Of record

Building On Excellence:
The Leadership Agenda
A Strategic Plan for the University of Pennsylvania
2003

The following strategic plan is the result of an extensive effort that began more than two years ago at a retreat of the University Trustees, followed by a series of discussions with the Council of Deans, the Academic Planning and Budget Committee, the President's Advisory Group, and the executive vice president's senior management team concerning the goals and priorities that should be included in the new plan. These discussions resulted in a tentative outline that provided the framework for the next step: the establishment of 14 committees, consisting of over 200 faculty, staff, and undergraduate and graduate students from across the university, who spent the fall semester of 2001 developing the major areas of the plan. The following February, an open forum was held to solicit additional suggestions and encourage more input from the university community. On April 2, 2002 a draft plan was published for comment in Almanac and many of the suggestions received were subsequently incorporated in the plan that appears here. As you will note, this new plan builds on the Agenda for Excellence, but updates it to reflect Penn's current context. As with the Agenda, it provides a blueprint for school and resource center plans, a basis for estimating and relating projected costs to the university's financial capabilities and constraints, and a roadmap for the university's future fundraising efforts. We look forward to working with the deans and directors of each school and resource center and all members of the university community in realizing the aspirations and goals articulated below.

Penn's Special Strengths and Future Challenges

Introduction

While the term "strategic planning" may sound abstract, in fact the planning process embodies our collective effort to answer a set of fundamental questions: given our historic mission and purposes, what specific goals do we set for ourselves in the years ahead? Penn and the nation's other great universities play a singular and distinctive role in shaping the future of society, in this country and around the world. Universities are institutions with long histories, whose shared mission entails a complex and continuing act of negotiation between the old and the new, conserving, interpreting, and transmitting mankind's legacy of intellectual and cultural achievement while at the same time adding to that store by producing and transmitting new knowledge.

Strategic planning is the organized effort we make to examine our aspirations, articulate our goals, identify our strengths and weaknesses, and set our priorities. It does not necessarily involve re-invention, radical change, or right-angle turns: Penn is already a place of immense achievement across a broad horizon. Rather, the planning process offers a periodic opportunity for all of the university's stakeholders to take stock, to challenge and inspire each other, to develop a strategy, and ultimately to choose among diverse objectives. In approaching this task, we are guided and energized not only by the concrete achievements of the past several years, but also by the rich legacy of our predecessors and the enormous institutional strengths they have bequeathed to us.

From its founding, Penn has chosen a distinct path in higher education, its character in large part shaped by the practical genius of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin called for an institution that would link the theoretical and the applied--or, as he put it, the "ornamental and the useful"--while promoting service to "mankind, country, friends and family." With its emphasis on the liberal arts and sciences, the curriculum of the early College of Philadelphia differed substantially from that of the other colonial colleges of the time, offering students new fields of study such as modern literature, political science, applied mathematics, history, and physics.

The contemporary University of Pennsylvania is a direct descendant of its colonial forebear. The central role of the liberal arts and sciences is matched by Penn's many excellent professional and graduate schools, which have helped to shape its modern-day character and global reputation.

Building on Our Strength

Penn's historically unique combination of the "ornamental" and the "useful" has helped us to achieve our position at the forefront of American and international scholarship, education, and professional life; it also has endowed us with some important assets as we face the challenges ahead.

These assets include:              

• Our World-Class Faculty

In the face of kaleidoscopic change, the core mission of the University of Pennsylvania remains unaltered: to pursue new knowledge through acts of invention, research, and scholarship, and to transmit knowledge through teaching. That mission is embodied in the university's faculty. Penn is especially fortunate to have on its faculty many extraordinary women and men whose talent, achievement, diversity, and dedication constitute the university's chief strength. In virtually every field of study, from chemistry to criminology, from life science to law, Penn's faculty are making fundamental contributions to knowledge. By every available measure, the quality of both our research and teaching has grown in distinction in the recent past.

• The Diversity of Our People and Ideas

Penn rejoices in the rich diversity of persons, groups, points of view, academic disciplines, and programs that grace the campus of the nation's first university. Tapping our diversity to strengthen ties across all these boundaries enhances the intellectual climate and creates a more vibrant community. Fostering and nourishing this diversity, especially among students, faculty, staff, and trustees, must remain central to the core mission of the University.

