Academic plan will outline priorities

In the past six years, almost every aspect of UNC life has been influenced by a single 44-page document.

The 2003 academic plan, UNC’s comprehensive road map for more than five years of budgetary and higher education evolution, set the tone and climate of the campus.

Now, as UNC enters a new era with a new chancellor and inconsistent state appropriations, it will look to the last plan as it writes a new one to be completed by next fall.

The 2003 priorities focused on a slew of developing ideas such as the First Year Seminar program, an increased focus on internationalization and an emphasis on faculty recruitment and retention.

“Every major decision, whether allocating funds or making cuts, looked at the plan,” said James Moeser, UNC’s chancellor from 2000 to 2008.

The break from short-term planning can impact almost every major decision UNC makes — including where money will be channeled, what new programs will be launched, what buildings will be built and how professors approach teaching.

Global education and the College of Arts and Sciences were primary focuses of the plan, and as a result received priority in major decisions.

And while the plan’s broad language touched on almost every area of campus, administrators glossed over some of the initiatives because of limited resources.

“A lot of strategic plans read well but get put on the shelf, because no one is held accountable,” Moeser said.

The plan, which took about a year to draft, was able to keep focused on specific priorities by mandating who was responsible for implementing proposals. It set specific benchmarks to measure success.

“Universities tend to have a need for occasions in which they think about doing things differently,” said professor Darryl Gless, former senior associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “It’s easy to coast and not take a step backwards to look at the direction the University is taking.”

Why does UNC plan?

The University didn’t always coordinate its priorities in this way.

Before the 2003 plan, it used comprehensive self-studies written every 10 years during the reaccreditation process.

“It’s common during the re-accreditation process for University officials to complain about gathering data and formulating policy for something that is virtually assured,” said Robert Shelton, president of the University of Arizona and former executive vice chancellor and provost at UNC. Shelton was the other co-chairman on the 2003 planning committee.

But administrators wanted something more — a chance to take the introspective attitude demanded in reaccreditation and tailor it to their own goals. The disparate forces that came together at the beginning of the decade — administrative turnover, budget cuts and academic changes — drove the old plan’s creation.

The University received more money from the state than expected in 2001, and Moeser’s new administration channeled this money toward hiring new faculty members in genome science research.

“I thought I’d died and gone to heaven,” Moeser said. “But we quickly realized the need for a over-arching plan to direct resource allocation on a larger scale.”

Led by Moeser and Shelton, the administration moved to draft a wider campus vision.

“It was decided that the University have a strong strategic plan in place to serve as a driving force for the future,” said Steve Allred, provost at the University of Richmond and UNC’s associate provost for academic initiatives during the formation of the plan.

What the plan did

Six years later, the successes — and failures — of the plan play out on a daily basis.

A major focus of the plan was to expand international education, which developed in recent years with the construction of the FedEx Global Education Center and a rising numbers of undergraduates studying abroad.

“We definitely have seen more attention and investment in the last few years,” said Andrew Reynolds, chairman of the international and area studies department. He estimated that his department is the sixth largest major at UNC.

“We’ve certainly received cuts this year, like everyone else, but I’d say we’ve had less than most,” Reynolds said. The department is preparing to hire a new lecturer and develop a new master’s degree in global studies.

The plan’s commitment to the undergraduate experience resulted in a growing number of classes with fewer than 20 students, the First Year Seminar program and an increased presence of undergraduate research work. Administrators said there has been a modest, controlled growth of the student population to reinforce this focus.

Despite careful allocation of responsibility, several aspects of the plan remain unfulfilled because they relied on outside support. A controversial paragraph that suggested exploring the possibility of changing out-of-state student admission percentages was largely ignored.

“It wasn’t a popular suggestion,” Allred said. “There were multiple drafts of that section.”

Additionally, sections calling for faculty sabbatical programs, improved benefits and a new approach to K-12 education were not successful. “We didn’t do a damn thing for K-12 education,” Moeser said. “And when it comes to benefits packages, we’re at the absolute bottom of the list.”

Some of these missed opportunities will be revisited in this year. Faculty members from all disciplines will come together to shape the climate of the campus, which administrators said they valued.

“Having an English professor sit down with somebody from the School of Pharmacy and talk about academia is really enlightening,” Gless said. “It creates a communal sense of mutual responsibility, and allows one to appreciate the vast variety of things that the University provides.

“To see what we all have in common is good for institutional health.”

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.