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Prepared Remarks Easy-to-Print
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Speech to the University Senate
December 2, 2000
Ed Ray
Executive Vice President and Provost
The Ohio State University
Academic Excellence and Constancy of Purpose
Over the last three years, when I have been introduced formally
to people, I have been asked one question repeatedly: What does
a provost do? One explanation that has been suggested to me goes
as follows: it is the job of the president to give speeches and
not think deeply and it is the job of the faculty to think deeply
and not give speeches. The job of the provost is to make sure that
presidents and faculty do not get confused about their roles in
the university. The provost is supposed to make sure that the president
does not think deeply and that the faculty do not give speeches.
By that definition, I fear I have failed badly. Fortunately, we
have a president who thinks both deeply and well and a faculty that
generally chooses conversation over speeches.
The last year has been an unusual one in several respects. We
anticipated problems that did not occur and did not anticipate problems
that did occur. We spent a lot of time and effort planning to do
things we did not get done and we surprised ourselves with some
of the things we did get done. And, through it all, I believe we
have positioned ourselves to take advantage of extraordinary opportunities
on behalf of the university and the people of Ohio.
One of the biggest challenges we faced a year ago was the Y2K
problem. However, the turn of the calendar here was a non-event
and a lot of the credit for that goes to Jim Davis, Dan Allen, Mike
Veres and many other colleagues. We also avoided problems implementing
the new procurement and general ledger information systems. Brad
Englert, Bill Shkurti, Eileen Strider, John Ellinger, Helen DeSantis,
Greta Russell and many others deserve much credit for the smooth
implementation of these systems and for the upgrade of the human
resource system.
Two problems that we did not anticipate were the indecision regarding
how the State will address the De Rolphe case regarding the funding
of K-12 education in Ohio and both the occurrence and the divisiveness
of the CWA strike. Uncertainty regarding the disposition of the
De Rolphe case continues to obscure the budget picture as we approach
the next biennium budget process. And, even recognizing that the
rhetoric can get overheated in a strike environment, the mood and
actions during the strike served as stark reminders of how much
work we have to do if we are serious about creating a genuine community
here for all of our faculty, staff and students.
Three areas in which we planned to get things done but did not
reach the finish line involved the Academic Plan, the Diversity
Action Plan and Budget Restructuring. On other occasions I have
noted that if we are to have an honest and open conversation of
substantive matters on campus before we move forward, we cannot
put the process on a clock. The dialogue has to continue until we
are comfortable with the directions we choose.
While we have had elements of academic planning for a number of
years and Leadership Agendas to guide annual strategic planning
for several years, the effort to develop an academic plan, which
began about 18 months ago, was the first effort, to my knowledge,
to develop a university statement of purpose that included both
the rationale for the plan and an explanation of the context within
which we operate as a state land-grant university. When the draft
of the plan was distributed a year ago, we were told that we had
a good idea that was badly executed. Fortunately, many of you contributed
through countless committee meetings, several retreats, and other
means to help us to sharpen the focus of the plan on academic excellence,
limit the number of priorities and facilitating actions to a manageable
number, provide estimates of both expected costs and revenues, and
develop measures with which we could begin to assess our progress.
The Diversity Plan Committee produced a first draft of the Diversity
Action Plan almost one year ago. Fortunately, the committee had
the good sense to continue deliberations until the members felt
they had something concrete to share with the university community
and, fortunately, the rest of us took a good deal of time to provide
input and support to help develop the current Diversity Action Plan.
I believe it will serve us well for years to come. Carole Anderson,
David Williams and all of the committee members deserve our thanks
for their extraordinary efforts, and the university community deserves
credit for contributing to the effort.
Last year, Bill Shkurti and I distributed an update on where matters
stand with respect to budget restructuring that was not called budget
restructuring nine and we deferred for one year implementation of
changes in the budget process so that they would not coincide with
the HR upgrade and the implementation of the procurement and general
ledger systems. We have recently distributed a document that addresses
commonly asked questions regarding budget restructuring and it explains
how we will implement changes in the budget process beginning in
FY02. I believe that we have relented to the will of others and
we are calling the latest document budget restructuring 10. We are
using the time afforded by the delay in implementation of budget
restructuring to assess pilot programs in several colleges this
year.
