Letter to the Community

December 9, 2004
TO: The University Community
FROM: Philip E. Austin

Download a PDF of this Letter

In these letters and in other forums over the past eight years I have often discussed challenges that stem from the University’s progress. Enrollment growth, recruitment of outstanding faculty, expansion of research, increased private fundraising and massive improvement in our physical infrastructure certainly give us cause to celebrate. Yet we know from experience that every important advance creates its own set of new difficulties, some easy to address and some much harder. Our success has generated high expectations for the institution and set high standards for all of us. Moreover, the pace of change is accelerating. As the University progresses and adopts more ambitious goals, procedures appropriate in the past need to be revised to meet new demands.

This creates what popular psychologists might call “good stress.” Not many of us would want UConn to trade places with other universities. But it is important that members of the University community understand the scope of the challenges before us and the steps we are taking to meet them. In the pages that follow I will try to outline these and present a brief update on the events and issues that have come before us over the past several months.

Enhancing Quality and Accommodating Growth: Implementing the Academic Plan

This summer the Board of Trustees Committee on Academic Affairs reviewed the University’s Academic Plan for the Storrs-based programs. Two years in the making, the plan was developed primarily by a faculty, student and administration Task Force led by Professor Richard Brown of the Department of History and the Humanities Institute and then-Associate Vice Provost Karla Fox. Over the course of extensive deliberations, the Task Force met with multiple campus groups and solicited input from individual faculty, students, staff and others. Preliminary drafts were reviewed with these and other constituencies, evaluated and modified by the Provost, and presented to the Board of Trustees.

The Task Force’s goal was not to develop an agenda carved in stone. Universities are dynamic institutions that must adapt to changing internal and external realities; at UConn, while our mission remains constant, the means by which we implement it have to respond to new opportunities, challenges and responsibilities. That said, no great institution of higher education can function without a good sense of where it wants to go and how it intends to get there. The Task Force presented an outline of general goals in Spring 2003 that was accepted by the Board of Trustees. The next major step was the presentation to the Board of an outline of short- and medium-term goals, accompanied by a comprehensive set of measures to determine our progress.

This summer’s presentation did four important things. First, it outlined priorities for the next five years in five key areas: undergraduate education, research and graduate/professional education, diversity, resource development, and national reputation. Second, it listed a set of eight “aspirational peers” (Ohio State, Purdue, Rutgers, University of Minnesota, University of Georgia, University of Missouri, Iowa State and the University of Iowa). Admittedly the selection of peers, aspirational or otherwise, is somewhat arbitrary; nevertheless, these eight institutions represent a good cross-section of universities in whose company we believe we belong. Third, the presentation compared UConn to these peers across a range of quantifiable measures (e.g., student-faculty ratio, 6-year graduation rate, doctoral degrees awarded and external research expenditures per 100 FTE faculty, percent of faculty from underrepresented groups). With the exception of endowment assets, where our late arrival to the world of major external fundraising calls for a longer-term aspiration, we aim to rank first or second among these peers in each measurable data point within the next five years. (A full copy of the Board presentation is available at www.provost.uconn.edu)

The fourth element is perhaps the most significant. Among the Academic Plan’s goals, the two most fundamental to our mission and therefore most critical to our success are enhancing students’ educational experience (and, not incidentally, assuring timely completion of degree programs), and increasing the range and breadth of faculty research. We need to meet both objectives expeditiously. To that end, the University hopes to be able to secure resources to increase the size of the Storrs-based faculty significantly over the next five years.

Since the initiation of UCONN 2000 in 1995, undergraduate enrollment at Storrs and the regional campuses has increased from 14,667 to 20,151, while the number of full-time faculty increased only marginally. Beginning in 2002 we capped new Storrs freshman enrollment at 3,200, though we promoted an increase at the not-yet-fully utilized regional campuses. Nevertheless, our student faculty ratio climbed from 15:1 in 1995 to approximately 18:1 this year, a trend partly exacerbated by the State’s Early Retirement Incentive Program.

