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UIC 2010: Strategic Thinking

Introduction

Strategic Thinking

Since October of 2003, the 2010 Committee has engaged the UIC community in an exercise in “strategic thinking.” During this process we have been asked many times, Don’t you really mean strategic planning? Actually we don’t.

Strategic thinking is both a collective process and a preparatory one. It sets in motion a collaborative, institution-wide conversation about the vision and the mission of the university, designed to help us decide what we should be planning for rather than to tell us what our plans should be. Strategic thinking sets the stage and provides focus for the more speciﬁc strategic planning that is crucial to the effective development of a university. Thus, strategic thinking is the ﬁrst step toward institutional evaluation, change, and growth.

But a ﬁrst step implies more steps to follow. Strategic thinking must be followed by action, and action requires planning. The information and recommendations gathered in this document can guide the principles on which UIC plans its actions. In sidebars throughout the document we suggest agenda items and potential directions for the plan that follows—examples of endeavors, informed by the university’s mission and values—that are necessary for UIC to move toward the vision of 2010.

UIC: Then and Now

Like many great public universities, UIC has no single origin. The university as we know it today was formed in 1982, when a consolidation of the University of Illinois Medical Center and the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle brought together the history and traditions of two very different campuses. The Medical Center campus, dating back to the mid-1800s, housed the health sciences colleges and the University of Illinois Hospital. The architecturally distinctive Chicago Circle campus, opened in 1965, was a comprehensive teaching and research university. It was the successor to an earlier campus, housed in temporary buildings on Navy Pier, that had served as a feeder for the University of Illinois after World War II.

Over the past twenty years UIC has transformed itself into one of the top ﬁfty research universities in the United States. UIC now has more than 25,000 students, almost 40 percent of them professional or graduate students. It employs more than 11,000 people. The campus comprises more than 100 buildings on 250 acres of land just southwest of Chicago’s Loop. For all the changes in the site and size of the campus and in its mission and visibility, UIC remains inextricably tied to the city of Chicago. Those ties are reafﬁrmed by UIC’s Great Cities Commitment: partnering with government agencies, community organizations, businesses and schools, UIC has sought to improve the quality of life in Chicago, and other urban areas, through increasingly relevant efforts in teaching, research, service and economic development. Supporting that commitment, the Medical Center annually handles over 470,000 visits from the community, and the College of Medicine provides Illinois with one out of every six of the state’s physicians.

Students are attracted to UIC. They are coming in increasing numbers and they increasingly reﬂect the diverse, global nature of Chicago and other cities around the country and the world. Put another way, many of our students are decidedly urban and over a third speak English as a second language—they work well in the city environment and appreciate the resources it provides. As a state assisted university, we offer a tuition advantage over many schools; as a premier research university, we offer an intellectual advantage over many others. Furthermore, our location in Chicago makes us attractive to students and faculty both. Taken together, these factors—the kinds of students who want to study here, the kinds of faculty who want to teach and work here, the kinds of involvement with the global city that our location makes possible—are fundamental to who we are.

Strategic Starting Points

We assume that UIC can be at once:

1. A source of high quality, comprehensive undergraduate education;

2. The home of highly competitive academic programs of graduate and professional preparation;

3. A public research institution, state-assisted and therefore responsible to the state, even in the face of declining state investment;

4. A fully integrated institution, engaged in the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois and the world, at all levels of research and service.

These ambitions and responsibilities combine to create a dynamic institution where changes often occur at dramatic rates. As starting points for strategic thinking, they require thoughtful participation by all of us at UIC—students and faculty, staff and partners, alumni and friends of the university. In this spirit, the UIC Strategic Thinking 2010 Committee has sought to be to be inclusive, reﬂective and at times provocative. The committee’s aim is to set in motion a representative and fully engaged deliberative process that will stimulate and enrich us all.

The committee itself is a diverse group representing a wide range of faculty, staff and student interests at UIC, as well as the interests of alumni and the business community. We have taken our charge from the Provost very seriously, and we have attempted to build an inclusive and interactive process of strategic reﬂection and direction. We understand our mission to involve not only writing a report but helping to create an ongoing culture of strategic development. Toward this end, we have held over forty full committee meetings and met with every college in subcommittee meetings over the past year. We have met with student, faculty and internal interest groups, and with alumni and with external interest groups. We have met with every level of administrative and program management, participated in the 2004 Campus Leadership Retreat, engaged in literally hundreds of conversations with members of the UIC community and collected and reviewed numerous UIC documents and reports, including historical documentation. To give us context, we have also identiﬁed and placed on our website the strategic efforts of more than one hundred public and private universities.

This document is intended to stimulate conversation and deliberation across the campus. With the help of faculty and students in the Graphic Design program of the College of Architecture and the Arts, we will create an interactive website where the campus can continue to re-work and re-invent the strategic direction of UIC. We hope the discussion begun here will come to play a role in committees across the campus, in conversations among colleagues and even in the curricula of some classes.

Still, it is a document that is the heart of this process. Our approach to strategic thinking is substantially different from those described in most of the strategic planning documents you will ﬁnd on other public university websites. What we have learned from every sector of the campus over the last year does not lend itself readily to traditional academic and institutional categories. UIC’s unique mission and vision have led us to report our strategic ﬁndings in a slightly unconventional but, we hope, compelling way.

UIC Strategic Thinking 2010 has ﬁve parts:

1. Vision. The vision provides a view of UIC that acknowledges where we have been, registers our experiences in the moment and challenges us to shape a future with a focus, but without limits.

2. Mission and Values. This discussion provides direction toward our vision and begins to identify the standards by which we will measure success at UIC.

3. Environment. Here we explore the physical condition of UIC, its architectural and developmental role in the city of Chicago, the goals and themes of our physical environment and the planning that will lead UIC to excel as a great urban institution.

4. People. Our report on the people of UIC encompasses students, faculty, staff and visitors, describing the demands of instruction, research and support. We identify key themes of current life at UIC and offer a set of targeted objectives for 2010.

5. Institution. This section examines the administrative, managerial and ﬁnancial infrastructure necessary to support UIC and its diverse constituencies in reaching the vision and fulﬁlling our mission. While these structures and processes are not as visible as buildings and people, they evoked some of the most passionate calls for change.

The document does not deal explicitly with our ﬁnancial constraints. It’s not that we aren’t very much aware of these. It’s rather that we believe the purpose of our committee is to think about what UIC should be doing in 2010 in ways that are in some respects budget-neutral. If one outcome of this process is a set of priorities, they will be roughly the same whether we have signiﬁcant discretionary resources (in which case we can hope to accomplish a lot of them) or very little (in which case we will have to make the hard choices that make this process, and the guidance of this document, even more important).

At the same time, the need for resources has been very much a part of our thinking. Indeed, one crucial purpose of this report is to provide the kind of vision that will make it obvious in both the public and the private sphere—in the legislature and the corporate community, among alumni and other potential donors—that UIC is, as we all passionately believe, an institution worth investing in.

