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Self-Study, Volume I, Chapter III: Mission and Goals
Beginning in the early 1970s, Case Western Reserve University has used a five-year cycle to do 'long-range' planning. The president plays a significant role in the process, working with campus groups and with the leadership of the Board of Trustees to discuss preliminary plans and taking advanced drafts to the Board for approval. Staff support comes from the Office of the Vice President for Public Affairs.
The most recent institutional planning cycle, focusing on the period 1990-95, differed from its predecessors in ways that reflect a new approach to carrying out the university's mission. First, it recognized that the many strengths of CWRU's individual academic programs are best addressed and enhanced through a unified institutional effort rather than through fragmented initiatives. Second, it drew into the institutional statement of goals and priorities a description of the plans of the various academic units of the university. Finally, it acknowledged the impact of market forces on the university's activities.
The university has begun the review of goals and priorities for 1995-2000 by circulating within the institutional community a draft revision, below, of the university's mission, character, and priorities. Meanwhile, individual schools and colleges are preparing updated descriptions of their own plans for discussion in the coming academic year, and administrative units will do likewise. During 1994-95, these strands will be brought together into a single statement for consideration by administrators, faculty, students, and advisory groups, and ultimately for presentation to and approval by the Board of Trustees.
Case Western Reserve University's mission is to serve society as a leading independent center for undergraduate, graduate, and professional education, for research that adds to society's store of knowledge and addresses its priorities, and for active, responsible world and community citizenship.
The students, faculty, staff, volunteers, alumni, and other friends who constitute the university community pursue and exemplify this mission through their teaching, research, professional activities, and public service, all marked by a commitment to continuous learning.
The university's mission is sustained by intellectual vigor and honesty, open expression of ideas, independent judgment, a commitment to a just and humane campus community, and a tradition that integrates the dominant themes in modern education: the arts and sciences, technology, and the professions.
Integrity in all of the university's pursuits, both scholarly and administrative, is essential to the search for knowledge. This requires that we respect new ideas and encourage examination and discussion of differing opinions. It requires as well that we recognize the dignity of each individual, that we appreciate and enjoy the rich cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity of our campus community, and that we respect the contributions of all disciplines to the advancement of knowledge.
These characteristics make it possible for the larger society to place trust in the degrees we confer, in the instruction and research we conduct, in the new knowledge we disseminate, and in the judgments we make about academic and administrative matters. To strengthen and preserve these qualities, each member of the university community has a responsibility to serve as a mentor for other members.
The university's highest priority is on learning. This encompasses a wide range of activities, from formal classes and extracurricular activities for students to research and other avenues for continuous development of the knowledge and skills of faculty and staff. In the interest of learning, and in recognition of the special role that society assigns to universities, we make parallel and inseparable commitments to teaching and research.
Case Western Reserve enrolls promising students in courses and programs in the arts and sciences, in engineering and the applied sciences, and in the professions of dentistry, law, management, medicine, nursing, and social work. We have no task more important than the superlative education of these students, which includes classroom and laboratory instruction, advising, tutoring and other assistance, and providing a campus environment that supports learning through active scholarship. Our goal in this education is to help our students develop in-depth knowledge in a field of special study as well as integrate the humanistic, scientific, technological, and professional cultures that are represented within the university, thus to prepare them to make important contributions to society.
The region, the nation, and the world look to Case Western Reserve and a small number of other universities worldwide to provide the new knowledge upon which society depends. The university's faculty conduct research in the full range of disciplines in which we offer instruction, generally with the active participation of students and with a commitment to share the results of the research widely and, when appropriate, to promote their dissemination through the market. Sustaining this high level of quality in research is vital to preserving an environment supportive of learning.
The university is of itself a community, but it exists in several communities as well ' University Circle, the City of Cleveland, the State of Ohio, the United States, and the world. We draw from each, and we contribute to each. We are committed to the principle that a great university must be active at each level of community, and that it can be no greater internationally than locally. In support of this principle, we encourage and support activities by faculty, staff, students, alumni, and other members of the university that address community needs and opportunities. We pledge as well that the university will itself be a responsible citizen.
