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The College of Liberal Arts and Vision 2020: Creating a Culture of Excellence
By Leanne South
A college committee spends the academic
year reviewing the college's progress in reaching for excellence.
While Vision 2020 was not intended to serve as a strategic plan, it did imply that Texas A&M was looking down the road. By the year 2020, the university aspires to be considered among the very best public institutions in the nation.
Fast forward nine years to Jan. 10, 2006. On this date, a university
advisory committee filed a progress report appraising Texas A&M’s
success in addressing the imperatives in Vision 2020 and the
challenges that still remain. Progress was noted in seven areas:
1. Becoming a member of the Association of American Universities
(AAU)
2. Organizing a Phi Beta Kappa chapter
3. Hiring 447 new faculty by 2008
4. Improving the undergraduate experience per implementation of
recommendations from a university task force report
5. Successfully completing a university capital campaign
6. Establishing a university position to coordinate and unify marketing
and communication efforts across the university
7. Creating a more collaborative leadership style among university
administration and academic leaders
The major challenges that remain include the following:
• Sustaining the university’s collaborative leadership model
• Finding adequate resources
• Reaching the desired level of student, faculty and administrative
diversity
• Setting high standards in institutional leadership and governance
The College Follows Suit
Beginning in the fall 2006 semester, Dean Charles A. Johnson created
a college-level advisory committee comprising faculty, staff and
current and former students to examine the College of Liberal Arts’
progress over the past seven to eight years in addressing the 12
imperatives listed in the Vision 2020 report. Three deans from AAU
institutions were also enlisted to advise the committee throughout the
year. The committee’s specific charges were to:
• highlight significant accomplishments and progress by the college
toward Vision 2020 goals;
• determine what steps are necessary to sustain and accelerate movement
toward these goals;
• identify areas where progress toward Vision 2020 goals is lagging;
and
• suggest adjustments to approaches taken by the college to achieve
Vision 2020 goals.
How the Committee Approached Its Task
At the first meeting in September, the committee decided to use the fourth imperative in Vision 2020: Creating a Culture of Excellence as its starting point for its review. This imperative concerned the growth of core arts, humanities and sciences programs. Committee members followed that with a review of the other 11 imperatives, looking specifically for ways these respective goals and precepts correlated to the College of Liberal Arts. Five working subgroups were established to aid in gathering data on the specific areas found in Vision 2020 — faculty, graduate programs, undergraduate education, resources and diversity. Each subgroup presented its findings to the entire committee over the course of the academic year and then submitted a final report late in the spring 2007 semester.
In addition to the data collected by the subgroups, Committee Chair Professor Margaret Ezell, distinguished professor of English, conducted a college survey assessing faculty perceptions on the impact of Vision 2020. Ezell used the subgroup reports and survey results to draft a preliminary report. Committee members reviewed it and submitted revisions, which Ezell fashioned into a final report that was submitted to the AAU deans.
The AAU deans met with the committee twice: at the end of the fall semester to advise them on their progress and again toward the end of the spring semester to respond to the final report.
Dean Johnson will lead a college-wide discussion during the fall 2007 semester to review the report and make specific recommendations as to how the College of Liberal Arts should proceed in addressing Vision 2020 goals over the next several years.
What the Committee Discovered
The committee learned quickly that the college is young when compared to its aspirational peers. The college itself did not even exist in its current formation until 1965, but, without question, it has made progress in addressing Vision 2020.
One reason for the progress is that the university invested in the college during the period assessed. University leaders recognized that the College of Liberal Arts would play a key role in the success Texas A&M would have in achieving goals found in Vision 2020.
The college used this support to increase the productivity and prominence of its faculty, to enhance the educational opportunities for its students and their professional placement after graduation, and to create a more diverse college community. The committee also concluded that this support had helped the college to form a community of scholars by connecting faculty, students and staff in ways that bridge departments and disciplines. The committee believes this model holds promise for creating even larger networks of scholarly intellectual communities among the university’s colleges.
Challenges That Remain
The committee noted that the university’s support has been vital to the college’s success and will continue to play a crucial role in any future success. While the college has journeyed far from its starting point, there is still a significant distance to travel. A number of departments have developed exceptional programs, but the college must continue this development until it achieves excellence across the college, a characteristic of a mature intellectual community.
When measured by the growing numbers of faculty, graduate students, programs and awards, the College of Liberal Arts is succeeding in building a dynamic academic community. The college, however, must also devise innovative strategies to sustain diverse scholarly intellectual communities and sustain a climate of inclusiveness for its new students and new faculty. To create a vibrant and sustainable culture of excellence, the college must look closely at the ways in which the liberal arts will engage with critical questions raised by advances in the technologies of research and information, as well as respond to the changing needs of 21st century students and the roles they will play in society.
A complete copy of the report is available here.