In some academic areas relatively high student-faculty ratios may not represent an insuperable obstacle to excellence; at UConn, as at other major universities, large lecture classes in certain disciplines at certain levels are an appropriate and efficient way of delivering instruction. As a general principle, however, the growth in student-faculty ratio is cause for serious concern. It puts UConn at competitive disadvantage in recruiting strong students and outstanding faculty, weakens our claim to special distinction as a university big enough to offer the benefits of a broad program but small enough to offer individual attention, and, at the most practical level, makes it difficult to offer sufficient class seats every semester to allow students to get into required courses in the proper sequence and complete academic programs in four years. To remedy these problems we set a goal of a 150-faculty increase.

I must emphasize that this is at the proposal stage. Its implementation requires a significant increase in resources from the state and from our students, and reallocation of existing resources. It is important for the University to demonstrate that the additional faculty will be targeted to areas of need, pre-existing strength or a compelling requirement to bring programs to a high level, and/or relevance to Connecticut’s aspirations for economic development and enhanced quality of life. It is especially important that new faculty contribute to the growth of the research enterprise, both because scholarship fulfills our mandate to generate new knowledge and because additional grant support provides vital resources for the overall academic program. Thus whatever new faculty positions we secure will be carefully targeted to specific areas of programmatic and academic need, research strength, and connection to our mission of service to the state.

Budget Challenges

Resource constraints are a near-universal reality in American universities. UConn is no exception. Connecticut’s elected officials have a responsibility to assure that taxpayers’ dollars are spent appropriately and in support of the public interest. The University recognizes our responsibility to communicate effectively, advocate strongly, and spend carefully, both in periods of extreme fiscal stress and in more normal times.

We also have a special obligation to our students and their families. Shortly after I joined the University of Connecticut I said in my inaugural speech, “No land grant university should ever price itself beyond the capacity of middle income or poor families. For access to be a reality, our tuition and other costs must stay within tightly constricted bounds. And of those students whose family income lies below the middle range, we need to provide ample scholarship assistance at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. No talented individual should ever be prevented from attending this state’s premier public University on the basis of economic need.”

That commitment has been kept. Since 1996 undergraduate tuition and fees at UConn have increased at a lower rate than the average rate for public universities across New England. Nationally, public university tuition increased an average of 8.3% per year, compared to 5.6% per year at UConn. Just as important, we increased need-based aid from $24.6 million in 1996 to $53.4 million this fiscal year, a 117% increase over that period. It is as true today as it was eight years ago that no academically qualified student is kept out of UConn because of inability to pay. That will remain the case.

Last summer I proposed and the Board of Trustees adopted a tuition increase of $512 for in-state undergraduates and $632 for in-state graduate students, with larger increases for out-of-state students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. This proposal reflects two realities. First, the State’s share of our operating budget continues to decline, from 50% in 1991 to 36% this year for the Storrs-based programs. The $2.3 billion investments represented by UCONN 2000 and 21st Century UConn are farsighted, generous, and greatly appreciated. Still, the operating budget gap creates a need that must be met.

Second, and in large part fueled by the building program, UConn is approaching a new level of excellence. This enables us to attract outstanding students, including nearly 100 high school valedictorians and salutatorians this fall and a freshman class at Storrs 35% of whose members were in the top 10% of their high school graduating class. They come here with great promise and also with great expectations for the quality of the academic program and the vitality of student life. Similarly, the new faculty who have joined us to supplement an existing faculty of very high quality arrive with legitimate anticipation of support for their research program. Maintaining new and pre-existing buildings (and avoiding the “deferred maintenance” cycle of the 1980s), expanding and implementing programs of high quality, supporting faculty, and operating a growing statewide campus generates a compelling requirement for additional resources.

