News
Conference
President’s Recommendations to the Rutgers Board of Governors
Regarding Undergraduate Education in New Brunswick/Piscataway
Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Good morning and welcome to Rutgers.
With me are some of the remarkable women and men who have led the examination of undergraduate education at Rutgers over the past two years including Barry Qualls, chair of the Task Force on Undergraduate Education, Martha Cotter, chair of the University Senate, and Paul Leath, chair of the New Brunswick Faculty Council. I want to thank all of them for their hard and focused work.
The document I am releasing publicly today and will ask the Board of Governors to consider and approve later this week is the result of an extraordinary process. Many large research universities have re-examined their commitment to undergraduate education, but none of them have taken this topic as seriously as Rutgers has. Change is hard, yet across this campus and throughout these many months, courageous men and women from among our faculty, students, staff, and alumni have been unafraid of boldly seizing the opportunity to set Rutgers on a new course, as difficult as it may be. I am immensely proud of the way our university has come together in a remarkable conversation about the core of our enterprise.
In New Jersey, students seeking higher education have many fine choices—public and private, large and small, two-year and four-year. But Rutgers is unique among them. We are the major public research university, with faculty engaged in exploration and discovery across every field of human endeavor. We want all students entering Rutgers to be able to take full advantage of all that this means for their education.
Today I am proud to put forth not simply a set of recommendations but something more ambitious and worthy of our students and the citizens of New Jersey. It is a model for a new public research university. It is a plan that empowers students, reconnects faculty to undergraduates, and gives the public a much clearer understanding of who we are and what we do at Rutgers.
Rutgers seeks to lead the nation in integrating the resources of a great research university into the education of all undergraduates. In achieving these objectives, we will propel Rutgers to a new and higher level of excellence.
Under the plan I am proposing, which will take effect for students entering in fall 2007, the new Rutgers student will find a welcoming environment that is free of the confusion and inequities that now tarnish public perceptions of Rutgers and diminish our students’ experiences.
From Day One our undergraduates in New Brunswick/Piscataway will engage in the life of a public research university and its missions of teaching, research, and service. We will put them face-to-face with our best faculty in small, intimate seminars exploring topics that greatly interest them. A rigorous core of classes will expose them to the breadth of intellectual experiences across the disciplines and the depth of knowledge in a particular area, leading to a major.
Along this journey, the new Rutgers student will engage with our great faculty. They may work side by side to create new knowledge in an undergraduate research project through our Aresty Research Center. They may consult on faculty-guided service learning experiences. And then, to complete their undergraduate careers, our students will have a capstone experience, such as an honors thesis or a studio project that crystallizes everything they have learned at Rutgers.
This kind of education, this engagement with our renowned faculty in the life of discovery and service to society: this is the value added in coming to the Rutgers we are creating. This is what attracts the best and the brightest students.
Now, to achieve this vision we need to fix the structural and procedural problems that have dogged Rutgers all these years. In 1981 we got it half right. We reorganized and united all New Brunswick arts and sciences faculty, which led directly to our emergence as a top research university. But in doing so, we retained a system of separate undergraduate colleges, without faculties but each with its own admissions standards, general education requirements, graduation requirements, even its own academic discipline policies. So today we have degree-granting colleges without faculties and an arts and sciences faculty without students—what I called in my Annual Address last September the “weirdest academic setup in America.”
The July 2005 report of the Task Force on Undergraduate Education, which Executive Vice President Phil Furmanski and I commissioned nearly two years ago, has identified an exemplary set of solutions to these problems. The report set forth six overall goals for undergraduate education that have been nearly universally endorsed over the past eight months. They are:
My recommendations to the Board of Governors support these goals and align with the vast majority of Task Force recommendations. Where they go beyond the Task Force, it is the result of our extensive, collegial, and outstanding period of discussion. I listened, I learned, and I am ready to move this university forward.
