Submitted to: Middle States Commission on Higher Education
DATE of Submission
SECTION 1: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Institutional Context
Background
Governance
University Campuses and Academic Structure
Student Profile
Institutional Memberships and Educational Programs
Faculty and Staff
Research and Development
Summary of Periodic Review Report
SECTION 2: RESPONSES TO RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE PREVIOUS EVALUATION AND TO COMMISSION ACTIONS
SECTION 3: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
New Leadership at the Helm
Integration – and the new Rutgers
New mission elements
New program offerings
New physical locations
New strategic and capital planning processes
New leadership and governance structures/processes
New compliance responsibilities
New senior management
Leading and Managing the Integration Process
Budgetary Challenges
The Campaign for Rutgers
Membership in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC)
Leveraging Technology for Online and Hybrid Learning
Summary
SECTION 4: ENROLLMENT AND FINANCE – TRENDS AND PROJECTIONS
Enrollment Overview
Financial Overview
Financial Documents
SECTION 5: ORGANIZED AND SUSTAINED PROCESSES TO ASSESS INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTIVENESS AND STUDENT LEARNING
Offices with Responsibility for Assessment
Office of Institutional Research and Academic Planning
Center for Teaching Advancement and Assessment Research
Center for Organizational Development and Leadership
Executive Council for Assessment and Its Subordinate Structure
Annual Process for Learning Outcome Assessment Reports by the Schools
New Brunswick (NB)
General Education: The Core Curriculum
The School of Arts and Sciences (SAS)
New Brunswick Office of Undergraduate Academic Affairs
Graduate Education
Camden
College of Arts and Sciences
Newark
Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FASN)
Core Curriculum
Universitywide Program Assessment
Reassessment of the Academic Program Review Process
Division of Student Affairs
Assessment in the University Libraries
SECTION 6: LINKING INSTITUTIONAL PLANNING AND BUDGETING PROCESSES
The Broader Context
The All Funds Budgeting Process
Strategic Initiatives to Enhance Revenues
Enrollment growth and diversity in strategic academic areas
Expansion of off-campus and online education programs
Research and Development
Moving Ahead
Reevaluation of the all funds budgeting process
Reshaping management
Strategic planning process
Capital Projects Committee
Collective Bargaining Agreements
Debt
APPENDICES
1
SECTION 1: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Institutional Context
Background
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and New Jersey’s Land Grant College, was created as a body corporate and politic with the title “The Trustees of Queens College in New Jersey” by royal charter granted by King George III on November 10, 1766. The charter was amended and confirmed by the Council and General Assembly of New Jersey in 1781 and again in 1799. Its title was changed to “The Trustees of Rutgers College in New Jersey” in 1825. In 1864, the Scientific School of Rutgers College was designated the “Land Grant College of the State of New Jersey” with curricula in agriculture, engineering and chemistry. In 1945, the various departments of higher education were collectively designated the State University of New Jersey to be utilized as an instrumentality of the State for providing public higher education and thereby increasing the efficiency of its public school system. The University’s title was changed to “Rutgers, The State University” and its charter was amended and supplemented by an act of the Legislature of the State in 1956 (the “Rutgers Law”).
In the short span of less than 50 years from the mid- to late-20th century, Rutgers rose from a disparate collection of schools, geographically dispersed and operating largely independently, to become one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the U.S. That advancement was recognized in 1989 when Rutgers was invited to join the Association of American Universities (AAU).
Dedicated to a threefold mission, Rutgers is equally committed to excellence in teaching, scholarship, and public service. Driving all of Rutgers’ activities is the defining characteristic of a premier research university: the continuous and vigorous creation of intellectual capital—the new discoveries and insights that drive the advancement of human knowledge and contribute to the improvement of the human condition, and the graduates who are able to continue to create this new knowledge and apply it to every area of human endeavor.
Governance
All of the university’s property and educational facilities are impressed with a public trust for higher education of the people of the State. The Board of Governors presents an annual request for State support to the State Department of the Treasury and to the State Secretary of Higher Education in accordance with legislation adopted in 1994 and a reorganization plan developed by Governor Chris Christie in 2011.
The Board of Governors has general supervision over the conduct of the university and is responsible for determining the programs and degree levels to be offered, but final administrative decisions over new academic programs that go beyond the university’s programmatic mission rest with the Secretary of Higher Education.
The Board of Trustees of the University is designated under the Rutgers Law to serve in an overall advisory capacity to the Board of Governors and to the university. The Board of Trustees must approve the use of properties acquired by the university prior to passage of the Rutgers Law and also invests certain funds under its control.
University Campuses and Academic Structure
Rutgers, one of the nation’s nine colonial colleges, consists of 28 schools and colleges located at campuses in New Brunswick and adjacent areas, Newark and Camden, and maintains educational services in many other communities throughout the State of New Jersey. New Brunswick is the birthplace of Rutgers and is home to the university’s largest campus. The New Brunswick Campus is comprised of five smaller campuses, each reflecting the university’s historical evolution: the College Avenue Campus in New Brunswick (74 acres)—the site of Rutgers College, as the original Queen’s College was renamed in 1825; the G.H. Cook Campus in New Brunswick and North Brunswick (753 acres)—originally the site of the experimental farm of the land-grant Rutgers Scientific School, later Cook College, and now the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences; the New Jersey College for Women, later renamed Douglass College, a residential women’s college; and across the Raritan River, the Busch Campus in Piscataway (771 acres)—the site of major science facilities, and the Livingston Campus in Piscataway and Edison (935 acres)—the site of Livingston College, founded in 1969 as a shared learning community committed to academic innovation and social equality.
