Provost's Column Sept. 1

Future ready

Over the past six months, as I have engaged with faculty, students, staff, community leaders, and numerous others, many of the same themes have arisen. The more I have heard and experienced, the more compelling I find our strengths as a learning community at IU—and the more enthusiastic I am for the opportunities before us today.

As we head into fall, I want to share some of the priorities that have emerged from my conversations with many of you, a first step toward envisioning our future together as a Bloomington campus.

“What makes IU … IU?”

This is one of the questions I have frequently asked people since returning to IU as provost. Your answers have been as varied as the disciplines we study.

I have had the privilege of meeting with hundreds of faculty and staff members and learning about unique areas of excellence that make IU great, from global area studies to quantum simulations. Clearly the depth and breadth of our faculty leadership, academic programs, and other learning opportunities are among our core strengths as a campus.

In thinking about what will make IU uniquely IU for the future, one of the clear opportunities ahead is how we come together across all these historic and emerging strengths, bringing the best of who we are and what we do together for the betterment of all.

As we look toward a more extended planning process in the coming months, here are the key priorities that I believe we can work toward together.

Creating a distinctive undergraduate experience.

As shared earlier this week, our newest incoming undergraduate class is our most diverse, academically accomplished, and largest ever. We are thrilled to welcome this group and look forward to their many contributions to our community.

And as we look to the future, there are tremendous opportunities to create a more distinctive and invaluable student experience at IU—one that will draw even more of the top students from Indiana and across the nation and world.

Our first key priority is to ensure an exceptional learning environment and academic offerings for our students.

Uniting the strengths of our current efforts across all aspects of the undergraduate experience—curriculum, teaching, living/learning communities, academic and student support, career development, campus life, and more—we can ensure every IU student has the fullest opportunity to succeed and flourish, and in a way that only IU can offer.

Over time, this will mean increasing our selectivity and becoming ever more attentive to the quality of the full educational and campus experience we offer our students.

Growing graduate education.

In today’s knowledge economy, the competencies and mindsets that students need to become effective future leaders span programmatic areas and are always changing. Our graduate programs must prepare students for an ever-evolving Indiana and global workforce.

We have a fantastic opportunity to build on our existing strengths to develop new graduate programs and innovative areas of study, particularly those that cross and combine traditional disciplines. Like our successful cyber security degree, these programs may unite two or more areas and supplement or extend undergraduate studies.

Our second key priority is to enhance our graduate programs and improve access to graduate degrees.

With the flexibility of residential and hybrid/online modalities, we have the potential to become even more a center of ongoing learning for our current students, along with residents of our state and beyond.

As with undergraduate education, we must also continue to ensure our graduate students have the best possible experience at IU.

Some of these efforts are already underway through the Task Force on Graduate Education; they will accelerate as that group begins to discuss opportunities in curriculum and academics in the coming weeks.

Elevating research and innovation.

We are blessed at IU to have so many currently thriving research efforts across campus, working to advance understanding and improve the human condition.

From the arts and humanities—where our faculty are regularly among the most prolific scholars in their fields in terms of their publications or creative works—to emerging strengths in science, technology, and health, we have many successes on which to build.

Looking ahead, we have the opportunity to extend our research enterprise in ways that bring together talent to generate transformative ideas, scholarship, and technologies. To enable a high level of success, we need to enhance the infrastructure that enables our faculty to seek new research funding and win major grants and awards. In the coming months, together we will identify key areas for additional research investment and faculty support, particularly at innovative disciplinary intersections.

Our third key priority is to grow our research productivity in areas of significant existing strengths and emerging areas for excellence.

In all, we must continue to create an environment that supports diversity in identity, thought, and aspiration, while fostering a shared connection as an IU community. We must also ensure that our efforts, through study, service, and new discovery, connect directly to the communities around us to build a stronger region, state, and world.

I look forward to joining you as we engage these priorities together, bringing the great talent, energy, and passion that we have in the IU community to make a positive difference. What makes IU … IU, for tomorrow is ours to shape.