The following overall goals represent institutional priorities to which the university agreed to devote the principal share of its available intellectual, human, physical, and financial resources in the period 1990-1995. This presentation incorporates observations about progress made toward each of these goals during the past several years and the challenges remaining.
1. Broad and integrated undergraduate education of exceptionally high quality.
Students choose to pursue undergraduate education at Case Western Reserve both because of its special strengths in important fields of human endeavor and because the institution goes beyond these specialties to offer a broad and integrated educational experience.
Our goal is to bring together the modes of learning and selected content of the humanities, the social sciences, the physical sciences, and engineering in curricula that provide both historical and global perspectives, and are oriented to the problems, opportunities, and technologies of the future. Our undergraduate programs should ensure that students develop an understanding of the relationships between this and earlier civilizations, and among Western and other societies, their economies, their political systems, their cultures, and their languages. These programs must also employ and illuminate emerging technology, such as the ability to store, retrieve, and manipulate vast quantities of information electronically. In preparation for adult lives as leaders, professionals, and citizens, our students will be expected to bring these skills with them when they graduate.
This is no small task: it demands as much of our faculty, facilities, libraries, equipment, and service activities as it does of our students. But the rewards of such an effort are enormous, distinguishing graduates of this university from others for their vision, their expert knowledge in fields important to society, their grasp of complex issues, and their ability to integrate knowledge across many fields. Of such qualities does leadership consist.
To this task the university brings considerable assets. During a quarter century of experience in bringing together the dominant themes in American higher education, CWRU has built a set of undergraduate programs that are distinctive for their broad views of traditional disciplines. With the decision in 1992 to organize the central academic units of the university into the College of Arts and Sciences and the Case School of Engineering, the university has put in place a stable and understandable organizational and leadership structure for these programs. In the years ahead we must address the following challenges:
Total undergraduate enrollment has risen over the past five years, and is now at a 20-year high. Further increases can be accommodated in selected fields of study, but facilities and staffing in some disciplines are already strained. The quality of the students in these programs is quite high, as is that of the faculty who provide their instruction.
As is true in other areas of the university, much attention will need to be given to faculty recruitment and retention in the arts and sciences and engineering in the years ahead as the large population of senior faculty members who joined the institution in the 1960s continues to move toward retirement.
2. Research leadership in biomedical science and advanced technology, and in selected fields in the arts and sciences and the professions.
Since the emergence of what are today known as 'major research universities' following World War II, only 35 of the nearly 2,000 private colleges and universities in the nation have established themselves in that special category. Among these 35 private universities, Case Western Reserve ranks 16th in the amount of competitively awarded federal support for research. In the amount of such support awarded per faculty member, CWRU ranks near the top among all institutions, public and private.
This performance is a tribute not only to the faculty, graduate students, and research staff whose innovativeness and hard work have attracted these levels of support. It reflects as well a tradition of nearly five decades of leadership and support for outstanding research here, dating to the initiatives developed at our predecessor institutions, Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University, in the late 1940s. They recruited strong faculty leadership, worked with trustees and others to raise funds for facilities, and assured CWRU a place among the nation's leading research universities, positioning it to be an even more significant force in the discovery and application of new knowledge in fields that are critically important to society.
Observers of this institution will not be surprised by the choice of fields to be emphasized in the university's research efforts. They represent both longstanding strengths at CWRU as well as focal points for the creation of value at the regional, national and international levels. They are magnets for highly qualified faculty and students because they offer the opportunity to explore the unknown with powerful new tools and techniques. And they promise to address some of society's most pressing concerns.
The first of the two specific areas of research to be emphasized is biomedical science, which is anchored in the School of Medicine but involves disciplines in other schools and colleges of the university as well, particularly the schools of dentistry, engineering, and nursing and the College of Arts and Sciences. Much of the foundation for progress there is already in place as a result of an aggressive program of investment and rebuilding in the School of Medicine's basic science departments that was begun during the late 1970s. New leadership, additional faculty, new and renovated facilities, and other improvements have brought several of these departments to the forefront of a field that has grown rapidly, most notably since the introduction of powerful new techniques of molecular genetics. The Celeste Biomedical Research Building, completed in 1993, has doubled on-campus space for research in biomedical science.