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Part One: Vision

UIC seeks to embody the ideal of a public university: to cultivate the highest intellectual ambitions of faculty, students and staff and, at the same time, contribute to the making of a more egalitarian society. We will be a resource and destination accessible to all who share our ambitions and have the desire to excel. We seek to be both a leading research university and a great urban institution, taking advantage of the opportunities and needs presented to and by the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago. We believe that for this commitment to be meaningful in the twenty-ﬁrst century, it must be both local and global, a commitment not only to Chicago but to all “Great Cities”—the physical, social and intellectual communities that characterize our modern world. Whether in the surrounding communities or on the other side of the globe, in our own library or on the worldwide web, in the single-investigator laboratory or at an international research center, we are dedicated to creating, sharing and applying the knowledge the twenty-ﬁrst century demands.

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Part Two: Mission and Values

UIC’s mission, in its most elemental terms, encompasses teaching, research, service, and economic development. But the essence of our mission—our deepest values—resides not in a simple statement but in who we are, where we are, and what we believe.

Who We Are

UIC is proud of its role as a gateway of intellectual and social discovery, especially for those students who might not otherwise attend a top-rank research university. Our faculty, staff and administrators understand this role and embrace the opportunities it offers. We eagerly commit ourselves to educating the citizens of Chicago, Illinois and the world, providing access to an educational and scholarly environment of uncompromising excellence.

Our measure of success is not the test scores of those we admit but the accomplishments and quality of those we graduate. We expect that our undergraduate students deserve and receive the most ambitious education a research university can provide, whether they enter UIC through traditional gateways or special programs. We insist that our graduate and professional students, who are among the best in the nation, receive training in the context of the most ambitious, challenging, important, and timely projects in their disciplines.

If it is difﬁcult for some of our students, especially our undergraduates, to meet these expectations, we should reach out to schools and community colleges to actively ensure that students are better prepared when they arrive. We will support students once they do arrive to ensure that they ﬂourish here. Above all, we will make sure that the education undergraduate, graduate and professional students receive at UIC is worth the effort we will demand of them, and that it involves them with the crucial ideas and skills of our time. For our students, UIC will be more than a point in their journey of intellectual growth; it will be a life-long resource for new opportunities and intellectual renewal.

To those who say UIC has to choose between our commitment to making education accessible and our commitment to being a world-class research university, we answer: This is a false choice, and UIC is replete with examples that refute it. Our mission demands that we embrace both commitments, using the tensions between them as springboards for our own achievement. Indeed, our greatness will be because of these tensions and not despite them. One of our primary goals must be to continue not only to develop excellence in a wide range of programs but especially to develop excellence in programs that enable us to understand our particular situation and to act as a mechanism of change.

Without question, UIC faculty must be selected from the most qualiﬁed, accomplished and promising anywhere. They should be leaders in their ﬁelds who will propel the scholarly reputation of UIC in their respective academic communities. They will, of course, be good teachers. But more than that, they must be teachers committed to working with any student, from any social or economic background, who has the ambition to elevate him or herself intellectually. We believe that this commitment to intellectual development will enrich our institution and all its students and faculty.

The Accomplishments and Quality of the Students We Graduate

It is not enough for us to merely assert that the measure of our success is the value we have added to our students’ lives as they graduate; we must ensure that there are mechanisms to assess the value-added outcome for every UIC student. Today, a number of UIC campus units provide valuable support to particular populations of students as they move through their academic pathways. Examples include LARES, AAAN, ODS, GPPA and the Honors program. However, no matter how effective these programs are, more must be done to address the needs of the entire student population. The practices and success of these programs will be drivers of, as well as embedded in, a broad network of external educational institutions (such as K-12 schools and community colleges) and the academic units within UIC so that we build strategic, integrated pathways for all students to achieve their academic goals.

One starting point is the present campus effort to arrive at a new model for General Education at UIC designed to serve as a foundation for lifelong learning. Another is the Academic Assessment Committee organized to identify and record the mechanisms UIC has in place to build the students pathway to academic success. Beyond these early efforts, we must continue to explore avenues to improve the value of a UIC education and make evident the outcomes, using these results as input to improve our educational programs.

While a major research institution will have gifted people and strong programs in the core disciplines, UIC must also excel in new areas of knowledge, which increasingly cross traditional academic boundaries and deal with important, real-world questions. Research in these new areas can exploit our unique mix of talent and resources; for example, from a campus rich in cultural differences, we will draw scholars committed to working across disciplines to explore the notions of culture and difference. Throughout UIC, increased cooperation and collaboration among disciplines can give rise to new knowledge.

New knowledge will also come through our engagement with the city, the nation and the world—an expansion of the Great Cities Commitment to encompass the worldwide physical, social and intellectual communities of the twenty-ﬁrst century. The nature of Chicago, with its extraordinary mix of people, assets and challenges, will focus these activities in a way that will uniquely deﬁne UIC. For example, the rich constellation of science, technology, and entrepreneurship found in Chicago, including major national laboratories and commercial research facilities, puts an unparalleled opportunity at UIC’s doorstep.

To make good use of all these opportunities, UIC will have to become a fully integrated university—an institutional whole—offering innovative, interdisciplinary partnerships along with essential disciplinary scholarship. We must have a faculty, staff and student body who, whatever their ﬁeld, will be excited by the speciﬁc challenges raised at UIC and by the opportunities to build new disciplinary, regional and global relationships to develop and share new knowledge.

The Ways We Teach and Learn

In seeming contradiction in a university at the forefront of scholarship, research and technology, the ways in which we teach and learn do not always fully embrace and beneﬁt from the tools that the 21st century can provide. This must become a focal point for UIC. To live up to our commitment of access to excellence, we must bring to bear all available ways of increasing access to knowledge. We must ensure excellence through a culture of assessment and feedback. One of the best ways to guarantee that these changes occur is to recognize and appreciate the hidden effort involved in developing programs that support the visible teaching and that provide constructive evaluation of our performance.

New Knowledge

New knowledge advances the status of any ﬁeld of study by placing different epistemologies and sets of knowledge in a new dialogue that produces unique perspectives, solutions, and understanding of our lives, society, and the natural world. UIC, due to its remarkable and diverse set of attributes, can make distinct contributions to the production of knowledge in the following ways:

At the frontiers and interfaces of existing knowledge and disciplines

Through collaborative work that brings together vernacular and academic sets of knowledge

Within the inherent tensions and potential inﬂuences between pure and applied knowledge

In the application of cutting-edge paradigms to areas of knowledge that have been constrained by traditional world views or research approaches

Between interdisciplinary spaces In participatory action research In community service learning initiatives In knowledge that articulates the local with the global

For new knowledge areas to ﬂourish and grow, however, we require the intellectual, physical and administrative structures that support it. We must create ﬂexible administrative structures that will facilitate these interactions, as well as give ofﬁcial institutional recognition and value to such hybrid, creative practices, such as through the tenure process and intramural awards. Without these major shifts in current practice, the promise that is UIC cannot be fulﬁlled.

Where We Are

UIC seeks to be not only a great university in a great city but a premier urban institution. We will be an actual and virtual destination for the world, from the university community to those who live and work nearby to scholars and visitors from afar. For UIC the notion of “community” is wide-ranging and inclusive, offering opportunities for scholarship, cultural exchange and human enrichment.

In 2010, UIC will be deﬁned by its partners as well as its faculty, students and staff. This means we must engage those outside our boundaries: the university’s neighbors, urban civic leaders, business leaders, patients, tourists and sports fans, lovers of music and art. Through partnerships in and with other great cities of the world and their universities, UIC can participate in creating the global and local networks of knowledge, interdisciplinary inquiry and meaningful economic, civic, cultural and social relations that will impact the world and our understanding of it.

