For Immediate Release January 10, 2006

For More Information Contact: Rich Schneider, 317-278-4564 rcschnei@iupui.edu

When It Comes to IUPUI Doubling Goals, There Is Much to Celebrate, Much Still to Do

Chancellor Charles R. Bantz

INDIANAPOLIS - Since Chancellor Charles R. Bantz invoked the power of two to double teaching and learning, research, scholarship, and creative activity, civic engagement, and diversity two years ago, much has been accomplished.

Bantz noted that the doubling goals are critically important because IUPUI plays such an essential role to the future of the state.

“That is a privilege and an obligation,” he said. “The community understands that education is essential to the success of this state.”

That is why doubling goals for teaching and leaning are so critical, the chancellor said.

Under the doubling goals, 4,400 students are to receive baccalaureate degrees in 2010. In 2004-05, IUPUI conferred 2,429 baccalaureate degrees. To reach that goal, the freshman-to-sophomore retention rate needs to rise from 65 percent to 75 percent by 2008. In addition, the six-year graduation rate needs to be boosted to 40 percent for first-time full-time students who entered in fall 2004. The six-year graduation rate for students entering in the fall of 1998 was 22 percent.

It will be a challenge to accomplish those goals, Bantz said, but the campus has made progress. Among the accomplishments he cited as cause for celebration are:

• U.S. News and World Report ranked IUPUI for the fourth year in a row in 2006 for first-year experiences, learning communities and service learning.
• Council on Adult and Experiential Learning IUPUI case study strengths: contact with faculty and use of technology, both for teaching and student support.)
• National leadership in pedagogy
• The School of Engineering and Technology awarded 325 BS degrees in 2005, exceeding target of 306 toward goal of doubling baccalaureates.
• Attracting high achieving students through Bepko Scholars program
• High retention rates among programs such as Sam Jones Community Service Scholars and Nina Masson Pulliam Scholars

Goals for doubling research, scholarship and creative activity require IUPUI to look at opportunities for synergy and “big opportunities” across the campus, the chancellor said.

“As National Institutes for Health (NIH) funding gets tighter, we have to come up with ideas that are so compelling that NIH gives us the money instead of someone else,” Bantz said.

While campus-wide researched funding dipped in 2005, “We can celebrate our colleagues in nursing, whose NIH rankings move from 21 st to 17 th in NIH funding, with an increase of 68 percent in awards,” the chancellor noted.

The School of Public and Environmental Affairs doubled its awards last year with a $2 million Lilly Endowment grant for “Building Communities One at a Time, $6.5 million was awarded b y the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to the Indiana Health Information Exchange, and the Indiana Center for Rehabilitation Sciences and Engineering Research and partner organizations received a $1 million Department of Defense appropriation to study rehabilitation needs of veterans.

New facilities that will influence research, scholarship and creative activity are under construction, including the Medical Information Sciences Building and Indiana University Cancer Hospital.

Numbers reflecting civic engagement doubling goals are trending upward, but need to increase at a faster rate, the chancellor said.

According to the chancellor, the challenge is measurement and to measure civic engagement in the same manner as it measurers other indicators on campus. “Civic engagement is where we can make a mark. We probably already have made it, but we need to make it indelible.” Among accomplishments to be celebrated are:

• Being Selected in 2005 by the Princeton Review as a “College with a Conscience,” one of only 81 colleges and universities that were selected for their outstanding commitment to community involvement.
• Democracy plaza has become a successful venue that draws students together.
• Selected by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning as one of 12 institutions to pilot the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement
• Being one of the first three campuses in the nation to include “civic engagement” in re-accreditation review through the North Central Association.
• The Sam H. Jones Community Service Scholarship Program, one of the largest service-based scholarship programs in the nation.

Doubling diversity goals also represent a challenge.

“We need to enhance the diversity of students, diversity of faculty and we need to spread diversity through the curriculum,” the chancellor said. “We need to move forward in a way that reflects not only our community's diversity but the country's national diversity.”

The campus has made slight progress but it cannot claim yet that it is matching the diversity of IUPUI's Central Indiana service population, much less national diversity levels.

“The best way to create an environment in which people of all cultures and ethnicities can thrive is to make sure that the university's mission and goals for diversity are communicated clearly, viewed as absolutely necessary for collective success, and acted upon with the collective power of all members of the community. This entails a sense of inclusiveness on the part of all members of the campus community coupled with a shared belief system and code of conduct that is embraced by faculty, staff, and students,” Bantz said.

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