Academic Master Plan, 1997-1999 Preamble The University of Nevada, Reno, is first and foremost a center for scholarship and learning, with responsibilities that extend to the citizens of our state, our nation, and our world. This invests us with an obligation to gather, apply, convey, and preserve knowledge for the improvement and enrichment of human life. The university's mission weaves teaching, creative activity, and service into a seamless fabric. Our instruction includes not only teaching what is known, but also seeking that which is not known and instilling the methods of creative and thorough scholarly inquiry in our students. Our scholarship is both a service and a learning resource for our local and global communities and, as such, is inseparable from our instructional activities. The sum of our activities empowers our students to become educated women and men in society, armed with the intellectual tools necessary to surmount the challenges of today and tomorrow. The university mission has traditionally centered on undergraduate education as the means to express most of these ideals. During its historical evolution, the university's educational mission has expanded to include graduate and professional programs, each of which tangibly enhances the quality of our undergraduate programs. Moreover, that mission itself has changed as the university has come to serve a broader range of our citizens. Our challenge now is to create a university community that recognizes these changes, one that bridges traditional separations between teaching and research, between faculty, staff, and students, and between the world within and the world outside our campus. Our planning for the future springs from an understanding of where we-- our University and our state--have come in the last decade, and what the next decade is likely to bring. Nevada's explosive population growth has not simply increased the number of students we teach; it has also raised issues of economic diversification and demographic and cultural diversity that the University is uniquely situated to address. Because our growth will continue well into the next century, we must define how our University will meet the demands and reap the opportunities posed by a student population far greater than our current enrollments. We possess strong foundations on which to build, thanks to several developments of the last ten years. The core curriculum has placed critical thinking, mathematical, and writing skills firmly at the heart of a University of Nevada, Reno, education; its maturation allows us to consider further initiatives to enrich the undergraduate experience. Our concurrent maturation as a research institution, whose sponsored projects have tripled in less than a decade, has made us an economic engine for the state and a vital source of inquiry and knowledge. Beneath both these developments lies a faculty far different from the university faculty of ten years ago. More than half of our faculty have come to the University within the last six years, and new hiring over the 1995-1997 biennium will increase this proportion. These new faculty come to the University from the nation's most prestigious institutions, with innovative concepts in teaching and creative new models of scholarly inquiry. In community with experienced colleagues and students at all levels, and in partnership with the larger world outside the University, they make this a defining moment for the University of Nevada, Reno. This plan offers our vision for the University's future, and our goals for the end of this decade in pursuit of that vision. It suggests the framework within which we will make decisions about priorities and the allocation of resources. Finally, it explores how we will assess the progress we have made. Vision Statement Our emerging theme is that of a thriving academic community--a gathering of people with common concerns, needs, and purpose, dedicated to the ideals of scholarship and learning. In this community, we will strive to create an environment of discovery, an atmosphere of diversity, a forum for problem-solving, and a birthplace of new ideas. As the state's land-grant institution, our concept of an academic community extends beyond the physical environs of the University campus and includes growing partnerships with primary and secondary educational institutions, local and statewide businesses, and government agencies. Thus the University is not an isolated community, but one that occupies a central place in the intellectual, economic, and strategic development of our state. In developing the University community, we will promote educational strategies that recognize the symbiosis between teaching and research and that bridge these activities in creative and stimulating new ways. Specifically, we will enhance traditional forms of instruction by increasing student scholarship through independent projects, by utilizing modern technology as both the means and the object of instruction, and by developing more effective interactions among students and faculty. Beginning with the freshman year, we will emphasize both the development of critical academic skills and the germination of critical thinking within specific disciplines. Scholarly achievement within the student's major will become a primary basis for our assessment of student success. In support of our objectives, we will seek innovative and responsible solutions for the allocation of our resources, both human and material. We appreciate that our success as a center for scholarship and learning depends on the efforts of all members of our academic community, and we will aggressively recruit the very best students, faculty, and staff and value their contributions and commitment to the University's ideals. To accommodate the expected growth in our population humanely, we will work to streamline our administrative structure and to promote mentoring relationships throughout our community. Where appropriate, we will devise technological solutions that improve communication, facilitate instruction and scholarship, and enhance administrative efficiency. Our emphases on research, scholarship, and instruction will be central to our partnerships within our greater society. We will expand our connections to local and