The ten years since its last reaccreditation have been ones of change and growth for the University of Michigan. Throughout the decade, and across transitions in executive leadership that have taken place during the past three years, the University has been guided by a commitment to leadership and excellence and to maintaining the highest standards of a great public research university. Over this period, as the institution entered a period of far-reaching change in higher education, the Regents and the Executive Officers have provided leadership for improvement in a number of critical areas. Through a reflective and iterative process of review, planning, and allocation of resources, University administrators and faculty are laying the foundation for the future. Many details of these changes are found in the special focus self-study on collaborative and interdisciplinary research and learning, as well as in this institutional report. An overview of some of the significant events and highlights of the past decade reveals the contours of remarkable growth and continuity across changes in leadership.

The appointment of Lee Bollinger as President in 1997 marked the beginning of a nearly unprecedented transition in executive leadership. Under his predecessor, James Duderstadt, President from 1988 to 1996, the University solidified its financial, physical, and infrastructural foundations. After Homer A. Neal served as interim President from 1996 to 1997, the election of President Bollinger by the Board of Regents was followed by new appointments to fill vacancies in all the Executive Officer positions. Nancy Cantor, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs; Robert Kasdin, Chief Financial Office and Executive Vice President; and Gilbert S. Omenn, Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, were all appointed in 1997, followed by the appointment of other Executive Officers, as presented in this report. As well, a number of Deans have been appointed in recent years, including: Douglas Kelbaugh, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, appointed in 1998; Bryan Rogers, School of Art and Design, January 2000; Karen Wixson, School of Education, January, 2000; John L. King, School of Information, January 2000; Shirley Neuman, College of Literature, Science and the Arts, 1999; Allen Lichter, Medical School, 1999; Rebecca Blank, Gerald S. Ford School of Public Policy, 1999; and Earl Lewis, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, 1997.

The University’s leadership began the decade determined to solidify the financial, physical, and infrastructural foundations of the institution. As this has been accomplished with remarkable success, in recent years strategic emphasis has shifted to identifying priorities and strengthening key areas of the academic programs of the University in order to provide leadership in emerging and important fields of knowledge.

Managing resources

The University of Michigan is fortunate to have several important revenue streams that enable it to respond to changing conditions. At the beginning of the decade, for instance, the University was faced with a weak regional economy and no increases in state appropriations. The University was able to offset revenue from state appropriations by turning to other sources, including sponsored research and tuition, and moved to implement a new model for building budgets that responded to program missions and priorities. Toward the end of the decade, with the economy of the State of Michigan healthy and strong, the University has sought to restrain tuition increases with increased support from the state, and to take advantage of a budget system that allows the Provost to respond to priorities.

The University was able to improve its planning and budget models in order to contain costs and more effectively match resources with programs. Beginning in the early 1980s, the University began a series of steps introducing management incentives. As part of this process, in 1993 the University began to devise a budget model, which gives Deans responsibility for both revenues and expenditures for their unit. By 1998, the University Budget system was in place.

Endowment support and research revenues have grown substantially in the past decade. In 1992, the University began the Campaign for Michigan, a $1 billion fund-raising effort that reached its goal in 1996, two years ahead of schedule and produced $1.4 billion in donations, the largest ever for an American public university. As well, across this decade the University of Michigan placed first in the nation in total annual research expenditures, exclusive of expenditures at university-associated federally-funded research and development centers. Last year, total research expenditures reached the $500 million mark, of which $439 million came from external sponsors. In recognition of the solidity of the University’s financial position and the soundness of its budget process, in 1994 Moody’s Investor Service raised the rating of the University of Michigan’s debt for General Revenue to Aa1, the first time a public university had earned a rating higher than Aa.

Building foundations

From the late 1980s, the University embarked on an ambitious plan to upgrade and provide new state-of-the-art facilities to encourage collaboration and more faculty-student interaction. Additions, renovations, and new construction on Central Campus, North Campus, and the Medical Campus answered a critical need for renovated classrooms, additional office space, modern laboratories, and library and information, technology, and instruction facilities.

