Virginia in Peking

November 3rd, 2009

Last week the College opened an office on the campus of Peking University.  It is located on the fifth floor of a state-of-the art building, overlooking a stately courtyard, surrounded by stunningly beautiful modern academic buildings that keep springing up, as the Chinese are wont to say, like bamboo shoots after the spring rain. We expect to put this office at Peking University to good use to facilitate research collaboration and faculty and student exchanges between the two universities.

At the ceremony for signing the agreement, President Casteen spoke of the growing bond between two great public universities.  The parallels between the two places are numerous. The University of Virginia was founded not because Thomas Jefferson wanted another shining beacon of enlightenment and secularism but because he felt the university was a prerequisite for the survival of the Republic and the American Revolution that had given birth to it. The creation of Peking University was also an act of desperate hope, seeking to establish modern learning in order to revive an ailing nation in a world dominated by the Western powers. In both universities academic freedom was to be the guiding principle governing the conduct of all their affairs.

But Peking University has had a more turbulent history. Academic freedom in the best tradition of the German research university (which is essentially what was sought at Peking University) was grafted onto the body of a Chinese tradition where the intellectuals actually laid claim to power. It turned out to be a combustible combination. In traditional China, intellectuals (or the literati) came from local landed gentry and, upon passing the state examination, they became government officials. Thus the intellectuals in China identified with the state, and took a certain responsibility for its welfare. This sense of political agency took new forms at the newly founded Peking University.

Throughout its history Peking University produced intellectuals, leaders, and rebels of every conceivable political stripe, and was responsible for triggering major social and political movements in China. A birthplace of the May Fourth Movement which gave cultural expression to Chinese nationalism, it also spawned Chinese communism by producing a number of founding members of the Chinese Communist Party—even Mao Zedong worked there as a staff librarian. In addition to Communist leaders, it also produced nationalist thinkers on the right and liberal thinkers somewhere in between. Nearly all major historical events involved agitations on its campus, whether be it the Cultural Revolution or the Tiananmen Square protests.

Thomas Jefferson famously said that the University of Virginia will be based on the “illimitable freedom of the human mind.” He also followed that “for here, we are not afraid to follow truth where it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

At Peking University, reason is still not fully free to combat the errors of its complex history. But it is claiming its rightful place as one of Asia’s greatest universities, and it is teeming with scholars from all over the world, engaged in all kinds of cutting-edge research. The Chinese government accounts for nearly one quarter of global funding in scientific research—and the beneficiaries are the universities like Peking University, China’s flagship in higher education. When I see their science laboratories, my jaw drops, not just because they are state of the art, but also because they are able to build them at a fraction of what they would cost in Charlottesville. With such vigorous investment in research and scholarship, China is finally returning to its greatness, again putting intellectuals and learning at the center of its civilization.

At the moment of this historical turn, I am full of hope for the future and for greater collaboration between our two great institutions.  When students from all over China and around the world walk down the hall of that beautiful building to arrive at a sign that says, “University of Virginia,” they may appreciate the truth so eloquently described by Jefferson: “That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature . . . like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.”

Posted in International, Research, Strategic Directions | No Comments »

My First Year as Dean

June 24th, 2009

As I mark the end of my first year on the Grounds, I thought it would be a good time to take a moment and reflect on the events and the accomplishments of the past year.

Shortly after my arrival, Provost Garson asked me to identify three things that I would like to accomplish in my first year. I promised him that I would work with my colleagues to:

  • set the priorities for the College
  • enhance the College’s administrative capacity
  • increase our fundraising capacity

Let me touch briefly on each to let you know where we stand.

Top Priorities

When I arrived on the Grounds, the long-range vision for the University was already laid out in the report of the Commission on the Future of the University.  Their study underscored the continuing importance of undergraduate education but also emphasized the value of building the sciences, graduate studies, as well as global experience and scholarship. As I read the report, I understood that the College, as the largest school at the University, would need to play a leading role in achieving these goals.

The challenge was to how to best direct the College’s energies and resources toward the University’s goals. Our first priority, then, was to craft a series of specific strategies that would set the College on a clear course toward achieving the larger goals of the University.

The great German sociologist, Max Weber, once likened politics to “the strong and slow boring of hard boards.” This is equally true of academic leadership. In order to maintain excellence, we have to be persistent, with our eyes focused on seemingly small things that together are essential for something of lasting value; carefully crafted hard boards become a room where teachers and students think great thoughts.

We have identified six priorities for the College.

  • The first is to expand the size of the faculty to maintain the strong student-teacher ratio that is a hallmark of the College. Where possible, we will make target-of-opportunity hires.
  • The second is to establish or expand collaborative and multidisciplinary research in targeted areas. Toward this end, we first identified areas where we have distinction, where we are on the cusp of distinction, and where we feel we must achieve distinction in the long term.
  • The third is to secure consistent funding to provide appropriate start-up packages for new faculty to enable them to mount aggressive research programs.
  • The fourth is to support research and teaching capacity through adequate staffing and facilities.
  • The fifth is to increase financial support for graduate students to make our programs more competitive. Inadequate graduate support is a long-standing concern. Its solution will require taking a hard look at our graduate program to determine the optimal size of the Graduate School in light of the high cost of graduate education today.
  • Last but not least is to enhance the undergraduate educational experience. We are particularly interested in moving the fine and performing arts closer to the heart of our undergraduate education.