• Our Interdisciplinary Environment

Having all twelve schools situated on a single compact campus facilitates opportunities to nurture new relationships among faculty and to bring advances in one discipline to bear on problems in many others. Our environment rewards those who can reach between and among departments, schools, and the central university, in order to create new programs and to develop new approaches to important problems. This spirit of entrepreneurism and risk-taking is acknowledged as one of our most distinctive features.

• Our Urban Context

Penn is an urban institution, located in the heart of the nation's fifth largest city. Our location is valuable not merely for the cultural riches that Philadelphia offers, but also for the wonderful laboratory it provides for learning, teaching, research, and service. Civic engagement in all its multifaceted forms has become the norm and hallmark of Penn's faculty and students, as it has of the university itself.

• Our International Scope

We are also an increasingly international institution. Many of Penn's schools now have active and growing international components--Wharton, Nursing, Medicine, the Graduate School of Fine Arts (recently renamed the School of Design), and Education among them. Sixteen percent of our student body and fifty percent of our postdoctoral scholars come from abroad. More and more Penn students are spending time abroad during the course of their studies.

• Our Entrepreneurial and Engaged Spirit

Penn is an especially dynamic place, an institution that has been described as "a bustling collection of entrepreneurs of the mind, finding ingenious ways to stretch slender resources to further ambitiously conceived academic ideas." A singular energy and vibrancy defines our campus. Our students are described as "feisty, intellectually self-confident, risk-takers, independent thinkers, and intellectually engaged," a description that also fits our faculty.

The Challenges

Franklin's vision of melding intellectual and practical connections with a strong commitment to service provides the framework of what we are today: a great research university, noted for the excellence of its undergraduate experience, its strengths across a wide array of schools and fields, and its ability to foster innovative connections among disciplines, faculty, students, and the larger human communities we serve. As we move ahead, preparing to make bold, but careful, long-term investments in the university's future, we need to measure our strengths and resources against a number of significant challenges.

The twenty-first century represents a new world for Penn, and for American higher education generally. Some of the challenges we face reflect long-term trends in technology, communications, transportation, Philadelphia's evolution as a city, and the internal dynamic of various disciplines. Others reflect the realities of a financial and political environment that will be far more challenging than that of the mid-nineties. These are some of the factors that must be considered in charting Penn 's course into the next half-decade:

• Faculty Recruitment and Retention

Our single greatest challenge will lie in faculty recruitment and retention. Hiring and retaining teacher-scholars of uniform excellence is the prerequisite to all our institutional ambitions.

• Globalization

We are a global competitor in the higher education market. Increasingly, the strength of a Penn education will depend to a significant extent on our ability to make international competence a major priority, both for our faculty and our students.

• Technology

Nothing drives the pace of change faster or more unpredictably than the evolution of technology. The next few years will test our capacity to adapt, change, contribute to, and even direct, this technological revolution.

• Defining Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century

While the university's mission will remain constant, the methods and practices that guide research and teaching will almost certainly undergo unprecedented change in the decades ahead. Penn will find itself challenged by the shifting demographics of its students, by serious financial constraints, and by an unpredictable political climate. We will need to apply all of our agility and imagination to meet the demands of the professions and the educational needs of our students in the decades ahead.

• Regional Economic Development

Occupying a key economic and geographic position in the fabric of urban Philadelphia means that Penn is a major factor in determining the quality of life and attractiveness of the Delaware Valley region--in turn, a crucial determinant of our ability to attract students, faculty, and staff to the region, and especially to West Philadelphia. Finding ways to help Philadelphia renew its regional economy will be one major determinant of our own future success.

• Financial Capacities and Constraints

Large investments in Penn's future--first and foremost in academic programs, faculty and students, but also in land, in buildings, in new technologies, in regional development and in preparing for the unpredictable--require financial resources. Unfortunately, we are still seriously under-endowed relative to many of our peer institutions. Our success will require effective marshalling of our available resources, active fundraising for new resources, and efficient operation of our infrastructure.

