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A Faculty Senate Vision for U.Va.

As a site for cutting-edge research in major scholarly fields and as the home for an unparalleled undergraduate experience, the University of Virginia is already poised to assume leading rank among all research and teaching universities. To achieve this goal, U.va. must invest new resources in targeted initiatives of high ambition that will extend our research and teaching excellence, without decoupling the reciprocal relationship between the two. If we excel across the University with this dual distinction, our research-and-teaching academical village will become a paradigm for higher education, both public and private.

The Faculty Senate fully endorses a range of initiatives already underway - including efforts in the sciences, movements toward internationalization of the university, a commitment to new initiatives that will enhance current programs in the visual and performing arts, investment in growing libraries and in digital technologies for research and teaching, and a renewed commitment to public outreach, especially in K-12 education. To these we add and encourage several concrete initiatives that, if taken together, would lead toward the transformational goals we regard as both necessary and within reach.

Our first and foundational recommendation is:

  • Immediate pursuit of a 1:15 faculty-student ratio, to be fully achieved within seven years through a targeted 20% increase in the number of faculty. These additional faculty would enable U.va. to increase the number of classes having fewer than 50 students and, especially, fewer than 20 students, and to extend faculty involvement with students in research.
  • We propose a long-term goal of a 1:12 ratio by 2020.

Accompanying that goal and in large measure building upon it are these core aims:

  • A well-funded effort to build internationally prominent research programs, as assessed by academic metrics like National Research Council rankings, especially in the sciences, while taking steps at every stage to enhance already distinguished areas in the humanities, social sciences, and professional schools.
  • A commitment to have every undergraduate receive a course in writing instruction and to train all students in professional schools in relevant communication skills (writing, speaking, presentation technologies, etc.), as part of a resolve to make U.va. the national leader both in the teaching of writing in every school and in engagement with K-12 writing instruction.
  • Renewed initiatives to increase diversity in the faculty and student body, including a commitment to move U.va. into the top third of the rankings of comparable AAU institutions within the next decade in the percentage of female faculty and faculty of color.
  • Establish an ambitious program of cross-school exchange that will promote research and teaching collaborations among faculty, with incentives and rewards for creative collaborative work in targeted areas.
  • Offer unprecedented possibilities for undergraduate research, aiming toward, within seven years, a tripling of undergraduate research awards, such as the Harrison Undergraduate Research Awards, with funding for students and their faculty mentors.
  • A commitment to bring graduate funding up to market rates within five years by closing the gap in various disciplines' graduate fellowships between U.va. and the nation's most prestigious institutions in those fields.
  • In order to guarantee sustainability of these and other targeted initiatives, establish an ongoing academic planning process that would involve the Faculty Senate, the Office of the Provost, and the Board of Visitors and that would continue to work through and beyond the present capital campaign.

Beginning work soon on these complementary initiatives will ensure the University's ability to fulfill its potential as a premier institution of knowledge and learning, dedicated to human flourishing and engagement in public life.

Faculty Senate Committee on Planning & Development (approved, Executive Council, 27 April 2006)