To be a great urban institution we must be sensitive to the aesthetic, economic and social challenges of designing and developing the twenty-ﬁrst-century city— beginning with our own campus. UIC is located on over 250 acres in downtown Chicago. At its heart is a powerfully conceived and highly controversial design. The campus is one of the leading examples of Utopian campus architecture—one that demonstrates both the failure and the promise of grand urban design. It was one of the most passionate architectural statements about the urban future, and it now requires an equally passionate commitment from the university community to ensure that we fulﬁll our obligations to become a major urban institution.

Like any major campus, the physical landscape of UIC will always be a work in progress. Its development has to support not only the future of higher education, but the future of the city and of our university as an important and active site in the city. If we ignore these challenges UIC cannot become the major urban destination, or the great university, it aspires to be. We therefore urgently need to attend to the physical spaces of our campus, indoor and out, and to their planning, structure and use.

UIC will also serve as an open and inclusive site for debate about the urban future of its neighbors and its city, and about the global forces that are transforming urban life. We will be especially cognizant of our own role in these transformations. We will seek to be a critical leader among urban research universities in a collaborative, global network of universities committed to the idea of Great Cities.

The Great Cities Commitment

The Great Cities Commitment stems from the unique opportunities presented by the location of UIC in the heart of one of the world’s great cities—Chicago. In the 21st century, through communication, transportation and interdependence, the notion of “city” is broadened far beyond the physically-based entity. Rather than a single site, the “great city” of the 21st century is as much a network of relations as it is a single place—a network bridging the local with the global. For UIC, this notion of ‘cities’ reﬂects worldwide networks of geographic, social and intellectual relations that become the source of new communities of scholarship, research, international education and collaboration. UIC’s particular place in the city of Chicago and its involvement in the life of these 21st century cities will increasingly deﬁne the institution as an example of the world-connected university. By 2010, this opportunity will be fully recognized, embraced and have become a signature element of UIC.

What We Believe

Certain core values are so essential to educational life at UIC that they inform every element of individual and institutional practice. The very best of what UIC can become by 2010 will be imbued with the values of:

Knowledge - Access - Openness - Excellence - Collaboration

Knowledge that leads to global as well as individual transformations

Let there be no doubt: the central value of UIC is knowledge—the creation of knowledge through scholarship and research, and the sharing of knowledge through teaching, application and practice. We are especially committed to scholarship, research and teaching that reinforce the mission of UIC and add value to the city and the intellectual world—knowledge that can transform the global society just as it can the everyday lives of our students.

Access to excellence

Our vision of a more egalitarian society requires an unstinting commitment to access to excellence. We have already noted the debate over our core mission— whether we will be a university of access or an institution of academic excellence. Many public research universities resolve this dilemma by paying lip service to access and student diversity while celebrating loudly their goal of becoming an elite institution. Other institutions establish themselves as “urban universities” dedicated to providing access to diverse urban student populations, but without laying claim to the goals of a world-class research institution.

UIC will distinguish itself by the precept of access to excellence. We seek to be a leading urban public research university, providing a decidedly diverse student population with access to world-class academic study. “Access to excellence” will serve as a guiding principle for higher education at UIC and for many of our partnerships and research enterprises.

Openness to the world of ideas and urban and global change

Some people view the university as an enclave where knowledge and wisdom can be pursued in an environment of isolated reﬂection. Others argue that the research university cannot be an ivory tower, and must be completely engaged with the world in which it is embedded. Neither view is entirely accurate.

Knowledge always has a context, and even in the most research-oriented universities, knowledge is not produced for students and faculty alone. At the same time, communities beneﬁt from the scholarship pursued at universities in their midst, and they can contribute to the quality and signiﬁcance of that scholarship. This is certainly the case at UIC, where we practice openness to all domains of knowledge and to the urban context and transformation that gives such knowledge its many meanings. Further, we believe that new knowledge, as never before, will require openness to crossing disciplinary and institutional boundaries where interdisciplinary, inter-institutional and cross cultural sites of discovery will be the platform for future invention, research and creativity.

Excellence in every facet of intellectual life and in the physical, cultural, developmental environment that sustains academic achievement

For UIC, excellence is not so much a goal as a value that informs our every practice. The students we attract must display uncommon excellence, achieved not only through formal academic measures but through life experiences that give them the passion to succeed at UIC. Our faculty will seek excellence in their research and scholarly pursuits and in their teaching, producing the best undergraduate and graduate students. The university as a whole will seek excellence in its collaboration with peer institutions, new partnerships aimed at higher scholarly accomplishment. The university will seek unparalleled excellence in the planning, design, architecture, administration and development of a great urban institution. UIC will seek to be the leading example of the engaged university, working in partnership with the people, institutions and businesses of Chicago and the world to achieve excellence in human, community and urban development.

Collaboration in scholarship, problem-solving and innovation

The culture of collaboration at UIC will encourage each of us to seek out cooperative relationships, leading us to a fuller, more efﬁcient and more supportive approach to creating knowledge and teaching students. The partnerships formed in a collaborative environment will create new levels of interdisciplinary scholarship, new avenues of problem-solving in administration, the classroom and the lab, and new approaches to institution-building. This culture will also contribute to new forms of collaboration with the city and the state, and to collaboration with other universities in other Great Cities of the world.

Making the Vision of Access to Excellence a Reality

The theme of access to excellence runs through the entire 2010 report, from the opening vision statement, to the three strategic directions focusing on the UIC environment, people, and institution; but this commitment will only be realized if we keep one fundamental question central to every initiative that is understood to follow from this report:

Is what we are trying to accomplish consistent with UIC’s vision, mission and values?

The 2010 report delineates a distinctive role for UIC among comprehensive research extensive universities. For example, while it requires us to guarantee students the full range of knowledge that prepares them for the 21st Century, it does not require that we do everything that every university does. In fact it directs us to decide which things we need to do, choosing those that will set us apart, and then doing them at the highest level. Every time we have an opportunity to set a priority, implement a plan, or make a key decision, we should consider whether the initiative is moving us in the right direction. Is it something that UIC should be doing? Is it something that UIC can do at the highest possible level? If the answer to either of these questions is no, then we shouldn’t be doing it.

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Part Three: The Campus Environment

As the most visible aspect of the institution, the campus environment has a crucial role to play in deﬁning UIC as a great university and a great urban institution. The physical and technological structures of our campus drive and shape the interactions of our people, and they must actively support our core values and intellectual activities. We therefore require an environment that reﬂects access and excellence at all levels.

UIC is located close to the heart of a city known throughout the world for its innovative architecture and urban planning. The site of the campus and the history of its planning and design reﬂect broader conditions of urban change, and do not today present a coherent whole. But the complex mix of purpose and promise seen on our east and west campuses offer opportunities for UIC to re-align itself with the architectural innovation of Chicago. With foresight, UIC can become at once an exceptional university campus and a new kind of urban institution.

UIC can and should be a world leader in architecture, landscape and planning and this leadership should be evidenced in ongoing and progressive attention to the campus and its surroundings. We envision a physical campus that meets the highest standards of design excellence and supports active, accessible engagement within the UIC community and with the life of the city. This includes, importantly, physical and programmatic access to and within the campus for people with disabilities. UIC must live up to its commitment to universal access. As the campus addresses accessibility and adopts an innovative and sustainable model of contemporary urban design, it will become a source of pride and support for the university community and a destination for the residents of Chicago.