The second specific field to be emphasized will deal with selected areas of advanced technology, anchored primarily in the engineering and science disciplines. These fields have well-established patterns of interdisciplinary collaboration which have led to some of the university's best-known research efforts: polymers, ceramics, and other advanced materials; sensors for both industrial and medical applications; biomedical engineering, including functional electrical stimulation; space structures and other aerospace projects; artificial intelligence and intelligent systems; and electrochemistry and surface science. Most of these areas receive major support from industry as well as from federal agencies, an indication of their potential for commercial as well as intellectual development.
While these research areas continue to make important contributions to society's understanding and control of important natural phenomena, they soon will lose their edge without continuing improvements in facilities and equipment to accommodate recent advances in technology, and without the ability to bring new, young faculty into these departments, particularly in some of the sciences, where strict limits on faculty size have allowed the recruitment of relatively few new faculty in recent years. The Kent Hale Smith Engineering and Science Building, completed in 1994, provides an outstanding home for the university's world-class Department of Macromolecular Science. In addition, a major renovation project is under way for the facilities of the Department of Physics and another is in the planning stage for Chemistry, both fields with close interaction with materials science and related technologies.
In addition to these two specific clusters of fields, the university has important strengths in a large number of disciplines where faculty can and do provide national and international leadership through their research. In disciplines ranging from anthropology, art history, and biology to religion, regional economics, and social work, and in many others, faculty scholarship is strong and vital. While external support for research in many of these fields may be less plentiful than in the biomedical sciences and engineering, they are no less important to the intellectual community and to the larger society. Because external support is more difficult to obtain in many of these fields, however, the university must be both imaginative and careful in taking steps to nurture research strengths there.
3. Graduate and professional education oriented to the needs of society in the 21st century.
Parallel to the university's development as a major center for research has been its growth as an important source of advanced education at the graduate and professional levels. CWRU's professional schools'medicine, nursing, dentistry, engineering, law, management, and social work'include some of the nation's leading programs in their fields. Students can pursue doctoral studies in more than 60 disciplines based in the arts and sciences and the professional schools.
Approximately two-thirds of CWRU's students are enrolled in graduate or professional school programs, and the majority of our undergraduates plan to pursue further study. This pattern reflects the increasingly complex content of many fields of study and the growing expectations society has of those who enter the professions. Too often, however, post-baccalaureate study consists of an ever-narrowing series of experiences that can produce a graduate bursting with specialized information but lacking a larger view of the world, a world that prizes knowledge above information, perspective above technique. Advanced study at Case Western Reserve has traditionally supported this broad view of the role that scholars and professionals play in society. This is a tradition to be sustained and enhanced in the years ahead.
As the university continues to develop its graduate and professional offerings, three important objectives will guide investments and the evaluation of programs:
Educational leadership. The university expects its graduate and professional programs to provide leadership for the fields they serve, not only within the education community but within their respective practitioner communities as well. Achieving this objective requires outstanding faculty and students brought together through exemplary curricula and facilities. There are excellent recent illustrations of progress toward this objective in such efforts as the competency-based M.B.A. program of the Weatherhead School of Management, the primary-care initiative at the School of Medicine, the advanced practice programs at the School of Nursing, and the emerging professional engineering curriculum at the Case School of Engineering. Leadership also requires regular, productive interaction with practitioners, including appropriate continuing professional education to persons in these fields. While CWRU has established programs in several fields, the new Dively Center for Executive Education at the School of Management is worth noting.