Our surprise with things we did get done in the last year is less
a matter of having concluded activities unexpectedly than it is
with the quality of the results. A year ago we were seeking new
leadership for the Office of Research, the Health Sciences and our
College of Medicine and Public Health, our College of Education
and the Office of the CIO. Over the last few years we have had many
discussions about the challenge to Ohio State University to match
the research performance of our aspirational peers. We have worried
about how we could prosper amid the challenges facing academic medical
centers. We have accepted a key role for Ohio State University in
working with the P-12 system to improve education at every level
in Ohio, while we searched for new leadership for our College of
Education. And, we have recognized that we are moving too slowly
and too timidly to position Ohio State to be among the leaders in
the use of instructional, research, and distance learning technology
in higher education. But, in bringing Brad Moore, Fred Sanfilippo,
Donna Evans and Ilee Rhimes to Ohio State, we have managed to bring
extraordinarily talented leadership to each of those critical areas.
To sum up, I believe that the primary consequence of what we did
and did not accomplish in the last year is to have positioned the
university for extraordinary progress this year. We have implemented
information systems that support us rather than torment us. We developed
an academic plan to guide our strategic drive for excellence in
all that we do. We completed a Diversity Action Plan that should
aid us greatly in creating a diverse community at Ohio State and
a clearer sense than ever of the imperative to get on with that
effort. We have positioned ourselves to implement a budget process
that serves the needs of the academic plan. And, we recruited wonderful
new leadership in several of the most critically challenged areas
in which we must succeed.
Given that backdrop, I want to focus the remainder of my comments
today on what we must do to seize our opportunities in the year
ahead. The President spoke to the Senate at the first autumn meeting
and, as custom would have it, the Provost is invited to speak to
the Senate in December. In his address to this body in October,
President Kirwan spoke with great eloquence and passion regarding
the Academic Plan and our commitment to academic excellence. He
explained why it is crucial for the state of Ohio to have one of
the leading public universities in the world and the strategic role
that such an institution could play in advancing the economic and
social well being of the people of Ohio. He advanced the unique
case for The Ohio State University in fulfilling that role and explained
the 14 priorities and several facilitating actions that we must
pursue in implementing our Academic Plan.
My purpose in coming before you today is not to repeat what has
been articulated so effectively already but rather to continue a
discussion that we began when I first spoke to the Senate as Provost
in March 1999 and in the process explain how the Academic Plan,
the Diversity Action Plan and budget restructuring support each
other in our effort to make Ohio State one of the world's truly
great universities. In moving from vision to action, it is critical
to be clear about next steps. I think that one of the jobs of a
provost is to do that.
THE ACADEMIC PLAN
When I spoke to the Senate in March 1999, I said that our ability
to achieve our goals would be determined by how we answered three
questions. How effective are our planning efforts? How can we best
use the resources available to us? And, how do we best organize
ourselves for success? I said the effectiveness of our planning
efforts would depend on our ability to set short-term and long-term
priorities in support of our goals, to establish accountability
for taking action and to benchmark the degree to which we are successful.
Last year, I indicated that the three most important things that
we can do to make The Ohio State University a leader among public
teaching and research universities are to focus, focus and focus.
I also noted that the degree of our success would depend upon the
extent to which shared governance is reflected in shared commitment
and shared accountability among administrators and faculty. Today,
I would add to those observations that whether or not we can attain
our goal within the next twenty years will depend upon whether or
not we can maintain constancy of purpose in our efforts to implement
the plan.
The Academic Plan, as presented to you by the President, is more
than a simple compilation of recommendations from previous reports.
It is important to remind ourselves, as President Kirwan did in
his Senate address, that the priorities and facilitating actions
contained in the Academic Plan are matters that have been studied
and discussed extensively within the university for a number of
years and that continue to call for discussion. However, the Academic
Plan is unique in its articulation of the purpose, values, goal
and vision for the university, in its explanation of the strategic
role that Ohio State University can play in the economic and social
progress of the state, the nation and the world, in its clarity
about the resource requirements and funding prospects for the next
five years and, in its listing of specific benchmark measures against
which we can estimate our progress each year.