The opportunities presented by the makeup and the location of UIC are evident. The steps required to realize these opportunities are, however, much more dramatic and far-reaching. To begin to understand this we must look at the current state of the UIC campus, its characteristics, its needs and the processes by which it is planned, operated and maintained.

UIC is located in a rapidly gentrifying area near downtown Chicago. The campus is made up of east and west portions, separated by a gap nearly a mile in width, plus a new, and largely residential, south portion. The west campus is primarily home to the medical ﬁelds, the east campus to a broader range of disciplines. The university buildings comprise an area of approximately 13 million gross square feet. They represent a spectrum of architectural styles, reﬂecting their different ages and functions and the dramatic growth of externally funded research at UIC.

Despite regular planning efforts through the years, the physical campus has no apparent coherent vision. Two major factors are to blame: the lack of involvement of campus users in the planning process, and the piecemeal and opportunistic funding of renovation and construction. Because of the chronic lack of state funding, new construction and renovation are largely driven by the availability of alternate funding sources, including research funds and student fees. As a result, new construction is determined by what can be done, rather than what should be done. The university is currently beginning a new master planning exercise. For it to succeed, the process should be inclusive, innovative and long term.

This master plan must also address renovation and maintenance needs, which have reached crisis proportions. The cost of deferred maintenance is now estimated to be $525 million. The day-to-day maintenance of UIC buildings is at the lowest industry deﬁned standard. In almost every meeting the committee had with faculty, students and staff, the most passionate statements concerned the physical state of the campus and the impediments it imposed on productive work.

This is not to deny the signiﬁcant progress that has been made. We have seen improvements in the overall campus environment and its impact on day-to-day activities. Examples include Project Oasis, new student housing and the new research and clinical buildings on the west campus. But the successes have been too few and not tied to an overall vision.

Any future vision of UIC depends on innovative, comprehensive and long-term efforts in construction and renovation. These efforts should respond to clearly articulated needs of the campus, and be driven by a planning process that is reﬂective of the strategic goals of the institution. While the work will certainly extend beyond 2010, planning for these changes has to begin immediately. The process must be representative, logical and on-going. Above all, it must reﬂect our values and the vision for 2010.

Campus Aesthetic

In 2010, the UIC campus will be recognized as a premier site of urban architecture.

UIC can and should be a part of the architectural imperative that is Chicago. This leadership should be evidenced in a renewed commitment to aesthetics that encourages ongoing comprehensive and progressive attention to the campus and its surroundings. As the campus adopts an innovative and sustainable model of contemporary urban design, it will become a source of pride and support for our students, faculty and staff, as well as a potential destination for the residents of Chicago. Implied in this is the parallel development of access through strong and integrated transportation and communication systems. Nothing can more strongly embody our vision of UIC—the highest standards of excellence manifest in our physical campus and an active, accessible engagement with each other and the life of the city.

Important steps have already been taken: The university is committed to establishing a new Campus Master Plan. These activities should involve representative members of the UIC community at large and make good use of UIC’s connections to the city’s architects and planners. We must also create a radically different decision-making process to ensure that campus planning supports the university’s overarching vision.

Our aim should be to create a distinctive physical environment that reﬂects our ambitions and achievements. The campus must support all our activities while being architecturally innovative and environmentally sustainable. It will be welcoming not only to the people of UIC but to the wider community, making the campus a destination that draws people from the city, the region and the world. To do that, planning must address issues of communication and transportation both within the campus and between the campus and the surrounding community. The planning process must be based solidly in the real world: it should include concrete plans for implementation, including securing the funding for construction, operation and maintenance.

An Integrated Campus

The 250 acres that formally constitute the UIC campus physically could well be from two different universities—the histories of the east and west campuses are as different as the architecture. The lack of an integrated campus—physically and architecturally--is suggestive of administrative divisions and programmatic differences that often contribute more to campus dysfunction than campus distinctiveness. By 2010 UIC will have planned and designed an integrated campus—with a transportation, landscape, signage and community development infrastructure that knits together the east and west campuses and the campus with the city—giving UIC a clearer identity and a physical logic that helps direct programmatic and administrative linkages and efﬁciencies.

“Signature” University Architecture for the 21st Century Global City

Perhaps as important as the goal of an integrated campus is the goal of a campus architecture that makes a distinguished contribution to the world-class architectural heritage of Chicago. In 2010 we envision the beginnings of an environment that meets the high standards of world class architecture of Chicago.

City as Campus, Campus as City

In 2010, UIC’s activities will continue to extend beyond its conventional boundaries into the surrounding community.

The university of the twenty-ﬁrst century will interact with its environment at all levels. For UIC, we speak of a broader “Great Cities Commitment”—one that deﬁnes Great Cities as the physical, social and intellectual communities of the modern world. We must extend the boundaries of the university in both the physical and virtual worlds, to establish relationships between UIC and its many communities. We should be cognizant that the decisions we make and the actions we take will resonate most strongly in the communities closest to us. This “broadening” begins on our own campus: by softening the boundaries between the traditional divisions of scholarship, research and practice and by developing processes, facilities and technology infrastructure that encourage interaction and exchange across disciplines and functions. The key is fostering communication—physically, through transportation and use of space and time, and virtually, through electronic media and administrative processes.

Attracting more of the public to our campus will enhance life both at the university and in the neighborhood. To make the UIC campus a destination for local residents, we need to strengthen and further develop programs and facili-ties—from libraries and collections to concerts and public forums—that attract people from outside the university community. Certain buildings that support scholarly and research activities could also serve as cultural centers and magnets for the wider community. These “signature buildings” would symbolize UIC’s engagement in creating, sharing and applying knowledge and culture.

As the physical boundaries continue to blur and as the surrounding area gentriﬁes, the university must ensure that the UIC community has access to affordable housing, and equally importantly, that affordable housing and quality community life abound for neighbors not connected with the university. Such policies acknowledge that the quality of university life for all is greatly enhanced when faculty, staff and students live close to the campus in communities that are historic and diverse.

For the interactions of UIC with the outside world, we have alluded to the many “Great Cities” represented by our scholarship, research and practice. Our faculty are engaged with scholarly communities that know no institutional or national boundaries; their interactions with these communities enrich and broaden our university, giving students and faculty access to the wider world. Of course, these activities depend on communication. For UIC to develop fully as a world university, we must enhance virtual and physical access: of our faculty and students to the world, and of the world to UIC. We are fortunate to be located in Chicago, a major and long-standing hub of transportation and electronic communication. Couple this with particular strengths on the UIC campus, and we can position ourselves in the vanguard of modern communication technology. Couple it with welcoming facilities, and we will become a destination for the outside members of our Great Cities.