Supply of qualified students. There is considerable concern, and deservedly so, about the lack of sufficient numbers of qualified students seeking research-based doctoral degrees in fields of high priority to society. Despite this broadly shared concern, however, little has been done to address several factors that combine to make graduate student life less attractive for many students than its alternatives, including immediate employment or pursuit of a professional degree. The university expects to improve its ability to recruit highly qualified students for doctoral programs in key fields by increasing the amount and the timeliness of financial support provided to such students, and by addressing more effectively such matters as housing, campus activities, and career planning, where undergraduate and professional school students currently receive more attention. These are matters currently on the agenda of the Faculty Senate Committee on Graduate Studies.
Collaboration among disciplines and organizations. As an institution that incorporates the principal disciplines to which society turns for advice and guidance in addressing major issues, CWRU represents an outstanding environment for broadly-based advanced study. Current examples of collaboration among fields illustrate the potential value of involving colleagues from several units of the university in such programs. The Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations, the University Center on Aging and Health, the Electronics Design Center, the Yeager Center for Electrochemical Sciences, the Center for Regional Economic Issues, and the Center for Biomedical Ethics are but a few examples. The most recent illustration, yet in an embryonic stage, is the initiative to develop a public policy program involving faculty from many units of the university. The university expects its graduate and professional programs to develop even greater cooperation among campus-based resources and with other organizations, including our neighboring institutions in University Circle and our partners in the several Edison Programs of the State of Ohio and other regional and national consortia in which CWRU participates.
4. Superbly qualified students, faculty, and staff.
The university is justifiably proud of the community of scholars who are its members. But it will take great effort to sustain this level of quality, and to enhance it in certain highly desirable ways, including increasing the number of women and minority group members on the campus'in the face of projected demographic and economic trends. Too many children in America are growing up in poverty, confined to elementary and secondary schools ill-equipped to offer them the educational foundation they need to break out of this cycle. Yet these are the young people from whom the colleges and universities of this nation will recruit an increasing proportion of their students. Similarly, too few students are pursuing programs of advanced study that would prepare them to become faculty members in our colleges and universities as the current cohort of older faculty, most of whom were appointed in the 1950s, move toward retirement.
Four specific priorities have been identified to guide the university in addressing these issues:
Student financial aid. About 20 percent of the nation's entering freshmen each year enroll in private institutions, where tuition rates are generally much higher than in public institutions. Only a few decades ago, that proportion was 50 percent. Trends in federal financial aid programs are making loans the principal form of assistance for all but the most needy students, thus eliminating assistance that has helped students from middle-income families consider attending private as well as public institutions. While economists and others who study these matters remain convinced of the long-term value of investments in high-quality, private education, the university must deal with the concerns'short-term as well as long-term'that influence decisions by the students we wish to enroll. For this reason, CWRU is reviewing the manner in which it allocates its own financial aid resources among students to ensure that these institutional funds help the university toward its parallel objectives of enrolling a well-prepared, diverse student body and making it possible for admitted students to afford the cost of attending.
Increasing minority enrollments. While recruiting qualified potential students is generally becoming more competitive, the problem intensifies dramatically when dealing with the pool of academically well-prepared minority students. The university has initiated a number of programs to attract more minority students to the institution, and we expect these efforts to continue in the years ahead. The principal such effort at the pre-college and undergraduate level is the Minority Scholars Program, which offers both pre-college and in-college assistance to students who are members of minority groups under-represented in higher education'African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Eskimos, and Pacific Islanders. The institution should look as well to the Upward Bound Program, strictly pre-college in its focus, as a source of potential students. In addition, the university has developed a number of collaborative programs with the Cleveland Public Schools that will help increase the number of minority students who qualify for admission to selective colleges and universities'that number is still a smaller share of the total minority student population than is true of the population generally. The success of these efforts over the past several years has been uneven, but the objective is important and the program must be continued, with possible improvements.
