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From the Editor

 

 

If you don’t know where you are going, you might not get there

Thomas Edison, hailed as the Wizard of Menlo Park, N.J., knew something about convergence. “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning,” observed Edison, who in addition to inventing the electric light bulb and phonograph, was a pioneer in establishing the first industrial research laboratory.

The great progress made by the University of Connecticut in all areas of campus life, since the early days of the blueprint for UCONN 2000 to the proposals for 21st Century UConn, stands as an example of how good planning results in good fortune.

Support from the General Assembly for UCONN 2000 and the additional investment of private support from alumni, businesses and friends of the University have been rewarded with a reputation as one of the top-ranked public research and teaching universities in the nation. The logical question to ask: Where do we go from here?

The answer is in the new academic plan for UConn, approved this past fall by the Board of Trustees. The plan relies on a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to moving the University to the next level of academic excellence.

An important aspect of the plan emphasizes directing resources to strong core programs and areas of potential excellence that also contribute to Connecticut’s economic and workforce development, something critical in these days of tight budgets. The plan, which covers 2009-2014, has six goals:

  • Engage undergraduates in an intellectually challenging and diverse learning environment;
  • Sustain and develop select graduate and professional programs of national and international distinction;
  • Enhance UConn’s contributions to the state, nation and world;
  • Ensure a diverse community that recognizes and celebrates individual differences;
  • Collaborate with partners in the public and private sectors;
  • Establish administrative, infrastructural and budget systems designed to efficiently realize the goals of the plan.

There are many specific objectives within the plan, including raising the SAT scores of admitted freshmen from 1200 this year to 1270, increasing the number of graduate and professional programs ranked in the top 25 among public institutions, adding 145 new faculty members, increasing the alumni giving rate – already high among other universities – from 21 percent to 25 percent, and moving from No. 26 to the top 20 among public institutions in the U.S. News & World Report national rankings.

As we learned from UCONN 2000, taking a complex institutional plan from the printed page into the real world requires time, and it may be necessary along the way to make adjustments.

But the most important thing is that there is a good plan to follow. Or as another wise man who took up residence in New Jersey, Yogi Berra, once opined: “You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going ’cause you might not get there.”

 

Ken Best
Editor

 

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