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Thank you for the opportunity to bring you up to date on
Our top 25 initiative.
If you remember when I spoke to you in June of
2010, we laid out what it would take for us to be a top 25 institution.
I told you it would take about a decade to accomplish that.
We set metrics to chart our progress. We developed action plans.
And we've implemented those plans
Today I am pleased to report that we have made significant progress
In a very challenging economic environment
We still have many challenges ahead but we never said it would be easy
And we are pursuing our goals with abandon
The emphasis in the first phase was on improving undergraduate education.
We've probably made the most progress in that area.
And we have significantly changed some key metrics
At the undergraduate level
Today I want to show you a check list of what we have accomplished
These are not inclusive they are simply illustrations of what we've done.
If we wanted to stay all afternoon it would take me all that time to explain
really what we've done on this whole process.
We're going to use this format as we go through
First of all looking at undergraduate education
And we will have two, three things that we look at here
One is the quality of our students
And we will look at progress from 2010 to 2012
On each one of these that we show
And we will show our two year progress
We will then also recalibrate ourselves
Against what's happened to the top 25
And I will show you that in retention rate for example.
Our retention rate started at 84
It is now at 85
We've gained one percent in that
But when we look at our peers they've also gained one percent
So that made no change in lowering the gap
We've become better but we've not become better in relationship to our peers.
In the education, in the six year graduation rate
We started at 60 we are now at 63
That's a three point increase and that actually closes
The gap some with our top 25
I'm pleased to report to you that next year when I report to you
This figure will be sixty-six percent
We have that in the bank so we know that it is sixty-six percent
But we won't tell you that until we get all of the other data that relates to the same thing
You will notice as far as our student quality
We remain in the peer ranges which means
That we are not at the bottom of the top 25
but we are about 4 up from the bottom of the top 25 public research universities
When it looks at quality of our undergraduate students
As we look at undergraduate education
There's several things that we've accomplished
First we've increased emphasis on graduation
For three years we've talked to our new freshman
And talked to them about the importance of graduating in four years
I've shared with you the last three years we've given them a new tassel
That has the year that they are supposed to graduate and walk across the stage
So we've done everything that we can do to increase graduation rate
We've changed our drop policy
It currently says that you can drop four courses
In years and that's all without extenuating circumstances.
Prior to that they could drop many courses
That's not good academic policy
We've reduced substantially the bottle neck courses
Those are courses that students need in a certain semester
And there's not sufficient quality for students to meet the demand, need of the students
We've increased our number of advisors and tutors
You've heard that we've increased our advisors by nineteen
We've also increased our tutoring staff
And we've deployed our tutoring staff at various places on the campus
In June you approved the 15 four tuition model.
That will not only be a financial model that drive graduation but also
The expectation of four year graduation
It's what we consider a major game changer
And we have in the last two years created an online
RN to BSN program you saw this at your workshop this year about what we're doing
We have sixty-four students enrolled in that completely online program
If you also look at undergraduate education
We've developed four new learning communities
These are communities within residence halls
And the idea is that students with similar majors or similar interests to live together, work together and there is more connection among students
The better interaction you can have with students
Among each other
The better retention is
We also implemented two years ago a bridge program with Pellissippi State University
That takes the next students that we would admit to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
But we didn't have room to admit those students
We give them the capacity to be here in the summer
Take two courses, live in the residence halls
Buy athletic tickets, live on campus
But go to Pellissippi State for the first year
If they do the right things at Pellissippi State in the first year
Then they come here as a sophomore
This year we had forty-eight students that did that
Next year we anticipate 60 students
We've had a seven percent increase in enrollment in summer school
You know that that is one of our priorities is to make our summer school program more robust.
I'll mention that again in a few minutes
We've also created a one-stop service center
It's going to be in the library
It's close to competition and will be at full implementation in August of this year
The next steps, what do we do now at the undergraduate level going forward
In August of 2013
We will have a program called You Track
It tracks students toward majors
It also if the student is not taking the appropriate tracks for majors
It forces them to go see an advisor prior to registration.
