STRATEGIC DIRECTION ON PREEMINENCE
Provide an environment that cultivates and supports activities of global
preeminence and impact
I. Global preeminence and impact.
II. The local impact of global preeminence.
IV.A Institutional organization
IV.B Intellectual community
IV.C Rewarding excellence
IV.D Providing resources
IV.E Providing support functions
STRATEGIC DIRECITON ON PREEMINENCE
I. Global preeminence and impact
Advancement and stewardship of mankind’s store of knowledge are at the core of the university mission. By definition, this forces us to strive for global preeminence and impact. We are driven to discover, understand, and express that which has not been understood before, across both the physical and the aesthetic worlds, to distill and record the wisdom of those who have gone before us, and to pass this experience and knowledge on to future generations. These are empowering goals.
These are also the goals of all distinguished universities; the road to preeminence and impact is crowded and there is much jockeying for position. Quite clearly, preeminence has to be built area by area – it will not happen by fiat, or by external forces, it will happen only as we struggle to achieve and grow. It is then appropriate to ask: What are UNM’s strategic resources? Where do we have an advantage on which it is possible to build toward preeminence? What will be necessary to get there? What is necessary to maintain a position once it is achieved? Will we even recognize when we have it? We attempt to address some of these questions in the following. By necessity, this is an incomplete roadmap. There is no formula for preeminence. There is only trial, error, correction, retrial, improvement, error, and so on, ad infinitum.
In the course of the strategic planning process, several lists of UNM strategic advantages have been put forward. The following is a synthesis of those lists. These strategic advantages give us directions in which we can unite to seek global preeminence and impact. Importantly, these advantages are sufficiently broad to span wide swaths of the university and, we believe, sufficiently powerful to give real impetus to our efforts to achieve excellence and impact for UNM.
Faculty Quality: Recruiting and retaining outstanding faculty is a vital and ongoing process that is fundamental to the development of a distinguished academic reputation for the university. Preeminent faculty are viewed as individuals whose works are of such outstanding quality that they impact in a formative manner all levels of societal thoughts and actions. Attracting such high quality faculty to a university is based upon the presence of recognized areas of strength, effective and progressive leadership, and a vibrant vision with the recognized opportunity for professional growth and development.
Distinguished professors within the senior ranks are fundamental to the development and maintenance of academic strength and quality within the university. Programs within the university are designed to retain quality faculty by maintaining salary increments, recognizing and rewarding accomplishments, limiting non-academic obligations, maintaining infrastructure and support systems, and sustaining a vision of faculty growth and development.
Student Quality: Linked to the goal of developing internationally prominent programs is the necessity of implementing recruitment, admission and retention programs that attract and support students who are eager and prepared to learn and to contribute to the intellectual life of the university. Students of high quality will come to the university because of its recognized programs, diversity of studies and culture, scholarship availability and value of earned degrees. Students of particularly high academic abilities will be provided learning opportunities within the honors program that allow intellectual growth and academic preparation that is consistent with programs offered at the most demanding institutions of higher learning.
Graduate students are an important factor in attracting and retaining good faculty. The ability of the university to attract high quality graduate students is determined by the presence of recognized areas of research prominence. To be effective contributors to society, it is recognized by the University that graduate students must obtain learning experiences in the ethics of acquiring and applying knowledge. Students graduating from our programs must be independent thinkers who are prepared to compete successfully on a national and international basis. This is accomplished through coupling students with distinguished faculty mentors.
Research Quality: The generation and communication of new information is the hallmark of university research. As a Doctoral-Extensive Research Institution, the University places a major focus on cutting-edge research and its impact on the external community. Research opportunities should be an increasing part of the undergraduate education curriculum that function to enrich the student-learning experience and the graduate’s impact in society. Strength of research is sustained through partnerships across the University, with National Laboratories and other research institutions worldwide. Faculty research productivity is sustained through research-focused study leaves, programmatic research initiatives, peer and administrative support, and maintenance of a cutting-edge research resonance throughout the university. Central to the research program is the quality of graduate and postdoctoral students whose creative works are fundamental to the generation of new knowledge. It is through the faculty-mediated products of these individuals that the University gains global stature and preeminence.
Special note should be taken of the opportunities afforded by focused interdisciplinary activities. Much exciting research lies at the boundaries of disciplines and the University needs to provide mechanisms, such as centers and other cross-disciplinary structures that enable and encourage formation of research teams across disciplinary, college, campus (main and Health Science) and institutional boundaries. Research centers are examples of how faculty entrepreneurship, program synergy and partnerships can coalesce into effective research foci. The stature and success of research centers is an autocatalytic model for creating new centers of emphasis throughout the university. Faculty expertise and distinctions in these centers is a natural resource for the quality mentoring of faculty during their professional growth and development. Most importantly, research centers and cross-disciplinary initiatives encourage faculty to think and function outside of traditional disciplinary boundaries.
Education Quality: Research and education follow a common path at the university whose creative product is learning. As a result of the close linkage between research and education, the university supports a rich learning environment that is a derivative of the research and scholarly activities of its faculty and the desire and dedication of students to acquire knowledge and its application. The university contains a healthy mix of students that are afforded numerous course-of-study areas that accommodate either a broad-liberal or focused-specialty education. In all cases, the university is dedicated to providing a learning atmosphere that utilizes highly effective and dedicated faculty, current support technology, accommodating facilities, varied learning modalities, and learning-assistance programs. Distance and WEB-based learning is also of importance to providing educational opportunities through the extended university community. Providing students with resource materials through the library’s print and electronic holdings are fundamental to their academic and creative works. Information technology (IT) will continue to be updated in order to meet student needs for expanded resources.
