Retention, Research, Reputation

Chancellor Jo Ann Gora
Convocation Speech, September 17, 2003

Introduction

"Uncertainty," wrote psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm, "is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers." Well, this was a year of unparalleled uncertainty. The presidency of the university was questioned, the mission of the campus challenged, our funding undermined.

Despite this uncertainty, we moved forward to fulfill promises made and to chart new initiatives. We held fast to our mission, never wavered from our course, and strengthened our resolve to achieve even greater successes for this campus. We kept our promise to begin replacing the positions lost through the early retirement program of 2002.

We are delighted to welcome to the campus 21 tenure track faculty, a dean of the new College of Science and Mathematics, a dean of the Graduate College of Education, and a department chair in chemistry. These scholars have outstanding credentials. We welcome their enthusiasm for scholarship, their commitment to teaching, and their dedication to our mission. They join a distinguished faculty -- many of whom have received singular recognition this year.

Faculty/Staff Recognition

The outstanding achievements of our community of faculty and staff bring distinction to the educational experience offered by this campus. I would like to share with you a select number of these.

The Los Angeles Times named Creative Writing Program Director Askold Melnyzcuk's book, Ambassadors of the Dead, one of the "Best Books of 2002." History Professor Julie Winch received the American Historical Association's Wesley-Logan Prize for her book, A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten. Professor of Psychology Jean Rhodes was elected a Fellow of the American Psychology Association. Assistant Professor of Nursing Karen Dick was selected as a fellow of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.

Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Anita Miller was named International Advisor of the Year by the Golden Key International Honor Society. Our Distance Learning Video Production Center won the national "Award of Excellence" for Video Production in the 2003 Videographer Awards Competition for their work on the production "First Tuesday" and a national "Award of Distinction" for their work on the production, "A Report from Gavin Middle School on Teen Violence."

Thanks to the fine efforts of Charlie Titus and his staff, for the fourth consecutive year, our Athletics Department was named "number 1" in the nation for community service through athletics by the National Consortium for Academics and Sports.

Furthermore, our faculty were quoted or featured in such national/international media as CNN, PBS, the ABC Nightly News, the BBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, NPR, and Radio Free Asia. Kiplinger's ranked us among the top 100 American public colleges and universities.

We were the only public university included in a study of the economic and social impact of Boston's eight research universities on the metropolitan Boston area. Engines of Economic Growth recognized us for the activities of our faculty, centers and institutes; for the work of the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership; for new collaborations such as the New England Regional Center for Ocean Science Education Excellence; and for our contributions to the Boston Public Schools and the field of green chemistry.

Research/Earmark

What an extraordinary year we have had in research and sponsored projects. Our research funding totaled over $30 million for fiscal year 2003, an 11% increase over the previous fiscal year and an 18% increase in the number of awards. Even more outstanding, the award dollars have increased 55 percent since 2001.

We are excited about our $3 million award from the National Science Foundation to develop a coordinated, self-sustaining, regional IT system. The Boston Area Advanced Technological Education Connections Partnership, known as BATEC, will enable the University of Massachusetts Boston to create courses and pathways that attract diverse student populations to IT careers, provide them with cutting-edge education, and ensure a skilled IT workforce for the Commonwealth and the nation.

Recognition goes to John Ciccarelli, Dean Dirk Messelaar, Dean Philip Quaglieri, Associate Dean Richard Eckhouse, Associate Professor Oscar Gutierrez, and especially to Principal Investigator Deborah Boisvert for bringing together so many different constituencies to build this technology center, one of only four regional centers in the country.

ECOS Associate Professors Robert Chen and Meng Zhou received a $426,785 National Science Foundation grant to study the dispersion processes and biochemical responses within the Hudson River freshwater plume.

Physics Professor GoPal Rao received a $381,824 grant from the National Cancer Institute to study medical image processing using optical fourier technique.

ECOS Associate Professors Zhou and Gordon Wallace and Research Associate Mingshun Jiang continue their work on $362,000 modeling project to study the hydrodynamics and water quality in Massachusetts Bay.

Nursing Associate Professor Linda Dumas received a $728,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration for "Bringing the Best to Nursing," a program to recruit, retain, and graduate high quality minority and economically disadvantaged nursing students.

The William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences received a $325,000 grant from The Rockefeller Foundation to support resident fellowships in the humanities for Vietnamese scholars. This is the 2nd 4-year grant and 3rd overall that the center has received from the Rockefeller Foundation.

This year has had a most auspicious start with the exciting news that Associate Professor of Nursing Carol Ellenbecker has just received an R01 award from the Department of Health and Human Services. This three-year award is for $828,000.