Officials at the Connecticut Department of Higher Education recently issued a statement about our proposed tuition increase that was at best misleading. They alleged that the University entered this fiscal year with a “surplus” that should have reduced the need for a tuition increase last year. In fact, what happened was that our salary and benefits expenditures came in nearly $16 million below budget for the fiscal year that just ended. This was hardly surprising, given the temporary hiring measures instituted to tide us over in the transition from the State’s Early Retirement Incentive Program. These “savings” represent one-time dollars; we have now made a permanent hiring commitment to rebuild our faculty and staff ranks. After accommodating other budgetary needs last year, the remaining “savings” of approximately $10 million was dedicated to the support of long-planned upgrades in the technology infrastructure to support educational programs. Our sister institutions in the state’s public higher education system, Connecticut State University and the community colleges, had similar dedicated savings. Had the tuition increase implemented last year not been imposed and the one-time savings used to fill the budget gap, the University would now be facing a fiscal crisis of serious proportions.

We derive funding from multiple sources and the University’s budget is complex. It is, however, subject to careful examination by the state auditors, the Office of Policy and Management, the Office of the Governor, relevant committees of the Connecticut General Assembly, the press, and others. Guided as always by a commitment to fiscal responsibility, we are guided as well by our responsibility to present our students and our state with a university that achieves and maintains excellence. Bargain-rate tuition for a mediocre educational product is no bargain at all.

Strengthening the Administrative Infrastructure

Over the past year and a half Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Linda Flaherty-Goldsmith implemented a comprehensive review of administrative operations and has undertaken significant improvements in key areas. Our goal is to maintain a climate of responsiveness and efficiency, eliminate unnecessary duplication, link operations, where appropriate, at the Storrs-based programs to analogous activities at the Health Center, and create a climate where dedicated staff can do their best work. Perhaps most important, at a time of high expectations and expanding operations, we will continue to strengthen our processes to promote effective internal oversight and full accountability.

Several ongoing activities in this area are particularly notable. Faced with myriad processes that required tweaking or revamping, we retained the Juran Institute, a nationally recognized firm focused on process improvement, to provide training, change- management, project tracking tools and ongoing consultative services. More than 100 Storrs and Health Center staff and faculty have been trained in these techniques and several team-based projects are now underway to improve processes in personnel recruitment, to enhance automation of purchasing, to reduce time required for minor maintenance, to improve the efficiency of special payroll processing, to improve patient call response and billing operations at the Health Center, and to reduce the time required for grant closeout.

We have also taken steps to enhance operations in key administrative areas. The new Associate Vice President for Human Resources for the Storrs-based programs, Donna Munroe, is working to enhance responsiveness to departments and staff members, and a joint effort with the Health Center is leading to the initiation of a new PeopleSoft HR system next July. In the Information Technology area, collaborations between the Storrs-based programs and the Health Center have been strengthened and already helped save more than $1 million through efficiencies in telecommunications across the University. (The savings are being returned to departments through reduced long-distance rates). A solid foundation for new financial systems for both campuses is being created.

Another major initiative, which will continue in the months to come, involves strengthening procedures for construction oversight. The success of UCONN 2000 reflects credit on the State of Connecticut, the University, and, particularly, the many talented individuals charged with bringing 53 major projects from the planning stage to completion. Another 13 major projects are in various stages of planning or construction. We expect to continue that level of progress through the ten years of 21st Century UConn. As might be expected in any activity of this size and scope, the construction program creates its own set of challenges. Late in October code deficiencies at Hilltop apartments, Charter Oak and Husky Village residences came to light and required expeditious remediation, which is now underway. All three facilities were completed under a “design-build” process; though the need to complete the buildings quickly to accommodate additional students may have made sense in prior years, this is a process we will reevaluate closely before it is considered for future use. Moreover, the UConn Fire Marshal, with the concurrence of the State Fire Marshal’s office, has assured us that the buildings in these complexes remain safe for occupancy.

Vice President Flaherty-Goldsmith is now implementing organizational changes to assure thorough inspection by parties independent of those charged with construction of all facilities prior to occupancy. These changes, coupled with our existing and extensive safety provisions (including sprinklers in all residence halls, fire doors for egress, automatic door closers, and smoke/fire/heat alarm systems hardwired to UConn’s Fire Department), have strengthened our oversight efforts.