II. The local impact of global preeminence.
This section relates to Strategic Direction #2: Apply the University’s education, research and service capabilities to advance the interests and aspirations of New Mexico and its people; and Strategic Direction #6: Foster the responsible, effective, strategic, accountable cultivation of human, financial and physical resources.
Preeminent programs within a University ignite the spread of excellence in at least two ways: they serve as role models that challenge other programs to reach beyond their limits and dare to be excellent, and they create and nurture opportunities for development within the University and within the state that would not otherwise be available. A preeminent program serves both as beacon and as catalyst.
We all enjoy being associated with and contributing to excellence. As this is written the Lobo Women’s basketball team is getting ready to play for the NIT championship, a first for UNM. The Pit is totally sold out, setting an all-time attendance record for the woman’s NIT tournament. The team and their coaches are to be commended for this performance. Win or lose, they certainly know that they are contributing to UNM and to New Mexico and the community is demonstrating its appreciation. This preeminence and impact are good for the program, for the school, and for the participants.
Within itself, a pillar of excellence is a magnet for engaged students and innovative faculty, both of whom are attracted to the potential for outstanding learning and research opportunities. These students and faculty in turn attract others who are equally dedicated. The intellectual barometer of this community thus continues to rise. At the same time, the reputation of the program elevates as success begets more success. Funding opportunities increase as agencies recognize the potential for continued superiority and choose to back a winner. Preeminence begets preeminence.
Across the University’s terrain, these pillars of excellence serve as role models for programs that may not have the resources or strategic advantages to achieve preeminence, but that can aspire to be better and to raise their standards. In marketing terms, this is called "elevation by association." By associating with and emulating a proven winner, a program can learn to build an image that is dynamic, positive, and exciting. Students are attracted to the aura of excitement; faculty are intrigued by the challenges and opportunities to be part of building a solid reputation and achieving success. Thus does the program prosper having been shown the way by a pillar of excellence. Preeminence begets preeminence.
As this cascade of success rises, the entire University will prosper. It will build an overall image that promises growth, innovation and superiority. Its stature in the academic community will rise and serve to attract better students and more prominent faculty. This enhanced reputation becomes a source of pride for alumni who feel it adds value to their degrees. It likewise attracts donors who wish to place their resources with an institution that promises a positive return on their investment in terms of successful students and renowned programs.
The institution’s reputation with policy makers, from local and state to federal, will evolve from that of a consumer to a builder of resources. Of course, a reputation for boot-strapping success may be a mixed blessing, for it gives lawmakers the excuse to be stingy with their support since the institution seems to be doing well on its own. This is why the communication to the policy-makers and their electorates of the University’s role within the state and its positive influence on both the citizenry and the local economy is so very vital. The goal is to have UNM’s reputation within the state evolve to that of leader, enabler and problem-solver.
An added benefit to an institution’s aura of success is that an enhanced reputation among its peers encourages invitations to partner, thereby opening up new realms of research and educational opportunity. It is a fiscal fact of life that funding agencies look more kindly upon collaborations among institutions. Preeminence begets preeminence.
The University of New Mexico is in the enviable position of being the only research university proximate to two major National Laboratories that are increasingly interested in seeking out the University for partnership opportunities. Historically, these opportunities have been mainly in the physical and engineering sciences with main campus, and in heavily technology oriented aspects of medicine with the Health Science campus. What is important is that the increasing frequency and scope of these interactions are examples of the positive feedback referenced above. Preeminence begets preeminence.
Federal funding agencies look with particular favor on research that is programmatic and interdisciplinary. Many eminent research universities are unable to take full advantage of opportunities for biomedical applications of high technology research by the physical separation of their undergraduate and medical campuses. UNM has an integrated campus, making it possible for main campus researchers in the physical, chemical and engineering sciences to apply their expertise to achieve excellence in areas like bioengineering, neuroimaging and genomics where the School of Medicine has strong funding opportunities and conversely for School of Medicine faculty to achieve national recognition through interactions with centers of excellence on main campus. In addition, psychology, sociology, communication, anthropology, and other social sciences are involved with School of Medicine faculty in integrated research projects within multidisciplinary research centers such as CASAA (Center for Alcohol, Substance Abuse and Addition).
Such cross-campus partnerships can have strong impact. As an example, School of Medicine Faculty in Infectious Diseases have teamed with Biology faculty on main campus to become the preeminent site in the world for research on Hantavirus, a rodent-borne virus that causes human Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome. This disease was first observed, diagnosed and treated in New Mexico. Far from being an isolated disease, it has now been recognized throughout the Americas and UNM serves as the world-wide center for diagnostic testing, innovative clinical treatment, molecular analysis and for studies in the wild on the natural history of the virus and its host. Interdisciplinary CDC and NIH Center grants have been awarded across campus for this preeminent research and investigators continue to visit UNM from all parts of North and South America to understand this killer disease. It is worth noting the obvious: four state borders come together in the area where Hantavirus was first discovered. UNM responded in the most comprehensive and preeminent way to this new threat, and the benefits to the University are evident and continuing. Preeminence begets preeminence.