A New Deﬁnition, Design and Planning of “Campus”

Today, and in 2010, the traditional notion of “campus” as an “ivory tower,” whose borders serve as walls of intellectual demarcation and physical differentiation is inadequate. The borders of the campus are permeable and as the area gentriﬁes, the university should recognize that it is at once a campus and a city—a twenty-four/seven environment where the formal border of the campus will become increasingly less important and the quality of living, working and playing on the campus and in its neighborhood become central features of what it means to be “at UIC.” Campus planning means community development planning in all its manifestations. For example the importance of faculty, staff and students living in proximity to the formal campus requires that the campus plan be as much about securing employer assisted and affordable housing in the UIC neighborhood as it is about new residence halls and academic buildings on campus. UIC will have limited success in improving the quality of non-class life for members of the University if the majority of faculty, students and staff who wish to live near campus cannot do so. The South campus development is one success where a previously declining area has been transformed into a mix of student housing, town homes, condominiums with commercial and university space, all in close proximity to the campus. This is bringing a new sense of life and community to the campus environs. Ironically, however, it has not provided housing that is ﬁnancially accessible to most of the faculty and staff.

Technology

In 2010, the best communication and computer technology will support and enhance our mission.

UIC’s computing, networking and communication infrastructure and application should be second to none and fully accessible to the UIC community. This is an essential part of providing access to excellence, and allows us to extend our reach to all the communities in which we participate and which we serve.

Communication and computer technology have advanced at an extraordinary pace in recent years, with profound implications for research, scholarship, teaching and economic development. Sometimes research has driven the development of new technology; sometimes technological progress has opened up new methods or areas of study. UIC has led in many of these ﬁelds, from networking to virtual reality, and we are well positioned to bring technological expertise to the service of our mission. Technology has vast potential to improve teaching and to support the application of our knowledge. As we develop new technologies or ﬁnd new uses for existing ones, we must bring them from the classroom or laboratory to the world.

The continuing rapid rate of change in technology is both a beneﬁt and a challenge. It means we cannot simply establish ourselves as state-of-the-art at a single point in time; we need a structure that allows us to adapt to continual change. This applies not only to hardware and software but to the support and training of its users—students, faculty and staff. We must recognize that the effective use of technology requires deliberate, continuing effort, and be willing to make that effort.

Technology in Creating, Sharing and Applying Knowledge

There was a time when computing and networking capability outpaced our ability to put it to good use. However, technology has quickly moved from a new tool that faculty, staff and students struggled to infuse into our academic and administrative work to an essential element in carrying out cutting edge research, teaching and service. Today, our requirement for technology, which is central rather than peripheral to the classroom, conference room and laboratory, has surpassed the ability of the university to keep up with demand. Research grant support is invaluable in providing speciﬁc current technologies to address speciﬁc pressing challenges, but those speciﬁc technologies are required to interface with a broader technology infrastructure that must continually be upgraded. In addition, a teaching and learning infrastructure must be developed and maintained so that educational technology is a seamless part of the teaching and learning experience rather than a classroom management challenge. To live up to our commitment of access to excellence, we must bring to bear all available means of increasing access to knowledge. This will not only require attention to hardware and software, but must also include a human resource support structure and an institution-level strategic technology plan designed to support every aspect of UIC’s mission.

Campus Integration

In 2010, UIC will function as an integrated whole: physically, architecturally and substantively.

One of the distinctive features of UIC is the diversity found in almost every aspect of its makeup. To take full advantage of the opportunities presented by the combination of these diverse disciplinary strengths, the institution must function as an integrated whole—physically, architecturally and substantively. The challenge is to create a coherent, functioning entity while respecting the uniqueness and strengths of its constituent parts.

To achieve this vision, radical improvement in the transportation and communication infrastructures that facilitate dialogue and scholarly collaboration is required. High on the list are upgrading the campus bus system, creating common interactive spaces between the east and west sides of campus and effectively promoting campus-wide events. The visible improvements have to be supported by administrative and institutional processes; though they are less obviously parts of the campus environment, these processes are crucial to our ability to work together in a complementary, coherent and constructive manner.

Care of Our Campus

In 2010, the care and maintenance of our working environment will be a part of UIC’s culture.

The poor maintenance of our campus, so passionately addressed by those who met with the committee, strikes at the core of our identity. It erodes the sense of value and achievement that should result from our successes, undermines our efforts in recruitment, retention, and the day-to-day performance of students, faculty and staff.

Poor maintenance is a chronic problem, and remedying it requires a cultural change. The physical appearance and maintenance of the campus must become a priority, not an afterthought. The care of our campus is a responsibility belonging to all of us. It should become a source of pride rather than contention.

Lack of resources is only the superﬁcial cause of the problem. The current condition has arisen over time and by choice—albeit forced. Maintenance cannot be viewed as a cost to defer, but as an essential investment in the people and institution. UIC’s outstanding programs and leading research initiatives require funding, but if undercut by poor maintenance of the environment, they will soon decline. Excellence in scholarship simply cannot be sustained without an infrastructure of equal excellence.

We recognize that the neglect of decades cannot be repaired overnight. Restoring the campus will require creativity, careful planning and a clear commitment of resources. But without it, UIC cannot be the great urban institution it aspires to be. With conscious efforts, refocused priorities and innovative applications, UIC can create a campus environment worthy of a top research university of the twenty-ﬁrst century.

Critical Issue: The Physical Environment of UIC

Too often, it is clear, problems with the physical campus have been regarded as merely cosmetic and brushed off or relegated to a secondary status since they were not seen to affect the primary functions of the university. We believe just the opposite. We believe that these problems strike at the core of the UIC identity, insofar as a successful university is one where all people have pride in the

entire enterprise—in their workplace, their employer, their work, and themselves. Environmental problems can drain motivation from and stiﬂe the productivity of every student, faculty member, administrator, and staff member of this university. In turn, these problems limit the growth of research activities, threaten the teaching mission, and block community engagement. By 2010, UIC will experience a sea-change in attitudes to the importance of the campus environment. Without this change, our continued growth and increased stature cannot be sustained.

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Part Four: The People of UIC

The heart of UIC is its people. The university’s vision, mission and values – its core identity—reside in its students, faculty and staff, its alumni, external collaborators and partners. Our vision for 2010 is the product of a year-long strategic conversation with the people of UIC, and it can only be achieved if each one of us works to make it a reality.

The unique mix of cultures and experience found on our campus invests UIC with a stimulating intellectual and social environment. The culture of diversity is a key element of the excellence we demand for 2010, and we will continue to lead the way in ensuring that our students, faculty and staff reﬂect the broad diversity of Chicago. At the same time, access to excellence requires that we expand and strengthen a culture of collegiality and civility; we must foster an understanding that each person uniquely contributes to the institution’s mission, that each is equally worthy of respect, and that working together—as a truly integrated university of students, faculty, staff, academic professionals, alumni and external constituencies—we can realize the vision of 2010 expressed in this report.

Students

In 2010, recruitment, mentoring and teaching will support students who reﬂect the diverse and global nature of our Great Cities and seek the excellence of a major research university.

Our student population comprises some 16,000 undergraduate students, 9,000 graduate and professional students. These students differ widely in their courses of study. Yet we hold one expectation of them all: that they learn not as passive recipients of information but as active participants in generating, imparting and applying knowledge. In turn, our students expect the university to provide the courses, classrooms and active “learning by doing” environments of research and professional training, along with the administrative structures that support their learning.

If we are to provide access to excellence, as our vision demands, all levels of a UIC education must be affordable to the broadest range of students. Declines in state appropriations in recent years have threatened this historical affordability. We need to make every effort to support accessibility—by improving academic preparation and access to required courses so that students can graduate more quickly; by ﬁghting to reverse the decline in state appropriations for tuition and fees; and by increasing the availability of ﬁnancial aid for students in all disciplines and professions, especially those coming from lower income environments.

