The Imperative of Excellence

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

Drexel University
March 11, 2003

page 6

     We are making important changes in this arena. Yesterday, we received budget requests from the schools and colleges for the upcoming fiscal year. For the first time, these requests must be presented in the context of a four-year academic plan for the future of their unit. For the first time, unrestricted budgets will be considered along with the other fund activities, including restricted funds and sponsored projects, so that we can all begin to understand better the totality of our activities, our product, and the resources available for their support. For the first time, budgets will be provided as lump sum budgets, with the flexibility given to the academic units to reprogram funds to meet their needs more effectively.

     More important, we will begin to manage the academic units in their totality, including revenues and expenditures. To our colleagues at the health sciences campuses, it may come as a surprise that a complete presentation of the academic operations was not considered at Drexel. Revenues, including tuition and discounting, were not part of the financial reporting of the academic units. This is all changing now, and it must.

     There will be important rules that will need to be considered as this new model of management is implemented. First, the deans will need to grow as managers. They must be empowered to be deans and held accountable for their performance. As a university is only as good as the quality and performance of its faculty, it is also dependent on the quality and performance of its deans. They are the leaders of the colleges, and as leaders they will need to reach outside the institution to bring ideas and students, outstanding faculty, money, scholarships, equipment, and new buildings to their colleges. They must also engage their faculty and departments, so that the academic units set goals based on a collective vision, so that changes are made with a common understanding of purpose. Accountability of the deans will be lateral as well. No dean will be able to set policy that directly affects other units, or is not in alignment with university policy and priorities. We must grow to see each other as partners, to encourage collaborations, and to respect and support each other's endeavors. As we develop and implement plans, we must establish clear criteria for evaluating success. For each school and program, different measures will be appropriate, just as in different academic disciplines there are different criteria to measure performance. However, retention and graduation rates will, across the board, be key indicators of our success. Increasingly, these measures are coming to be recognized as important measures of performance across a number of dimensions. If a student leaves, he or she is telling us something. We must all make sure we are listening.

     We must also restructure the way we administer graduate programs and graduate assistantships, our full-time doctoral enrollment must grow in numbers and in quality. I will charge the new vice provost for research and graduate policy with this important assignment. Our graduate students must be regarded as full members of the student body and as such have access to the full array of programs that are appropriate and customary at the best of the nation's research institutions. Their stipends must be competitive. Where there are costs attached to these goals and where there is the national tradition of fee-borne access, we will explore our options.