And I'm especially proud to announce that for only the 2nd time in our history, we secured a $1.5 million federal earmark that will allow us to make significant progress in the development of our planned state-of-the-art Environmental Sciences and Technology Complex also known as BEST Park and in the updating of our existing environmental sciences facilities. This funding will enable us to initiate three major projects.

The first advances our planning and design process for the BEST Park complex, allowing us to conduct land surveys and a forensic study of the historic Pump House.

The other two projects are aimed at building two critically-needed core research facilities: a state-of-the-art GIS/GIT laboratory suite that will provide access to the hardware, software and technical assistance that faculty throughout the campus need for their mapping, remote sensing analysis and spatial/temporal analysis of natural and social science data sets; and an advanced Environmental Genomics core facility that will include the newest DNA sequencing and Real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction technologies that can be used to address critical biologically-based environmental questions. The establishment of these two facilities is the first step in our long-term plan to improve the environmental sciences research infrastructure on campus.

New Programs

Our academic offerings are the heart of this institution, and we strengthened them this past year with new programs and structures. Last month, the Board of Trustees approved the Community Media and Technology degree program in the College of Public and Community Service. This program will combine media analysis, technological proficiency, and a commitment to public and community service. A first in the nation, this major responds to employment needs and opportunities in the nonprofit sector and will be in the forefront of establishing national standards and educational certifications for this burgeoning profession, thanks to the leadership and hard work of Professor Reebee Garofalo and Assistant Professor Fred Johnson.

We have just launched the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies that will bring together four graduate programs, four centers, one institute, three endowed chairs, and a $6 million endowment. The school will give prominence to the essential role we play in policy analysis and formulation for the Commonwealth. We also created a separate College of Liberal Arts and College of Science and Mathematics to develop a more dynamic, entrepreneurial, and academically competitive university.

In 2003-04, we look forward to the approval of a new Community Studies major in CPCS, developed under the leadership of Professor Jim Green. This program will offer students a multidisciplinary approach to the study of human communities, their histories and cultures, their identities and values, their institutions and economies, and their problems and prospects. I am hopeful a new Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing will also be brought before the Board for approval. This program will provide outlets for the creative talents of our students through its concentrations in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, among others.

Honors

To enhance the academic curriculum of our Honors program, we added two unique experiences -- one an orientation program on Thompson Island designed to build bonds among our students, the other a weekend experience on Nantucket -- and we welcomed our strongest Honors class ever, with a median SAT score of 1260. We hope this program will grow from its current size of 180 students to 400 students in five years. We are especially proud of the 90% retention rate of the Fall 2002 class and the 97% retention rate of first-year honors students -- our best ever.

Student Awards

Our Honors students continued to win national recognition. For the first time in the university's history, a UMass Boston alumnus was awarded the prestigious Marshall scholarship. The first Marshall scholar in the university system in 17 years, Mark D'Agostino '02 was one of 40 students nationwide given this extraordinary honor. Mark is pursuing graduate study in neuroscience at Great Britain's Nottingham University. An alumnus of UMass Boston's Honors Program, D'Agostino joins a growing group of honors students who have won recognition at the highest level. We are delighted to have produced four Fulbright winners in the last four years, two of these to England, the most competitive of all Fulbrights. What an amazing record of accomplishment Professor Monica McAlpine has fostered among these talented students.

Among the May 2003 graduates recognized for their outstanding research are Computer Science major Sindhura Sunkara whose research paper on pupil dilation will be published in a refereed journal and Biochemistry major Arundhati Undurti, who co-invented an environmentally benign method for "perming" hair, for which the University is seeking a patent. Sindhura was mentored by Assistant Professor Marc Pomplum and Arundhati, by Professor John Warner.

And our student athletes deserve recognition for receiving the National Association of Division III Athletic Administrators award for outstanding community service. In 2002-03, their activities reached 263,403 community residents.

In fall 2002, we welcomed our academically strongest and most diverse class in the last five years. I'm proud to say that our fall 2003 class bested this record with an average high school GPA of 3.0, and the number of fall 2003 applications was our highest ever.

Communication/Retention

While we celebrate our students' achievements and the quality of our entering classes, we must recognize that improving student retention is critical to the University's future. I am grateful to Associate Provost Peter Langer's Retention Committee for its year-long analysis and recommendations to reduce attrition of first-time, full-time freshmen. Under their guidance, we hope to help freshmen develop close relationships with their peers and faculty through linked courses which will create academic learning communities. Students will take freshman English paired with a First-Year Seminar, offered in one of several disciplines, or a critical reading and writing course. These paired courses provide a critical positive learning experience for new freshmen as they make the transition to university academic life.

