One of the trickiest problems US universities are facing right now is an indirect effect of constrained financial resources. Georgetown, like the vast majority of universities, must shepherd its resources carefully right now. While these constraints affect all of us, there are particular inadvertent impacts on faculty. Faculty thrive (and thus universities thrive) on imagined new initiatives that push the frontiers of research, scholarship, and pedagogy. For most faculty, excitement lies in exploring around the next corner in their intellectual lives. All of this is driven by the inner-need for innovation and discovery. Anything that suppresses that urge hurts the university in the long run.
I’m worried that our own need to be prudent stewards of the financial side of the house might dampen the deep resource of faculty to invent new ways of being Georgetown.
Too often, when chatting with faculty I feel a skepticism about their proposing any new initiative that would make this a better university. I’ve heard some version of “there’s no money and there’s no space” too often. Now, let me be clear, there isn’t a lot of money, but we need to invest in ideas that will make Georgetown stronger. There isn’t free space now, but it’s incumbent on us to develop space for good ideas.
All of this crystallized in my mind as I heard a presentation from Sasaki, one of our consultants on space planning, about alternative visions of building on the hilltop campus. It became clear to me that I haven’t been doing my job very well. One of their ideas sketched out a couple of new buildings on campus, with no specified use. I felt at that moment that I, as provost representing the faculty and students, should have had a list of coordinated uses of new space. In the absence of academic guidance on space uses, poor or inefficient uses are likely to result. The visioning process that we launched last week with President DeGioia’s presentation needs all of us working together in multiple ways to assure that the Georgetown of 30 years from now is the best it can be.
We have made some moves that directly affect our future space needs. We know that our undergraduate enrollments on the hilltop will not increase. Our growth will come from graduate programs, especially those interdisciplinary new programs that the new dean of the Graduate School will be tasked to catalyze. Graduate programs have different space needs than undergraduate programs; graduate students aren’t residential to the campus as are most undergraduates. Lacking a dorm room on campus, they need spaces to interact with one another, collaborate, do their research, and study. Graduate students often learn much from one another, and space needs to be organized to stimulate this. This fact alone suggests that we need to integrate academic program planning and space design.
Further, some things are happening. I am asking Dean Gillis to lead an effort to consolidate the past plans on the sciences, post Regents Hall, to have a cogent statement on space needs for the sciences. This will require new coordination with the science chairs and faculty. That component is sorely needed to make sure our moves on growth of the science faculty are met with commensurate moves on space for new faculty. This is also consistent with our desires to reduce the barriers to collaboration on teaching and research between the Medical Center programs and the main campus programs and between the natural sciences and other units.
In addition, however, we think we need from all units similar long-term plans on new programs and new faculty and new space. So, based on a discussion with the deans last Monday, we will have a special focus for the multi-year planning documents this year. By March 17, 2014, from all units/departments/areas/schools we want faculty to imagine new programs and new space needs that they want to consider launching in the next five years or so.
One vision might be helpful in this regard. Imagine a brand new building of 200,000 square feet sitting on the hilltop. It’s empty. Our job is to fill it with activities that help Georgetown leapfrog other universities and become a leader in innovative programs, both research and education. What should they be? What faculty do we want working side by side? What synergies could we create; what new collaborations could be stimulated? Could we use the new space to enhance partnerships with other DC institutions? Could we stimulate new global activities there? Could we create learning spaces well-suited to blending technology and traditional face-to-face teaching methods? How could we use the new space to enhance our research volume and impact? Could we craft space to enhance the impact of the Jesuit and Catholic values underpinning our intellectual pursuits? How could the space be used as part of a new effort to assure sustainable economic resources for the core contributions of Georgetown? In short, how could we use the space as part of facilitating new levels of academic excellence appropriate to the 21st century?
Inventing ideas does not produce their implementation. I acknowledge that. However, I also know that if we don’t forward the ideas, we can never use them to entice funders to support them. If we don’t articulate them, they will never get into the queue of possible building ideas on campus.
So, maybe what the deans and I are asking is a suspension of disbelief for a moment. This is a time for Georgetown to be bold and create new ways forward that will support its advancement among the world’s great universities. While provosts and presidents can facilitate, the ideas best emerge from the faculty and students.
We want to hear them.
What I would like to examine more fully is the question of what “progress” means. What is the good towards which we are advancing? Towards what are we leapfrogging ahead of other institutions? What is the purpose of our leading them?