state educational systems, introducing a K-20 vision that spans all levels of formal education. We will also encourage new connections with our citizenry through the concept of lifelong learning. As a resource for scholarship, we will develop relationships with new industries that promise to diversify the state's economy in the 21st century. In these activities, we will provide real- life learning opportunities for our students, bring additional resources to campus, and help address critical problems and issues facing our communities. Finally, we will value contributions to the University mission that foster such partnerships. Issues and Actions [Note: This section is designed primarily to establish a preliminary structure for the plan. It is by no means a comprehensive catalogue of the issues we should address and the actions we wish to take; it is, rather, a framework for a wider array of contributions. It is important to note that we have distributed three sets of issues--outreach teaching/research/service, diversity, and technology-- across the structure, as they are part of each of the larger categories herein.] In envisioning the University of Nevada, Reno, as a center for scholarship and learning, we ask three fundamental questions: --What will take place in the University in the 21st century? --Who will populate the University in the 21st century? --What will the University look like in the 21st century? What Will Take Place in the University I. Formal instruction. With the maturation of the Core Curriculum, the quality of the major and graduate curricula will become a primary focus. The major and graduate curricula need to prepare their students to think critically, to solve problems, and to function in the diverse world outside the university. In the coming years, programs and departments will be asked to educate more students. Therefore, they will assess whether they are using resources most effectively and utilizing the talents of other curricula. The first four objectives below address the issue of enhancing the major curricula; the subsequent objectives address other issues involving formal instruction. Action: We will strengthen the rigor of the freshman-year experience, (1) within the current core courses and (2) where appropriate, in new department- and college-specific courses designed to introduce students to the methodologies of their intended or prospective disciplines. Both of these will better prepare beginning students for the expectations of their upper-division work. Action: We will continue the schedule of program reviews within departments, using these reviews to enhance the major curricula. Action: We will also assess the program-review process itself, in order to determine (1) its effectiveness in enhancing departmental programs and stimulating the solutions to problems identified in the reviews, (2) the desirability of maintaining a five-year schedule of reviews, and (3) the relative importance of flexibility in the schedule, given differing departmental schedules of action and other accreditation reviews within some disciplines. Action: We will devote funds to send faculty members to discipline- specific conferences, with the mission of attending sessions on teaching; those faculty members would then make presentations about new approaches to teaching in the discipline. Funds for this endeavor could come, in part, from funds currently devoted to sending faculty to non- discipline- specific conferences on education in general. Action: We will establish a review process to identify and provide resources to courses that need low faculty-to-student ratios to facilitate learning. Action: We will continue to support interdisciplinary programs, and will house them whenever possible within departments or colleges in order to provide consistent, discipline- based administrative oversight and assessment. Action: We will provide the technologies necessary for instruction: this equipment is both a teaching tool and the object of instruction. Action: We will continue to monitor and increase the rigor of the core curriculum. II. Informal instruction. Academic experiences outside the classroom and laboratory are central to students' life at the University. Ideally, these experiences will expose students to a diversity of individuals, at all levels within the University community as well as in areas outside the University related to their academic work. Action: We will develop mechanisms to expose freshman students to their selected or prospective disciplines. Action: In consonance with the increased rigor in the core curriculum, we will provide increased numbers of assistance and problem-solving sessions in these courses. Action: We will continue to improve our mentoring at all levels, cognizant that mentoring bridges chasms between segments of our population. Thus we will encourage not only faculty mentoring of undergraduate students, but also graduate students' mentoring of undergraduates within academic disciplines. Action: We will promote internship programs that link students from specific majors to educational experiences outside the university. III. Scholarly and creative activity. Our mission here is integrative: we seek to deepen the understanding, among all groups within the University as well as among those outside our campus, that scholarship and instruction are inseparable within our mission. Action: We will promote undergraduate research experiences, thus further strengthening the major curricula, bridging divisions between teaching and research, and affording students the opportunity to engage in creative, original thinking. We will do so in the following ways: 1. We will allow a senior thesis in the major to satisfy one of the capstone requirements. 2. We will facilitate qualified undergraduates' enrollment in graduate- level courses. 3. We will establish a competitive undergraduate research grants program, which will provide travel, equipment, or other necessary seed money for thesis projects. Currently scholarships for undergraduate research are available through Student Services; an expanded program would ideally involve funding and coordination of both the Associate Vice President for Instruction and the Associate Vice President for Research. 