A special message from President Milton Glick :

April 20, 2007

Dear Colleagues:

I've spent the past eight months engaged in conversation; many people have been generous with their time and ideas. As we move forward, I would like to outline some ideas for our future.

It is my belief that the university would be better served by moving from a traditional strategic planning process to addressing a small set of issues that will set a direction to improve our institution. It is my hope that we can then empower colleges, departments, faculty and staff to each, in their own way, achieve these goals.

Metrics are critical because they further define these priority issues and because we cannot measure our progress without baseline numbers. In the past six weeks, I have shared an initial set of peers and metrics with the President's Council, the Academic Leadership Council, the chairs and directors and the Staff Employees Council.

In these discussions, I invited feedback and the opportunity for ongoing input. I ask for your ideas on ways to best facilitate this continuing conversation. I also ask you to embrace these measures as the first of many steps toward our collective future.

Many of the possible metrics focus on undergraduate student success as this is an imperative. However, I want to also talk about our need to enhance our research and creative activity and to grow our graduate programs.

Although we are small compared to our competition, it is important that we find ways to be competitive on the national stage. To do this, we will have to address space and infrastructure needs.

I have also talked with many of you about the need to build a vibrant campus culture: a culture that makes our campus a community forum for inquiry, discourse, and discussion; a campus that transforms from 8-to-5 to 24/7.

With the opening of the Joe Crowley Student Union this fall and the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center next year, we have the opportunity to cultivate a new campus atmosphere that better engages our students and integrates the University more into the surrounding community.

Also part of this new culture is a continued effort toward bringing the world's greatest minds to campus. In the past year we have hosted one of the country's finest journalists in Frank Deford, one of its most thought-provoking environmental leaders in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and world leaders such as Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto.

Such events must increase in numbers and participation. For our students, the campus needs to become a place where they say, "This is where our life is; we just go home to sleep."