The Academic Plan reflects an understanding of the terrain we
must traverse during the first five years of perhaps a twenty-year
journey. Each year we will have to review where we have been and
where we now stand and look five years out again. In that sense,
the Academic Plan is a dynamic document that will change as we learn
which strategies do and do not work and what the unanticipated challenges
and opportunities are just beyond the horizon. The constants are
our purpose, our values, our goal and our vision. And, the pursuit
of academic excellence is at the heart of every strategy we pursue.
But, how do we put the Academic Plan into practice? Each priority
and facilitating action will require a clearly defined process for
implementation, a timeline for action, an understanding of who is
responsible for moving the agenda forward, the availability of financial
and other resources, and a regular means of assessment to ensure
accountability and success. The Office of Academic Affairs has begun
to put together a matrix that includes those elements for each of
the fourteen priorities and several facilitating actions. As one
would imagine, many of the priorities and facilitating actions require
review and recommendations from senate committees, deans, vice presidents,
staff, students and faculty at large.
For example, with respect to facilitating actions, President Kirwan
has written to Susan Fisher, as Secretary to the Senate, asking
her to contact appropriate committees of the Senate and the faculty
of Arts and Sciences to begin discussions about reviewing the GEC
and providing recommendations regarding the proposed shift from
quarters to semesters. And, each time I have come before the senate,
I have challenged us to decide whether or not we are prepared to
define workable rules of engagement to consider the optimal size
and composition of our colleges.
Furthermore, Larry Anderson, Chair of the Senate Steering Committee,
has written to each of the Senate committees to solicit their suggestions
regarding matters contained in the Academic Plan that speak to their
areas of responsibility. And, more generally, I have talked to the
Senate leadership about an appropriate oversight committee to ensure
that changes implemented in carrying out the Academic Plan appropriately
reflect shared governance responsibilities. In short, putting together
the "work orders" to accompany the Academic Plan will be a collaborative
effort. And, I hope that task can be completed by the end of Winter
Quarter.
The need for collaboration on the Academic Plan is fundamental.
First, such collaboration is essential if shared governance, commitment
and accountability are to have any meaning. Second, unless the Academic
Plan becomes a common good for all of us, it will not sustain us
in attaining our goal of becoming one of the world's truly great
universities. We are striving to reach a goal that could well take
us twenty or more years to realize, so we must define a process
to maintain constancy of purpose in our effort. Presidents and provosts,
advocates and nay-sayers will come and go in the next twenty years.
The Academic Plan can be the mechanism for sustaining an institutional
ability to stay the course and reach our goal. But it cannot serve
that purpose if it is not the common property of the entire university.
At this point, it is difficult to predict how much of the additional
state resources called for in the plan will actually be available
in the coming biennium. Whatever the amount of additional state
resources, we need to be prepared to continue to move forward. A
strategic academic plan is useful, even in the best of time, and
essential in the worst of times.
THE DIVERSITY ACTION PLAN
President Kirwan and I have had a number of opportunities in the
last few months to talk with various groups on campus and elsewhere
about the Diversity Action Plan. In the course of those discussions,
we have often heard that the university has had a number of diversity
plans in the past and that somehow they have ended up on shelves
collecting dust. So, the question people ask is why has that been
our history and why would we expect anything different this time?
I have tried to explain our lack of follow through based on my personal
experience that I believe might generalize to the university. In
simplest terms, because I look the way I do and am who I am, issues
of diversity and community can never be as immediate and constant
for me as they are for women and minorities and others who feel
marginalized. The imperative to act and to persist in promoting
a learning environment that is inclusive and supportive can never
be as intuitive to me as it is to those who feel excluded, and under-valued.
I can get distracted by any number of real and significant issues
and lose track of a diversity agenda for long periods of time with
no sense of lost momentum or appreciation of the imperative for
getting back to diversity issues. That is not the case for women,
minorities and others on this campus.
However well intentioned I might be, however well intentioned
this predominantly white institution might be, there has been a
lack of constant attention, a lack of everyday reminders, a lack
of constancy of purpose that makes it possible for the best of plans
to get put aside to collect dust. It is essential that none of us,
whether it is intuitive or not, lose track of our diversity agenda.