Opportunities are not limited to cross-campus activities or to local partnerships. Global impact leads to global collaboration. There are increasing opportunities for cross institutional partnerships between multiple universities. A clear example is the DoD multi-disciplinary university research program (MURI), which each year holds a national competition for the largest university research support opportunities available from the DoD. Teaming between multiple institutions is a clear requirement; UNM has been host to several awards and has been partnered in several more. Preeminence begets preeminence.
Partnerships are valuable with industry as well as with other universities and with government. Each sector has constraints associated with its role. The universities are underfunded and tasked with many disparate responsibilities; research and investment in the future is only a small part of government’s role – one often neglected in the press of other urgent priorities; global competitive pressures are increasingly focusing industry on near-term objectives. Together, we can be more successful than in isolation. Only by finding ways to support each other without compromising our unique and important roles within society can we reach preeminence. Academia must hold to the time-proven ethics of openness, accessibility, and intellectual rigor; but a great university cannot hold itself aloof from the application of knowledge to society.
The value and success that cascade from a preeminent program lead to more opportunities for the state and region. In his 2001 treatise on the role UNM plays in the economic development of New Mexico, President William C. Gordon states that major research universities play a critical role in economic development across the country, because virtually every aspect of the research endeavor has the potential for impacting local, state and national economies. He summarizes the range of economic benefits as follows:
Programs of preeminence are the engines that drive a research university’s contribution to the local and state economies.
Given all of the preceding rationale as to why and how programs of preeminence benefit their institutions and their state, it could be argued that UNM should refine its mission toward the nurturing of these elite programs whose impact is wide-ranging and comprehensive. That argument, of course, ignores context and herein lies the challenge of balancing preeminence with access.
The University of New Mexico is a state institution whose mandate is necessarily and appropriately committed to the education of New Mexicans. As summarized in the Environmental Scan, the demographics of the state present the University with some unique challenges.
New Mexico has a significant number of people and groups whose cultures and values have derived from their historic ties to the land and who live chiefly in pueblos, villages or on reservations. Opportunities to participate fully in the industrial and post-industrial economy are limited where these people live. Value in these communities tends to be placed on family and culture and on having the young people stay to work and raise their families. There has not been a long tradition of participation in higher education.
In addition, the well-documented problems facing the public schools in New Mexico result in many under-prepared students entering higher education. The domino effect has been a serious retention problem for the University leading to substandard graduation rates. These have had an adverse impact on UNM’s academic rankings which even pillars of excellence will be hard-pressed to overcome.
With this challenge comes opportunity, for it is a fallacy to believe that a preeminent program reaches its level of success only in spite of diversity and access. There are preeminent programs that focus on diversity and access issues and these can truly be models for the University as a whole. New Mexico is in the vanguard of these "majority-minority" issues, success in dealing creatively with these issues would make it a model for the rest of the nation.
III. Metrics – agreeing on and supporting excellence.
Preeminence and impact have to be widely recognized both internally and externally to provide their benefits. It is of little value for us to declare our own preeminence. Benchmarks to other activities across the nation and the globe are necessary to establish credibility, and are easy if we are truly preeminent. Many of these benefits stem from a widespread recognition of the contributions and of the impact – which can only be realized if objective external measures are provided.
Benchmarking also allows UNM to benefit from the creativity and experience of other institutions in dealing with similar issues. Faculty and staff at even the richest institutions will protest that they are woefully underfunded. As a school with one of the fastest growing contract and grant research budgets, UNM is new to the ranks of large research institutions. Others have been there before us and have dealt with the growing pains. There is much to learn from their successes and failures.
In order for UNM to judge that which is truly preeminent across all of the many roles of a large university is a difficult task. Much more difficult, but also much more important, is judging newer programs that have the potential to reach for preeminence. But these judgments must be undertaken if we are to sustain and grow activities of global preeminence. Inevitably, resource allocation must be based, at least in some measure, on informed judgments of potential for preeminence if we are to move forward.
Within the research realm, the broader academic community has established many different measures that assist in these tasks. These include: publications in peer-reviewed journals; presentations at prestigious national and international meetings; citations (giving a measure of impact on the broader outside community); patent awards and licensing for more application oriented technical areas; activities and leadership positions in national and international professional societies; competitive contract and grant awards; honors and awards (society fellowships, nationally competitive prizes); external review panels, etc. It is important not to take these too literally. Just as in the current debate about the value of the Scholastic Aptitude Test as a predictor of undergraduate success, it would be inappropriate to rely on any single number to quantify the impact of a research program. Rather it is the impression across a broad range of measures that must be used. To a large extent, "you know it when you see it," but you will only see it if there are some measures that make it rise above the crowd.
Critical acclaim and audience response serve much the same functions in the arts and performance activities of the university. The excellence of art and humanities scholars may be indicated by publications, juried awards and exhibits, and membership and activity in prestigious societies.
It is clearly true that peer groups are sometimes slow to recognize novel contributions or are even antagonistic to innovation and creative endeavor that has yet to be accepted into the disciplinary mainstream. The university should offer a home for all pursuit of knowledge, both evolutionary and revolutionary, but it must insist on rational pursuit of that knowledge, and on evidence of contributions and of impact.