First and foremost, I propose that we establish one single school—the School of Arts and Sciences—that will enroll all arts and sciences undergraduates in New Brunswick/Piscataway, beginning with the class entering in fall 2007. Since 1981, while our faculty have been teaching our students, they have been absolved of responsibility for core academic responsibilities such as setting admissions standards, general education and graduation requirements, even academic integrity policies. We are now asking them to assume these responsibilities, based on the recommendations of a task force itself composed mainly of faculty. This is without question the single most important change we can make for the sake of our undergraduates on this campus.
It is also vital that all our New Brunswick/Piscataway students share in a truly Rutgers core curriculum. I applaud the excellent work the Task Force has done in this area and wholeheartedly endorse the concept. But I also recognize that the curriculum is clearly the purview of the faculty, including those in the School of Arts and Sciences and those in our professional schools. So my recommendations encourage our New Brunswick/Piscataway faculties to work together—using the Task Force model as a starting point for discussion—to develop a core that identifies a truly Rutgers curriculum, modified as needed for the professional schools.
As this suggests, we want to make a Rutgers–New Brunswick/Piscataway education exciting and rewarding from start to finish. To do so, we will work hard to maintain a dynamic and diverse community of talented students eager to benefit from a great public research university. Diversity has done so much for the educational experience of Rutgers students and we will not let that suffer. I pledge to maintain our commitment to diversity and be held accountable for doing so.
Next, in the spirit of the Task Force report but somewhat different from its recommendations, I am proposing the creation of one-credit seminars available to all first-year students and taught in small settings by regular members of the faculty. In addition, I am recommending that every academic department identify or create capstone experiences available in the graduating year. Capstone projects are rich and often very meaningful experiences that help capture for each student what a Rutgers education means.
The Task Force process also gave us an opportunity to re-examine the particular mission of Cook College, a professional school with its own faculty that serves pre-professional majors similar to those of the School of Arts and Sciences. After extensive discussion within the Cook community, led by Executive Dean Robert Goodman, I am recommending that Cook continue its mission under a new name as the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.
My recommendations, like those of the Task Force, the New Brunswick Faculty Council, and the University Senate, see great value in having a strong voice speaking for the academic welfare of all undergraduates in New Brunswick/Piscataway. We will, therefore, radically redefine the position of Vice President for Undergraduate Education so that the individual who fills that role engages faculty and students in new and meaningful ways. Among other things, the Vice President will help build a unified and distinctive New Brunswick/Piscataway-wide honors program that will attract high-achieving students from across New Jersey and beyond.
The connection between student and professor is at the heart of this transformation. But a better campus life is equally critical to the success of our undergraduates. Again and again during the open forums, students made clear that they desire a sense of community. They want equal access but don’t want to get lost in a giant bureaucratic university. And they are right. Our students deserve to feel both welcome and well served wherever they live at Rutgers.
If the Board adopts these recommendations, all new Rutgers students who choose to live on a campus will have the option to select one of five residential campus communities: Busch, College Avenue, Cook, Douglass, and Livingston. Douglass will continue to be a campus for women. Students will be able to move easily from one campus to another if they choose to do so. Each of the five campus communities will be led by a dean and served by an office of student affairs and a full array of programs and services. Simply put, a student will be able to live anywhere and take advantage of any program on all of our New Brunswick/Piscataway campuses.
Of course, with such freedom of movement our students will vote with their feet, and so every campus must be attractive and inviting. That will require a special commitment to Livingston, which is clearly in need of improvement. We will quickly make good on that commitment. I am proud to announce that we will break ground for the Livingston Student Center expansion in 2007, a year earlier than planned.
To make a big university feel smaller, I am also encouraging that learning communities be formed where students share common interests—perhaps around a field of research, a particular culture, a love of photography or Spanish or music. At the same time, I am recommending to the Board that we authorize the possibility of more formalized learning communities called residential colleges, where there is a clearly defined mission and purpose and a residential element. To underscore this distinction, the creation of a residential college would require approval by the Board of Governors.