As we try to improve retention of all students, we know that improving communication is one element of building community on campus. We improved communication with and services for our students this past year by introducing the monthly Campus Community Calendar; the Community Front Page, which provides a daily electronic bulletin board of notices, events, and advertisements; and computer kiosks which enable students to register and check their accounts, among other functions. These efforts help create a more "user-friendly" campus for our students. Starting this semester, we are introducing TV monitors stationed at 14 different locations to provide up-to-date information on campus events and activities.

To see how well we're doing from the students' perspective in such areas as overall satisfaction, satisfaction with campus communication, and satisfaction with the major, we instituted a mandatory Graduating Senior Satisfaction Survey. Students were asked whether they would attend UMass Boston if they had it to do over again, and whether they would recommend UMass Boston to a friend or family member.

The good news is that the initial results of the May 2003 survey show significant improvements from the summer 2002 survey in several key areas: 83% of students say they would attend UMass Boston if they had to do it over again, up from 76% in 2002, and 87% would recommend UMass Boston to a friend or family member, up from 83% in 2002. We are making progress in the degree of students' satisfaction with "campus events and activities," "recreational opportunities on campus," "appearance of the campus," and "how we communicate what we expect of our students."

While we still have a long way to go in these areas, it is important to note that there was statistically significant improvement from the summer 2002 to May 2003 survey because of the concrete steps we took to make improvements in each of these areas. The students reserved their highest ratings for "quality of teaching," "faculty availability to discuss course work," and "overall satisfaction with the major."

These ratings are a tribute to our faculty and their commitment to student learning. It probably comes as no surprise that students reserved their lowest ratings for parking. Believe it or not, we finally have a plan to address that concern. More about that in a minute.

This past year we began a process of analysis and evaluation of student satisfaction with all aspects of University life in order to attack the attrition problem that plagues this University. Part of our strategy was to recruit a new vice chancellor for student affairs. Under Dr. Keith Motley's leadership, this year, we will build a richer, more varied student life experience -- a critical element in our retention efforts. Keith brings to our campus more than two decades experience in developing services for diverse student populations, providing off-campus and other residential life opportunities, improving freshmen retention rates, and linking academics and co-curricular programs to provide an enhanced educational experience for students.

As we seek to improve retention and, subsequently, graduation rates, it is important for us to remember that helping to achieve these goals is everyone's responsibility. Each of us has a profound impact on our students' campus experience through our various interactions with them and through the relationships we form with them as faculty, mentor and service providers. Nothing is more important to our campus' future than reducing the attrition of continuing students. Providing our students with the best possible experience both inside and outside the classroom must be our relentless focus.

Strategic Plan/NEASC

Therefore, I was very pleased to see that focus in the comprehensive Strategic Plan developed by the 50-person University Planning Council, led by Provost Paul Fonteyn and Associate Provost Peter Langer. The plan, as currently drafted, is wide-ranging and broad in scope so that each area of the University can use it as the framework for its actions over the next five years. The University Plan must be buttressed by and provide the framework for college and unit plans. Only by doing this can we truly move forward aggressively to realize our institutional goals to improve learning, increase retention, achieve greater excellence in faculty research, cultivate a student-centered campus life, and increase our visibility in the region.

During the coming academic year, we will begin the process of preparation for an accreditation visit in 2005 by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. As the first step in this process, we will convene a broad-based committee of faculty, staff, students, and other members of the university community to undertake a comprehensive and rigorous institutional self-study. This self-study will be aligned with the University Strategic Plan and will help us identify institutional strengths and areas in need of improvement.

Information Technology

As we develop the self-study, we will point with pride to the great strides made this past year in the area of information technology. We hit the information highway at full throttle. We developed an Information Technology Strategic Plan for the campus, under the leadership of Dick Eckhouse and Charlie Boland, and have already implemented five of its ten recommendations.

We initiated a four-year computer replacement program. We are upgrading the campus network to increase bandwidth from the current technology where up to 40 users may be sharing one 10 Megabit/second line to dedicated individual desktop network connections with speeds of up to 100 Megabits/second, adding greater security and functionality that will take advantage of our new connection to Internet2.

We also updated the older Technology-Enhanced Classrooms to bring them up to the level of the ten new ones completed in January 2002. A month ago, we welcomed our first-ever chief information officer, Martyne Hallgren. She looks forward to applying lessons learned from past experiences at Cornell and other organizations on using standards and service level management to define a unique digital environment that can deliver innovative services required by our students, faculty, and staff.