Critical Issue: UIC’s Historic Commitment to Student Financial Access

UIC must create new ways to maintain and advance its historic commitment to student ﬁnancial access to higher education, such that by 2010 the university will have adjusted its proﬁle of ﬁnancial support (in all programs, from, for example, MAP Supplemental Financial Aid to ﬁfth year funding) to respond to (i) the changes in state funding that require increases in tuition and raise barriers to access, (ii) cuts in funding that have the potential to negatively impact sustained excellence in every quarter—students, faculty and their learning environment, and (iii) requirements to garner external resources which bring additional responsibilities and controls.

Student Recruitment and Retention

Our recruitment and retention process must indicate to students that we care about them as individuals. A “one size ﬁts all” orientation, advising, or counseling program will not do. A customized approach is needed to ensure the academic success and community engagement of each student. To be successful, this cannot be delegated to a small cadre of advisors. Instead, we must develop processes and an ethos of caring that involves faculty and staff across the institution. We already have a successful model to emulate. Graduate students typically develop relationships with individual faculty based on research interests. Indeed, many graduate students are actively recruited by faculty seeking students with particular strengths and experiences. The kind of personal relationships that develop between graduate students and faculty are needed for all students.

It’s time to transform our relationships with students. It’s time to move from the old mode of the admission ofﬁce as gatekeeper, to a model where we actively seek out students we want. It’s time to make real commitments to prospective students and to honor those commitments through graduation and beyond. If we begin this transformation now, by 2010 we will truly be a resource and destination accessible to all who share our ambitions and have the desire to excel.

Undergraduate Students

Undergraduate education at UIC is an entry point for access to excellence, a commitment that begins with the recruitment process. UIC must not rely solely on class rank and standardized testing as measures for acceptance. Rather, we need to evaluate each student’s potential, based on his or her promise for contributing to the intellectual community at UIC and to the larger world after graduation. As such, admission to UIC is not an end in itself, but rather a signiﬁcant stage in a student’s intellectual and professional journey—one that commenced many years before college, during their K-12 education.

UIC’s role in this journey requires that we develop strong relationships with the public schools and two-year colleges of Chicago and Illinois, so that we can meaningfully evaluate the accomplishments and potential of their students from all backgrounds. This will require new levels of communication with those schools and a new understanding and programmatic articulation of exactly what is required for success at UIC. We must create and participate in co-institutional programs that offer our students pathways of success, including outreach and tutoring programs in the city schools and on our campus, and co-admission partnerships with community colleges. Preparation programs like these will assure that our students achieve their potential and meet their academic goals within the traditional four-year time frame.

UIC already has good experience in building such successful pathways to student success. The university attracts, and will continue to actively seek out, academically outstanding undergraduate students through the Honors College and the Guaranteed Professional Program Admissions Initiative (GPPA), which provides guaranteed admission to graduate or professional school. These programs are another facet of our commitment to “access to excellence” and examples of the most ambitious educational pathways a research university can offer.

When we accept students into the UIC community, regardless of the pathway to admission, we make a commitment to support them in their journey. That means we should seek to match our new admissions efforts with equally responsive programs for student retention and for the transition to life after graduation. Currently—whether for educational, ﬁnancial or other reasons – many students who begin at UIC do not stay to graduate. Our six-year graduation rates among transfer students are under 60 per cent; among four-year students they are even lower,just over 44 percent. We must understand and improve our retention rates, as these student losses undermine the mission of the university. As our students near the completion of their degree programs and approach graduation, we need to help them move into their new roles as alumni and professionals, with innovative programs that offer strategies for employment, graduate study and professional development.

Finally, we should expand our research and service learning programs in undergraduate education. A hallmark of the UIC student will be the way he or she “learns by doing”—not simply writing papers, but doing research and training with faculty, in the lab or online, or doing community-based work and engaged research in Chicago and beyond.

Graduate Students

Graduate students are vital to the success of a research university, not only because they require the highest level of advanced instruction, but also because they play essential roles in teaching and research. In all these roles, the students gain experience in building knowledge and opening doors to their academic careers. As we push the boundaries of disciplines at UIC, graduate students should become even more central to our mission of creating, sharing and applying knowledge. Finding new ways to integrate teaching, research and learning in graduate-level programs will help us recruit and retain the most qualiﬁed students.

Scholarly activities at UIC cross international as well as interdisciplinary boundaries. Our graduate students come from more than 100 different countries and are a signiﬁcant part of UIC’s global network. However, new restrictions on U.S. visas are raising barriers to students who wish to come here, curtailing scholarly growth at home and abroad. We recognize that this problem is not unique to UIC; it affects universities throughout the U.S., depriving our nation of valuable scholars and scientists, and the world of well-trained professionals who understand American values. UIC must work to overcome these barriers and to bring to our campus the best-qualiﬁed graduate students, regardless of nationality.

The principles of diversity and access to excellence are as important in graduate as in undergraduate programs. They require us to increase our efforts to recruit qualiﬁed graduate students from underrepresented groups. We need to encourage students from our own minority undergraduate programs to consider careers in academia and to take advantage of the research opportunities we offer. In all these efforts, we will work to expand the range of characteristics that can predict student success, including, for example, intelligence, personality and drive. Thereby we will ensure a talented, diverse and global student body at UIC.

The recruitment of the best faculty is closely linked to the recruitment and retention of the best graduate students. Top faculty require top students—who can contribute to their research endeavors and to teaching. While UIC graduate students start out as students and assistants, ideally, they should emerge as junior colleagues in the research laboratory, the classroom and in sites of engaged research. Employing this graduate level version of “learning by doing,” UIC will help students develop their own pathways to excellence, in their disciplines and in new interdisciplinary areas of knowledge.

Graduate students require a supportive environment at UIC, in the research settings of their faculty mentors, in their disciplinary units and throughout the campus. We should ensure that our graduate students receive fair compensation, beneﬁts and quality student services. Additionally, we need to provide instruction in methods of teaching and effective writing, as well as seminars and services to help students develop careers in the academic, public and private sectors. With implementation of such efforts, graduate students can become central contributors to the mission of creating, sharing and applying knowledge. Once again, the quality of those we graduate will deﬁne UIC.

Professional Students

The professions at UIC include architecture, business, education, engineering, social work, urban planning and public administration, as well as the health ﬁelds of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, dentistry and applied health sciences. Many of these schools and programs—including the colleges of Pharmacy, Nursing, and Urban Planning and Public Affairs, and some key programs in the colleges of Medicine and Public Health—rank among the top in the United States. In keeping with the quality of the programs, UIC professional students will be selected based not only on academic criteria, but also on their potential to serve as leaders in their profession and their community.

UIC’s professional students have much in common with other graduate students, though their training often focuses more directly on the clients they will serve. The concepts of learning by doing and engaged research—of scholarship combined with practice and issues-based application—are especially important in the professions. Wherever they work—from design studios to clinical and community settings—our professional students must do more than learn and create knowledge. We must ensure that they participate in research, as their training requires and that they understand the impact of research in their chosen ﬁelds. Equally important, they must understand the value of professional practice and the importance of adhering to the codes of ethics in their respective ﬁelds.