IV. Creating a climate that cultivates and supports preeminence and impact
IV.A Institutional Organization
Departments are the central organization unit for faculty within the University. It is in this context that faculty have much of their scholarly and education linkages with colleagues of similar background and interest. The strength and recognition of a department is based upon the distinction of its faculty. Therefore, the department retains the major responsibility for hiring and developing outstanding faculty upon which the preeminence of the University depends. The department is also the vehicle whereby tenure and promotion are acquired, and the main venue whereby faculty are mentored by an excellence-produces-excellence paradigm.
Additionally, many of the growing areas of research in which the University of New Mexico could gain preeminence are at the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Areas of growing importance such as nanoscience, high-performance computing, and various aspects of biological research, require contributions from a variety of traditional disciplines. These could include, but are not limited to, all aspects of engineering, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, and medicine. Other directions would include various aspects of the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts in addition to the physical sciences and engineering. Particular examples include many of the issues facing the Southwestern region of the United States and high-performance computing. This is not universally true since several areas in which the University of New Mexico already has a national reputation, such as photography, do not involve disciplines outside the primary area.
In order to support the establishment of areas of preeminence and then sustain them it is necessary to provide appropriate resources and a suitable administrative structure. In addition, the administrative structure and resource base need to be flexible enough to allow for controlled evolution. Furthermore, processes need to be in place for the University to continually assess the future viability of the area and of our associated activities. This would include the intellectual creativity associated with the endeavor and its role in the meeting the University’s strategic plan.
Currently, several areas of preeminence exist within the University of New Mexico. Some of these are associated with the strategic, Class III, Centers while others reside within a department or college. Many UNM research foci have evolved from our unique environment, i.e., the Southwest. UNM has established three classes of centers, varying in size and levels of institutional investment. The largest are the Class III centers of which there are currently four: the High Performance Computing Education and Research Center (HPCERC), the Center for MicroEngineered Materials (CMEM), the Center for High Technology Materials (CHTM) and the Center for Alcohol, Substance Abuse and Addiction (CASAA). The directors of these centers report to the Vice Provost for Research and are expected to support interdisciplinary programs with substantial levels of outside support. The Class II centers, for example the Latin American and Iberian Institute (LAII) also report to the Provost’s office (Associate Provost for Academic Affairs for LAII), but are generally somewhat smaller in scale. Finally, the Class I centers are wholly housed within colleges. There are established criteria for migration between these classifications.
Before proposing any changes to the current system, it is worth noting that the University of New Mexico has achieved degrees of preeminence several areas, both within departments and interdisciplinary centers. Certainly one of the most visible and perhaps most widely known areas is that represented by the Center for High Technology Materials (CHTM). The precursor to this center was originally created in 1983 with five years of funding from the State Legislature and the assignment by UNM of several faculty slots to the center. The first director envisioned this center as an Institute for Modern Optics . As part of his vision, a doctoral degree in optical sciences was proposed and eventually implemented. Subsequent evolution of the center under two visionary and strong directors moved the center into semiconductor research and brought it to its current level of success. This was accomplished because of the vision brought by the center directors, the formation of strategic alliances with industry and Sandia National Laboratories, and the addition of strong faculty and research staff members. The consequence of this growth has been an increase in research productivity and funding, the attraction of graduate students into physics and electrical engineering and name recognition of UNM throughout the country. The optics degree program remained within the Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Electrical and Computer Engineering. Although this program has grown with the addition of several faculty over the ensuing years and is a respected degree program, it is has not reached the level of preeminence that was originally envisioned or that it could have attained.
A second interesting example is the Department of Anthropology and its strong reputation in Southwestern Archaeology. Much of the initial growth in this area was based upon the fact that UNM originally owned Chaco Canyon and therefore had exclusive rights to archeological research in this very fertile arena. Even after the site was transferred to National Park Service, the University retained exclusive rights to perform archaeological research for an extended period of time. These circumstances gave the Department of Anthropology a decided advantage in establishing a preeminent program in Southwestern Archaeology. Furthermore, they were given the resources to attract and often retain distinguished faculty in this field. The establishment of the Maxwell Museum was also an outgrowth of this process and further enhanced the already strong reputation of the Department. This department has continued to retain a strong national reputation in archeology even though many of the conditions under which they obtained preeminence have changed. This has been due to the hiring and retention of quality faculty, the successful pursuit of outside funding as well as the leveraging of strategic advantages. An example of the latter is the Alfonso Ortiz Center which has a $500,000 NIH Challenge Grant to begin programs between the university and local Hispanic and Native American communities. They have also secured funding to build the Hibben Building that will be used for housing museum collections and for teaching.
Both the similarities and contrasts between these examples provide hints as to the organizational structure that is necessary to provide and sustain preeminence in a given area. Furthermore, it must be noted that future directions in which attempts will be made to attain preeminence will probably require contributions from a variety of traditional disciplines and will, in some instances, require crossing college/school boundaries.
The development of an area of preeminence requires four important ingredients: a vision, key personnel that support and are dedicated to the vision, resources, and an administrative structure that supports and shares the vision. Once an area reaches preeminence, it needs to be self-sustaining with sufficient flexibility and resources to evolve in new directions and/or keep abreast of the field.
