A Blueprint for Excellence

The University of Alabama is a university in transition, and the end point of that transition will be our recognition as one of the leading public universities in this country. Our transition is guided by a blueprint that is a mosaic of the aspirations, goals, programs and plans of the many units that make up the academic and administrative infrastructures of the University. Our blueprint, a blueprint for excellence, is organized around the four building blocks of academic excellence – people, programs, facilities and resources. I would like to spend my time with you today discussing those building blocks.

People – students, faculty and staff – are the heart of the University. The cornerstone of our vision for the future of The University of Alabama is “to be a university of choice for the best and brightest.” In the fall semester 2005, I believe we proved that we have the ability to turn that vision into reality. A little over 3,700 new freshmen joined our campus. They included 72 National Merit Scholars, which ranked The University of Alabama 13th in the country among public universities in terms of National Merit Scholars. The freshman class included 639 students whose high school GPA was 4.0 or higher. This year we had six USA Today Academic All-Americans, marking the third year in four that The University of Alabama had more academic all-Americans than any other university.

Last fall’s freshman class included 429 students who had ACT scores of 30 or above – 429 students who ranked in the top 2 percent nationally on the ACT. These truly are the best and brightest, and we are attracting them to The University of Alabama.

Faculty and staff are critically important to meeting the expectations of those best and brightest students. There was a headline in The Tuscaloosa News this morning about the fact that The University of Alabama’s faculty is the best paid faculty in the state. And, while that was good news, the headline was incomplete. It should have said “The University of Alabama’s faculty is the best paid faculty in the state because The University of Alabama has the best faculty in the state.” This is my 38th year in higher education, and I have never had the privilege of working with and for a finer group of faculty and staff colleagues.

I would like to spend a couple of minutes talking about the progress we have made in addressing the University’s number one priority – the compensation of our faculty and staff. Four year ago, our goal was to reach the Southern University Group (SUG) 50th percentile within a reasonable number of years. Three years ago we changed that objective. Our goal is to achieve the 75th percentile. The 50th percentile is associated with average and this University is not about being average. Looking at our progress, in the fall of 2003 the average full professor on our campus had a salary that was $8,700 below the SUG 50th percentile. Fall 2005 we were only a thousand dollars behind. Fall 2006 we will move above the average. In fall 2003 the average associate professor on our campus was $3,300 below the SUG 50th. This past fall, the average associate professor was $2,500 above the 50th percentile.

By next fall both our full professors and our associates will be well ahead of the 50th percentile. Our assistant professors in fall 2003 were $7,500 below the SUG 50th. This past fall, they were $4,700 behind. In fall 2006, in addition to our full professors and associates being above that 50th percentile, our assistant professors will have moved quite close to it. When we reach this point I think it is very important that we stop thinking about the 50th percentile, stop talking about the 50th percentile and start focusing on the 75th percentile. I believe that by the fall of 2007, when I report to the faculty and staff at this meeting, you will be able to see that in both faculty and staff we have made significant progress toward achieving 75th percentile status.

The core of the University’s academic mission is structured around education and research. The three offices involved are the Office of Academic Affairs, the Office of Research and the Office of Student Affairs. In Dr. Judy Bonner, Dr. Margaret King and Dr. Keith McDowell We have had outstanding leadership and very close coordination, but I believe that a realignment of reporting relationships will allow those three offices and those three dedicated leaders to achieve even greater levels of synergy and effectiveness. Effective immediately Vice President McDowell and Vice President King and their respective operations will report directly to Executive Vice President Bonner. They will form an operations group which will deal with day-to-day operations and a policy group. I will sit with the policy group so that I will be able to stay involved in setting academic policy, student affairs policy and research policy. We are not fixing something that is broken. All three of those offices are performing at an outstanding level. I believe this realignment will not only enhance synergy and coordination, but it will also free up more time for me to spend on the capital campaign.

The second building block of academic excellence is programs. Honors College continues to make excellent progress. Bob Halli, dean of Honors College, has informed me that we have just admitted our 1000th student to Honors College for next fall. Last fall we admitted fewer than 800 students. The competition for those students is intense and obviously not all of them will come, but I am confident we will see growth of at least 10-15 percent in the incoming Honors College freshman class.

Our new construction engineering program will come online this fall. And, we continue to make progress in the area of graduate programs that are closely linked to the quality of our research environment. Last year, Vice President McDowell was able to make available resources so that all graduate research assistants on grants and contracts could receive an out-of-state tuition scholarship, thereby making our faculty more competitive in pursuing grant and contract funding. For the coming academic year I have recommended to the chancellor and the chancellor has agreed to recommend to the Board of Trustees that The University of Alabama fund health insurance for all of our graduate teaching assistants and graduate research assistants. I am optimistic that will be approved.

Research support is critically important to the future of the University. Vice President McDowell and Provost Bonner have worked closely together to significantly increase the flow of dollars to support our research mission – dollars used to support new positions, start-up costs, facilities and equipment. I expect the amount that we invest in research in next year’s budget will be substantially over our commitment this year.

