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UC Identifies Statewide Centers of Excellence

   With the approval of the Board of Trustees granted today, the University of Cincinnati will submit a list of identified Centers of Excellence to the Ohio Board of Regents. This Center of Excellence Institutional Report was developed in response to the University System of Ohio Strategic Plan for Higher Education requiring all institutions to identify, by June 30, 2009, distinctive strengths within the University System of Ohio. 

Anthony J. Perzigian

The UC report identifies eleven Centers of Excellence that will advance the state’s economic prosperity and quality of life, and provide strong mission differentiation for UC within the University System of Ohio.

“The centers identified after a year-long review by the University of Cincinnati are nationally competitive and distinctive, reflecting UC’s signature academic strengths, and respond to the state’s economic priorities and societal needs,” said UC Provost Anthony J. Perzigian. “The selections were guided by the UC|21 strategic plan for ‘the new urban research university,’ and the criteria identified in state’s plan for Higher Education. 

The eleven University of Cincinnati Centers of Excellence are:

• Design & Innovation
• Diabetes/Obesity
• Environmental Health and Cancer
• Humanities: Classics, Creative Writing, Philosophy of Science
• Intelligent Air & Space Vehicle Energy Systems
• Music & Theatre Arts
• Nanoscale Sensors
• Neurosciences
• Pediatrics
• Sustaining Urban Environments
• Urban Transformation & Justice

“The diversity of our nominated centers is what one would expect from a comprehensive research university engaged in a comprehensive academic planning and prioritization process,” Perzigian said.

Three years ago, a newly-created Strategic Planning Council was charged to “develop a set of recommendations that will become a blueprint for the UC|21 Academic Plan, which drives resource allocation, the capital campaign, and infrastructure planning.” The result was five major thematic areas from which emanate UC’s eleven centers.  Begun in summer 2006, this work continues as UC’s blueprint - driving reallocation and facilities planning as well as fund raising.   These academic priorities, and the Centers of Excellence that are linked to them, are:

• 21st Century Learning
• Health in the 21st Century:  Neurosciences; Diabetes/Obesity; Environmental Health and Cancer; Pediatrics
• Science & Technology in the 21st Century:  Nanoscale Sensors; Intelligent Air & Space Vehicle Energy Systems; Sustaining Urban Environments
• Arts, Design, and the Humanities in the 21st Century:  Design & Innovation; Music & Theatre Arts; Humanities(Classics, Creative Writing, Philosophy of Science)
• Urban Solutions for the 21st Century:  Urban Transformation & Justice

The focus on UC’s Centers of Excellence extends to the university’s comprehensive campaign, Proudly Cincinnati. 

“Each of our proposed centers has fund-raising targets in the campaign – from endowed chairs and professorships that will attract and retain excellent faculty to facilities and equipment that will enable the work of the centers - with regional, national and international leadership as a goal,” Perzigian said.

Perzigian noted that the University is one of Ohio’s three comprehensive research intensive universities, those with the highest Carnegie research classification.

“As a cohort, the three universities (Case, Ohio State and UC) account for nearly 80 percent of the federal research dollars attracted to Ohio, and their combined economic impact is in the billions,” Perzigian said. “In terms of Ohio’s state universities, UC ranks second only to Ohio State and generates twice as much federal research funding as all of Ohio’s other state universities combined.”

In its latest report, the National Science Foundation ranks UC No. 18 for federal research expenditures and No. 23 for all research expenditures, among all public research universities.