PRESIDENT'S PERSPECTIVE

photo by Michael Sipe

Add your voice

In October, I e-mailed all of our current faculty, staff, and students with a call to engagement in the future of the University of Vermont. Specifically, the topic at hand was an essay titled “Signatures of Excellence: UVM in the 21st Century.” The essay seeks to identify the foundations on which a UVM education will be built in the future: principles that will stand the test of time and educational imperatives that provide a strategic framework within which to articulate and realize UVM’s distinct identity.

The document, authored by Provost John Hughes, immediate past Provost John Bramley, and myself, has been shaped by a full year of discussion with many in the campus community. It is our hope that this document will extend and broaden a discussion that will be essential to achieving UVM’s overarching goal: to be the nation’s premier small public research university, providing a truly exceptional educational experience for every UVM student and an extraordinary environment for the professional development of our faculty and staff.

In addition to the campus community, we also urge alumni, parents, and friends of the University to add their voices to this dialogue. I cannot stress strongly enough that this document is not a blueprint or a set of promises, but is posed as a stimulus to aspiration and discussion. Toward that end, I encourage you to read the complete “Signatures of Excellence,” which can be easily accessed from the Office of the President’s homepage, uvm.edu/president/signatures.

For those who may not have the time to dig into the full ten pages of the essay, please allow me to offer a brief overview of its central themes.

In the first major section of the piece, we suggest that distinctive signatures of excellence are available to UVM if we leverage our small size and distinguished intellectual and ethical heritage to infuse through every college, school, and program a core commitment to service to society. How? Primarily by coupling the continued building of strength in the disciplines with transdisciplinary research collaborations easier to create here, with our intimate, human scale, than at larger universities and by enhancing academic rigor and quality in undergraduate, graduate, and professional education, especially through a focus on the practical application of knowledge and on experiential learning (the Vermont traditions of James Marsh, Justin Morrill, and John Dewey).

We present four core principles: 1) the social process of education, 2) the unity of knowledge, 3) the imperative to apply research to make a positive difference in the world, and 4) the indispensability of academic freedom and the autonomy of the individual scholar. We also frame a set of academic imperatives, beginning with diversity and global engagement as essentials of academic excellence, moving through support and reward systems for faculty, staff, and students designed to promote interdisciplinary learning and applied research, and concluding with commitment to an academic culture in which faculty members mentor students who are expected to take personal responsibility for their own learning and conduct.

In the last section of the essay, “A Vision for the Future of the University of Vermont,” we use a tour of parts of the campus as a narrative device for painting a picture of what UVM might become in ten years if the Vision is pursued with firm adherence to these principles and imperatives. In closing, we re-emphasize UVM’s commitments to service in and for Vermont and to the economic development and social well-being of our state.

I hope that our alumni and parents of our current students—two groups of the UVM community uniquely positioned to know the value of the UVM educational experience—will explore the full essay and take the opportunity to add your voices to the discussion on our campus. Comments and suggestions may be addressed to me at daniel.fogel@uvm.edu.

As always, thank you for your continued support of our University.

—Daniel Mark Fogel

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