Financial Realities

As the College was working out the details of these priorities last fall, we found ourselves in the midst of a financial crisis, a crisis so severe that we were forced to direct our focus from the future to the present and make some hard decisions in order to protect and preserve the distinction of the College. The current financial crisis will have both short-term and long-term effects, and it has affected our thinking in significant ways.

During the early 1990s the University realized that our resource needs could not be adequately met by the Commonwealth, and thus launched us on the path to seek greater philanthropic support than ever before. The current crisis has taught us, however, that we cannot rely on the market for consistent returns on the endowments so generously given by alumni and friends of the College over the years.

In the midst of the current crisis, then, we are increasingly focused on the need for greater external funding for research, either from the federal government or from foundations. Robust research funding is the sine qua non of a great research university. In order to increase the flow of external funding to the College, however, we need to make a significant investment in our new faculty members, especially in the sciences, to place them in a position to apply for and receive the external funding they need.

Immediate Progress

Despite the financial crisis, during the past year the College has made significant progress in the priority areas that we identified in our medium-range plan. Here are a few examples:

  • One of the frontier areas that the College has identified is in energy research. Professor Brent Gunnoe, who joined the Chemistry faculty in 2008, was recently awarded an $11 million Energy Frontier Research Center grant from the Department of Energy to develop technologies for converting methane gas and other hydrocarbon and fossil resources into readily transportable and higher-value liquid fuels.
  • Another focus area for the College is Morphogenesis and Regenerative Medicine. It now has an institute on Grounds, bringing together researchers from Medicine, Engineering, and of course, the College. The questions that underlie morphogenesis are basic puzzles in the biological sciences involving not only developmental biology, but also the areas of cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and neurobiology. The College has just made important hires in developmental biology, thus bolstering our strength in morphogenesis.
  • Chemistry of the Universe is a third area of recent progress. The College has great research strength in this field that brings together astronomy, astrophysics and astro-chemistry. It is buoyed by the collaborative presence of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA)-related science projects. U.Va. scientists have developed a major breakthrough with the potential to reduce laboratory measurement times by a factor of 50,000. This enables our scientists to develop chemical models and extend understanding of the chemistry that operates in the universe. Led by chemistry professor Brooks Pate, a group of scientists within the College is now operating under a seed grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to potentially create a center for chemical innovation that could attract $40 million of NSF support over the next decade.
  • Finally, the College is gearing up to compete for National Resource Center (NRC) status from the Department of Education, especially in the study of East Asia and South Asia. In addition to increased federal support for graduate fellowships, establishing NRC status will enhance the stature of our language and social science programs in these critical areas. Achieving NRC status requires the addition of faculty positions in the relevant languages as well as additional faculty strength in the related social science and humanities fields such as anthropology, history, and the arts.

Administrative Capacity

The past year also saw a significant restructuring of the College’s senior administration. Many large liberal arts colleges at major universities have a divisional structure, with each division—humanities and the arts, the social sciences, and the natural sciences—having its own dean to serve as an advocate and provide expert guidance and attention to the increasingly complex details of faculty and academic affairs.  I felt that the College would benefit from a more decentralized structure of a divisional system. So in the past year we created three divisional portfolios, and the three associate deans now work closely with department chairs and program directors on all aspects of faculty affairs from recruitment and retention, to tenure, promotion, and retirement.

Over the past year, we also oversaw the appointment or reappointment of one third of all department chairs and program directors. Department chairs in the College have a three-year term, with most rotating out after three years to concentrate on their teaching and research. The quality of this year’s administrator-scholars is absolutely superb and because of them, I could not be more optimistic about the future of the College.

Fundraising Strength

Because the development operation in the College is relatively young, we spent the past year expanding its size and mentoring and training new gift officers. Whereas in the past few years the College development operation was necessarily focused on the completion of the South Lawn Project, now our fund raisers are familiarizing themselves with the College’s academic priorities, becoming more versed in matters from poetry to neurobiology.

The development office also arranged dozen of events across the country this year where I have had the chance to talk about the College, meet alumni, and help them reconnect with the school they love so well.

As you can see, the first year has been a whirlwind of activity for me, but it has been a wonderful whirlwind. I have been so impressed by everyone I have worked with, from our senior administrators, to our faculty, our staff, and our students, both those studying in the College now and those who studied here in years gone by who return to the Grounds for their reunions. Everyone has made me feel so welcome. And as I look back on this first year, I am proud to call Virginia, and the College, home.

Posted in Strategic Directions | No Comments »