Key Collaborations

From its earliest days, the land-grant university model envisioned close partnerships between public universities and the major institutions of their states. Community service is part of our mission; it provides a compelling justification for public financial and political support. On a practical level in an era of constrained resources, the more effectively we can secure private resources for partnerships in the public interest, the more likely we are to achieve ambitious goals.

This has been a consistent theme at UConn and like so many other things it is rapidly gaining momentum. To cite just four recent examples:

• On October 29th, in the presence of Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez, SS&C Technologies CEO William Stone, several Hartford-area business leaders, Dean Curt Hunter and many enthusiastic faculty and students, Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson officially dedicated the new SS&C Technologies Financial Accelerator and School of Business Learning Center at 100 Constitution Plaza in downtown Hartford. With a Wall Street-type trading floor, scrolling financial news and stock market indices, and high technology classrooms the Accelerator offers an ideal 21st century business school learning environment; just as important, it provides a setting for ongoing collaborations between students, faculty, and area business executives, and represents an important contribution to the economic vitality of the Hartford business community.
• On November 10th , in the second of what will be an extensive series of community meetings, the development firm retained by the Mansfield Downtown Partnership presented the proposed design of a commercial and residential complex for the center of Storrs. As discussed in previous letters, the Partnership is a collaboration that works to the advantage of all concerned: students, faculty, and staff who want a real “college town” atmosphere; local residents, who may or may not be affiliated with the University, but who want a vibrant commercial center nearby; parents, alumni, and other visitors; the local business community; and the town’s elected leaders. The plan calls for a combination of retail and entertainment enterprises and housing on about 15 acres in the area near the School of Fine Arts and E.O. Smith High School, and on both sides of Route 195; about 30 additional acres would be preserved as wetlands and open space. Much remains to be done to respond to community input and finalize the proposal, but we are now at the point that we can anticipate construction in the not-too-distant future.
• An interventional cardiology and open heart surgery program for the Waterbury area, now being developed at Waterbury and St. Mary’s Hospitals, is being launched with the support of the University of Connecticut Health Center. UCHC personnel are providing staff training and team-building activities for Waterbury personnel, training nurses to provide acute and post-cardiac surgical care, and other supportive services. As the state’s medical school this is a natural role for UConn, especially since cardiology is one of the Health Center’s three Signature Programs. The Waterbury collaboration is a particularly significant example of outreach in the delivery of health service across Connecticut.
• The Teachers for a New Era project, supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York with additional funding from the Annenberg and Ford Foundations, was formally inaugurated at UConn on October 1, with a keynote address by Carnegie Corporation of New York President Vartan Gregorian. We were one of just eleven higher education institutions chosen for funding, a list that includes Stanford, Michigan State, the University of Virginia, and other outstanding universities. The TNE project at UConn engages the Neag School of Education and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in a close partnership that incorporates both the methodology and content in the preparation of excellent teachers. The program includes a heavy focus on curriculum development, assessment, and a residency program for new teachers entering the profession. It brings UConn to the center of national efforts to enhance K-12 education and offers faculty in a wide range of disciplines the opportunity to contribute their expertise to a program of direct relevance to our state’s needs.

Continuing the Momentum

A measure of our transformation is the fact that several achievements that might once have been considered extraordinary are now regarded as routine. They are not. They are the product of hard work by many outstanding individuals, including faculty, students, administrators, staff, and, in many cases, alumni and friends of the University. Let me cite a few significant indicators:

