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President Loh: 2015 State Of The Campus Address

November 10, 2015 College of Arts and Humanities

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University President Wallace Loh outlines a path forward for this university in the annual State of the Campus address to the University Senate.

University President Wallace Loh discusses the past, present and future investments for this university, a premier research and land-grant institution. 

Last year, research funding exceeded  $550M, a new record, Loh said. Basic research is resulting in the start-up of four to five new high tech companies each year. The university's partnership with the University of Maryland, Baltimore, which has begun in 2012, has led to 70 joint faculty appointments and generated more than $80M in joint research.  

To support the university's educational and research mission, seven new campus facilities—totaling about $1B—have been built or are underway, Loh said. Because the future of this university is intertwined with the future of the surrounding community, the University of Maryland has helped catalyze more than $400M in private development to implement the vision of a “Greater College Park,” Loh said.   

The university's new partnership with the Phillips Collection builds on the university's programs in art, art history, performing arts and the arts and humanities. "We are truly a STEAM university; the arts stand side-by-side with the STEM disciplines," Loh said. The university's affiliation with the Big Ten Conference and its academic arm, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, has spurred extensive collaborations with the other 13 schools. 

Going forward, Loh said that the university must continue to build on its strengths, despite the fact that state appropriations and tuition revenues will likely stay relatively flat. "That means using our collective ingenuity to diversify and expand our revenues," Loh said.

To raise critical funds for scholarships, endowed professorships, programs and facilities, Loh said that we will soon launch the university’s largest philanthropic campaign—after three consecutive years of record fundraising. "We will strategically increase enrollments, entrepreneurial academic programs, and new partnerships with industry and government to generate the new revenues to propel our university’s ascent," he said.  

The university will also work to modernize administrative processes so that they work better, faster, and more economically—savings that departments can reinvest in their own work.

All this will allow the university to make strategic investments:

·       For students —by raising endowment dollars to make college more affordable and increase funding for career-readiness programs. 

·       For faculty and staff —by creating a new fund to address salary compression, while continuing to advocate strongly in Annapolis for competitive salaries to attract and retain the university's talented people. 

·       Loh said we will also make targeted investments in interdisciplinary research areas that build on existing strengths. These include, for example, big data, cyber-security, global climate change, brain and behavior, and contemporary African American life—issues that are among the grand challenges of our time. 

See video here