The University of Alabama is growing, and that means we need additional faculty. Next fall, we will start the first year of a multi-year effort to add faculty to the University. That process will be directed by Provost Bonner, working closely with our deans. I have asked Provost Bonner to carefully review the strengths, the contributions and the needs of each of our academic programs. New positions will not be allocated across the board. Growth is not a de facto argument or justification for new positions. We will be looking at strengths, contributions and needs.

I have asked Dr. Bonner to think in terms of a three-element model: identify those programs we should invest in – and hopefully that will be the majority; identify those programs we should maintain – hold essentially to the status quo; and identify those programs that will be either reduced or eliminated. I expect over the next several years this third category will be a very small category, but we will not be able to continue to move The University of Alabama forward if we do not have priorities and support those priorities. Units that are not significantly contributing to the future of the University must be carefully reviewed. If it is not clear that a unit can make a significant contribution in the future, then I believe we are obligated to reinvest those resources in areas where progress can be made.

The third building block of academic excellence is facilities. We have opened 10 new buildings in the last two years. We will open six more this year. The Board of Trustees has approved phase III of our residence hall program, which means two new residence halls will come online in August 2007. We have a multi-year commitment of federal support from Senator Richard Shelby that will give us one of the finest engineering and science complexes anywhere in the country. In addition, those federal dollars will allow us to redirect our own funds to invest in the physical infrastructure of our other academic units. So, the entire University will benefit from that federal support.

We have started a renovation program that will call for taking at least one building offline every year. In January we moved out of Graves Hall, and it is undergoing a major renovation. We have one of the most beautiful campuses anywhere in the country. The buildings around the Quad are extraordinary, but they are also getting older. We need to systematically renovate and upgrade those facilities. Our campus master plan is nearing completion. We are currently in a series of town hall meetings to receive input, and I expect the plan to be finalized within the next few months.

Resources are the fourth building block of academic excellence. The prospects of increased support from the state remain good. I do not expect the growth in support in the coming years to be as great as the last two years, but I do expect growth. Our economy remains strong; sales tax receipts are still running comfortably ahead of the same date last year. The budget model that we use at the University is conservative. We do not budget any of the revenue that we anticipate from our growing enrollment for permanent use. These dollars are used for “one-time” expenditures. We do fully budget our increased state appropriation, but within that full budgeting we set aside a pool of dollars that are used for one-time purposes only and that creates another reserve. We are being conservative because it is very important that we maintain reserves that will allow us to protect ourselves if we should have a bad year in Montgomery. The momentum that we have established on this campus is so important that we need to ensure against anything that could slow down that momentum.

On April 8, we announced our capital campaign. The goal is $500 million. We also announced when we went public that we had already raised $299 million in cash and pledges. Last year, The University of Alabama enjoyed its first ever $100 million year in cash and pledges. I am convinced in three years when the capital campaign ends that we will be well beyond the $500 million mark.

One of the announcements that I made at the campaign kick-off that pleased me the most was that over 40 percent of our faculty and staff have contributed to the capital campaign, contributing in cash and pledges over $5 million. I ask that faculty and staff who have not yet made their decision on whether or not to participate make the decision to contribute. Nothing delivers a more powerful message to a potential donor than to know that the men and women who make up The University of Alabama academic community believe enough in the future of this University and the value of what we do that they are stepping up. As we enter the final phase of this campaign, as I speak to groups and to donors, I would like to be able to say that over two out of every three faculty and staff on this campus have made a contribution.

Toward the end of my comments at the capital campaign gala on April 8, I made the following statement. “At the end of our first 175 years we are enjoying the shade of trees we did not plant, the music of chimes that we did not build, and the benefit of programs that we did not initiate. We are appropriately taking advantage of the gifts and opportunities created by those who came before us. And it is now time for us to make our contribution to the future.”

It is now our time and it is now up to us. We are in control of our own destiny as a university. That should be some of the best news that we could share, but it is also, in my judgment, very sobering news. We are in control of our own destiny, and that means if we do not achieve our goals, if we do not turn our vision for the future of this University into reality, I do not believe we can point to the Legislature, because they are doing their level best to support us. I do not believe we can point to the University of Alabama System, because we have had tremendous unqualified support from the chancellor and our Board of Trustees. I do not think we can point to our friends and supporters, because they gave us $100 million last year. They helped us announce that we are already at the $299 million mark on our capital campaign. If we do not achieve our goals, if we do not turn that vision into reality, I think we can only point at each other. But, I believe strongly that we are going to achieve our goals. And we will turn that vision into reality.

We are in control of our own destiny because we know what we need to do. We are in control of our own destiny because we know how to do what needs to be done, and we are proving it on a daily basis. We are in control of our own destiny because the business model we have for our University – our financial model – is generating the resources we need to support our people, our programs, our facilities and our plans. And most important, we are in control of our own destiny because we have demonstrated over the last two and half years that we have the will to succeed, that we are committed to success and that we have the will to succeed with quality and a sense of urgency. That sense of urgency and our progress has created a tremendous sense of momentum on campus. And, that momentum is a force for progress, our progress, toward being recognized as one of the country’s leading public universities. It truly is our time, and there is no doubt it is up to us.