Presentation:

Welcome to the Reinvention Center’s fourth biennial conference. It is gratifying to be standing here once again and to see so many old and new friends. Many of you have said that you find Center conferences particularly valuable because they provide a rare opportunity for you to meet with colleagues who work at universities like your own, network and establish ongoing relationships, many of which have led to highly productive collaborations. We anticipate further networking and sharing of ideas and practices in the next two days.

Before we start our deliberations, I would like to thank officials of the National Science Foundation who have contributed intellectual capital and critical moral and financial support to this meeting, as well as to previous conferences.

Today’s conference is special for two reasons.

First, it is the Reinvention Center’s first major national event since relocating to the University of Miami and transforming into a membership-sponsored organization. In response to a single mailing, the Center has attracted 70 research universities as defined in the original Carnegie classification system. This number is remarkable, especially given the current financial situation, and it reflects the attention now being given to undergraduate education by these institutions.

The new status of the Center is very exciting. With the money generated by the membership fees, the Center is finally able to do many of the things you all have been calling for. Moreover, what we do will be up to the members, who now have a real stake in the Center and increasingly will be the driving force in setting the agenda.

I attribute the enthusiastic response to this transformation to you and your colleagues who, in sharing your most effective programs and practices with others and together addressing common challenges, have ensured that Center meetings are productive, and that the Center itself has become both a focal point and valued resource.
I would like to note the important role of one group in particular--what we at the Center call the UVPs: Vice Presidents, Vice Provosts, Deans and other senior officials at research universities who have overall responsibility for undergraduate education on their campuses and who are there to make things happen. The UVPs wear many hats and have an enormous array of responsibilities. They are simultaneously faculty “in the trenches” and administrators leading campus efforts to plan, design, implement, and monitor the curriculum, while ensuring that it is coherent and educationally sound and meets the learning goals the university has established for its students. And they often must do so with minimal resources. More than for any other senior university administrators, their effectiveness depends on the robustness of their ideas, their leadership skills, and their powers of persuasion and on the good will of their colleagues.

Two years ago the Reinvention Center established a UVP network to give visibility to the undergraduate mission and to create a forum in which this group can come together on a regular basis to discuss current and emerging issues and probe some of the most persistent challenges.

The UVP network, which is the only national organization for individuals in this leadership position, is akin to similar organizations for university presidents, provosts and graduate school deans. Its members aim not only to strengthen undergraduate education on their own campuses, but through collective action, to change the current discourse on higher education nationally so that it is evidence based and reflect the research university’s true academic mission and values.

In a few minutes, you will hear from Donna Shalala, President of the University of Miami and the person responsible for the Center’s successful relocation and transformation-- in fact, for our being here today.

The second reason why this conference has special meaning is that its timing coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Boyer Commission report Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Universities (1998). The report--perhaps more than any other document-- inspired and provided direction for the intense discussion, experimentation and innovation in undergraduate education that has taken place at research universities in the past decade.

This ten-year anniversary makes the conference the ideal occasion to pause; take stock of the reforms and advances of the last ten years; highlight approaches and practices that have produced significant results; and, then looking to the future, to investigate ways, to build on what we have learned to further the "reinventing process." As we deliberate, the driving interest remains-- as it has been from the outset-- to continue the process of determining how the research university culture, values, and rich array of resources can shape and add distinctive value to undergraduate education. Our next step will be to figure out how to use the knowledge we have gained thus far to improve curriculum and pedagogy, particularly as we expand the scope of our teaching and engage an increasingly diverse student population.

The Reinvention Center, as most of you know, is the child of the Boyer Commission. When the Center was founded, the Commission bequeathed it three items: A name, a logo, and ten recommendations that were intended as a guide for the “reinvention” in undergraduate education that the Commission was urging..

I’ll start with the name. The word “Reinvention” comes directly from the title of the Boyer Commission report: It was coined by Milton Glazer, a world renowned graphic artist and wordsmith and the only member of the Boyer Commission who was not an academic.

Initially, the Center’s name was the butt of more jokes than you can imagine. Invariably, when I handed someone my card or happened to mention that I was the director of something called the Reinvention Center, the standard response I received was a laugh, followed by something like, “Reinvention, what,” or “what do you reinvent,” or “ are you an interior decorator” or “do you renovate houses?

Then the name became a source of embarrassment when the word was adopted by Madison Avenue, and used to describe new sleek models of Toyota and Subaru, to name just two products to which it was applied.

But time has passed and “reinvention” has become commonplace. A few weeks ago a commentator on the Charlie Rose show referred to a “reinvented economy” in reference to the economy likely to emerge from the current fiscal crisis, and last week, in expressing awe at the diverse citizenry who voted for President-Elect Obama, Wolfe Blitzer on CNN spoke of a “reinvented America.”

The point is that the Center’s name not only has stuck, but it has gained real meaning over the years as all of us have truly been in the “reinventing” business-- re-thinking and transforming undergraduate education at our institutions and nationwide, in doing so, taking full advantage of the research university’s intellectual vitality and the richness that derives from its research and graduate programs.
The logo was easier—a beautiful and colorful bouquet of flower sitting atop a classical column—the perfect symbol of the research university as an institution that connects civilizations by actively committing itself to preserving, transmitting and generating knowledge.

