Albuquerque, New Mexico USA
Copyright ©1998 The University of New Mexico.
Comments to: paaffair@unm.edu
Public Affairs Department
700 Lomas NE, Two Woodward Building
Suite 201
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0011
Telephone: (505) 277-5813, Fax: (505) 277-1981
|
Campus News - May 8, 2000 |
Provost Brian Foster says UNM’s strategic plan must be
“inclusive, anchored in the reality of the University’s
resources and be visionary.”
“The most important outcome is to produce a coherent, complicated,
multidimensional view of what the University wants to be and how
to get there that’s realistic in the light of our resources,”
he says. It will also be a plan that is built upon the University’s
existing strengths.
Foster says he expects the strategic plan will be unveiled sometime
within the next year. “Several of us have been talking about
how we would structure a kind of central coordinating committee
for the planning process and get the right kind of balance of
different perspectives on that committee.”
The central committee, he says, should not be one on which “people
come in and advocate for their own particular piece of the University.
We want people on the committee who can bring different perspectives
to a University discussion. It won’t be a huge committee,
maybe a dozen or 15 people, but it will be a very inclusive process.”
“All kinds of stakeholders in the University will be involved
in the process in different ways,” Foster says. The process
will include representatives from the Albuquerque campus, the
branch campuses, community, students, faculty and staff. “There
will be various committees that will do position papers and focus
groups and all kinds of things as input to the plan but, in the
end, it’s going to be the central coordinating committee
that actually brings all of these disparate parts together and
crafts a plan from them,” he says.
Foster is working to identify potential members to serve on the
strategic plan’s central coordinating committee. “The
one part of the timetable that’s clear is that we’d
like to get this committee appointed and charged, if at all possible,
by the end of the semester so that it can have a running start
in the fall,” he says.
He says he does not foresee “one of those endless processes
that rolls on for two or three years. We are going to have a
plan sometime in the next year. On the other hand, it will be
a living document so it will never be completed in the ultimate
sense. It will always be a work-in-progress, but there will be
built into the plan an honest and tough way to evaluate progress.”
The plan will have to be tied to the University’s resources.
“I don’t think you’ve got a plan if you’ve
got a wish list that doesn’t have anything to do with your
resources. The plan has to be a real plan….It’s going
to be anchored in the reality of our resources,” he adds.
Foster says one of his observations has been that there already
has been much “really good, high-quality planning done by
smart, dedicated people thinking in very sophisticated ways about
strategic things in the University. The problem is there hasn’t
been any kind of process to wrap it all up into a coherent institutional
plan.”
“Where we’re going to go depends upon where we are.
One of the things I think is so wonderful about this university
is that we have some really high peaks of excellence. And, those
are very important points of leverage for advancing the University’s
stature in higher education and advancing our abilities to do
the kinds of things we want to do to serve the State of New Mexico,”
he says.
“If we choose areas that articulate with these real…international,
pre-eminent points of excellence, then we can be competitive with
the very best. I think we’ll see in our planning a lot more
thinking of that sort.”
The planning process will also consider new approaches to current
major issues, such as the improvement of the University’s
retention and graduation rates, at both the undergraduate and
graduate levels.
In addition to the strategic planning process, also high on Foster’s
agenda are matters concerning UNM’s Extended University.
“The mode of delivering instruction off-campus is going
to be important for several reasons, including how we think about
graduate centers and degree-completion programs at branch campuses,”
he notes.
Foster says the “big topic” of extended university is
“going to become a very big feature of higher education.
What we don’t know yet is how it fits in with the rest of
the University, but we’re not alone. Nobody else does either.
Everybody else is struggling with those issues and it’s
very important that we be in the national discussion, partly because
that national discussion is going to shape the competitive environment
in which we’re going to be.
“We’re going to have to be able to go into a market
for higher education delivered outside the university campus and
compete with other schools that are after those same students.
We have to think about what that means in terms of the services
we deliver, the programs we deliver and the ways we deliver them.”
Foster says his office is already receiving applications for the
new position of Vice Provost for Research, a position that will
report to him. The search has started and he is hopeful that
the position will be filled by January 2001.
Additionally, he says he plans to open a search for the position
of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in the fall. “We
will have an interim dean in the meantime,” he says. Current
Dean Michael Fisher recently announced he is leaving UNM July
1 to fill a vice presidency at Trinity University in San Antonio,
TX. “Michael Fisher is a very, very big loss for UNM,”
Foster says.
| The
University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico USA Copyright ©1998 The University of New Mexico. Comments to: paaffair@unm.edu |
|
Campus News Public Affairs Department 700 Lomas NE, Two Woodward Building Suite 201 Albuquerque, NM 87131-0011 Telephone: (505) 277-5813, Fax: (505) 277-1981 |