And they have a discussion about whether or not they want to get on track with their major
Or choose another major
So it's a more invasive advising process and procedure
We hope to significantly increase the use of the summer term
Summer term not just be summer school but also the use of our residents halls
Dining services and book store
We continue to expand our online and blended course offerings
And our objective to the undergraduate level is to eliminate all bottle necks
Now that's a very high objective because the changing nature of our students
For example in the last 5 years we've had a 28 percent increase
In STEM disciplines
And when you have that many more STEM disciplines it's hard to offer sufficient Physics
Chemistry and Biology
Look at our next indicator
It's graduate education
We still have a lot of progress that we need to be made here
Nationwide enrollment in graduate education professional schools is down
So we've actually lost some ground when you look at graduate education.
For example our gap has increased at both the total number of PhDs and total number of masters degrees
That are offered
We think we have some plans in place that will change that over time
But that we hope is a temporary situation
We have at the graduate level
Significantly improved our admission process
Particularly for international students
We've allocated $2,000 the last two years for graduate student travel
That's important because as our great graduate students come here they
Need to travel to deliver papers as they do research
This does two things, It gets our graduate students in front of their peers
But it also bring recognition to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Another thing we have done is we have committed $12 million over the
Next five years
Six million was committed last year
Six million is committed this year
And it is for helping to attract very talented PhD students
We've also created a new interdisciplinary PhD program
In energy science and engineering that has been very successful
We've forged new international partnerships at the graduate level for PhD students
To have interaction with our faculty here
And our students to have interaction with their faculty
And we've also created two new programs will reallocation of existing resources
A doctor of nursing practice and a doctor of social work
Both of those degree programs are offered almost exclusively
By distance education
As we look toward going forward
We're developing a plan for significant growth at the graduate level
We're also improving recruitment
And we're also increasing our competitiveness for exceptional students
If you remember earlier today I said our funding priorities were number one
For private funds, professorships and chairs, and the second was graduate fellowships and scholarships
That fits into increasing our competitiveness
If you look at the next indicators
You see that from the research prospective
We have made favorable progress against our top 25 peers
And we've actually increase federal expenditures by $39 million.
in a two-year period of time, and total research expenditures by $43 million.
That's a huge amount of growth in the two-year period of time.
If you look at our accomplishments, we've increased our faculty
If you look at our accomplishments, we've increased our faculty
competitiveness for grants and contracts. You've just met one of our outstanding faculty
and he's been part of that. We've implemented a faculty research incentive plan to
incentivize high ability to obtain grants and contracts from
external sources and provide awards within some colleges.
We've expanded our partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
and we've also leveraged a new partnership with Y-12.
Y-12 now has an active relationship
with every college on this campus. That's
communications, that's veterinary medicine, that's architecture, and
that's engineering. So every single college on this campus has some kind of
relationship with Y-12.
We've also created a Center for Humanities. The purpose of that center is to bring
faculty from the humanities together and make us more competitive for federal
grants and contracts. As you know, we've created the Bredesen Center and now have almost
50 new Ph.D. students in that center,
in that interdisciplinary program. Last night we had the opportunity to visit
the Min Kao Engineering Building. We received last year the first
NSF National Engineering Research Center award the University of Tennessee, Knoxville,
has ever received. A very competitive award.
Four were given in the nation and one came to us. It's an $18.5 million
grant over a five-year period of time and it deals with Smart Grid technology.
It's renewable for five years. It should also leverage at least twice that amount
in grants and contracts that come in as a consequence of that. We have nine
Governor's Chairs now on our campus and we've hired three Governor's Chairs in the last three years.
Next steps. We're trying to centralize some of our research laboratories
to buy expensive equipment and centralize it
so each laboratory and faculty members don't have that same piece of equipment.
So we call those core laboratories.
We need to also increase the quality and quantity of research space.
And in the building that was funded last year by the general assembly and
the governor, that has some of this space in it. We've got to increase partnerships
and conduct more multidisciplinary research. And we're
also increasing cooperative foundation support and trying to take more of our research to
the marketplace. We're trying to develop better relationships with TVA, Eastman Chemical,
and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, just as examples.
If we look at faculty and staff, we've actually got some real good news here. We've actually
made some favorable progress in our salary gap with the Top 25, and
our undergraduate tenure-accruing ratio has remained
the same, so there's no change there. If you look
for example at our assistant professors against the Top 25, we've actually moved up four
positions to where the average assistant professor salary is $71,000 a
year. You can see that we're above one, two, three, four,
five schools.
