It’s here at last: The report from the Commission on the Future is now. After a year’s worth of work, it has a host of recommendations.
“We learned in the school of hard knocks during the early 1990s that the University cannot be all things to all people,” reads the report, composed by a group that included reps from all the interest groups. “We must make choices.”
What are those choices? Student experience, science and technology, and global education are the areas that the commission pulled out.
 In 10 years, will Provost Tim Garson, one of the leading members of the Commission on the Future, still wear a bow tie? |
In 10 years, “the University will strategically increase its size and diversity, increase the percentage of scientists and engineers among the faculty, attract and retain the best graduate students, build much needed academic research and teaching facilities, increase the quantity and quality of international partnerships, and claim the University’s primacy in service to the public good.” Is that all?
The report didn’t just use sweeping broad language, however—here are a few firm commitments of what will happen in the next 10 years.
• Hire 500-600 new faculty by 2018 for a student to faculty ratio of 16 to 1
• Form an institute to research best teaching methods in every type of school
• Emphasize creativity, originality and entrepreneurial skills in faculty hiring
• Fund multi-disciplinary research that spans schools and departments, as well as design a “technology-transfer process that will become widely recognized as
a model service to faculty and a resource for industry.” (Whatever that means.)
• Have deans develop “diversity goals” for their schools
• Label courses that offer global perspectives and create new global courses
• Start a new journal called Public
• Increase the minimum stipends for graduate students—though only where research shows that makes a competitive advantage (apparently some grad students don’t care about more money)
• Invite more foreign faculty and students from other countries to visit here in Charlottesville
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