Challenging Ourselves

Taken together, these considerations have led us to conclude that we will continue to need the breadth of perspective, the engaged practicality, the adaptive flexibility, and the openness to the interdisciplinarity that have become the hallmarks of our University. Thus, as we face the world of the twenty-first century, we know that over the next five years Penn must challenge itself to achieve four strategic objectives that form the framework of the following plan:

I.   Enhance our academic excellence and solidify Penn's position as one of the premier research and teaching institutions in the nation and in the world.

II. Build upon our special strengths to develop five selected academic priorities that will differentiate Penn among international research universities of the first rank.

III. Adapt our pedagogical methods and our student and alumni offerings to the learning needs of current and future generations.

IV. Develop the physical, financial, operational, and entrepreneurial capacities to sustain our academic enterprise.

The strategic goals and initiatives that follow build upon the accomplishments of our past, while setting out a new course that meets the challenges of both the present and the future. Achievement of these goals will fulfill the four strategic objectives outlined above and help to secure Penn's place as one of the great universities at the forefront of education, research, and scholarship in the twenty-first century.

Nothing is more essential to the securing of Penn's preeminence than recruiting and retaining a faculty of universal excellence. This excellence, in turn, must be reflected in the undergraduate education we offer, the graduate and professional education we provide in training future generations of faculty and practitioners, and the research we carry out. The quality of Penn's faculty, research, undergraduate education, and graduate and professional training are the major determinants of our reputation, vitality, attractiveness, and competitiveness.

Goal: Build and retain an outstanding faculty.

A major international research university must have as its highest priority the building, strengthening, and retention of a world-class faculty. We must continue to attract and retain outstanding faculty if we are to sustain our position as one of the top universities in the nation and the world. Although many on our faculty are already exceptional, virtually every one of our chosen academic priorities will require strengthening of our faculty in key areas. Competition for top talent will increase in the coming years--not only for junior faculty, but also through the senior professorial ranks--and we must be vigilant in our recruitment and retention efforts. We must work harder to retain outstanding junior and senior faculty when our competitors come calling; indeed, our goal is to anticipate competitive recruitment before it occurs. We must make effective mentoring of junior and mid-career faculty the norm. Building and retaining a universally outstanding faculty will also require us to address the tension between specialization and the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of research and teaching; to increase the presence and leadership of women and underrepresented minorities on the faculty; to integrate new learning technologies into our pedagogy; and to recognize the changing demographic profile of the faculty. To meet these challenges will require the strongest possible commitment of resources--both in human effort and in finances--from across the institution.

Recommendations

Be creative and proactive in retaining our best and brightest faculty at all levels. We must sustain and reward exceptional Penn faculty with a strong compensation program and with an environment that encourages and nurtures their scholarly growth throughout their careers. Improving our efforts to retain outstanding junior and senior faculty will require a higher level of cooperation among departments, schools, and the central university administration. Effective mentoring of junior and mid-career faculty, as well as attention to quality-of-work-life issues and responsiveness to the individual needs of senior faculty, will be required. We will need to increase the number of funded endowed professorships and explore options for term chairs for our more junior faculty.

Assist schools and departments in identifying outstanding candidates for the faculty, paying particular attention to gender and minority equity, and develop new mechanisms for appropriately enhancing and expanding recruitment efforts in key areas and key populations. To achieve our ambition to recruit and retain the finest faculty, we will have to expand recruitment networks beyond the usual disciplinary and professional organizations. Deans and department chairs will need to engage in carefully coordinated recruiting efforts. Central mechanisms must be developed that can respond quickly and effectively to special needs and situations.

Develop mechanisms to recognize and enhance the roles and contributions of faculty members in the later stages of their careers. We must systematically initiate long-term planning with senior faculty to help them map out professional development goals. In particular, we should develop creative ways in which senior faculty can be productively engaged in activities relating to the university's core mission, such as the mentoring of junior colleagues.

Focus on teaching as well as research in crafting faculty incentives and goals. Facilities and resources must be provided to train and support faculty in the innovative use of new technologies in their teaching. Outstanding teaching must continue to be recognized in the promotion process.

Consider new, more creative and flexible models for the appointment of future faculty, exploring such innovative possibilities as joint faculty appointments with top universities, both locally and abroad. In this spirit, we must find new ways to encourage and facilitate inter-school appointments, teaching, and research. We should also encourage the use of practice faculty, with the faculty of each school determining whether and how the use