I mentioned this morning when we have the opportunity to talk
about the faculty chairs and professorships, we've endowed in the last two
years 23 faculty chairs and professorships. That's over $5 million
and that goes to high-achieving faculty. We've launched a future
faculty program, which has graduate students form other institutions coming here
to see us so we can look at them as possible hires in the future.
We've also implemented a career path program for
lecturers. Lecturers do teaching at the University of Tennessee. They do a very good job, but
we did not have a promotional process for them. We implemented that this past year.
And we've also completed a benchmarking compensation study.
As far as we look at it going forward, we need to continue to improve salaries, work on a
career path for full professors. That's the place we have the biggest gap with our Top 25.
And so we need to come up with a strategy to identify the high-performing full professors
and reward them. Create more endowed professorships and chairs and improve our
faculty activity reporting.
If we look at resources and infrastructure, you'll see that we've
made some favorable progress when we talk about teacher support per
student. We've made progress in the endowment but our gap still has increased.
As we look at our accomplishments in development, we focused
on strategic priorities, and those strategic priorities are faculty chairs and professorships,
graduate students, the chancellor's challenge - I talked about that earlier
this morning, and we set record fundraising. Actually, year-to-date
today, we're better than last year and last year was our very best year in fundraising.
If you look at some of our accomplishments with new construction, we have the student union, the
Natalie Haslam Music Building, the John Tickle Engineering Building, recreation fields, Sorority Village,
a new residence hall - the first one we've built in 40 years on the campus - and the
Joint Institute for Advanced Materials.
We've also done some great renovations in humanities and social sciences, in Greve
Hall and the Library Commons, and we've invested $20 million in deferred maintenance.
Newly constructed buildings in the last two years: Min Kao and the Student Health Building.
As we look forward to where we want to go from here, we want to continue to improve our infrastructure
facilities, increase giving for academic and athletic priorities on the campus,
and increased alumni giving rates. Our statement there
is one gift, any amount,
every year. And if you look at the chart that
Joe showed you a few minutes ago, we do not have sufficient annual
giving, and so we're trying to encourage all of our alumni from the University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, to consider one gift, any amount, every year.
Now let me give you a snapshot of the "U.S. News and World Report."
This is all of the institutions that are in the Top 25, plus three that we also
have as aspirational peers.
Since 2010, we have moved up in the "U.S. News and World Report"
rankings six spots. You will notice that
there were four, five institutions up at the top that there was no movement on.
And a place like UC Davis has moved up two, but
a place like Pittsburgh has moved up one.
And a place like Minnesota has actually moved down
by about three. And we've gone up six.
This year we stayed in exactly the same place we were last year.
We were at 46. Last year when we were in the 46
bracket, there were 10 schools in that bracket.
Think about that. Ten schools in that bracket. This year there's five
schools in that bracket. So that bracket narrowed a lot.
Of those 10, six of them fell down and one of them went up. The next step
up is 42. It's not 45, because there are
ties for these various sports. So the next time we move somewhere
in this ranking, it would be to 42 or higher. It wouldn't be to 45.
And so if you look at us as far as progress we've made, we've made the most progress of anybody on this
chart. And we've still got a very long way to go.
We've got tremendous buy-in on the campus for our
Top 25 effort. Our faculty is fully engaged.
Our faculty are thinking all the time about "how can we be better?" How can
we help accomplish the Top 25 goal? How can we be a
Top 25 department? How can we be a Top 25 college?
And recently at a luncheon with our student leaders
we talked about it. One of their questions was "How can we
collaborate with you? How can we partner with you to make us a Top 25
university?" I think I told somebody this. Student body president Adam Roddy
was sitting next to me and I put my arm on Adam and I said, "One of the ways you can do it is you can
put your arm on a freshman, just like I've done with Adam here, and say 'Adam, I want you
back next year. We want you to graduate from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
We're glad you're here, but we want you to graduate.' So that's one of the major ways."
I want to thank you for what you're doing for us for the Top 25
initiative. Governor, we appreciate your funding of the formula.
We appreciate your funding of buildings and infrastructure. It's critical to
us to reach our Top 25 goal. The General Assembly was very
supportive of us. The board has been, our system president has been.
And we need your sustained support to make sure that we
continue on the path of becoming a much better university next year than we are
today. Thank you very much for the opportunity to address you. [applause]