Context
Goals
We produce knowledge and we produce powerful, disciplined thinkers. Knowledge originates in the research and scholarship of our faculty and is offered to the world through publications and creative works. Our distinction depends substantially on the impact of this work. Powerful, disciplined thinkers are the fruits of our undergraduate and graduate programs; our distinction here depends on our capacity to attract bright entering undergraduates and transform them into rigorous, creative intellects, and on our capacity to attract talented entering graduate students and transform them into skilled professionals and powerful researchers.
Strength in each of these groups is essential, and inextricably coupled to strength in the other two: we attract and retain outstanding faculty only by offering the opportunity to teach talented graduate students and bright undergraduates; we can attract strong graduate students only by having a distinguished faculty; we can attract the most promising undergraduates only by offering them opportunities for engagement with distinguished faculty.
Our future success therefore depends overwhelmingly on, and is measured by, the strength and distinction of the people that comprise the College. Our plan must ensure this.
Plan Development
Our work started with an assessment of our present state—our strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities before us, and the threats we face. Framed by these circumstances, our plan offers a rich and compelling agenda for systematic strengthening of Arts, Sciences and Engineering.
- Our greatest strengths are
- Strong and distinctive research profile, especially in quantitative social sciences, sciences, engineering
- Distinctive and attractive Rochester Curriculum
- Integration of academic and co-curricular life
- Integration of arts and sciences with engineering in a single school
- Our greatest weaknesses are
- Small faculty size and constrained resources limit the range and depth of research and undergraduate programs; it limits our visibility and reputation
- Paucity of professionally-flavored undergraduate programs
- Lack of undergraduate programs focused on the world beyond the United States
- The greatest opportunities are
- New academic partnerships with the Eastman School of Music, and with George Eastman House; strengthened partnership with the School of Medicine and Dentistry
- Development of professional master’s and certificate programs
- Increased enrollment of undergraduates from abroad
- The greatest threat is
- The adverse demographic trend in New York State, and the northeast generally
The plan results from an enormous amount of work by the faculty and staff. Beginning in late 2005, departments and programs began work on individual plans to strengthen themselves over the next ten years. These plans were reviewed by divisional working groups (humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering) charged with identifying larger multidisciplinary opportunities. From all of this work we identified a set of candidate initiatives of potentially great potency, and during 2006 and early 2007 faculty working groups (several involving faculty from other schools in the University) examined these in detail and recommended how they should best be pursued. Altogether more than a quarter of our faculty were involved in this stage of planning. Our plan was subsequently refined through separate consultations with faculty, with students and with senior staff.