I offer my enthusiastic support and admiration to you, President DeGioia, and the students, faculty, and alumni participating in your “Freedom to Dream” blog. I applaud your initiative of a new, long-term strategic plan for the University borne out of the collective wisdom of members of the Georgetown University family.
As Chair of The Dental Alumni Board, I represent approximately 4,000 Georgetown University School of Dentistry (GUSD) graduates. The GUSD dental alumni formed a committee with a collective goal to see the University reopen the School of Dentistry. Our Committee consists of former faculty and/or alumni engaged in dental education to include sitting deans and department chairs along with private practitioners active in tripartite dental organizations.
Recently, the Committee sent a Business Proposal to the University to create an International School of Dentistry at Georgetown- the first of its kind- modeled after the distinguished former Georgetown University School of Dentistry but fashioned as a state-of-the-art program for clinical education, teaching, and research. Georgetown University is in a unique position to realize this goal and at the same time, consolidate medical/nursing and dental/medical research to an off-site location (similar to Georgetown University Law Center)
By way of background, over the past 10 years or so, the dynamics of dental/medical education have changed as well as the social, academic, and economic climates throughout this country. Ten dental schools have opened in the United State in the past decade (after eight closed in the 1980s and 1990s). Over the years, the University has had many opportunities to move the Medical Center from it current location on the undergraduate campus. Allowing the Medical Center and research facilities to relocate off campus would give the University freedom to expand the undergraduate campus.
Part of Georgetown’s vision should be and must be to “educate the world.” To that aim we propose an International School of Dentistry complete with postdoctoral (specialty) programs as well as a vibrant faculty practice. An International Dental School with post doctoral programs, faculty practice and an international faculty exchange program will serve as a template for other universities. The School would provide people in the Washington, DC and surrounding areas with multiple entry points for affordable oral health care. Further, the proposed School could develop a feeder program whereby Georgetown undergraduate pre-dental, composed of international students on government scholarships, could spend up to 10+ years at Georgetown (4 years of undergraduate, 4 years of dental school followed by 2 to 4 years of specialty training). This would be most beneficial to the University as it would provide 10 years of guaranteed full tuition and spread the Hoya good name internationally! Following their education and training, these students would return to their country to assume leadership roles in academia, government service, and patient care.
Perhaps a medical center at a downtown D.C. location where there is public transportation, or sharing space with a MedStar property could offer a more abundant flow of patients supported by ample public transportation. Students might be served by the University transportation system (GUTS) linking the undergraduate campus and the medical campus. It would certainly help solve the existing problem of parking and congestion on the undergraduate campus and medical center.
Our vision is based on a profitable and sustainable Business Plan which, if implemented and integrated properly, will generate income for the University that might be applied to other University endeavors.
With the Georgetown Jesuit Mission of cura personalis at the heart of this plan, our vision will consolidate, augment, and elevate the status of an integrative, contemporary medical education at Georgetown that would unfold to a world leader status for “Generations to Come”!
Thanks for the inspiring post! and the comments are great as well.
I am thrilled about joining the Physics faculty in Spring and contributing to new dreams at GU.
To build upon all the great comments above I believe the University should also start laying the foundation for eventual expansion into engineering. The University has already started by launching the new MS in Information Engineering, but more can be done.
Engineering is increasingly playing a bigger and interdisciplinary role in all areas from medicine to business to politics. Many schools such as Harvard, Brown, etc. have recently expanded and upgraded their engineering schools. UChicago is also laying the foundation to eventually start an engineering school:
http://www.uchicago.edu/features/20110307_molecular_engineering/
Secondly, as the University is facing many financial constraints to realize our dreams, I believe that offering graduate programs to more international students would be beneficial. Many international students have the financial and intellectual capabilities to study at Georgetown. By admitting and enrolling highly qualified international graduate students, the school will not only receive more financial resources, but eventually deeper connections in our globalized world.
