President to address goals, map future

Despite the faltering economy, the University was able to fulfill 38 of 40 key strategic goals University President Richard L. McCormick emphasized in his annual address last fall.
At his Sept. 25 annual address, McCormick plans to accentuate the University’s accomplishments and plans for the year ahead.
“It has been on everybody’s mind that it has been a challenging year for Rutgers and every institution around,” McCormick said. “I usually save the resources and budget stuff until the end, but I’m going to talk right at the outset on some of the impacts that the economic recession has had on Rutgers.”
McCormick said he will chart a future that involves a great deal of responsibility on the University for generating its own resources.
“Such programs will benefit the University in many ways,” Rutgers University Student Assembly Chair Werner Born said. “I look forward to what he has to say about making the university more fiscally self-sufficient.”
At last year’s address, McCormick said the best investment for financial growth lies in expanding revenue-generating programs such as professional academic programs, master’s degree programs, executive education programs and continuing education programs.
“Our faculty brought in $391 million in support of their research last year,” he said. “Most universities went down, Rutgers went up … revenue from tuition and fees has continued to rise, although less this year than previous years, because there was a 3 percent cap.”
Under Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Philip J. Furmanski’s leadership, virtually every college and school in the University is expanding previous program offerings, McCormick said.
“Our philosophy has been to try to save wherever we can and marshal resources and to invest in the academic programs because in the end, that’s what the University is about,” Furmanski said.
The 38 successful points include the launching of Rutgers Day, increasing security by installing 450 more security cameras University-wide and completing a permanent financing for $254 million in capital projects on all campuses.
“We also received a $10 million dollar grant from the Robert Wood Johnson foundation for new facilities,” he said.
Despite the successes, there were two failures: The University was not able to increase enrollment of new out-of-state and international undergraduate students by 5 percent more than the average of the three previous years, and they also were not able to increase revenue from technology commercialization by 10 percent to an annual amount of $9 million.
“We did not hit that number nor did any other University in the country,” he said. “My boss, the Board of Governors, said that both failures — if you want to call them that — were because of the economic recession.”
The College Avenue greening project is experiencing delays. The city asked various questions involving traffic and parking.
“It’s waiting approval by the city of New Brunswick,” he said. “The plan no longer involves closing down College Avenue, but it will only open to bus traffic.”
McCormick will give his annual address on Friday, Sept. 25 during the University Senate meeting at 1:10 p.m. in the Multipurpose Room of the Rutgers Student Center on the College Avenue campus.
“Every year I pick up particular areas of academic initiative,” McCormick said. “A couple years ago, [it was] alternative energy and climate change, [and] this year I will be talking about international education.”
To view all of the goals for the 2008-2009 year, you can visit http://www.president.rutgers.edu/strategicgoals0809.shtml.