Attracting the Best, Most Diverse Graduate and Professional Students in the World.

In order to attract the best graduate and professional students, UIC must create the physical, operational and ﬁscal environment to support the best and most diverse faculty and students in creating, sharing and applying knowledge. By 2010, UIC will have become known as one of the premier research universities in the country because of its approach to “learning by doing,” where UIC graduate students start out as students and assistants, but ideally transform into junior colleagues, working in partnership with faculty in the research lab, the classroom, and in sites of engaged research. Professional students will work in equally engaged partnerships of clinical experience, studio learning, internships or in incubators of invention.

For UIC to create this dynamic, engaged, “learning-by-doing”-world of graduate education will require the best students, who in turn will be part of the reason we attract the best faculty, who, together, will be central contributors to the mission.

Faculty

In 2010, faculty will be recruited, supported, recognized and rewarded according to clearly articulated assessments of achievement and in accordance with their contributions to the vision, mission and values of UIC.

UIC is home to a distinguished faculty, comprised of 1,000 tenured, 300 tenure track and 650 research and clinical faculty members. Their research excellence is matched by their excellence in the teaching and the mentorship of students. Maintaining and enhancing the quality of the faculty, the productivity and contributions of its members and the stability and growth of its numbers in key disciplinary and multi-disciplinary areas are paramount goals for 2010.

UIC faculty must be more than distinguished researchers; they must integrate their passion and highest ambition for research with a commitment to teach a diverse, urban student body, including students whose life experiences may challenge traditional ways of thinking in the academy. Our faculty must be aware of the particular challenges and opportunities of our cultural, social and physical environment, and must look forward to transforming and being transformed by these elements.

UIC faculty must share a commitment to making knowledge available to all who desire to learn. By creating a culture around scholarship—whether through public conversations and forums, through applications in medicine, engineering and science, or through teacher education programs across the university—UIC faculty members will give life to the motto “Access to Excellence.” They will put knowledge to work in order to transform our world.

Realizing this vision will require interactions between different faculty cultures on campus, institutional support of interdisciplinary research, and the creation of new centers and institutes. These changes will require historic decisions by academic units that have long functioned in isolation. Faculty must play an active part, looking beyond traditional roles and disciplines to help build the twenty-ﬁrst-century public research university.

No great urban research university can grow without attracting and retaining new faculty who will develop and embody the intellectual projects that deﬁne the institution. It is essential that we assemble the major leaders in the ﬁelds of UIC’s academic excellence—educators who are at once passionate about teaching our students and eager to contribute to the particular projects that make UIC a great research institution.

UIC must be adept at attracting, supporting and retaining the very best of its faculty. University resources should be organized to make UIC the most competitive and attractive environment for faculty who contribute distinctively to UIC’s mission and to its ﬁelds of excellence. Not only should we provide strong mentoring and faculty development programs forjunior faculty members as they progress toward tenure, we also need to ensure a structure for promotion and tenure that is commensurate with the vision, mission and values of UIC. The measures of success must be clearly deﬁned, and should recognize contributions in teaching, scholarship (including research and creative work), service and economic development. While requirements will differ among disciplines, we should ensure that the respective criteria are communicated to all concerned.

UIC must continue to expand its current efforts to ensure equity and promote racial, cultural and gender diversity in its faculty and administration. We must work to ensure the success of women and minority faculty as they seek tenure, promotion and leadership opportunities. This will enhance the learning experience for all our students and ensure diverse contributions to the intellectual community. Finally, if we are to keep talented faculty at UIC, we need to address compensation inequities brought on by factors such as salary compression, and investigate the feasibility of options for more ﬂexible workloads and career paths.

Faculty Excellence in Light of the Intellectual Programs that Deﬁne UIC

UIC is an academic community that is at once diverse, comprehensive and distinct. By 2010 it will be important for UIC to have attracted and retained the major intellectual leaders in the rich array of ﬁelds of that comprise UIC’s diversity of academic excellence in scholarship, sponsored research and creative enterprise. By 2010 we will have made clear the particular intellectual projects that deﬁne the institution and will have committed our resources and programmatic initiatives to attracting, retaining and rewarding those faculty who are equally committed to teaching our students and contributing to the new and foundational intellectual efforts that will make UIC a great research institution.

Academic Professionals and Staff

In 2010, UIC’s academic professionals and staff will be clear partners in the mission of UIC, sustaining a culture of mutual support with students and faculty.

The range of positions held by staff and academic professionals at UIC is about as broad as one can ﬁnd in a modern organization. These groups have very different professional goals, job structures, pay scales, satisfaction and turnover levels. Yet they are fundamentally linked to one another and to faculty and students: philosophically, by the overarching identity and mission of UIC, and functionally, by sets of institutional needs and responsibilities. They are linked, too, by their dissatisfaction with the split between the “academic community” and the “administrative community.” To create an integrated, cohesive university, this tension must be addressed.

We need to continue current efforts to examine the reward and recognition system for staff and academic professionals, to address issues of long term salary compressions and inequalities among administrative units and between the east and west campuses. We should make continuing professional development and training—access to excellence—an expected element of every employee’s career at UIC. With such a new level of support and community, staff and academic professionals will have the opportunity to realize their important roles within the university through the highest standards of skill development and service orientation.

The university community needs to also recognize that some current institutional structures and processes are daily impediments to the work of staff and academic professionals. While these issues are speciﬁcally addressed in the “Institution” section, we note here that systems, processes and administrative structures deeply affect the roles and activities of these individuals. The issues involved are complex, and efforts to address them need to be serious and deliberate.

Academic Professionals

Academic professionals have earned a full range of college and advanced degrees and have acquired a high level of expertise. They hold positions in every sector of the University, from business managers and administrators to technology support. They play central roles in teaching, research, service administration, and they often provide links between the University and industrial, commercial and public services and voluntary organizations.

To enhance the career opportunities of academic professionals and enable them to reach new levels of excellence, UIC needs to develop speciﬁc opportunities for professional development and advancement, including guidelines that clearly deﬁne responsibilities and rewards for all positions, and resolve questions of salary inequities across the campus. For example, increased responsibilities often are not accompanied by a commensurate increase in compensation, a situation that invites real or perceived exploitation. Underlying all these efforts is the need to improve the lines of communication between academic professionals and upper-level administration and faculty.

Staff

UIC could not operate without a large staff of full-time, part-time and temporary employees, trainees (residents, interns, and externs), and student workers. These staff members support UIC’s teaching, research and service missions, and the quality of their service plays a central role in the satisfaction of people within and outside the university.

While the staff overall is committed to UIC and its welfare, different subgroups are driven by different expectations and incentives. Some staff are civil service employees, while others are not. Compensation, beneﬁts and training vary widely. While reliance on large numbers of non-permanent and student staff is an essential part of the university, it also imposes the burden of repetitive training; training must be improved and work processes simpliﬁed to enhance current levels of service quality. The training and interpersonal professionalism of staff is especially important because they are often the ﬁrst point of contact with UIC for people inside and outside the university.

To improve the quality of staff services, we need to make UIC a place where people choose to work throughout their professional life with pride, ownership and the knowledge that they are appreciated. To do that, we need to reexamine and reengineer our stafﬁng, systems and structures, and create effective avenues of communication between staff and other constituents of the university. Staff should be a part of the development and implementation of new policies and procedures. Additionally, all units should encourage staff to grow and develop, providing opportunities such as access to classes for professional development.