So, when the President and I speak to groups about the Diversity
Action Plan, we emphasize that it is an action plan. We point out
that we have begun to take action this year to change the landscape
for diversity - to constantly keep diversity issues prominent at
Ohio State. Among other things, we have initiated the President
and Provost's Diversity Lecture Series, begun planning for the Multicultural
Center that will be housed in the Ohio Union, provided funding to
hire faculty to create an ethnic studies program, and initiated
an effort to establish an interdisciplinary, inter-college, Institute
for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in the Americas. We have redesigned
the faculty hiring assistance program, commissioned an Affirmative
Action Committee to develop strategies to promote a diverse community
on this campus regardless of how the legal issues play out, established
the President's Council on Women's Issues. Judy Fountain, Director
of The Women's Place, will develop a process to select members of
the Council during Winter Quarter. We required Deans and Vice Presidents
to develop agendas for advancing diversity within their units and
we are appointing a Diversity Council to monitor and report annually
on our collective efforts to advance diversity on this campus.
In a sense the Diversity Council can serve an important role of
constantly reminding us where we stand with respect to our agenda
for diversity and community. And, it can enable us to sustain the
constancy of purpose that we will need to keep this important matter
from drifting off center stage. The Council can help college and
academic support units develop diversity action plans with realistic
goals against which to measure their performance and progress each
year. And, the Council can remind all of us each year to remain
attentive to our problems until we have solved them.
The Office of Academic Affairs is working on the "work orders"
to accompany the Diversity Action Plan - just as it is doing so
with the Academic Plan. For our Diversity Action Plan to be successful
it is critical to identify actions to take, processes to follow,
responsible parties, timelines for action, resource requirements
and evidence of progress. The effort to put such a matrix together
will require conversations with deans, vice presidents, senate leaders,
faculty, staff and students. The effort to build a truly diverse
community here at Ohio State where all of our faculty, staff and
students can reach their fullest potential is a day-in and day-out
effort that will take many years. Unless the Diversity Action Plan
becomes a common good for all of us, presidents and provosts will
come and go, those who are too privileged to recognize their privileged
status will prevail, the goal will elude us, and we will wonder
years from now how this effort failed too. My office will work with
the Diversity Council to finalize those "work orders" by the end
of Winter Quarter.
It is important to note that key elements of the Diversity Action
Plan are priorities within the Academic Plan. These are complementary
and not competing agendas. Shortly after President Kirwan was designated
to be the next president of The Ohio State University, he spoke
to a group at the Faculty Club and expressed his firm belief that
this university could attain academic excellence through diversity.
Still, our greater challenge is not in defining a common path to
academic excellence through diversity but committing ourselves every
day to stay the course.
Over the course of the next year, colleges and academic support
units will be asked to develop their own diversity action plans.
Many of you remember the Affirmative Action Plans that were developed
and soon forgotten in the late 1980s. Those plans focused almost
exclusively on numbers and percentages of women and minority faculty,
staff and students within each unit. Pool problems are real in many
disciplines and opportunities to fill vacancies are not always readily
at hand. The narrowness with which success was defined in those
earlier plans contributed to inflated and unrealistic goals, cynicism,
and virtually assured their ineffectiveness.
The Diversity Action Plan for the university should serve as a
model for all the plans to be developed within colleges and academic
support units. The goals include the hiring, retention and promotion
of a diverse faculty and staff and the recruitment, retention and
graduation of a diverse population of undergraduate, professional,
and graduate students. But the Plan includes much more to keep diversity
issues in the limelight. The Diversity Action Plan articulates the
need for seminars, lectures and discussion groups on diversity issues,
the need to include courses in the curriculum that reflect the academic
standing and scholarly significance we attach to diversity, the
need to work with the P-12 sector, and the need for social and cultural
activities outside the classroom that promote learning, understanding
and a sense of community. In short, the Diversity Action Plan identifies
a number of ways that any academic or support unit could contribute
to a better understanding and an improved climate on this campus,
and to making long-term progress in reducing the pool problem.
Unit diversity action plans should have goals for the representation
of different groups as markers of whether or not the myriad of diversity
activities they are engaged in are actually creating a more diverse
environment for them and the larger university community. But, there
are many activities that each unit could engage in that will help
all of us make this campus a more inclusive and supportive place
for those who currently find the climate chilling. We do need recruitment,
retention and advancement strategies but also, we need to improve
the climate on this campus for women, minorities, and others who
feel unwelcome, marginalized and under-valued. Every academic and
every academic support unit should be able to develop initiatives
that contribute to that effort.
