OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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CORVALLIS - Oregon State University announced today a finalized strategic plan that calls for the university to improve the quality of its academics by investing in five key areas, increase student access to higher education through a scholarship drive, and help jump-start the Oregon economy through key partnerships with business.
The plan, distributed by OSU President Ed Ray, also calls for Oregon State to become one of the nation's top 10 land grant universities.
"We need to aim high, while at the same time keeping a realistic eye on social and economic environment in which we live," Ray said. "Whining about financial challenges gets us nowhere. Instead, we are focusing our energy and resources in areas that first and foremost benefit students, yet also dovetail with what the state needs.
"In a nutshell," he added, "we want to become more relevant in the lives of the people of Oregon and enrich the global competitiveness of the Oregon economy."
Ray said the university will invest more of its current and future resources in the five theme areas and emphasized that the priority for those resources will be to fund student scholarships and to hire and retain top quality teaching and research faculty - and provide them with the facilities and equipment they need to be most effective.
The university also will evaluate its Extension Service, off-campus programs and support services to help advance the five theme areas. The five theme areas are:
The OSU president said the university will "put its money where its mouth is" and support funding for up to six proposals for significant, integrated programs in those theme areas that meet Oregon's educational and economic needs.
"We can do this by preparing graduates who will compete against anyone, anywhere in the world, and by developing outreach programs that benefit Oregon and the nation," Ray said.
He cited as an example of a current innovative program at the university the new Austin Entrepreneurship Program - a joint venture between the colleges of business and engineering that is designed to help teach students how to become entrepreneurs and then create their own companies upon graduation, or while still in school.
"This is a student-oriented program that has captured the interest of the business community and could play a pivotal role in Oregon's future economy," he said. "That's a clean sweep."
Funding for the new initiatives will come from a variety of sources, Ray said. Underlying its broad aspirations is a series of goals and associated metrics that will document the university's progress. A more detailed implementation plan will be finalized this spring, he added.
One of the goals is to increase the university's research enterprise, which generated $137 million in grants and contracts in 2002-03. The new target: $171 million annually by 2007-08.
During the past two years, the university began streamlining its non-academic areas and funneled more money into classroom teaching, said Tim White, OSU provost and executive vice president. That effort will continue, he said, not only in the central administrative areas but in the academic units as well.
"The goal is simple," White said. "We want to put as many of our resources as possible into the core areas of the university. We have to be accountable to students, to legislators and to the citizens of Oregon. That means hiring faculty who can deliver the best possible education to meet student demands. It means creating research programs that bring in additional outside funding and meet the needs of the state, region and nation.
"And it means partnering with other universities, businesses, organizations and even individuals to accomplish as a team more than we can on our own," he added. "In every case, when we choose to invest dollars at Oregon State University, it needs to be relevant, strategic and effective."
Ray said OSU also plans to fund some of its initiatives through its first university-wide capital campaign, adding it was premature to discuss a timetable or dollar goals for the initiative until a comprehensive feasibility study has been done. The strategic plan does call for the university to raise its annual private fund-raising dollars from $43 million in 2002-03 to $75 million in 2007-08.
A major focus of the private fund-raising efforts will be the creation of student scholarships that focus both on high-achieving students and financially needy students. That focus is necessary in today's economy that has seen college tuitions around the country skyrocket, said Larry Roper, OSU's vice provost for student affairs.
"Access to higher education has become a major issue because at most universities scholarship funding has not kept pace with costs," Roper said. "The impact is particularly harmful to low income students and under-represented students of color. In most cases, students understand they will have to assume some debt to graduate from college, but if the amount is too staggering, it serves as a disincentive.
"Scholarships therefore become critically important," he added. "It is refreshing to see that as a primary goal for fund-raising."
Roper said the strategic plan includes several areas aimed at boosting success for students once they arrive at the university. OSU plans to create new centers to enhance teaching and learning, and outlines several goals to be achieved by 2007-08, including increasing students of color from 13 percent of the student body to 15 percent; increasing the number of international students from 6 percent of the student body to 9 percent; improving freshmen-to-sophomore retention rates from 80 percent to 83 percent; and increasing the six-year graduation rate from 58 percent to 62 percent.
The university's strategic plan calls for an eventual campus enrollment of about 20,000 students and says much of the future growth is aimed at the OSU-Cascades Campus in Bend, the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, and in the Portland area, where OSU has a Food Innovation Center, evolving Extension programs and a collaborative pharmacy program with Oregon Health & Science University.
Off-campus learning through the university's E-Campus program is one of the largest potential areas of growth.
"The non-traditional student population engaged in higher education continues to grow rapidly in Oregon, as well as the rest of the world," said Bill McCaughan, dean of the OSU Extended Campus. "The emergence of 'e-learning' is enabling the university to meet the demands of this population, whether they are seeking degrees, professional certificates or advanced education in their chosen fields.
"Enrollment in academic programs through OSU Ecampus is among the fastest growing at the university and projected to increase at a rate of 15 percent to 20 percent annually over the next decade."
The full plan is available online at via the OSU homepage: http://oregonstate.edu/.
Ed Ray, 541-737-4133
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