Critical Issue: Creating a Culture of Mutual Support between Academic Professionals, Staff, Faculty and Students

The variety of roles played by academic professionals and staff are about as broad-reaching as one can ﬁnd in any modern organization. At the same time, staff and academic professionals are often linked by functional and professional interactions. However, even with these latter organizational commonalities, the campus is characterized by a general sense of division—a split between the “academic community” and the staff or “administrative community.” To overcome this and to address some of the dysfunctional differences within staff and academic professionals, the university will, by 2010, have invested (i) in a new system of recognition and reward that will at once address long-term salary compression and inequality between administrative units and the east and west campuses and (ii) in a new system of professional development and (re)training to provide full “access to professional excellence” for all staff. These systems of reward, recognition and retraining should be part of a broader initiative to meet the goal of an integrated, cohesive campus, not only geographically, but also professionally, where the divide between “academic” and “staff” is overcome by a new deﬁnition of “community.”

Alumni

In 2010, UIC’s alumni will be more involved partners in the university community, sharing in efforts leading to UIC development and success, and beneﬁting from increased interactions.

The number of UIC graduates now exceeds 160,000, and we add another 5,000 every year. While 30,000 UIC graduates live in Chicago and 85,000 live in the greater Chicago area, fewer than 18,000 have signed on as members of the Alumni Association. This is not enough. Alumni are important resources for the UIC community—key partners and contributors to the university’s future development and success. Alumni are older siblings and parents of prospective and current students, they are potential employers, they are mentors, they provide connections and networks that can ensure a student’s future success or a researcher’s access to resources. They have the potential to extend the reach of UIC farther into the community.

For all these reasons and more, by 2010, we should make efforts to dramatically increase the number of alumni involved in the Alumni Association. We should nurture them while they are still students as well as after graduation. For example, students and alumni should be invited to share experiences in a comprehensive career counseling program. Making alumni a part of the overall educational experience of our students will produce positive and memorable encounters for all concerned. Reminding alumni that the continued strength of UIC has a direct impact on the value of their degree may provide additional motivation for them to stay involved with the university.

We should also increase the number of ways we give back to our alumni. Along with gaining their active involvement and support in entertainment, sporting and cultural events at their alma mater, UIC should offer them a full array of innovative programs to help them build on their initial education with continuing education and professional development. In short, we should aim to establish UIC as a leader in life-long learning, with our alumni at the center of such extended educational pathways.

Just as the university builds its community of alumni, students and friends through academic programs and civic activities, it will also need to celebrate the accomplishments of this extended community. We need to publicize the national and international accomplishments of our alumni along with those of faculty, students and staff, thus expanding our collective understanding of and commitment to the intellectual and creative excellence of all of us at UIC.

These relationships are particularly relevant in the context of private fundraising. In 2010 we will be concluding a seven-year, campus-wide fundraising campaign, having raised as much as $750 million. This would be more than double the funds raised in the last such campaign. To achieve this level, we must be aggressive in our contacts with potential funders and in our messages about the importance of giving to UIC. Campus leaders, including senior administrators and deans, must consider fundraising to be a key component of their responsibilities, and a culture of philanthropy, both understanding its importance and valuing time spent in pursuit of contributions, must be created at all levels of the university.

A successful campaign of this magnitude will have positive effects beyond 2010. The fundraising infrastructure that will be built during the campaign can remain in place, ensuring a larger and more reliable income stream from private giving on an ongoing basis. Endowments established during the campaign will provide income in perpetuity, provided additional ﬁnancial stability and offsetting ﬂuctuations in state funding.

By fostering “relationships for life” with alumni, UIC will have the opportunity to develop both academic and philanthropic relationships; alumni will become valued participants in the UIC community, and in turn, UIC will be a sustained presence in their lives.

External Constituencies

In 2010, UIC’s friends and supporters, along with extensive networks of government, business, community and research organizations, will be key partners in the university’s development and success.

At one level this entire strategic thinking exercise is about the building and rebuilding of community at UIC. Yet we are also a key part of a larger community, in our role as a great urban institution contributing to the growth and development of Chicago. We are ultimately part of the global community, a network of Great Cities around the world.

Our community should ﬁnally embrace all people who are related to UIC, directly and indirectly, individually and institutionally. This includes people within UIC and its neighborhood, people who are afﬁliated now and have been in the past, people who are interested in UIC’s well-being and in whom we are interested. We need to consciously seek members of our broad community and cultivate their loyalty.

UIC should work harder to make itself well known to all its constituencies, including prospective students and employees, neighbors, and local and global businesses. Once these relationships are formed they need to be nurtured and sustained. We should ensure that these individuals continue to see the value of their relationship with UIC even if they are not a student, an employee, a patient or a partner and continue to provide value to sustain these relationships; this is particularly important for keeping alumni involved and cultivating partnerships with businesses, community organizations and government entities. Such community building requires communication, so it is necessary that we keep all members of the community informed about one another’s achievements.

To welcome and support our partners, we are also required to make the campus accessible and vibrant—a secure, 24-hour environment for learning, teaching and the exchange of ideas. The university must be served by public transportation during weekends and evenings and be fully accessible to all who wish to use the campus and its resources. We need to build a set of programs that include attractive and exciting entertainment, sporting, cultural and educational events that can draw the full range of communities in the city to our campus, and we should offer targeted activities such as summer camps, workshops, and visits by high school and community college students.

The key element of our approach to external constituencies is partnership. As UIC moves to establish itself as a model of a twenty-ﬁrst-century public university, relationships between the faculty, students and programs of UIC on the one hand, and external public, private and academic entities on the other, will be increasingly important. We need to become ever more cognizant of the mutual beneﬁts that come from combining the resources of the university and outside agencies to meet shared goals in the creation, sharing and application of information. We will need to seek these partnerships aggressively, in accordance with our mission, particularly where our reach and impact are limited by ﬁscal constraints.

Every facet of the basic university mission—teaching, research, service and economic development—holds the potential for partnerships. UIC is uniquely positioned to ﬁnd partners committed to access to excellence and to the goals of the Great Cities Commitment. By building on our strengths and vision, and communicating them clearly to the broader community, UIC can develop and strengthen its network of collaborators and expand its contributions as a leading public research institution.

To maintain and expand a position of leadership, UIC will have to develop and advance programs of creative entrepreneurship and collaborative enterprise by building on our tradition of collaborative and engaged research, taking advantage of the skills and talent available in Chicago, and establishing sustained external investment and philanthropic support. Development of donors willing to invest in our mission is crucial, especially as state dollars become a smaller fraction of our budget. Increased ﬁnancial support through these levels of entrepreneurial projects and development efforts will make possible a wide range of activity, including traditional and innovative programs of scholarship and research; programs to increase the diversity and excellence of faculty and students through a fully realized program of fellowships, scholarships and endowed chairs; enhancement of the university’s architectural preeminence through the funding of new laboratories, teaching and residential facilities.

In summary, public-private collaboration will bring entrepreneurial energy to the development of new information and invention. University-community partnerships will identify new resources and new knowledge needed to help UIC meet all aspects of its mission with renewed institutional vitality.