• Probably the best external indicator of our progress is the size, strength, and diversity of the pool of student applicants—perhaps a mixed blessing, in terms of student-faculty ratio, but a blessing nonetheless. The trend lines continue to point upward. This year we received 19,574 applications for 4,200 freshman places (3,200 at Storrs and 1,000 at the regional campuses). Among those who enrolled in August were 96 high school valedictorians and salutatorians—students who, for the most part, could have chosen to go almost anywhere and who decided that UConn offered the best educational climate and quality of student life. More than 800 students of color are in our freshman class, continuing the move toward greater diversity. Average new freshman SATs at Storrs are 1177, up 10 points over last year and 64 points since 1996. The 250 new freshmen admitted to our Honors Program have an average SAT score of 1382. Applications for graduate programs reflected the national post-9/11 decline in international applications (the UConn number went from 3,212 in 2003 to 2,253 this year), but we experienced an increase in domestic applications from 4,093 in 2003 to 4,402 in 2004. Law School applications, which tripled over the past ten years, remain strong in number and exceptionally strong in quality; particularly noteworthy is the fact that 26% of this fall’s entering students are members of minority groups. Medical and Dental School applications also remain exceptionally strong.
• A second success indicator is the level of philanthropic support invested in the University. Here, too, the numbers are exceptionally positive, a fact all the more impressive given uncertainties in the national economy. Campaign UConn, formally inaugurated in 2001 following a three-year “silent” phase, raised $457.1 million for University students, faculty, programs and facilities, $157.1 million more than the initial $300 million goal. More than 115,000 donors contributed to the campaign, with gifts ranging from modest initial contributions from recent graduates to $21 million for our School of Education and $2 million for our Health Center from alumnus Ray Neag, and $146.1 million of in-kind support in computer software for our School of Engineering from UGS PLM Solutions, a subsidiary of EDS. A particularly notable event this past spring marked an additional commitment from Ray and Carole Neag to the Health Center, the largest single gift in its history, to be used by the cancer program to support recruitment of clinical and research faculty, renovate research and clinical space, and make other advances; the appropriately renamed “Carole and Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center” is poised to become one of the nation’s outstanding centers of its kind. Across the University, increased private support translates directly into additional endowed chairs, more student scholarships, and innovative curricula; indirectly, in key areas of excellence it propels the University several steps ahead toward a position of national leadership. The University of Connecticut Foundation is laying the groundwork for a subsequent, even more ambitious new campaign.
• At a time of heightened concern over international conflict, the University continues to bring its resources to bear, both to help inform national debate and to prepare our students to make reasoned choices as engaged citizens. A month prior to the Presidential election, faculty from the Department of Political Science and other areas worked with students and administrators to hold a two-day series of panels, discussions and debates on key issues of foreign and domestic policy and on the political process itself. (In this connection, I was particularly pleased that student-led voter registration efforts generated about 2,500 new voter registrations locally and led other students to register in their home towns.) The University’s role in study and instruction in the area of human rights continues to attract national attention: two important conferences this semester, one on “Human Rights in an Age of Terrorism,” and a second—the Fifth Annual International Human Rights Conference, focused on human rights and the media—brought prestigious speakers to campus to speak to issues of great significance not only to Americans but to champions of social and political justice around the world.
• The Health Center is moving forward in implementing the vision of its Board of Directors and the strategic plan developed over the last four years. In addition to items outlined elsewhere in this letter or reported in other places, two things deserve special mention. One important new initiative, the Collaborative Center for Clinical Care Improvement, is now underway. “C4I” will develop and implement policies, practices and standards, as well as research and educational strategies, to improve patient safety and quality of care and is initially emphasizing four key areas—medication management, pain control, secondary disorders associated with hospitalization, and patient falls. The second, discussed in several forums but not as widely known as it should be, relates to the School of Dental Medicine’s role as a provider of dental treatment to Connecticut residents who would have no other access to this vital element of health care. This year, building on a long record of service, the School will provide nearly 200,000 treatment visits to economically disadvantaged individuals; over half of those are outside the Farmington facility. Through cooperative programs and partnerships with nine community health centers and several hospitals throughout Connecticut, the School fills a tremendous gap in statewide safety net programs. This achievement is made possible by the combined efforts of UConn clinical faculty, residents, and dental students.
• Our other professional schools also continue to thrive, and the Law School offers several excellent examples. We learned in October that UConn Law students who took the Connecticut Bar Exam in July had a 94% pass rate, the highest first-time pass rate in the State, and eighteen percent of this year’s graduates are clerking for judges around the country. Highlights this semester included a visit by the Chief Justice of the Civil Supreme Court of France, a United Technologies-University of Connecticut Law Review symposium in honor of the publication of Professor of Business and Law and Dean Emeritus Phillip Blumberg’s treatise on corporate law, and a trip to Beijing by members of the Insurance Law Center to renew ties with the University of International Business and Economics and to advise the school on the creation of an insurance law program in China.
• Finally, as always, our infrastructure program continues to create an attractive, accessible, and technologically advanced statewide campus that meets the needs of faculty and students and reflects credit on the State of Connecticut. In recent months we celebrated the opening of the new Center for Undergraduate Education and the new wing of the Neag School of Education; the northern half of the Student Union is complete and in operation (including a much-needed movie theater) and work on the southern half is progressing toward a 2005 opening. With the purchase of a five-story building on a 20-acre parcel of land near its existing facilities, the Health Center will now be able to provide more space for current operations and for anticipated growth in clinical programs; by moving employees from the Administrative Services Building and leased sites off campus, the Health Center is consolidating operations and gaining additional room on the lower campus for clinical uses, a major step forward in its effort to centralize all ambulatory clinical activities on the lower campus. Most important of all, plans are underway for the sequencing and design of projects funded by 21st Century UConn. As mentioned above, the scope and size of our infrastructure improvement calls for new processes to assure sustained progress, and developing the optimal oversight systems represents a high University priority.

