While the strengths of the UW are remarkable, we at the University of Washington must take responsibility for “facing and solving our own problems,” said President Richard L. McCormick during his annual address to the University Oct. 7.
“We cannot simply blame the outside world or assume that if ‘they’ only knew what we were really doing here, more support and dollars would automatically follow,” he told the gathering of faculty, students and staff in Kane Hall.
McCormick offered four areas for “change at the core of the University”: stronger links between teaching and research; a strengthening of core disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences; the UW becoming a “true” three-campus university; and the expansion of the UW’s partnership with K-12 education.
The President applauded the many successes at the UW, noting that the UW provides “superior educational opportunities for the brightest young men and women of the state and for many from beyond its borders.”
He cited the record amount of research funding awarded to UW faculty—more than half a billion dollars last year—as a clear demonstration of the quality of the UW professoriate.
He also noted that all four UW undergraduates nominated for last year’s Goldwater Scholarships won the award. “These are the nation’s most prestigious and competitive scholarships for students in math, science and engineering,” he said.
Turning to the challenges facing higher education and the UW, the President was concerned about the lack of financial support in the Legislature. “Higher education is failing to benefit from the current economic boom,” he said. “Our state is investing far too little in the resources that will ensure a future of opportunity and economic development.”
McCormick also made a pledge to defend diversity on campus. “The UW must continue to assert the essential connection between diversity and academic excellence. We must also work harder to embody that principle in our own student body, faculty, staff and curriculum. Among several initiatives now under way in this area, none is more urgent than the effort to improve the recruitment and retention of minority faculty,” he said.
In making his proposals for change in four key areas, McCormick acknowledged that “choosing new paths may come at the cost of abandoning some old ones.”
A top priority, he said, is to forge strong links between discovery and learning. The President advocated more experiential learning for all students, such as laboratory research, student internships, service learning and creative endeavors.
“Such an approach would focus more on active learning in communities, and less on the illusory goal of transmitting comprehensive knowledge,” he said. “Right now, 24 percent of our graduating seniors report they have had some experience in research. Why not 50 percent?”
A second Presidential initiative is directed at the arts, humanities and social sciences on campus. While there are many outstanding faculty in these core areas, “these are not the disciplines, by and large, where our top-ranked programs are found,” the President said. “We need to do better.”
One model for change is the Center for the Humanities, which brings an interdisciplinary approach to both teaching and research and reaches out to the community. The center recently received an anonymous, $5 million endowment gift to expand its work.
“Finding resources will not be easy, but the first step is to put these crucial disciplines much higher on our institutional agenda than they have been for many years,” McCormick said.
Another Presidential proposal puts more emphasis on balancing the three-campus UW system. McCormick noted that over the next 15 years, UW Tacoma and UW Bothell will receive almost two-thirds of all UW enrollment growth. By 2015 they will enroll a quarter of all UW students.
“Becoming a three-campus university does not mean homogenizing the three sites. On the contrary, it means building campuses with complementary strengths and objectives, and making sure that each campus benefits from developments at the others,” he explained.
The President sees more interaction between the campuses, drawing on each other’s resources, where appropriate. “Many students, by the way, are already creating their own kind of integration by taking courses at more than one UW campus,” he said.
A fourth initiative is the UW’s participation in the statewide system of public education. The University cannot afford to be an ivory tower. “We need to think and act as an integral part of that system,” he declared.
McCormick wants the UW to do more to strengthen pre-college education and improve the links between community colleges and the UW. For example, he said the UW already holds summer institutes for school teachers in 29 math, science and technology programs. These programs will be the nucleus of a major new initiative, the K-12 Institute.
The institute, with support from Boeing and other businesses, will bring together people, ideas and resources to forge a “high-quality, ‘integrated curriculum in science, math, and technology” across the state.
The President remains optimistic about the future of higher education, as long as it meets the challenges at the end of the century.
“When institutions like ours have stepped up to new challenges and met new educational needs and improved their responsiveness to social problems, the American people have reinvested in colleges and universities. That can happen again—if we make the right choices and changes at the core of our work.”