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By every measure that I know, we have achieved our reputation because we have been exceptionally successful at keeping our primary focus on the undergraduate experience, which is our inherent strength. I believe that Miami has been successful and can become even more successful by turning our assets into our advantages. Let me touch briefly on three of these assets that relate to undergraduate education: our size and composition, the Miami Experience, and our sense of community.
Size and Composition
At the top of the list of assets that can, and should be, our advantage is our size and special blend of undergraduate and graduate programs. Having served two top-flight academic institutions at opposite ends of the spectrum, Macalester College and the University of Washington, I am keenly aware of the advantages and disadvantages of each. In my view, Miami has achieved an exceptional balance between the two, truly a "golden mean" in which we combine intimacy and opportunity, undergraduate and graduate, to great effect. We are among the very best "universities of the third kind." This view is shared by others who are familiar with higher education across the country, as noted most recently in a Sunday issue of The New York Times:
The focus is truly on educating undergraduates," says Terry Hartle, a senior vice president at the American Council on Education. "This is a medium-size institution with the advantages that confers"—high quality facilities, research opportunities—"but it still has the feel of a small liberal arts college."
The Miami Experience
The "feel of a small liberal arts college" is the result of having both engaged faculty and engaged students. As I speak to alumni throughout the country, they speak with deep feelings when they describe their Miami Experience. And when they do so, they reference first and foremost the deep engagement of the faculty that they enjoyed while here. This tradition of deep engagement has been a part of the Miami Experience for a long time and is, without a doubt, one of our strongest assets in attracting students and other faculty here. As one of our colleagues put it, if potential faculty members don't have the gene that compels them to teach and interact with students, they ought not to be at Miami. Our passion for scholarship is integral to teaching and should give it greater energy. Despite the centrality of this quality, though, we have seen a decline in engagement on many levels, a decline that we need to turn around. Students today are less likely to be taught by tenure-track faculty than they were a generation ago, and they are less likely to have that intense first-year experience that launches students into their education.
We currently have two efforts under way to address this issue and will need to consider additional steps in the years ahead. First, we are in the process of adding new faculty lines to provide a better student/teacher ratio. Second, Provost Herbst has launched a study of faculty workloads. Our most precious resource is our time, and we need to use it wisely. The workload question is entangled in the question of the balance between research and teaching. Let me be clear about this. There is no question that every highly ranked college and university has a research-active faculty. This is as true for Macalester College—which has no graduate programs, no external funding, and a significant teaching load—as it is for the University of Washington, with $1 billion of externally funded research. Thus, we need to be recognized for our high-quality, research-active faculty as well as for our extraordinary teaching. Overwhelmingly, when I talk with faculty on campus—both those who have been here a long time and new faculty—they speak most enthusiastically about our emphasis on the balance of high expectations we have for both teaching and research. We need to continually examine our workload structure and our reward structure to ensure that we have the right balance of emphasis on teaching and research to accomplish our core missions. We also need to find methods to eliminate this dualism so that student learning and research merge seamlessly into faculty research and teaching, from our largest introductory classes to that special opportunity to work alongside a professor on a scholarly project.
The Miami Experience also includes our commitment to the Miami Plan and our tradition and goal of attracting "academically ambitious students," taught to lead "intellectually vigorous lives." Isn't that a great phrase—"academically ambitious students"? I have spoken with many faculty who have come to Miami from positions at other universities, and they commonly note that students here are much more engaged with their classes, actively seeking additional contact with their teachers and fellow students. This ambition both extends into and feeds off the high degree of student involvement in co-curricular activities—another signature quality of the Miami Experience. Students come here expecting to participate in extracurricular activities and do participate at an uncommonly high level. Some of these activities are entirely student-run, but many of them directly depend on faculty involvement and support. I have been impressed by how often students talk about their desire for even more involvement of faculty in everything from learning communities and student organizations within departments to attendance at lectures, concerts, and athletic events.
An interesting factoid of Miami is that each year more than 7,500 students sign up for intramural broomball. While this may not directly add to our national reputation, I have come to believe that it speaks volumes about the energy of our student body and the bonds of tradition that add greatly to our experience here. Let me give fair warning, though. We are assembling a "Team Roudebush" that we hope will surprise the league later this year!
Sense of Community
Finally, the Miami Experience is distinctive because of the strong sense of community that is engendered, among other things, by our beautiful residential campus and small-town setting. It is not that we are isolated, with Cincinnati close by and a deep commitment to global experience and perspective. Indeed it is this mixture of a local community with intense interactions and a globally engaged university that helps to make Miami distinctive. So while we work to create a stronger sense of community, we are also working to increase the proportion of students studying abroad. Similarly, we seek to increase the number of international students on campus. These students greatly broaden our horizons in and out of classes.
While geography has been an advantage when it comes to creating our strong sense of community, this advantage has been challenged in recent years by increased dispersion of faculty and staff, necessitated by changing household patterns and limited local employment opportunities. There are several ways that we can counteract this; let me suggest three. First and foremost, we must strengthen our sense of community through our common vision and meaningful common experiences, embracing campus life as fully as possible. As noted above, participating even occasionally in extracurricular activities has a huge impact on our sense of community. Second, we need to work to make Oxford more attractive to faculty and staff by strengthening our partnership with the community and contributing even more effectively to the success of our local schools. And let me take this opportunity to congratulate the Talawanda School District for its recent success in statewide testing. The District came within .2 percent of achieving the top excellent rating and Talawanda High School achieved an excellent rating for the second year in a row. Third, in keeping with many of the recommendations of the Alcohol Task Force last spring, we need to work on improving the quality of campus life, for students on and off campus. We need to encourage a more active campus life that will both enhance the undergraduate experience and reduce the risks associated with alcohol abuse.
A truly distinguished community is also an inclusive community; a community that supports all within it. It is a community that not only tolerates difference but also embraces difference. We all know that the racial and economic profiles of the Miami community do not mirror our society, and there has been much discussion of how we can create a more diverse student body, faculty, and staff. These are important goals, and there are many specific steps we can, and must, take to attract and retain greater diversity. But the success of those programs requires more than action. It requires above all an inclusive climate, a fundamental attitude that recognizes our differences, celebrates those differences, and works tirelessly to ensure that all feel that they belong here, that they are welcomed, and that they can succeed. Diversity cannot be viewed as an issue "on the side." It is fundamental to our sense of community, and we must make creating a climate of inclusivity one of our very highest priorities.
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