President Luis M. Proenza delivers the 2009 State of the University Address at the Stage Door at UA's E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall.

University of Akron President Luis M. Proenza underscored the successes of the past year and set in motion the process of steering the university toward the future during his 10th state-of-the-university address today.

As promised during his 2008 address, Proenza provided a progress report on the formal 10-year strategic plan, which he said “will chart the course to our new destination.” As he outlined these plans, Proenza encouraged the audience to think about the origin of the name “Akron,” derived from the Greek “akros,” meaning “high place,” in setting and achieving those goals.

See video of address

View the 2009 State of the University Address.

Five goals for future

Proenza outlined five strategic goals that will guide the university through the next 10 years and beyond:

• Strengthen Akron’s historical commitment to inclusive excellence to enhance student access, transformation and success.
• Create vibrant, healthy, and diverse campuses that are deeply engaged with their surrounding communities.
• Establish selected cross-disciplinary clusters of academic distinction that are recognized nationally and internationally.
• Achieve national recognition for a curriculum in which entrepreneurship and 21st century global competitiveness skills are comprehensively embedded.
• Be a primary driver of economic competitiveness in northern Ohio and a leading contributor in the state.

The president announced that the university is actively exploring ways in which it can attract private investment for the continued for the continued physical transformation of the campus and surrounding neighborhoods in University Park. He added that true progress will be made through identifying more creative and innovative partnerships and collaborations such as the Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron.

He boldly stated that the university will seek differentiation on an international level and that this will be obtained through a commitment to inclusiveness and an ongoing commitment to transformation.

Challenges at hand

While UA has made great strides in the last year and during his 10 years as president, Proenza also presented a sobering analysis of the challenges of the economic recession in the state, as well as the demands of an increasingly competitive environment for higher education. Knowing from the beginning of the budget process that state support for the next two years would be extremely tight, UA is doing what all good organizations do in tough times – set clear priorities.

“We have been fortunate in that we have done better than others," he said. “In fact, we are among just a few institutions not resorting to layoffs or furloughs. I appreciate your enduring lack of compensation increases, reduced operating budgets, and all of the many short-term sacrifices you have made, to enable us to put our people first in providing a certain degree of job security. If we are to have more tangible ways by which to put our people first, or to provide our students with a high-quality educational experience, we must craft our economic future even more aggressively. Indeed, we must do better at rewarding, incentivizing and compensating those activities that will further our success because that is the only way in which we can transform ourselves and shape our own future, lest we become regulated into oblivion or suffer decline by stagnation.”

Proenza also said that in addition to budget challenges, an increasingly competitive environment for higher education and universities can’t continue to operate with an educational model that is more than 200-years-old. In fact, representatives from around the world, including Proenza, will be gathering in China next week to address these issues at the 2009 Beijing Forum, where Proenza has been invited to present a paper based on the many successes at UA. He said he believes that the university must try even harder to be to bring down academic silo walls and build connections through clusters of excellence idea, emphasizing UA’s relevance, connectivity and productivity. He promised to send a letter to the university community on Wednesday that will ask that faculty, staff and students to “engage in timely and necessary conversations to bring this about. I am sure many lively and constructive ideas will be brought forward, but we must approach this with a sense of urgency because, as I have said before, doing business as usual is not an option.”

Focus on faculty, students

Before he outlined the strategic goals that will move UA forward into the year 2020, Proenza shined the light on selected UA student and faculty projects that enjoyed great success in 2008-09, as well as highlights of the university’s 2008-09 great accomplishments, including:

• UA faculty were again recognized nationally for research productivity in the latest Association of University Technology Managers’ report, which ranked UA #1 among public universities in Ohio in technology licensing, 7th among all U.S. universities without a medical school and 1st nationally when normalized with respect to research expenditures. UA also ranked 1st in Ohio for patents produced per research dollar and 3rd in Ohio for number of patents held – and, during 2008-09, UA reported $48.3 million in grants and contracts awarded, up 40.9 percent from $34.3 million in 2008.
• The Carnegie Foundation recognizing the university with a Community Engagement Classification in two categories – curricular engagement, and outreach and partnerships – something that only one other public university in Ohio can claim.
• Extending the university’s international engagement by expanding UA’s partnership with China’s Henan University to become one of only 42 Confucius Institute sites in the U.S.
• The university set a new fund-raising record in 2008-09, announcing that it had exceeded the original $500 million comprehensive campaign goal, reaching $606 million.
• Fall student headcount showed a 7.6 percent increase, reaching nearly 28,000. Student credit-hour production increased by 8.4 percent to make our full-time-equivalent enrollment the highest ever.
• The grand opening of InfoCision Stadium-Summa Field, a cornerstone of the New Landscape for Learning, as well as expansion of the campus to 16 new buildings, 17 major additions and renovations, 34 new acres of green space and several more facilities underway for a total investment of $500 million. In addition, UA dedicated the new Student Life Building at Wayne College and broke ground for the National Polymer Innovation Center.
• UA’s Inclusive Excellence efforts earned a national award from the nonprofit Minority Access, Inc., which named the university among an elite group of only 43 colleges and universities as a role model institution for promoting diverse academic environments.
• The International Economic Development Council recently honored the University Park Alliance, a collaborative effort to transform the 50-block area around the UA campus, with a coveted international award for its outstanding economic development work as an educational institution partnership.

Media contact: Laura M. Massie, 330-972-6476 or massie1@uakron.edu