Thanks again for another provocative post, but I must say I almost enjoyed reading the comments even more. The Fullbright quote from Mr. Wolfe should be a new campus motto, and an anonymous alum delightfully lists renovating the Reiss bldg as the number one priority ! In that spirit, I’m proud to chime in that our faculty do dream big, along the lines our Provost is admonishing us to do once again. We do need to do it again, but we do it regularly yet also recognize that implementation is everything. Numerous committees (many of which I have served on) have worked tirelessly for over 15 years to envision and describe where we could / should be as an institution if given the space to grow. Here’s a useful exercise that has guided many of us in that work: take a University’s national ranking (for us, that’s 20) and it’s overall international or global ranking, and subtract the two numbers. For 14 of the top 20 Universities in the US, the difference is in the single digits (for Penn it is 8, for Cornell it is 2, etc). For another 5, double digits (depending on the global ranking lists that are available). For us, triple digits; 150 or so, very far behind all other top 20 Universities, regardless which global ranking list you use. But if you look at the “sub scores” in various categories, Georgetown actually outranks many of our top 20 peer group in several categories, including teaching, international outlook, and other key parameters. How can these both be true ? Where we are clearly quite far behind is in research … not necessarily quality, but quantity. A reality for any research University is that the natural sciences account for a very hefty portion of the research volume. Federal and foundation grant support for science and technology (even in the current economy) is in the many tens of billions. Scientific culture and the needs of society demands that every academic scientist work towards producing multiple publications and grant applications every year. The grant support is needed to support the expensive work that any student does in a scientific research setting, and this is peculiar to science vs other academic disciplines. So this does not mean that scholarship in other fields is any less important, but doing science requires more grants, and these days successful grant applications require more and more publications. This has always been the trend, which is why natural sciences tend to dictate a proportionally larger share of a University’s published and funded research “volume”. Over the past 30 years, the college faculty ranks have more than doubled (from 800), which is entirely appropriate for a University achieving global stature. But for 50 years, tenure track faculty slots in chemistry, biology and physics did not increase at all. In 1980, natural science faculty were 14 – 15 % of the faculty in the college of arts and sciences, today we are 6 – 7 %. All of this led to the conclusions faculty and administration reached 10 years ago, working as the Provost again challenges us to do (we indeed need to do more of this). These conclusions, the so called “master plan” for the sciences, were that we needed to build a new science center that housed at least the current science faculty, renovate Reiss, and add substantial new science faculty (on the order of 20 – 30 across the three natural science depts) to make up for no growth in space or faculty for 50 years (a period of time when natural science has exploded at our peer institutions). Phase 1 (the Regents bldg) has been completed to much applause and heartfelt appreciation. Phase 2 and 3 are unfortunately stalled once again. As a top US University that aspires to be all that it can be globally, we should re-double our efforts to clear these ongoing log-jams that hold back the research productivity we are more than capable of.
Best
PD Roepe
Prof. of Chemistry
Prof. of Biochemistry, Cell. and Mol. Biol.
If GU had space and money enough, I would recommend creating a junior fellows/post-docs program along the lines of what Harvard and Michigan (and other universities) have. At the moment, it is in most fields a buyer’s market for young academic talent in the U.S. and even more so in several other countries in which even the best and brightest PhDs now cannot find positions.
GU could benefit by scooping up a couple of dozen such people, giving them space to work, space to talk among themselves, a modest set of teaching responsibilities. They would inject some novelty into the curriculum, some vim into the university’s intellectual life, and — from time to time — GU would find gems to hire to full-time tenurable positions.
I am happy that Dr. Groves is thinking about the future of the university and its future physical plans. Big ideas are important but it is essential to find ways to implement them. Here are a few comments and suggestions:
1. The renovation and reconfiguration of the Reiss Building should receive high priority, to enable science departments to continue developing.
2. However, the Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Public and International Affairs departments and programs are also short of space, and their needs should not be ignored.
3. One idea would be to build a “Language of the World Building” to accommodate all language departments. This idea was first proposed in the 1960s by Dr. Robert Lado the former dean of the School of Languages. It would significantly alleviate the shortage of space in ICC, and allow Social Sciences to grow and achieve distinction, as well as allow SFS to maintain its prominence. This Language Building could possibly be built on the parking in front of St. Mary’s Building or in place of Cober-Kogan.
4. GU could also do like GWU did some years ago and build a multipurpose Academic Resources Center that could be used by a variety of departments and programs, and include classrooms of various sizes and faculty offices.
5. There is also a real need for better and more spacious facilities for the Art and Art History Department, and for music practice rooms.