On Central Campus, the ten years under review began with renovation and new construction for the Willard Henry Dow Laboratory, completed in 1989, which brought together facilities for Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and Biophysics. Subsequent projects included Randall Laboratory, a state-of-the-art facility for Physics; extensive renovation to East Hall, home of the departments of Mathematics and Psychology; renovation and addition to the Undergraduate Library; and renovations and additions to teaching space and faculty offices in Angell Hall, including the construction of Tisch Hall. Other construction included the new School of Social Work Building, also home to the International Institute, and the Wyly Hall addition to the Executive Residence of the School of Business Administration.

The Medical Campus saw the construction of the new Cancer and Geriatric Centers adjacent to the University Hospital; renovation and addition to the Mott Children’s Hospital; and the completion of the Medical Science Research Building III, housing basic research and clinical departments and encouraging interdisciplinary work.

On North Campus, the completion of the aerospace engineering facility, the François-Xavier Bagnoud Building, provided new teaching facilities, research labs, and offices. The Lurie Engineering Center Building provides new space for administrative offices and student services, as well as academic space for Industrial and Operations Engineering. In addition, the completion of the Media Union in 1996 provides a state-of-the-art information technology environment and library and study space for integrating engineering, architecture, and the arts.

This legacy of achievement was complemented by attention to the University’s infrastructure–the digital information environment that enables this large and complex institution to conduct its business. The University of Michigan continues to build a high level of digital and video networking. In research laboratories, libraries, dormitories, administrative and faculty offices, computing centers, and public areas throughout the campus, the University is equipped with over 40,000 networked computers. Video conference sites and production facilities link the campus as well.

The electronic environment has changed the way the University works. Many classes now integrate the Internet as a medium of instruction and communication. Research institutes, centers, and programs maintain websites for distributing work and sharing information. As well, in 1994 the University moved to a distributed computing environment. Students and faculty, as well as academic and administrative units, were provided with wider access to operational and administrative data. In a major effort to rethink and reorganize its business processes, the University also embarked on the M-Pathways project to improve data management processes through the PeopleSoft applications environment, including student, financial, and human resources data systems.

Building diversity

The University of Michigan is proud of the diversity of its faculty, students, and staff. Building on the declaration of the 1987 Michigan Mandate, University leadership has sustained institutional commitment to this core value, recognizing that a great public research university can only accomplish its mission by embracing as members of its community persons representing a wide range of backgrounds, identities, ideas, and experience. Through such a strong pluralism, the University provides a unique place of confluence, of shared learning and discussion that makes the institution a dynamic center of learning and a place where core social and civic values are articulated, debated, and disseminated.

Diversity initiatives within the University are many. The decade has seen ongoing commitment to recruiting and retaining faculty, students, and staff of color. Through studies, reports, and programs, steps have been taken to address the status of women within the University. The University recognizes this to be a long-term commitment. In 1991, the President’s Advisory Commission on Women issued the first of two reports. In 1994, the University unveiled a plan to foster the professional success of women faculty, staff, and students. A panoply of strategic programs were implemented to build diversity. Achievements can be measured only in part through statistics on minority admissions, enrollments, and degrees awarded; in faculty and staff hired and promoted. As well, progress is noted through the public steps that the University takes, the leadership it exercises in demonstrating commitment to these core values. In 1994, the Board of Regents revised bylaw 14.06, guaranteeing that students, staff, and faculty will not be discriminated against because of sexual orientation. In 1998, two lawsuits were filed against the University and the Law School, alleging that admissions policies are discriminatory. The University is responding with a vigorous defense that, as befitting a research university, convincingly demonstrates the equity and effectiveness of its actions and policies.

Building academic programs

As a university with a national and global reputation for excellence, the University of Michigan is constantly strengthening its faculty and finding ways to support and advance the best research and teaching. The pursuit of excellence is ongoing and iterative. Faculty generate streams of fresh research, seeking out fresh ideas and new collaborations. Schools, colleges, divisions, and departments direct ongoing focus to the design of curricula and the effectiveness of learning. Several visible features of this profoundly important and productive aspect of the University might be noted for this decade.

