Third Century Forums Offer Opportunity for Feedback

A focused and sustained investment in people has emerged as a defining mark of "Creating Our Third Century”—a campus wide effort designed to sharpen the vision of the UC 2019/Academic Master Plan.

The University of Cincinnati President’s Executive Committee—charged last year with leading the Third Century effort—hosted a series of open forums in February and early March to get feedback from faculty, staff, students and alumni. UC President Santa Ono, PhD, and Provost Beverly Davenport, PhD, led the session in the Medical Sciences Building Feb. 28.

Ono and Davenport used the hour-and-a-half session to outline the five areas of focus—institutional priorities—that have developed out of the Third Century planning. They include:

• Investing in faculty and staff.
• Leveraging research.
• Re-imagining the student experience.
• Excellence in e-learning.
• Building the resource base.
  

Re-emphasizing that Creating Our Third Century is not another strategic plan, the two took turns discussing everything from dual career assistance, competitive compensation and the need to increase endowed professorships, to leadership development and mentoring, career advancement and recognition and rewards.

Health Brought into Focus

As part of the Third Century’s "Leveraging Research” priority, UC’s Office of Research convened a number of key stakeholders across the university to develop a three-pathway plan for the future of funded and unfunded research and economic engagement.

Through that planning, "Health” emerged as one of five initial areas of excellence—focus areas with existing strengths and great opportunity for cross-disciplinary effort. Health and the other STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) areas of focus, including analytics, environment, manufacturing and sensing, will be major drivers in the university’s efforts to recruit new research faculty.

Both Ono and Davenport spoke of their vision for a new way of recruitment and hiring of new faculty.

"We don’t envision traditional recruitment into the traditional department,” Ono said.

The plan Ono and Davenport outlined puts focus on cluster hiring in areas of focus—institutes and centers without walls.

"The best way to keep people here is to build a micro-community,” Ono said.

Ono launched the "Creating Our Third Century” planning in 2013 with a request to the Executive Committee to gather and align the more than a dozen planning documents from across the university.

Visit

uc.edu/thirdcentur

y to view the planning progress, download a copy of the slides presented during the open forums, get answers to frequently asked question or provide feedback.

The final Creating Our Third Century report will be unveiled at the State of the University address April 10 at 2:30 p.m. in Tangeman University Center. That event will be immediately followed by an All-University Faculty Meeting.