and interests and the state will want to partner with us in those areas,” said Ruth Watkins, associate provost. 

The new interdisciplinary initiatives include sustainable energy; emerging information technology applications in the sciences, the arts, the humanities and decision support areas such as business processes and disaster response; and biomedicine/bioengineering, in which UI students and researchers will collaborate with clinical partners in areas such as neuroscience, drug discovery, pathogen detection technologies, and health and wellness programs.

The plan also calls for increasing the UI’s presence in Chicago to bolster student recruitment and carry out six pilot programs – in education, entrepreneurship and math and science for Chicago youth – that will convey the excellence and relevance of the UI to key components of the Chicago population.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect may be garnering resources to bring the plans to fruition. The salary improvement program for faculty members is expected to cost $12 million annually, and the campus will face large unavoidable costs, including $3.5 million in annual inflationary increases in the costs of goods and services and library acquisitions. A 9-10 percent tuition increase over the next five years will cover some of the costs; income from gifts, endowments, grants and contracts will be amplified; and internal reallocations and cost-containment programs will be implemented to help the campus reach its strategic goals.

The UI Board of Trustees will discuss the draft strategic plans for the three campuses and the university at an upcoming board meeting. Draft strategic plans for the schools, colleges and major administrative units are being developed, with final versions due June 30.

“These are ambitious goals,” Herman said. “By declaring excellence our ordinary and only standard we can ensure steady and measurable progress toward reaching them.”

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