4. We will recognize students' achievement in several ways: a. through an annual undergraduate research fair for display of projects and results. The research fair will showcase students' work to the larger community; we will work with the middle schools and high schools to encourage their students to attend the fair. b. through awards for outstanding undergraduate researchers and their faculty and graduate-student mentors. c. through the creation of a university journal that will publish outstanding research. Action: We will consider travel support, which is a key component of research activities, a part of the cost of a state-supported faculty position. Therefore, we will increase travel support for conferences, scholarly activities, and professional development above their current levels (generally a portion of the airfare to one conference annually). Action: We will expand the Junior Faculty Research Grant program to allow larger grants for deserving projects. Research resources will also be made available to senior scholars as needed, in the absence of a senior faculty program for research grants. Action: We will make available additional funds for visiting scholars and external speakers for departments, in order to stimulate both faculty and students. We will also aggressively seek to hold professional academic conferences on our campus, and support departments that organize such efforts. Such efforts will make us truly a center for scholarship larger than the confines of our campus. In all of these efforts, we will encourage community attendance and participation. [ Action: any actions related to outreach research belong here, including reward structures and assessment.] IV. Service to the university and the community Who Will Populate the University Clearly, the population of the University of Nevada, Reno, will increase over the next decades. Rather than discuss this increase in general terms, we must define who our expanded population should be. I. Students. Our students will come to UNR directly from high school, from Nevada's community colleges, from colleges and universities outside the state, and from many years away from school. In order to achieve the goals defined for our instruction, we must work to raise the academic standards of our university and to convey those expectations to our students, prospective students, and larger community. A. The first element of this process involves examining the ways in which we bring students to the University. Action: We will advance a centralized university effort, and will encourage individual departments and programs, to communicate in the middle and high schools our requirements for admission and the prerequisites (skills and knowledge) for student success. Action: We will conduct ongoing assessment of our admissions standards, in the contexts of growing enrollments and of our rising academic standards within the curriculum Action: We will maintain communication with departments at our sister system institutions in order to ensure equivalent basic content and rigor of articulated courses. Action: We will increase funding and recruitment activities to attract top students from Nevada and surrounding states to our University. The size of the Honors Program will keep pace with the number of qualified students that we can attract, because these students establish a mark that helps to raise the academic standards of the University. We will place special emphasis on high-quality students who contribute to the diversity of our university community. Action: We will make graduate fellowships consistently available for departments and programs with active graduate programs. A certain number of fellowships will be available each year to make offers to top students early in the recruitment process. These objectives will require additional teaching assistantships to be provided for many departments. Action: We will develop improved recruiting materials to assist us in these efforts. Action: We will assess our progress toward present goals for diversifying our student body by the year 2000. B. The second element involves student retention. Many students who leave UNR without graduating do so within their first two years. This situation often results from financial exigency, inadequate academic and career guidance, and isolation from more senior students. Action: We will place particular emphasis on increasing scholarship money to improve access and encourage scholastic achievement. As part of this effort, we will implement scholarship policies that encourage increased participation in the University community. Action: We will develop programs that provide freshman and sophomore students increased contact with senior students, as academic mentors who can introduce them to the academic expectations of the junior and senior years and to career opportunities in their major. Action: We will assess the success of the Degree Audit system in improving student advisement. II. Faculty: The University should continue to seek the highest-quality and most diverse faculty possible. Our goal is not merely to bring these faculty to UNR, but to provide them with the tools they need for success in instruction and scholarship: a critical mass of top-notch colleagues, continuing currency with research and teaching methods in their disciplines, adequate space, staff support, and equipment. Action: We will include start-up packages competitive with those in a scholar's discipline as part of authorizing new hires. Start-up moneys, the seeds for hiring and retaining a successful faculty, should include funds for necessary instructional tools and equipment as well as necessary research materials. Action: We will allocate faculty positions with reference to several criteria, including instruction, research and creative activity, and service. As scholarly activity becomes increasingly important in the education of our students (in undergraduate research), allocation of resources must take a perspective broader than faculty-teaching equivalents. Action: We will assess our progress toward the goals outlined for recruitment of an increasingly diverse faculty by the year 2000. III. Staff: Insufficient secretarial and technical support limits many programs, both in research and in teaching. Action: We will assess the specific needs of each