Final Thoughts

For universities undertaking major change, as for other major organizations, the true indicator of progress is not the absence of difficulties. They are a part of life and the more profound the transformation, the more vexing the problems. The real test is how effectively we respond to challenges, both in the short-term sense of solving problems and in the longer-term sense of creating new policies, processes, and structures to meet emerging needs.

In the nine years since the initiation of UCONN 2000 the University of Connecticut has dealt with dramatic growth in enrollment; multiple budget difficulties generated by weaknesses in the national and state economy; the impact of managed care and federal cutbacks on our hospital and medical school; legal and organizational challenges in the world of intercollegiate athletics; difficult issues relating to the rapid growth of our research enterprise; the impact of student substance abuse, a national problem that affects UConn along with most other universities; early retirement incentives that led to the departure of hundreds of dedicated, experienced faculty and staff—and the list goes on. Along the way we faced the problems that inevitably come with the construction of new buildings and the renovation of others, the creation of new downtown campuses in Stamford and Waterbury, changes in Connecticut State government—and that list goes on as well.

The lesson I take from this is as simple as it is clear. Each of those challenges seemed huge at the time, and many still do. But working together, with our eyes fixed on the ultimate goal of creating a University worthy of our students and our State, we met every one of them. We benefited greatly from the support of a large and growing network of advocates, each representing a different segment of the University community but all committed to the institution’s future: AAUP and UCPEA members, the University of Connecticut Foundation Board of Directors, the Alumni Association, student and parent groups—many of which work together closely under the organizational structure of the “UConn Advocates.” And we have continued to adapt to meet a rapidly changing environment, keeping true to our mission and the goals of the Board of Trustees but making sure that the administrative structure is appropriately flexible and far-sighted.

We approach the end of the semester and the holiday season in a fundamentally strong position. Yet, as indicated in the previous pages, 2005 will bring its own set of challenges, some new and some carried over from the year now ending: a faculty whose size has not kept pace with the growth in the student body, a compelling need to increase operating resources and to explain to parents and taxpayers alike why this is so essential, the requirement to bring our construction oversight processes to the level demanded by 21st Century UConn, and the need, overall, to assure that we give every student, professor, and staff member the opportunity to do his or her very best work.

I am confident that we are equal to these tests, as we have been to the challenges of the past decade. As always, I look forward to your suggestions and thoughts. I wish everyone a happy holiday and, a bit in advance, a happy, productive new year.

c: Board of Trustees