The Imperative of Excellence

The Provost's 2003 State of Academics Address (cont'd)

Drexel University
March 11, 2003

page 5 

     We also owe our students quality advising. We must continue to support effective advisement by staff advisors, but we must strengthen the role of the faculty as advisor and mentor. Every faculty member who enters the academy with tenure will be expected to advise and mentor students. After all, isn't that why Mark Hopkins sat on the log rather than stand at a rostrum? Being a professor is more than standing between the student and a blackboard. The faculty must become the primary advisors of our students.

     I would like to suggest to the leadership of the Faculty Senate that we work together to engage the challenge of making quality educational processes part of the daily work of academic affairs at Drexel University, and that together we begin a year of self-study to explore the state of the art in academic quality processes. It is a critical failing of higher education as an industry that quality is such an elusive concept, and that the quality of a university is in the public's perception defined by the quality of entering students, not by the value provided to them during the years that they are in college. Even while at the direction of the President and the Board we strive to increase the quality of the student body, as measured by SAT and other scores, we must also engage the question of quality of our faculty and academic programs.

     Over the next five years, the task will be to address issues bearing on the quality of our course offerings — as befits a top-tier university. In this regard, it is important to notice that while new courses and programs are always needed to meet the demands of the changing workplace and world in which we live, too much change too quickly can frustrate our ability to perfect courses and programs that are a mainstay of traditional higher education. We must create a stable atmosphere in which it is possible for faculty to discuss meaningfully how their courses have matured from year to year; and we must encourage and support our faculty to deepen and refine their areas of specialization, to keep up with and advance the states of their respective arts, sciences and technologies, and to reflect as much in their teaching. This is a part of our obligation to faculty development.

     I also challenge the faculty to continue our leadership as an institution that dreams of and implements new ways of using technology in education. We were the first to put a computer in the hands of every student and we were the first to make the wireless network a utility of the academic community. Let us break the mold again. Next month I will announce a Task Force for Technology Enabled Education to be led by Professor and Gordon Prize winner Eli Fromm. Let's take our role beyond one of making technology a utility and invent ways to supercharge and transform our curriculum and the ways in which we interact as scholars and students within the boundaries and outside. Drexel's destiny is to be first in this important area.

     The next area of change concerns budgeting and planning. We have begun major changes in this area that will give greater responsibility and accountability for the management and leadership of the schools and colleges to the schools and colleges themselves. In the past, we have allocated unrestricted budgets to the academic units. Their responsibilities were largely to spend resources within very strict parameters, and within tightly defined budget categories. In addition, tuition revenue generation was principally the responsibility of enrollment management that would "deliver" students to the schools.