But that steady forward gaze is bringing three new campuswide initiatives into focus--the first broaching of major new academic efforts since successive shortfalls in state funding forced UC Davis to slice more than $40 million from its budget two years ago.
"If the university is to move forward, it must be responsive to academic directions, societal expectations and our own faculty's changing needs," said Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, vice provost for academic planning and personnel.
The three new initiatives--in the areas of the environment, health and globalization--were run up the flagpole earlier this quarter with deans and department chairs and then at the chancellor's fall conference.
"We saw really strong and positive reaction," Tomlinson-Keasey said.
The three "play to our strengths" as a campus, involve multiple units and respond to "some of the difficult and timely issues in society"--all important criteria of the chancellor and provost, she said. The next step is for three commissions to draft proposals by the end of spring quarter suggesting "plans, programs, ideas to position us as a leader in these arenas within the next five years," Tomlinson-Keasey said.
"The commissions have to sift through a really wide array of possibilities in each area, decide what we can and want to do and what funding agencies are willing to think about."
Some funding has also been set aside by the chancellor's and provost's offices, accrued from the Phase III budget-prioritizing process.
Ultimately, there has to be buy-in from the schools and colleges if these new alliances and efforts are to bear fruit, she said.
"I'm not sure all three of these initiatives will end up with plans that will get us places, and they may lead in different directions," Tomlinson-Keasey said. "We're still at the beginning here, but, based on the reception the initiatives have received, I think we've hit on areas lots of people can be involved in and enthused about. But ultimately, chairs and deans have to decide how they want their college or school or division to be shaped and whether they'll request FTE [full-time equivalent positions] to support these initiatives."
The commissions will be aided in their work by Tomlinson-Keasey, who'll focus on the globalization initiative; M.R.C. Greenwood, dean of graduate studies and vice provost for academic outreach, who'll help explore disease prevention and health promotion; and Robert Shelton, vice chancellor for research, who'll assist with the environment initiative.
Greenwood is expecting to meet with a small executive committee in mid-December to further identify the expertise needed on the health initiative's full commission.
She points to the campus's broad interest and accomplishment in the health field as a predictor of the initiative's success--from a medical school ranked No. 2 nationally in primary care training to a vet school that's "absolutely the first in the nation" in communicable diseases, comparative medicine and food safety; first-rate programs in nutrition and in plant and molecular biology that "can make us leaders in the new food wave for the 21st century"; an emerging biomedical engineering program; a "tremendous core" of Letters and Science faculty interested in such issues as access to health care, crime and violence, children, and the relationship between health and emotional development; strong ethnic and language programs to help build a health initiative that's accessible to a broad range of Californians; and extraordinary outreach efforts like health professional certification programs, telemedicine sites, and the UC Davis Medical Center's commercial television program "Pulse."
"Collectively, we've got all of the pieces for a program that would make us the place to be in the country for the future," Greenwood said. "All we need is a way to coordinate and build it and gain the collective advantage that working in this general area might give us as a campus."
Shelton is also in the process of formulating his commission, exploring faculty interest in serving and asking their help in refining the environment commission's aspirations. "The environment initiative covers an enormous breadth of possibilities, stemming from the variety of our activities and our historic strength," Shelton said. "We have so many strong programs that are truly multidisciplinary, and numerous federally funded research and outreach programs in the environment."
The globalization commission will be led by co-chairs Barbara Metcalf, acting dean of the Division of Social Sciences, and Colin Carter, professor of agriculural economics. Its members will consider ways to internationalize the curriculum, to encourage students to think more globally, to foster a broad perspective on economic and political issues, to strengthen relationships with businesses around the world and to tap the latest technologies to remove geographic boundaries to information and ideas.
"We do a lot internationally, based not only on our demographics but on our position within the Pacific Rim," Tomlinson-Keasey said.
But the globe continues to shrink, she noted, and "we must prepare our students for global thinking and for a globally-based job market. Businesses are dying to have students with a broader view, able to act in an international framework."
If the three commissions stay on target and deliver plans and budget proposals by the end of the academic year, "I would hope we would begin to move toward our five-year goals, with next year being year No. 1," Tomlinson-Keasey said.