Physical Plant

The most visible accomplishments of the past year have been those that have enhanced the quality and beauty of our campus' physical environment. It is because you -- faculty and students and staff -- have told me how important the condition of the physical plant is to morale that monies were reallocated to fix roofs, to replace filtering systems for water fountains, to improve HVAC systems, to increase signage, to repaint and refloor classrooms, to wash windows and stairwells, to wax floors, to reupholster seating in Lipke and Small Science Auditoria, and to provide glorious and colorful flower beds and flower arrangements throughout campus -- thank you, Dave Anderson, Bob Kelly, Jim Allen, and so many others.

This past year, the Ryan Lounge, the students' main meeting place, underwent extensive changes and enhancements to give this area a warmer and more welcoming ambiance for the many students who use it to study and to meet their fellow students and friends. Thank you, Melissa Moynihan, for your design.

This year, our campus will open its first new building in twenty years. Despite the many uncertainties of the past year, the Campus Center construction proceeded unimpeded; it may be the only project in the city of Boston that can rightly lay the claim to being on schedule and on budget because of the relentless attention of Stephan Chait.

As the new front door to the campus, this extraordinary structure with panoramic views of the harbor and the city will be a welcoming space for our students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Our students will benefit immensely from the Campus Center which will house all student services, including Admissions, Registrar, Financial Aid, and Bursar, providing a one-stop shopping experience and, ideally, a more "user friendly" environment. It will be the home of student activities and student organizations and the alumni office. The entire campus will benefit because this building will galvanize the sense of community which has been growing on campus and provide an extraordinary setting for events, lectures, seminars, and simple gatherings of faculty, staff, and students.

While budget concerns of the last year stalled the Retrofit process, we intend to move forward with a phased approach. After the Retrofit Committee's review of a draft comprehensive plan, we will make it available to the campus in October. Allowing time for review by the campus community, we will schedule a town meeting where everyone can comment before we move forward.

Another project received a major boost of support from the President's Office with the allocation of state bond funds for capital projects. Twenty-five million dollars plus additional borrowing will enable us to make repairs to the garage, properly and completely. And with the $40 million we have received in the new UMass Building Authority bond issue, we will build a new parking garage in two years so we will be able to close the old garage and repair it without unduly inconveniencing the campus.

Concurrently, we will begin a master planning process as we try to imagine how we will complete the build-out of the campus from now until 2020, including especially a discussion of how we will utilize the 20 acres of vacant land that we own at the north end of the campus. We look forward to the University community's input into this process as well.

The Future

The future holds much promise for this University, and each of us has the opportunity to play a role in securing that bright tomorrow for our students, our faculty, and our staff. If we are to move forward as an institution, however, we must give special attention to three areas:

(1) improving student retention and graduation rates, (2) increasing faculty research productivity, and (3) raising our profile locally and nationally. Our focus on these three R's -- Retention, Research and Reputation -- must be relentless. These areas are critical to our financial viability. I expect all colleges and departments to develop strategic plans that align with the University's Strategic Plan and that show how they will contribute to our success in achieving these specific goals which will be our common focus for the next several years.

In the last five years, our enrollment has gone from 13,481 to 12,719. During that same period, approximately 20% of continuing students did not enroll the following fall and have not graduated or returned later to graduate. We must aggressively stem these losses and their devastating impact on graduation rates and our bottom line. It is one thing to suffer financial losses because of cutbacks in state support. It's quite another to lose literally millions of dollars every year because of a loss of already enrolled students. We must listen to what admitted students tell us about the reasons they do not enroll and the reasons enrolled students leave us. And we must address their issues.

Here is one small example of how we are doing just that. We know from what students have told us that the lack of a residential experience hurts us. Although our efforts to provide some residential housing on campus have been delayed, we have worked this past year to strengthen our relationship with Corcoran-Jennison so that our students' opportunities for off-campus housing in the Harbor Point apartments are enhanced markedly. The fall 2003 semester has seen the number of students who reside at Harbor Point increase 25 percent. By providing "community advocates" to offer cocurricular programming for our students in Harbor Point apartments, we hope to meet their needs for an enhanced sense of community.

I want to compliment both the College of Management and the College of Nursing and Health Sciences for the new initiatives they have developed this semester to increase their students' sense of community. Their efforts have complemented the initiatives Vice Chancellor Kathy Teehan, and her staff, in particular Pat Monteith, have developed for the opening weeks of the semester to help students find their classes and a friend. These are small examples of our efforts to respond proactively to students' desire for an enhanced campus experience. We need to think creatively and proactively how to enhance students' experiences outside the classroom and develop cocurricular experiences that strengthen their ability to compete in the marketplace.