6. Plans now include converting temporarily the old Jesuit Residence into a student dorm. However, once a large suitable dorm is built on the Harbin Terrace or in place of Kober-Cogen, the Jesuit residence could be converted into faculty and academic offices for departments and programs in the Humanities and Public Affairs. The old Jesuit dining room, which has a certain aesthetic and historical value, should not be subdivided but restored and converted into a lounge, reading room or classroom, all of which are greatly needed.
7. The small temporary looking buildings on Observatory Hill could be replaced by a new Environmental Sciences Building, that would also allow more space for environmental and related sciences. The building should not be too tall to block the view of the observatory (which should also be renovated), and leave some space for the existing garden and picnic area.
8. The extension and upgrading of the Lauinger Library should receive high priority in future plans, as student need better library facilities for studying and research, and the faculty for its teaching and research.
9. Some of houses owned by the University outside of Healy Gate, and that will become empty after the new dorms are built. should be used as faculty and academic offices, to alleviate the shortage of such offices.
10. New dorms should each at least include one classroom, to further the concept of a living-learning space, and to alleviate the shortage of classrooms.
11. Generally speaking, planners should survey the needs of the schools, departments, programs and faculties for classrooms, faculty office space, and labs, as these are essential for proper teaching and research, and the progress of the University. Planners should realize that a university needs other facilities besides dorms, and that it needs offices to hire new faculty, and classrooms to teach courses. In my view academic facilities should receive first priority in any future physical plan, followed by facilities for student services and student space.
Dr. Groves, thank you for encouraging us to think big in the face of financial challenges. Georgetown has historically done a lot more with less, but I think you hit on the nail on the head when you said we may be thinking too small recently.
Not only does this slow progress for the university, but it has an immediate impact on students. If we – faculty, administrators – don’t dream big for our own programs, instead becoming resigned to the status quo, we’ve missed an opportunity to inspire our students.
Without people dreaming big dreams, we clearly never would have moved forward as a society. Thank you for challenging me to think about this.
As a graduate, thank you for sharing how you think about what you are trying to accomplish at Georgetown. It is refreshing, engaging and interesting to be able to observe the good, forward looking thinking that is taking place here at Georgetown. And thank you for coming to Georgetown.
I have long believed that imaging is the first step in creating, If you don’t imagine it, it can never happen. So I thought you would appreciate this quote which I recently ran across from J. William Fulbright, who said, “We must dare to think ‘unthinkable’ thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world.” He went on to say “We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about “unthinkable things” because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.”
Please carry on thinking about the unthinkable. Steve Wolfe F’67
Provost Groves,
Thank you for your informative blogs. I am interested to learn how you will incorporate administrators/staff who are a significant part of the student development process in your call to dream or take action. If you ask alumni, a significant number will describe their most meaningful “growth” happening outside the classroom, whether it be on an excursion led by a faculty or staff member, or in a residential setting with a live-in faculty member or a residence life specialist. Alumni who studied overseas also expressed that their overseas experience was one of the most meaningful learning opportunities they had at Georgetown and had a direct impact on their career decisions. (There is preliminary data supporting this in the Office of International Programs.)
As President DeGioia implied in his presentation on November 20th, the time that faculty and students spend together is one of the most precious gems we can create. I fully agree. I also believe that the time spent between student development professionals and students is as relevant and important as time spent with faculty. I kindly ask that you, President DeGioia and other senior leaders remember and include this important group of educational professionals who have been trained to help in the formation of the whole person, in your calls to action and to dream. By doing this, I believe the full scope and strength of this beloved University will be utilized to help Georgetown be a leader in higher education for years to come. HOYA SAXA!
Kathy Bellows
Executive Director
Office of International Programs
Provost Groves,
As I often do, I reposted your blog on the GUAA Board of Governors’ web page. In response, George Peacock (C’84), President-elect of the GUAA, added the category of “students with perspective’ (i.e., alumni) to your listing of faculty and students. The inclusion of “students with perspective” is a critical addition to your list. To date, you have done an outstanding job of incorporating alumni or “students with perspective” into your planning processes, whether you have specifically included the term “alumni” or not in your blogs or other written pieces. I urge you to continue to do so and would respectfully suggest that you add the term “students with perspective” or “alumni” as a critical component of the University, together with alumni and students! I appreciate your consideration and, of course, your weekly blogs!
Michael Karam, F’72, L’76, L’81
GUAA Board of Governors (Senator)