University of Maryland Office of the President
Introduction
how far
Marking the road
Providing and outstanding
Building the Maryland family
The Way Forward
What's Next
A Clear Directoin
Speech PDF

   Marking the road to excellence

Let me read to you some of the signposts that we passed along this road in the last five years to see if you think we're going in the right direction. The first one declared the amount of sponsored research. It reflects judgments about the quality of our work and our people. If we are not competitive in quality, we will not get sponsored. This is not charity; this is competition. Our goal set in 1999 was to increase our total research sponsorship by 50% to $300 million by this year. We cleared that benchmark for the last three years running with this year's total, $349 million.

A second sign post is our U.S. News public ranking that moved from 30th to18th, close to the high bar goal we set at 15th. We are 15th in peer reputation, which counts the most. Our number of top-10 programs moved from 11 in 1999 to 24, one short of our goal. In addition we show 44 top-15 programs compared to 18 in 1999, and 70 top-25 programs compared to 28 at the start. By any measure these are strong showings.

The third signpost shows the number of faculty chairs and professorships. It increased more than 70% from 46 to 79. Ok, I wanted 100, and I still want 100. But creating 46 over 143 years and then adding 33 more over 5 years shows that times are changing.

A fourth sign flashes brightly -- the new physical space added to the campus. If we tally the buildings under construction with those completed, we have built 25% of the total campus space since 1998. That is, 3.5 million new square feet have been built including the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, new Van Munching wing, Kim Engineering and Applied Science building, bioscience building, chemistry wing, Computer Science Lecture Hall, Comcast Center, research green house and many others. And this list does not include major renovations of existing spaces, like the Stamp Union, or the new research park, M-Square.

And to speak of M-Square we just passed it on a fifth sign post, our new research park. Four years ago we had no land and no money for a research park. And now we own a 115-acre research park, next to the campus and inside the Washington beltway. We have professional development partners for financing, constructing and promoting the park. And we have two prominent, long-term tenants. One, the Center for Advanced Study of Language, will create the world's center on acquisition and translation of seldom taught languages. The other will create the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in collaboration with us. We also have agreements with the People's Republic of China to build the U.S.-China Research Park and to create a new "Confucius Study Center" to promote learning of Chinese language, literature and culture. Both were firsts for China, and both are unique in the U.S.

The sixth signpost illuminates our leadership in diversity. With the increasing quality of our diversity programs, the campus fosters advancement of our diverse community. The recent June 10 issue of Black Issues in Higher Education showed some poignant program rankings. It ranked 9 University undergraduate programs in the top-10 in the nation and 25 in the top-25 compared to 3 and 11 in 1998. Among the top-50 public universities nationally, Maryland ranks at the top in the number of baccalaureate degrees awarded to African Americans, 3rd in master's degrees, and 4th in doctorates.

Our faculty appear regularly in journals focusing on diversity. Black Issues named Jim Gates of Physics as one of 20 Giants in the Classroom of the last century; and the July issue of Black Issues featured Lee Thornton, of Journalism, in an interview on ethics in journalism. On the back cover the associate editor Robin Smiles, a doctoral student in English, wrote of the challenge for African Americans in doctoral programs.

Throughout the run up in the quality of the university, and the greatly increased competition for admission over the last 5 years, we have expanded our minority graduates, increased the ranking of our programs, broadened the diversity on this campus, and yes, increased graduation rates. The number of African American, Hispanic American and Native American graduates in 2003 is each more than double the number in 1998. Between 1999 and 2004 the 6-year graduation rate increased a credible 9% for the student body as a whole, and also 10% for African American, 5% for Asian American, 14% for Hispanic American and 17% for Native American students.

One conclusion that you can take away from this discussion is that these signposts would not be there if we were not on the road to building a great university. People believe in us, they invest in us, and we are delivering outcomes.



Office of the President, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742