As for our goal to increase research productivity: We obviously have much to celebrate about our substantial increases this past year in both research dollars and the number of awards. Our plan to build upon and accelerate that growth under the leadership of a new vice provost for research and development is an important next step. Yet, even with this good news, we must dedicate ourselves, as our state support lessens, to demonstrate ever more diligently our many contributions to the Massachusetts economy. We are well known for our impact on shaping public policy and have identified this multidisciplinary area as one of our areas of distinction. However, the events of this past year highlighted our need to develop a science and technology strategy that aligns with the economic needs of the Commonwealth.

The state is prepared to make strategic capital investments in science and technology at UMass and other research institutions. Given Speaker of the House Tom Finneran's recent proposal to invest $110 million in science and technology, more and more attention will be given to how each institution's research strengths and capacities align with industry needs and assist the economic growth of the state. As a public institution located in Boston, the city that drives the state's economy, we must respond proactively to these opportunities to be part of the technology road map for science and research investments for the state.

For more than twenty years, faculty in all six colleges and several institutes and centers have been engaged in environmental research, service, and outreach activities. To better facilitate these activities and to further promote cross-campus interdisciplinary collaboration, I am hereby authorizing the formation of the Center for Environmental Health, Science, and Technology (CEHST). The major focus of the Center will be to understand the impact of economic development and urbanization on the ecosystem, human health disparities, and environmental policy.

The two most immediate priorities of the center are to (1) substantially increase the amount of external funding that the campus receives for environmental research, teaching, and outreach activities by facilitating cross-campus, interdisciplinary collaborations; and (2) establish itself as the focal point for all environmental activities on campus, thereby increasing the University's visibility and reputation in environmental and health disparities studies at the local, regional, and national levels.

By increasing our research capabilities in these areas, we will be building on our institutional strengths in the natural and social sciences, as well as our environmentally-linked research in public policy, management, nursing, and the liberal arts, tapping into federal funding priorities of the National Institutes of Health, and supporting Massachusetts industries in bio/ecoinformatics, green chemistry, biotechnology, environmental monitoring and modeling, and geographic information systems technology.

At the same time as we have tried to increase communication on campus, we have made great strides in telling our story to the region and the nation. Our faculty are now regularly quoted in the national and regional media. Our publications highlighting our research and our community partnerships, our monthly research bulletins, and the expanded distribution of the University Reporter celebrate and promote the important work and achievements of our faculty, staff, and students. They tell the UMass Boston story -- and in addition to informing the external community -- are vehicles for engendering pride among the campus community.

However, we must work even harder to raise the visibility and reputation of this campus. Every time a faculty member achieves recognition in his discipline, every time a researcher is quoted in the media, every time a community member is helped by our public service efforts, every time a student speaks highly of her campus experience, every time a state official is influenced by our policy research or our contributions to workforce development, every time an employer is impressed by the quality of our students' education, our chances for increased funding are enhanced and our ability to recruit and retain a diverse and talented student body is improved. Every one of us has a role to play in raising the visibility and improving the reputation of our campus. And we all benefit from these efforts.

I began this morning with a quote that spoke of how uncertainty may provide the impetus individuals need to unfold their powers. That quote, I felt, captured the essence of our work this past year. Despite the uncertainty and media attention that swirled around us as a member of the UMass system, we together called up our extraordinary powers to move this University forward. We were not sidetracked from our efforts to enhance the educational experience of our students, to support the teaching and research environment for our faculty, and to increase even further the already substantial contributions we make to the Commonwealth. Each achievement, each accomplishment made us a stronger, more focused community.

There is, however, one piece of unfinished business that needs to be addressed, and that is the funding of the current contracts. As Chancellor of this campus, I know better than anyone that our collective accomplishments of this past year are the direct result of your individual efforts -- whether faculty, professional staff, or classified staff. Your hard work and dedication to the mission and goals of this institution are among its greatest strengths. I pledge to you that I will work with Interim President Wilson, my fellow chancellors, and our Board of Trustees to seek the support of the Legislature and the governor for this funding so that, at long last, we can deliver to you the financial recognition all of you deserve.

In closing, I urge you to face the coming year confident that the future is ours to shape and that we have even more powers to unfold as we pursue our work on behalf of this campus and the Commonwealth. Ours is a wonderful, compelling story. We must tell it loud and clear to all those who benefit from the work of this University and with whose support we will achieve even greater successes.

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