Even at the stage of developing a vision or direction, the administration plays an important role. First of all the vision has to be bounded well enough to be attainable and resources necessary to reach the goals have to be obtainable. Furthermore, the commitments that must be made by the University need to be understood and agreed to beforehand. There are several forms that this may take that depend somewhat on the circumstances. Strategic directions, as will evolve from this planning process, will bring with them a commitment to pursue given directions. The process that is established to pursue those goals will require more careful consideration of the commitment of resources in the broadest sense. In particular, the university does not operate in a vacuum. Many possibilities for strategic directions will be coupled to the strategic assets noted in section I, including interactions with the National Laboratories. It is essential that dialogues between the University and the National Laboratories be established at an early stage so that complementary goals can be established in critical areas. This process will not only enhance the possibility of achieving preeminence but also possibly avoid ruinous competition. It is also essential that the North and South campuses work together as much as possible rather than act as competitors. Again, this requires some high-level agreement to set in place mechanisms for exchange of information and to establish mutually agreeable goals and operational policies where possible.
Personnel are the most important assets in establishing areas of excellence. This requires hiring or identifying internally people with both established reputations and the ability to build a program of national/international stature. These people must be given recognition within the University and also the time and resources to establish a program. Furthermore, one person is not sufficient to either establish or sustain a program with international distinction. This requires a team of people with varying skills and interests and a range of career objectives and accomplishments. A vibrant center or program with a national/international reputation will require not only senior people with name recognition but also a cadre of more junior members on which its future will be based. Since the core of any university based program or center of excellence is the participating faculty, the development of any strategic direction will require the assignment of faculty slots to the project. Under current operating procedures this will be difficult because vacant faculty slots reside either with a department or with a school/college. Although some entities will be willing to contribute a slot or slots to a project, the majority will not. This necessitates that some number of slots be retained at the level of the Provost and distributed at his or her discretion. Also, endowed chairs are extremely helpful for attracting and retaining distinguished senior faculty members. This speaks directly to a more focused and effective development effort to gather needed resources from alumni and private entities.
Although no area of excellence can be established without key personnel, it is also true that an area of preeminence cannot be established without the resources necessary to build and sustain it. As noted in the previous paragraph, some of these funds must be devoted to faculty salaries. Yet, resources include much more. Fiscal resources are also necessary to hire research and other support staff, purchase and maintain equipment, support students, prepare proposals, etc. In addition, space must be allocated and renovated if needed. Although some of the startup fiscal requirements can possibly be met through overhead funds from the Vice Provost for Research office, these are also limited and cannot possibly cover all expenses and do not cover space and other infrastructure issues. Traditionally, some of the costs of operating areas of excellence such as the current strategic centers (category III) are covered by returning to these units a larger proportion of the F&A funds that they generate than is normal. This approach certainly has the advantage of encouraging the center staff to secure outside funding and provides the center with much needed discretionary funds. On the other hand, these agreements tend to be of unlimited duration, thus permanently committing funds that could be used to seed other growth areas. Arguably, if a center continues to make progress towards preeminence, and to bring substantial funds into the University, this reinvestment is appropriate. Both evaluation and sustainment are issues that need to be continually addressed.
Many of the infrastructure issues run into departmental and college/school boundaries. Space is a prime example. This can be less of a problem if the unit is mostly housed within one of the departmental units since issues of space and other infrastructure support are more likely to be a departmental priority. Both the funding and infrastructure issues can be addressed through legislative priorities and/or acquisition of large grants.
The administrative structure necessary to support areas of preeminence are several and varied. The academic programs that should grow out of an area of preeminence are likely to be interdisciplinary and therefore raise a number of issues that have to do with allocation of faculty and staff time necessary to support the programs and apportionment of credit and cost between contributing units. The University has a number of interdisciplinary programs, some of which cross college/school lines. Although they operate in the sense that degrees are granted under the programs, they tend to be limited in their growth potential because they are at the mercy of multiple host departments. The goals and effectiveness of the program are often viewed differently by the different units involved. One approach that has been taken by the University is to grant selected interdisciplinary degrees or areas of study the status of "program." This confers a quasi-department status on the area, but still leaves it at the mercy of the departments who contribute faculty to the area of study. A different solution would be to have true interdisciplinary programs report to the Graduate School or some entity with a portion of each FTE of contributing faculty members assigned to this unit. Also, some number of teaching assistantships should be assigned to each interdisciplinary program as well as some faculty lines.
In the past, funding of successful interdisciplinary units and strategic centers has often relied on large contracts and grants that involve multiple entities some of which are outside the University. This will remain true in the future and is even likely to increase. Unfortunately, the University is not currently able to handle these contracts and grants effectively. Problems include the preparation, review and oversight of large projects in which multiple entities are involved and lack of procedures and policies for identifying and understanding long-term commitments to the institution. There is also a fundamental question of the role of the PI versus the institution in these types of commitments. As noted above, it is vital that the administration seek the advice and counsel of faculty with demonstrated success and understanding of these complex issues in evaluating new opportunities. These are important questions that must be addressed and resolved in consultation with the faculty.
IV.B Intellectual Community
Closely tied to strategic directions #3: Value and benefit from the creativity, innovation, insight, and excitement generated by the many dimensions of diversity that are the essence of the University and the State; and #4: Foster a vital academic climate that engages all elements of our community in an exciting intellectual, social, and cultural life.