program on campus, to determine where increased staff support is most needed. Action: We will add decentralized, state-supported accounting staff to accommodate the needs created by our progress toward $100 million in grants and contracts. Action: We will create services to assist faculty in research proposal, report, and presentation preparation. Assistance in proposal preparation should be free or at minimal charge. Assistance in report and presentation preparation should be on a charge-for-services basis. Action: As the number of soft-money staff positions on campus continues to grow, we must address the difficult personnel issues surrounding these personnel. We will update personnel policies to allow flexibility in hiring, promoting, and terminating staff positions. Our examination of this issue will include the balancing act between principal investigator rights and employee rights. It will also include the possibility of creating a new category for technical staff, separate both from classified employees and from faculty. IV. Administrators: An expanded University community will likely require increased administrative coordination. Action: In anticipation of the need for expanded administrative services, we will seek to decentralize those processes on campus that would gain efficiency thereby. These processes include the following: 1. The Instructional Enhancement Grants program, whose moneys could largely be distributed to colleges for awarding. 2. The coordination of startup packages for new faculty, currently a process involving excessively intricate coordination among the Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Associate Vice President for Research, and the new faculty member's dean. 3. The process of application and reapplication to Graduate Faculty, which will be accomplished by eliminating that designation. What the University Will Look Like I. The physical campus will remain the hub of its activity. But the needs of that campus will change, given our growth and our productivity. The University operates beyond its official business hours, and will likely expand its hours of operation in coming years. Moreover, our population growth will produce a basic need for more classrooms, offices, laboratories, and most other types of campus settings. The following are the essential parts of that hub, and our plans for them: A. Overall: equipment and physical plant Action: We will incorporate equipment, equipment maintenance and the trained personnel needed for maintenance and operation, and the replacement of obsolete equipment into all funding allocations. We will make more functional the process of shifting equipment unnecessary or obsolete in one field into another field where it can be useful. This applies to every setting where equipment is a necessity: laboratory, classroom, office, library, study center. Action: Cost-saving measures, such as reductions in air-conditioning and heating, will be evaluated in consideration of their overall productivity costs. Action: We will biennally assess the utilization of space on campus. B. Classrooms Action: We will bring all classrooms up to at least a minimum standard conducive to teaching. In so doing, we will recognize that a "minimum standard" means different things in different disciplines, and will include relevant faculty and staff in making decisions about classroom renovation. C. Libraries Action: We will continue to improve the physical collection of the library, as well as access to literature databases, electronic media, and resources at other institutions. D. Laboratories Action: We will update, upgrade, and expand laboratory facilities in the sciences and engineering. Currently, many teaching labs operate with out-of-date equipment, and lab limitations restrict the number of students who can take numerous courses. E. Offices F. Dormitories Action: In continuing to strive for a campus environment conducive to the scholarly interaction of students, we will seek to provide expanded student housing for undergraduates and graduate students. G. Student union/services/activities facilities (including athletics) Action: We will seek to create additional study centers and computer labs on campus. II. The 21st-century academic campus will extend far beyond its hub, embracing other institutions, a variety of settings where we disseminate, apply and gather knowledge, and a new environment defined not by physical space but by electronic connections. These are the central sites of that new campus, and our plans for creating, enhancing, and fostering connections with them: A. Our sister institutions in Nevada Action: We will seek to create partnerships with departments at UNLV that can offer students and faculty on both campuses opportunities not available on their home campus. We will maintain the similar programs that currently exist with DRI. Action: We will engage in dialogues with the community colleges to seek coordinated strategies to use each institution's resources most effectively. B. Distance education classrooms Action: As we expand the number of our distance-education classrooms, we will devise specific assessment mechanisms for the academic as well as the technical quality of classes taught in them. C. The campus of the information superhighway Action: We will set up file servers sufficient to provide access from remote locations to the programs and files needed for research and teaching. Action: We will provide expanded terminal hours on campus, as well as expanded computer labs capable of serving more students. Action: We will provide every faculty member with a computer suitable to his/her needs, and connection to the internet. Unanswered questions, which will need to be addressed as we fill out this document: 1. The allocation of resources. To date, we have not received specific materials about 1995-97 projected allocations, so it is difficult to set priorities for 1997-99. But this must, clearly, be a part of our plan. 2. The questions connected to outreach teaching, outreach research, and outreach service that emerged at the retreat. Specifically, (a) what are the tradeoffs involved in increasing these elements of our activities, and when are those tradeoffs desirable, and (b) what activities lie outside the boundaries of our mission?