The ten recommendations that the Boyer Commission put forward were all offered with the research university’s unique mission and assets in mind. Rather than trying to replicate the kind of undergraduate education that liberal arts college provide, the Boyer Commission urged research universities to adopt a mode of teaching and learning that aligns with their research and graduate programs and emphasizes inquiry, investigation and discovery.

When we a look at the Boyer Commission recommendations now, it is startling to realize the degree to which they served as a starting point for the reinvention process at most institutions. In 2003, the Reinvention Center surveyed 93 research universities about the extent to which they had been influenced by or acted on each of the recommendations in the three years immediately following publication of the report. Our findings, briefly: (see presentation slides)

It should be noted that in the 2003 survey, respondents reported little progress on two of the recommendations: Expanding capstone courses and interdisciplinary education. There was also little reference to the use of technology as an instructional tool, or to such interests as globalism, service learning, civic engagement, and the science of learning, which have developed in the intervening years.

In 2006, when the Center conducted a modified version of the same survey, we found that some of the recommendations had been so thoroughly implemented that they are now firmly engrained in the fabric of the undergraduate experience at a majority of the participating institutions. And great progress has been made on other recommendations. At the same time, in the intervening years, new interests and challenges have emerged. Some of our most interesting findings: (see presentation slides)

Today’s conference has dual goals; One, as I have indicated, is to take stock and consolidate what we have learned and what we know works. The second goal is to move on to the next set of challenges: 1) Determining how to maintain, sustain, improve, refine, and expand what has proved effective; 2) Identifying gaps that we still need to address; and 3) Developing priorities and positioning our undergraduate education so that it can respond to forces likely to emerge in the next five years and beyond.
 
During the next two days, together we will probe four of the major priorities identified by Reinvention Center constituents. Two were major concerns articulated in the Boyer Commission report that, despite considerable progress, still confound us today: General Education and crafting an undergraduate education that realizes our potential as research universities. The other two conference foci have come to the forefront in the ten years since the Boyer Commission report: Assessment, and Diversity and Globalism, which can be viewed as a continuum of the same theme.

It is my great pleasure now to formally start this conference by introducing the opening keynote speaker, Donna Shalala. Dr. Shalala is truly one of this nation’s most distinguished and accomplished educators and public servants. She is Professor of Political Science and President of the University of Miami. She also has served as President of Hunter College of the City University of New York and President of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

As a public servant, Dr. Shalala has worked with administrations on both sides of the aisle. In the Carter administration, from 1977-80 she was Assistant Secretary for Public Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. For President Clinton, she served as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) for eight years, the longest tenure of any HHS secretary. In 2007, at the request of President Bush, Dr. Shalala co-chaired with Senator Bob Dole the Commission on Care for Returning Wounded Warriors, to evaluate how wounded service members transition from active duty to civilian society.

In over a quarter century of work in public service and education, President Shalala has earned a reputation for both singular academic achievement and exceptional leadership. She is the recipient of over three dozen honorary degrees and is a member of numerous academic honorary societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine in the American Academy of Sciences. In 2006, she chaired an important National Academy of Sciences committee on increasing the presence of women in the science disciplines. In June 2008, President Bush presented Dr. Shalala with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. The award recognizes individuals who have made exceptional contributions to national security, world peace, or cultural endeavors. She is one of just a handful of university presidents to be so recognized.

President Shalala is an academic leader with a keen eye for excellence, and she improves every school she leads. In her first five years at the University of Miami she led a campaign that raised $1.48 billion. She has set the University of Miami on the most ambitious plan of campus reconstruction and academic renewal in its history.

All of this—and it is only part of what she has achieved—would be more than sufficient reason for President Shalala to address a meeting of the Reinvention Center, but two other aspects of her career make her presence with us particularly relevant.

First, in the midst of her multiple roles at Miami and across the nation, she has distinctively and unambiguously championed the centrality of undergraduate learning in research universities. President Shalala annually teaches the largest undergraduate course at the University of Miami, on the politics of health care. The course is lively, vital, sophisticated, and uses the full range of contemporary educational technology. More important, it also includes time for her to meet with individual students, to discuss everything from their progress in the course to their plans for their lives. In her own intellectual and instructional practice, she embodies the Center’s aims and values. She is a genuine scholar and an authentic student-centered educator.

Second, in a real and concrete sense, we are here today because of Donna Shalala. When the Reinvention Center ended its initial tenure at Stony Brook University, there was uncertainty about its location and thus its persistence. The University of Miami stepped in to enable the Center to have an institutional base from which to continue its work while we make our exciting and decisive transformation into a member-owned and member-directed consortium. The University of Miami’s support did not require hours of persuasion about the value of the Center’s mission. In one remarkable meeting with President Shalala about the Center, she was quick, clear, welcoming, and decisive. A friend in need is a friend indeed, and we all owe her and the University of Miami deep gratitude for extraordinary collegiality, support, and academic citizenship.

Please give a very warm welcome to Donna Shalala, President of the University of Miami.