The existence of a vibrant intellectual community lies at the heart of any great university. It provides the basso continuo of the academic world, part of the very fabric of the university environment, and represents an implicit challenge to faculty, staff, and students to dream, work, and achieve. In the broadest sense, this community consists not only of the members of the University itself, but the diverse set of people with whom they interact and engage in intellectual and creative discourse: collaborators at universities and institutions throughout the world, the National Laboratories, and industry; the artists and scholars who live and work outside the University’s walls. The notion of intellectual community should not be interpreted exclusively in the narrow sense of a single academic discipline; rather, it extends to the broader intellectual, cultural, environmental and artistic milieu in which our academic community is embedded.
Sometimes, but only rarely, can excellence exist in a vacuum. It takes an exciting and vibrant community to provide the conditions in which important advances can occur. An intellectual community provides the depth to inspire, the resources to achieve, an audience to encourage and elaborate on new ideas, and the breadth and interdisciplinary reach to encourage creative thinking and to cross-fertilize ideas from different areas. These benefits cannot arise without a conscious effort to nurture the existing intellectual community and expand it in new directions. The University can play a vital role in this process by creating congenial venues for fostering cross-disciplinary interactions that transcend traditional departmental boundaries, by recognizing outstanding accomplishments in order to reward excellence and inspire friendly competition among peers, and by providing mentoring and leadership in order to remove barriers to achievement. In fostering an intellectual environment conducive to these highest levels of accomplishment, the University can draw upon existing strengths: a highly-regarded faculty with a growing reputation for research excellence; unique library and museum collections and performance spaces; specialized science and engineering research facilities and Centers; the proximity of two National Laboratories; and the rich artistic and cultural heritage of the State in all its diversity and complexity—with the extraordinary physical setting of New Mexico as its backdrop.
The benefits to the University that derive from a flourishing intellectual community can be straightforward, as in attracting the best and brightest minds to join in the excitement. Sometimes the benefits are not immediately obvious, and are discernable only as the end result of a chain of circumstances: a chance encounter at a faculty club that leads to an all-night discussion; the seeds of a radical idea inspired by a seminar in a new or unfamiliar domain; the decision to turn down a more lucrative faculty position and remain where one can achieve and create in an inspiring and congenial environment. The challenge to the University is to provide traditional forums for intellectual sparks to occur, while encouraging those random, unstructured interactions that lead to radically new directions of thought and their creative fulfillment. A vibrant intellectual community spurs animated discourse and the exchange of ideas. It also provides inspiration, intellectual excitement, and a nurturing environment which can serve as an implicit source of encouragement, support, to students and faculty engaged in the highest academic challenges. It facilitates and encourages interdisciplinary collaborations, the cross-pollination of disjoint fields, and in the best cases, results in new scientific or technical advances, creative works, or centers of excellence that enhance the reputation of the University as a preeminent institution. This process reinforces itself over time by attracting superior students, faculty, and staff, who in turn contribute their own unique knowledge, experience, and abilities.
The creation of several successful Centers at the University, in the physical, biological and social sciences, HPCERC, CMEM, CHTM, CASAA, and LAII, provide examples. These Centers have flourished due to the energy and talents of a small number of exceptional faculty leaders with the courage and vision to see beyond conventional academic boundaries. Another example is our research contract revenue, which currently exceeds $220 million annually, and is among the fastest growing at any university over the past decade. This means that there are many successful faculty at UNM who understand the milieu outside of UNM and have been successful on a national scale. We need to find ways to use these successes to mentor and evaluate new entrepreneurial activities of the faculty. Along with the bright examples of successful investment leading to improved status for UNM, there are unfortunate counterexamples of lost opportunities and quagmires that squander our capital – fiscal, intellectual and political. We need to find ways to filter these out before they grow to this level, using the expertise gained from the successes, without dampening the enthusiasm and entrepreneurism of the faculty and students that must provide for the future of UNM.
Providing effective mentoring at all levels is essential. New faculty must be brought into an intellectual community that provides the resources and the stimulation that induces individuals to strive for preeminence. The best institutions reproduce themselves and breed more of the best. It is key that definitions of success be based and recognized on results and on impact, not on arbitrary academic definitions. Clarity of leadership, from the highest levels of the institution down to individual departments, centers, and even research groups, is equally important in inspiring a larger sense of purpose, and in giving rise to entrepreneurial excellence. Creating this aspect of community requires accessibility, again at all levels of the University.
Many of the starting points for deepening the existing sense of intellectual community at the University are already in place, and have only to be broadened, extended, and integrated. These include public lectures and colloquia, seminars, artist-in-residence and visiting scientist programs, performances and gallery displays, and topical workshops. Such activities foster a feeling of excitement that "things are happening" on campus. Regardless of whether these occasions lead to specific collaborations or joint activities, they provide the opportunity for stimulating new discussions, experiences, and the exchange of ideas outside one’s immediate discipline. The designation of distinctive, beautiful spaces for meetings that span academic departments and schools and bring together diverse parts of campus that might ordinarily keep to themselves, is a congenial mechanism for encouraging "horizontal communication," interdisciplinary collaboration and interaction. The existence of extensive library collections on campus, electronic search and retrieval privileges at the Los Alamos National Laboratory—arguably one of the best scientific and technical research libraries in the world—coupled with unique museum holdings such as those of the Maxwell Museum, allows researchers to spontaneously and effectively pursue new ideas. Cultural activities such as gallery talks, music marathons, outdoor performances, and artistic/crafts demonstrations can draw upon the rich surrounding cultural venue of Northern New Mexico, and provide informal opportunities for exchanges outside narrow departmental constraints. The University community is extraordinarily diverse, and this complex tapestry of backgrounds, traditions, and experiences constitutes a ready-made framework for overturning conventional assumptions and acquiring new perspectives. This rich cultural context is a valuable asset that can be used to shape an exceptional scholarly and creative environment at the University.