Over time we may have several residential colleges on our campuses. For the moment, I am calling for the immediate establishment of one that will clearly speak to a distinct mission and purpose. Just as there is urgency to the creation of a single School of Arts and Sciences, there is also a need for, and an interest in, the option of a four-year, women-centered educational experience within a public research university. I believe there is value both to our students and to Rutgers in upholding the historic tradition, mission, and identity of the New Jersey College for Women and Douglass College within the new Rutgers.
Therefore, upon approval by the Board of Governors, we will establish the Mabel Smith Douglass Residential College, to be located on the Douglass campus and led by its dean. We will provide interested women with single-sex living opportunities, an environment of innovative co-curricular programs, and, should the faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences approve, curricular opportunities as well.
These components would become part of a four-year, women-centered curricular, co-curricular, and student-life educational experience that has been recommended by both the New Brunswick Faculty Council and the University Senate. Of course, these programs would be open to other students throughout New Brunswick/Piscataway as well, consistent with our goal of full and equal access.
In making this recommendation, I recognize the tremendous concern our alumni have expressed throughout this process. So I want to invite the participation of our graduates in developing the Mabel Smith Douglass Residential College program, and I charge the Douglass dean to enlist and coordinate their participation.
Throughout the eight-months-long conversation about undergraduate education, we have said that our commitment to educational opportunities for women will remain strong. More than half our students are women. Some of our most distinguished academic programs concern women. In fact, with these recommendations we will make stronger our academic opportunities and scholarship related to women.
As a sign of that commitment, I am pleased to announce that I have asked Dr. Joan Bennett, a highly distinguished microbiologist, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and former president of the American Society for Microbiology, to join our faculty and serve as an associate vice president—and she has accepted. Dr. Bennett will be responsible for advancing women students and faculty in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields, where she already has a national reputation for promoting the careers of women. Dr. Bennett is here today and I want to welcome her to Rutgers.
My recommendations, much like those of the Task Force, recognize that we need more study regarding the special circumstances and unique needs of adult learners—those nontraditional students who come to Rutgers at various stages of their lives and careers. I am proposing that a Committee on Nontraditional Students take up the conversation of how best to serve this population in the new structure at Rutgers.
The changes proposed here will begin with students entering Rutgers in the fall of 2007. Current students and those entering this fall will continue to follow the current requirements of the system we have now and graduate with degrees from their colleges. They will, however, share in all the benefits that will come with full access to programs and services across the New Brunswick/Piscataway campus.
This is a bold plan and without question an incredibly ambitious one. We need to have this system in place in time to welcome the first students into the School of Arts and Sciences just 18 months from now.
To accomplish this work, we will appoint a Director of Implementation to lead a Steering Committee and oversee approximately 14 subcommittees drawn broadly from the campus community and covering everything from admissions and recruitment to campus programming to faculty engagement. In my full report you will see an outline of an aggressive plan of implementation, including a timeline for key implementation targets.
More than that, we have to make good on the plans I am recommending and make sure the new Rutgers serves our students well. I have outlined a number of assessment and accountability measures, and an implementation subcommittee will surely come up with more. In doing so, I pledge to measure and publicly report on our progress in carrying out this transformation. I do not fear having our feet held to the fire. I fear only what we will lose at Rutgers if we do not seize the moment.
In making these recommendations I do not pretend that they will receive universal praise and acclaim. Change of this magnitude is difficult—frankly, if it weren’t, it would not have taken more than two decades to address some of these problems. Not everyone may be willing to take the bold steps outlined here—to turn our attention from what is to what could be. Some well-intentioned people may disagree with these recommendations and may actively resist altering the status quo. But my job as president is to make tough choices for Rutgers and for the sake of our students.
Our current structure and policies are not nearly good enough for our undergraduates; they present far too many impediments and inequities. They prevent us from achieving the vision of excellence, enrichment, and engagement that I have described today. For the sake of our undergraduates, for the good of our university, and for the benefit of our great state of New Jersey, Rutgers needs to change.
We cannot and should not hold Rutgers back. It is time to move Rutgers forward.