Michigan has long been a place that encourages an enterprising spirit of research among its faculty. Many internal resources are available to stimulate new investigations, and many new initiatives succeed in finding sources of external support. This decade has seen an unprecedented increase in faculty collaborations. Of the more than 160 institutes, centers, and programs across the institution, well more than half have been founded within the past decade. A list of these units, together with links to their websites, may be found in the special emphasis self-study report (http://www.provost.umich.edu/slfstudy/research/resapp3.html). As discussed in this report, many of these emerge from faculty-driven research, while others represent strategic investments by the University to build connective areas of research excellence that bridge the schools and colleges of the University. Among these, for instance, are the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, created in 1995, and the International Institute, which was founded in 1993. Both units are charged with supporting and encouraging research and teaching across the academic units of the University.

Notably, in May 1998 President Lee Bollinger appointed a Life Sciences Commission to assess the University’s strengths and weaknesses in research and education, and to identify strategic goals for the University to become one of the leading academic centers for the study and application of the life sciences. The Commission submitted its report and recommendations for new initiatives in February 1999, noting that the most important aspect of the proposals was that they cut across the schools and colleges of the University and require new levels of institutional collaboration. The Commission noted that in the ten years between the 1982 and 1993 National Research Council surveys, the disciplinary structures within the life sciences had changed so markedly that direct comparisons between the reports is often impossible. The report calls for initiatives in select areas, all of them interdisciplinary: biocomplexity; biotechnology and translational research; genomics and complex genetics; chemical and structural biology; and cognitive neuroscience. The Commission recommended the creation of an institute to carry our many of its recommendations, as this structure would weave a cross-cutting network among the schools, colleges, and departments.

In 1999, the State of Michigan, in collaboration with the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Wayne State University, together with industry in the state, announced plans to promote a statewide life sciences effort that will complement the University of Michigan’s initiative. The goals of this proposed Life Sciences Corridor include positioning Michigan to be a major global center for life sciences research and business development.

A number of changes took place in the schools and colleges that signal new emphases in research and training. In 1996, the Board of Regents re-chartered the Institute of Public Policy as the School of Public Policy; in 1999, the Regents approved renaming the unit as the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, which is undertaking an ambitious plans to build the school’s programs. In 1996, the School of Information and Library Science was re-chartered by the Regents as the School of Information, recognizing a focus on integrated understandings of human needs as they relate to information systems and social structures. In 1999, the College of Architecture and Urban Planning became the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning which, thanks to an extraordinarily generous gift, is seeking to become one of the preeminent schools of architecture and urban planning in the world.

As well, and as discussed in more detail below, schools and colleges engaged in on-going improvements to curricula across the decade. In 1993-94, the College of Literature, Science and the Arts began a close examination of the first-year experience. A task force issued a report and recommendations, and subsequent study produced a series of innovations, including, among other steps, development of a new First-Year Seminar Program, introduction of a new requirement in quantitative reasoning, and the development of theme semesters to integrate learning. In 1993-94, the Medical School introduced a substantial revision to its curriculum, and in 1995 the College of Engineering began a thorough examination of its undergraduate programs that produced changes throughout the curriculum. The School of Information developed a new professional degree program reflecting a new focus on the development and application of principles of information management.

Building a university community

In recent years, administrative leadership has brought attention to the need to examine the implications of growth and specialization for sustaining the University community. As a physical campus, the level of activity of the University can bring a disaggregation, a loss of sense of shared purpose and value. The University of Michigan’s greatness is measured in its complexity and diversity, in the academic richness that its faculty and students can find among its great range of resources and in the opportunities for collaboration and the discovery of new paths for inquiry and learning.

The special emphasis self-study undertaken for this reaccreditation explores the values of collaborative and interdisciplinary research and learning. The President articulates the special values of the University as an intellectual community, as a pluralist and complex space for exploration. He has asked for a Campus Master Plan to be developed that is attentive to ways of richly layering academic and social space with physical space in a manner that enhances the coherence and strengthens the fabric of the institution. As well, in strategic discussions with the Deans and Directors, the Provost emphasizes the importance of collaborative and interdisciplinary work, both within each schools as well as across the academic units of the University. Within many of the schools and colleges, attention is given to finding ways unique to the research university for achieving integration of faculty, graduate and professional students, and undergraduates. Such attention to connection, communication, integration, and community, has become an especially important theme for a diverse and complex public research university.