IV.C Rewarding Excellence
Recognition of excellence is one of the most important responsibilities of the University leadership. There is no question that overall the University could benefit greatly from additional resources and that our levels of infrastructure support and salaries do not compare favorably with our peer institutions. Much can be accomplished by focusing on excellence and by providing a corresponding reward structure. There should be more University-wide awards to recognize excellence in teaching and academic pursuits. Recognition does not always need to involve direct financial rewards (although such forms of recognition are always welcome) and can take forms such as reduced teaching loads, infrastructure needs (e.g., modern computers in faculty offices), travel to professional meetings, research supplements, and venues for faculty to interact in appropriate academic settings, with themselves and students. UNM needs to create a stable community of excellent scholars and must provide the rewards, tangible and intangible, encouraging entry and continued membership in this elite circle.
There are many different ways of rewarding faculty excellence in the context of creating an environment where the University of New Mexico attains a position of global preeminence and impact. The following approaches, broken into three categories, are presented and described within the overriding theme that the University of New Mexico will only gain global preeminence and impact if it is far, far better recognized from the outside, well beyond the borders of New Mexico.
Faculty and Staff Compensation and Related Issues
The difficult state of faculty and staff compensation at UNM compared with our peers, and, indeed, that of our peers relative to major preeminent institutions, is well documented. Our object here is not to argue for across-the-board redress, but rather to urge the administration to adopt a flexible approach to compensation. Preeminent programs often have opportunities to bring new funds to the institution by their own efforts, through contracts and grants and other mechanisms. Often these funds are used for partial support of faculty compensation and partial or total support of staff compensation. More flexibility to use these funds to reward preeminence and impact could address some, but clearly not all, of the compensation issues. A system of this sort is already in place in the School of Medicine, extension to the entire University should be explored. Today, even when resources are available to pay critical, highly trained staff, the personnel system is unable to cope with market realities, and research programs suffer.
Non-Financial Incentives
Several approaches can be taken to reward faculty achievements and stimulate further faculty efforts. One obvious way is to take a modified approach to teaching loads. Teaching loads at the University of New Mexico are, overall, high in comparison to peer institutions and those of even higher stature. Productive faculty, as viewed in terms of scholarly productivity, quality teaching, and commitments to university/professional service, should be given reduced teaching loads, on a regular basis. In a more general sense, the "productivity" of an academic unit cannot be measured simply by the number of student credit hours generated. This approach, taken time and time again to compare academic units and to dictate the budgets of academic units, is deleterious to and, in fact, directly contrary to the goal of establishing global preeminence for the University of New Mexico. Obviously, the funding formula is poorly suited to the drive for preeminence and impact, and the administration is strongly encouraged to redouble its efforts to work with the legislature to move towards a formula that is more appropriate to a research university.
Intellectual Camaraderie
The University of New Mexico needs a facility that the collective faculty can call their own, where they can interact with one another and with scholars drawn to the University for various purposes and for various lengths of time. The facility needs to include faculty office space, meeting space, modest secretarial support, a comfortable lecture hall with all modern audio/visual capabilities, a common area with a modest beverage/food service, etc. Such a facility can be used for establishing better cross-disciplinary ties among UNM faculty and better connections with scholars at other institutions in New Mexico (e.g., Santa Fe Institute, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratories, School of American Research, etc.) as well as those from outside New Mexico. Again, global preeminence requires positive notoriety. The University needs to develop better means of attracting scholars from different environments and settings, so they can fully recognize and help spread-the-word of the quality of the faculty at UNM and its potential for global preeminence and impact throughout the broader community. This relates back to the previous section on creating an intellectual climate.
We believe that UNM can and must do more to celebrate our collective intellectual and performance achievements; that it should provide more venues for faculty to come together, to learn from and to enjoy each other, and to allow serendipity to work its magic. There should be both formal and informal, social and professional, occasions where faculty from different departments, colleges, and campuses gather with a spirit of collegiality and mutual regard.
IV.D Providing Resources
Resources are a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for preeminence. Resources are intertwined with all aspects of achieving and maintaining preeminence and have been touched on in other sections of this report. Our underlying premise is that activities of preeminence have opportunities to develop resource above and beyond that provided by the I&G budget of the University. Our policies must provide the underlying facilities and support systems that are vital throughout the University, while encouraging the development of outside resources and rewarding their attainment. Only by optimizing our resource base across all available avenues can we achieve and sustain preeminence.
The faculty, students and staff of UNM are its prime capital. By and large, it is the responsibility of individual programs to raise their own resources towards preeminence, beyond those that can be provided by the institution. The strategic advantages outlined in the first section provide opportunity; each program must translate that opportunity into resource. It is the responsibility of the administration to allow, facilitate and encourage this process, and to reward UNM’s successes. Just as we must be vigilant in our relations with the legislature to ensure that success in the gaining funds from outside does not lead to reduced funds from the state, we must be vigilant internally to ensure that success begets success and that good programs can grow into great programs and, eventually, preeminent programs.