BUDGET RESTRUCTURING
We have been talking about budget restructuring for a long time.
That is one point that both critics and supporters of change in
the budget process would agree on, and I hope they would agree too
that the discussion has been frank and open and that significant
changes have been incorporated into the proposed budget process
in response to that conversation. As we move forward there are two
broad sets of issues we must address. First, how will base budgets
be established? I have made it clear that base budget reallocations
will not be formula driven, that changes in base budgets will be
made in an orderly fashion over several years, and that the process
for setting base budgets would be open and consultative.
Throughout the discussion of budget changes, Bill Shkurti and
I have made it clear that we view the budget process as a tool to
support the goals of the University. That point has been difficult
to advance in the absence of an academic plan in the last few years.
Now that we do have an academic plan, I am quite comfortable with
having my decisions regarding base budget adjustments evaluated
in light of the goals of the Academic Plan. I will be meeting with
each Dean during December and January to indicate how the individual
college base budgets will be adjusted over the next few years. Each
college will be expected to submit a plan to me in the spring that
indicates how base budget adjustments will affect the individual
departments and/or schools in the college.
The second basic issue to be addressed in the budget restructuring
process is: how will new net revenues attributable to a college
be distributed? Now that we have an academic plan, we should be
able to move quickly to determine which common activities should
be funded centrally and which ones should be funded locally. I have
asked those with responsibility for initiatives such as graduate
student support, honors and scholars, and indirect cost recoveries
to provide me with specific proposals by Winter Quarter. How programs
get funded must be consistent with incentives that support the objectives
of the Academic Plan, and decisions must be made by spring.
The college plans for budget allocations in the new budget system
will be expected to include a clear indication of how new net revenues
generated within a college will be shared with the schools, departments,
and/or divisions within the college that generated those revenues.
If the budget process is to help us to achieve our academic goals,
there must be alignment among the financial incentives to all academic
units.
I have told the Deans that decisions about which initiatives should
be funded centrally and which ones should be funded at the local
level will determine whether the distribution of new net revenues
between the center and the colleges will be closer to 60/40 or 80/20.
To date, we have talked generally about a 75/25 split in new net
revenue, with the larger share going to the college. Whatever the
final distribution of funds, it is critical that the division of
new revenues is known in advance and that the rules for distributing
those funds are simple. That need is just as true within the colleges
as it is between the center and the colleges.
There are a number of important issues that need to be resolved
in order for us to move forward with budget restructuring. I have
mentioned just a few of them this morning. Although we need to proceed
carefully, we need to move forward.
The successful implementation of the Academic Plan will require
a number of strategic decisions to redirect resources within the
university, including central investments in extraordinary senior
hires, support for faculty and staff compensation and career development,
the seeding of multidisciplinary centers and programs, and other
initiatives outlined in the Plan itself. Budget re-basing is an
important undertaking but only one of a number of ways in which
we will be required to redirect resources if we are to be successful.
The most powerful contribution that budget restructuring can make
to the implementation of the Academic Plan is by providing positive
and significant incentives for the creation of new courses, programs,
and creative works and for the reduction or elimination of activities
that simply do not meet our institutional needs. For the Academic
Plan to be successful, we must restructure our current patchwork
system of resource allocation into something that is more focused,
more flexible, and more clearly aligned in support of our academic
goals.
SUMMARY
I have reviewed the odd twists and turns of the last year and
how they have both positioned us to make great progress on behalf
of the University this year and reminded us, sometimes painfully,
that we have much good work to do. The effectiveness of our efforts
will depend critically on our ability to develop the work orders
that should accompany the Academic Plan and the Diversity Action
Plan, to adopt these plans as common goods within the institution,
and to align the budget process to support our academic goals. However
the current course of events may go with regard to our goal of academic
excellence, community building, and securing the resources and organizational
changes we are considering, I do want to close by noting how proud
I am to be part of a university that is willing to address such
difficult issues vigorously and with the shared vision of making
Ohio State one of the world's truly great universities.
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