FACULTY FOR THE RENEWAL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION: Sustaining Excellence Steering Committee

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Sustaining Excellence Steering Committee

The committee's charge:

"We should be proud of the substantial progress we’ve made since we launched strategic positioning in 2004—achieving higher graduation rates; improving student support; strengthening areas of academic priority; increasing research dollars and tech transfer; and implementing more effective and efficient administrative operations. But there are still key areas that require creative thinking and difficult decisions in order to achieve sustainable results and secure the University’s long-term future. Many issues have long been on the radar, including (but not limited to) the University’s academic quality and performance; its priorities with regard to education, research, and public engagement; its financial viability; the future of the Academic Health Center; and metrics and measures to assess our progress and impact. While it’s tempting to recast our plans in light of the economic downturn, the truth is that the challenges we face today—including diminished public support, changing demographics and state spending priorities, intense competition, and increased demand for public accountability and demonstrable results—were on the horizon when we began this transformation. The economic downturn has not created these challenges, but it has accelerated the timeframe in which we must react to the “new normal.”

To act on this renewed sense of urgency, I am charging a new Sustaining Excellence Steering Committee, consisting of several members of the Future Financial Resources Task Force plus additional all-University representatives, with overseeing the implementation of the recommendations of the task force and ensuring that the serious decisions that must be made in the coming months advance the University’s strategic plan, aspirational goals, and long-term best interests. I am asking each of you to serve on this committee, which I will convene approximately once a month."

Members:
Rusty Barceló, Vice President for Equity and Diversity
Kathy Brown, Vice President and Chief of Staff
Carol Carrier, Vice President for Human Resources
Steve Cawley, Vice President & Chief Information Officer
Frank Cerra, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences
Alison Davis-Blake, Dean, Carlson School of Management
John Finnegan, Dean, School of Public Health
Amber Peifer Fox, Senator, Council of Academic Professionals and
Administrators
Karen Himle, Vice President for University Relations
Robert Jones, Senior Vice President for System Academic Administration
Gail Klatt, Associate Vice President for Audits
Kjell Knudsen, Dean, Labovitz School of Business and Economy, UMD
Kristi Kremers, President, Graduate and Professional Student Assembly
Stephen Lehmkuhle, Chancellor, University of Minnesota, Rochester
Russell Luepker, Professor, Epidemiology
Judith Martin, Program Director, Department of Geography
Tim Mulcahy, Vice President for Research
Kathleen O’Brien, Vice President for University Services
Richard Pfutzenreuter, Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Peter Radcliffe, Director of Planning and Analysis
Steven Rosenstone, Vice President for Scholarly & Cultural Affairs
Paul Strain, President, Minnesota Student Association
Tom Sullivan, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost

"I still believe that our aspirational goal of becoming one of the top three public research university systems in the world can be achieved, but only if we act creatively, decisively, and quickly. I look forward to any additional feedback you may have on this model and strategy, which I began to share with the Board of Regents at its October meeting."

Read the whole document here: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/33767762/Sustaining-Excellence-Steering-Committee

1 comment:

Monica ButlerNovember 30, 2021 at 12:42 PM
Thaanks for writing
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RECLAIM THE U!

As the administration has come to dominate instead of to serve the university, intellectual and educational values have been displaced by market ones like "efficiency" and "productivity." Faculty and students have been commensurately marginalized in the governance of the institution. We do not say that the university ought to be inefficient or unproductive, but we do demand that values central to scholarly and scientific inquiry and education be restored to the center of the university's endeavors, including (indeed, especially) the management of its finances. Our efforts have a fivefold focus:

1. Governance. The university should be governed by those who carry out its mission of teaching, research, and public service. At present faculty have little meaningful role in making decisions that are handed down from central administration. This state of affairs results from manifold causes, faculty in generations gone by having ceded governance responsibilities to an ever-growing body of administrators. We the faculty must resume our proper role in making, rather than merely reacting to, the decisions that govern our work and our workplace.

2. Transparency in budgeting. The administration should make all information about the university's finances, including expenditures as well as revenue sources, readily available to the public in comprehensible form. At present it is difficult or even impossible to find out how the university spends most of the funds at its disposal, effectively prohibiting people without privileged access and knowledge from scrutinizing the administration's allocation of financial resources. (N.B.: All these resources are public funds once they enter the land-grant institution's coffers.) We recommend an independent audit to open the university's budget to such scrutiny.

3. Accountability for the administration. Every office within central administration should be required to provide to the public an account of what it does, what relation its work bears to the university's mission, and why it costs what it does.

4. Workload. The administration demands greater "productivity" from faculty and staff at the same time that it reduces the resources we need to produce anything and increases the burdens that hamper our work. If resources are withdrawn, our workload must be reduced, not increased. We do not want to do less teaching or less research, rather, we demand that unfunded mandates handed down by the administration be eliminated. Meanwhile, adequate support must be provided to enable efficient and productive work.

5. Integrity of the university. We reject the notion that the university can somehow achieve excellence by cutting programs, faculty positions, and curriculum. All disciplines and all modes of inquiry are interrelated, whether directly or distantly; to excise one element affects others, and ultimately damages the whole. This principle of intellectual integration is encapsulated in the motto of the University of Minnesota, commune vinculum omnibus artibus, which is a phrase derived from the argument of Cicero that the study of poetry is essential to a career in law. To unbind the arts from one another, as if any form of human inquiry can stand in isolation from every other, violates not merely the motto but the principle of the University's existence.

FACULTY FOR THE RENEWAL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Sustaining Excellence Steering Committee

1 comment:

RECLAIM THE U!

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