Quality of student life. There have been dramatic improvements in campus life for students during the past seven or eight years, most notably at the undergraduate level, but for advanced students as well. Some of these changes are quite tangible, such as better support for activities, varsity and intramural athletics, counseling, and student health services. But others are intangible, including a newly perceived interest in the effect on students of policy decisions in areas ranging from physical and financial planning to the selection of deans and other officials. Progress must continue on this front so that it will be clear to current and prospective students that CWRU is committed to their full development as leaders and citizens of this society, not simply to their curricular achievements. Especially important are efforts to foster a greater sense of community among our students, including strengthening the programs and services associated with residential life. Further improvements in support and accommodations for athletic activities are also a high priority, illustrated most visibly by plans for the construction of a new convocation, sports, and recreation facility to complete the university's heavily-used indoor athletic facilities.
Improved compensation for faculty and staff. The university has made important progress toward improving salaries for faculty and staff over the past five years. In each case this was the result of a consistent effort to devote additional resources to salaries on a selective basis. While this matter is no longer at the near-crisis stage that was true a decade earlier, we must be careful that compensation levels do not begin to slide toward noncompetitive levels so that CWRU can be assured that it can successfully recruit and retain the highly qualified scholar-teachers who are the heart of an institution such as this.
5. Global and international orientation in teaching, research, and scholarship.
There is world-wide interest in many of the university's degree programs and in much of the research and scholarship that is conducted here, drawing to the campus students and faculty from more than 80 other countries. This globalization of higher education has come about here and at other major American universities less as a result of our initiatives than as a consequence of potent economic and cultural forces, the same forces that are reshaping manufacturing and investment decisions around the world.
It would be a mistake to assume that this trend toward global markets for the university's academic programs will continue unabated of its own accord, however, or that the normal interaction between domestic and foreign students and faculty will automatically yield valuable intellectual benefits. The university should pursue several initiatives that will together improve our ability to compete in this new and exciting environment:
6. Leadership for the cultural and economic renaissance of Cleveland.
Cleveland is the university's home. It is also one of the nation's finest cities, with a long history of supporting world-renowned institutions such as Case Western Reserve, and marshalling private as well as public resources to address community issues.
During the past two decades this region has faced, thus far successfully, the consequences of a fundamental restructuring of the U.S. economy. A 20-year decline in manufacturing employment in the region has been halted, and attention is now focused on helping the service industries to create jobs at an even faster rate. Sustaining Cleveland's favorable position as an exporter of goods, both domestically and internationally, will require extensive efforts to modernize plant and products and to strengthen the skills of the region's work force.
Just as the university contributed to the development of the region's traditional cultural and economic foundation since the early nineteenth century, recent progress has often built upon the work of CWRU faculty and alumni. Through close collaboration with industry and with federal and state government, CWRU researchers have brought to the region resources, investment, and visibility through their leading work in such fields as polymers, ceramics, and other advanced materials; sensors; biomedical technology and animal biotechnology; and robotics, intelligent systems, and flexible manufacturing. The work of the Weatherhead School of Management's Center for Regional Economic Issues has in turn provided a framework for evaluating developments in the region and the potential impact of alternative proposals for economic activity. In addition, our subsidiary, Enterprise Development, Inc., offers training and assistance to fledgling entrepreneurs. Since the early 1980s, dozens of new businesses have been established based on technology originating on the campus, and the university has entered into scores of cooperative research agreements with industry, most carrying technology licensing provisions.
The university contributes in many other ways as well to the quality of life in the Cleveland area. Faculty and students in our schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, and applied social sciences work closely with health-care and social-service organizations and school systems throughout the region as part of their clinical teaching and research activities. Exhibits and performances organized by our Departments of Art, Music, and Theater Arts are important contributions to the region's cultural life, as are the CWRU Film Society, the McBride Lecture Series, and other events offered to the public by the campus.
To help move forward in this area, the university in 1993 established an Office of Community Service to serve as an on-campus clearinghouse for information about community needs and priorities, and as a contact point for groups and individuals in the community. In 1994, building upon two years of intensive activity by a group of students working with Student Affairs and Community Service staff members, an Office of Student Community Service was formed as well.
As the community looks ahead, it is clear that the university's role will continue to increase rather than decrease. CWRU will focus its attention on the following areas of activity that serve the interest of this region:
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