Infrastructure is a broad, encompassing term, and from the perspective of support of programs can include, for example: providing up-to-date research facilities, including computational capabilities; providing appropriate technical support staff; and developing an effective Office of Graduate Studies that facilitates the recruitment and support of quality graduate students. To reach global preeminence and impact requires that infrastructure is constantly maintained and improved, to keep up with changing/improving technologies and approaches in education and scholarly pursuits. Again, preeminent programs are expected to develop access to alternative resources from outside the University for many operational needs. The focus of the University has to be on the major infrastructure elements such as providing quality laboratory facilities, on helping recruit quality graduate students and facilitating, not frustrating, their graduate experience, on providing timely and effective fiscal support and oversight, etc.
We are in a globally competitive environment. Globalization means that there are fewer resources and more competitors. It also defines new rules of the game. We must think locally and act globally. In the new Creative Economy, the most important force is the growing power of ideas. In an economy based on ideas rather than physical capital, the potential for breakaway successes is far greater because ideas, like germs and viruses, are infectious. They can spread to a large population overnight; the cost of copying ideas is negligible. This is exactly the university environment that must be protected, nurtured, and funded.
Synergy and ideas from multidisciplinary activities must be encouraged by tearing down old divisions between colleges, schools, departments and the like. Because of globalization and ideas, the definition of Intellectual Property (IP) and ownership is changing. The best that organizations can do is to create an environment that makes the best people want to stay. Advanced societies have gotten so efficient at producing physical goods that most of the workforce has been freed to provide services or to produce abstract goods, that is, data, software, books, music, entertainment, advertising, etc. New competition for academia is coming from industry expanding into Distance Learning, creation of content and ideas. Organizations will have to strike a delicate balance: reward mechanisms, enforce patents, copyrights, trademarks, and non-compete clauses to preserve the incentives to create, but not so much as to suppress competition.
What has the Internet brought us? Definitely it is not just technology. It is more powerfully a new mindset; it is the potential of interacting with other people, that is, people talking with people across geographical, cultural, and time barriers. In other words, access to existing and distributed knowledge. To take advantage of this with we need to be "connected" and have "processing" capability. Thus organizations have created Information Technology (IT) units to provide these tools to its users. Another component is the unit that takes advantages of ideas - a business development unit that is horizontal, multidisciplinary, reaches across boundaries, aggressive, fosters synergy, and is effective, efficient and transparent. This unit is key to the success of any organization. It must promote project identification, partnering and funding to diversify and expand the capabilities of projects. It must be savvy enough to play with in new modes such as "strategic alliances." Strategic alliances (consortia) among academia, industry, government agencies, and international organizations are essential. If done correctly, these alliances improve the profile of its members by increasing the quantity and quality of publications, production of ideas, and participation and organization of international forums. These alliances are also important to promote and raise the awareness on the need to create/enhance ideas, sustainable policies and infrastructure.
How can the generation of ideas be fostered and sustained? Where can resources be found? UNM will have to work across all of these areas if it is to achieve preeminence and global impact. Some are the responsibility of the individual programs, some of the central administration. A more effective sharing of information and aggressive policy of seeking resources is necessary.
Developing countries have special agencies for development: contracts, grants, donations
Traditional organizations: grants, credits to countries (public and private)
Special funds for specific projects. Refinanced as projects come to an end.
Special funds for specific projects until funds are expended.
IV.E Providing Support Functions
Strategic Direction #7 (Develop and sustain effective management systems and academic and student support functions) will likely provide more detail in identifying the support systems necessary for the university. Here we comment on aspects that are particularly important to achieving national and international competitiveness and recognition.
The excellence we strive for is grounded in the realization that we are part of an institutional system run by individuals, departments and management schemes, with differing level of support and functionality. Having to "fight the system" to get routine things done saps energy and enthusiasm from any research or educational endeavor.
In an ideal world, everything should work efficiently. All of the support systems should be effective and appropriately creative in getting tasks accomplished – with due regard for the rules and regulations under which we must live. In an ideal world, no one would try to "beat the system" or bend the rules beyond the breaking point.
Of course, we do not live in an ideal world. UNM has yet to implement many systems to take advantage of advances in information technology to minimize the number of steps to get things done and to integrate and coordinate multiple necessary steps, resulting in redundant data entry points with the potential for multiple errors and missed steps. The state economy and state legislature limits the investment in infrastructure needed for excellence, and often the University administration is unable to convince them otherwise. This problem is not unique to UNM. The University itself has many elements that have the potential for enhancing or inhibiting progress toward excellence. Different levels often demand their own paperwork or role in the decision-making process resulting in duplicated, time-consuming processes.
Many important changes/improvements have been made in recent years and the criticisms are not as strong now as they were as recently as five years ago. This improvement is closely related to the addition of a cadre of good, dedicated managers with a customer service focus. However, there still are many functions that have to be provided multiple times, and at multiple levels, because the systems do not work effectively or efficiently.
Preeminence is hard to achieve and easy to thwart. The university needs to provide support that frees the creativity of its faculty, students and staff. We need to develop an ethic of excellence and strive to help each other to reach beyond where we can go individually. If a culture of reward for excellence and mutual respect is nurtured across the campus, the climate will propel us to excellence. If we fall prey to turf battles and to narrow definitions of responsibility, we will continue to struggle and fail to reach the levels to which we all aspire.