Tracing its origins to 1892, Rutgers–Newark today is housed on 38 acres in downtown Newark, New Jersey’s largest city. It is the northernmost campus of Rutgers, located just 20 minutes from New York City. The Camden Campus (29 acres) is located on the Camden Waterfront in the heart of the metropolitan Philadelphia region. It began in the 1920s as an amalgam of the College of South Jersey and the South Jersey Law School.
In total, the university operates research and instructional facilities on 5,973 acres in 13 counties and 28 municipalities. Its New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Stations has offices, faculty, and staff in all 21 of New Jersey’s counties and operates three on-campus research farms, five off-campus research stations, four coastal research stations, and a 4-H summer camp.
As of February 2013, Rutgers degrees are awarded by 28 schools and colleges: 13 on the New Brunswick Campus, one on both the Newark and New Brunswick Campuses, eight on the Newark Campus, and six on the Camden Campus.Appendices 1.1.A and 1.1.B list the schools of Rutgers and the undergraduate and graduate degrees granted by each.
In June 2008, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) reaffirmed the university’s accreditation without requirements or recommendations. This five-year Periodic Review Report is being submitted to MSCHE as a requirement for continued university accreditation. Certain programs at the university are also accredited individually by professional accreditation associations. Among these are the AACSB International–the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc., the Association of American Law Schools, and the American Bar Association. For a full list of these professional accreditation associations, see Appendix 1.2.
Student Profile
In fall 2012, Rutgers enrolled nearly 59,000 students, with almost 44,000 undergraduates and close to 15,000 graduate and professional students. Rutgers enrolls more female than male undergraduate and graduate students; women represented 50.2 percent of undergraduate and 54.8 percent of graduate enrollments in fall 2012. Rutgers’ undergraduate student body reflects New Jersey’s deep racial and ethnic diversity: in fall 2012, the undergraduate enrollment was 44 percent white, 23 percent Asian, ten percent African-American, 14 percent Latino, three percent foreign, four percent multi-ethnic/racial, and two percent unknown/other.
Graduate and professional student enrollment shows a slightly different racial and ethnic distribution. In fall 2012, 49 percent of graduate students were white, ten percent Asian, nine percent African-American, eight percent Latino, 19 percent foreign, three percent multi-racial/ethnic, and 4 percent unknown/other.
Two-thirds of undergraduates at Rutgers are between the age of 18 and 21 while almost three-quarters of all graduate students are 25 years of age and older. Ninety-two percent of the undergraduates and 69 percent of graduate students reside in New Jersey.
About 72 percent of Rutgers undergraduates enter the university directly from high school. The rest of the undergraduate student body typically transfers to Rutgers after beginning their higher education at another college or university. The majority of these transfer students come directly from one of New Jersey’s 19 county colleges.
See Appendix 1.3 Student Enrollment and Profile Tables.
Institutional Memberships and Educational Programs
In 1989, the university was elected to membership in the Association of American Universities(AAU), an association of the 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada. The AAU focuses on issues that are important to research-intensive universities, such as funding for research, research policy issues, and graduate and undergraduate education. AAU membership recognizes the growing distinction of the entire university and, in particular, its graduate and research programs.
Recently, Rutgers has also been invited to become a member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), a consortium of world-class research universities dedicated to advancing their academic missions. The CIC includes all Big Ten institutions, as well as the University of Chicago. Membership in this consortium will create invaluable opportunities for new and expanded collaboration in cutting-edge research and academic programs.
The university offers a broad range of educational offerings in the arts and sciences and in professional fields. The arts and sciences are at the intellectual heart of both undergraduate and graduate education and constitute a substantial share of the university’s teaching and research efforts. In academic year 2011-12, the arts and sciences departments and programs awarded approximately 60 percent of baccalaureate degrees and 50 percent of all degrees conferred (through May 2012); they also comprised 63percent of instructional output across the three campuses of the university. A number of arts and sciences programs are regularly recognized as among the nation’s best in annual or periodic rankings. Programs that regularly garner high rankings include philosophy, history, women’s studies, English, and mathematics, among others.
The provision of excellent professional education, research, and service in a wide array of professional schools is also central to the university’s mission. Programs including agriculture, law, social work, education, business, communications, nursing, criminal justice, pharmacy, library studies, management, labor studies, engineering, planning and public policy, and public affairs and administration educate thousands of New Jersey citizens for social service and for the public and private sector throughout the state, region, and nation. Within a three year period between academic years 2009-10 and 2011-12, Rutgers awarded over 25,000 degrees in these professional fields at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Appendix 1.4 lists degrees conferred by broad discipline area—both arts and sciences and professional—and level of degree from October 2009 through May 2012.
Retention of undergraduate students has improved over the years. First-year retention for students entering Rutgers for the first time in 2006 was 89.4 percent and is now at 90.5 percent for the 2011 cohort of entering students. Four year graduation rates have improved by nearly eight percentage points, growing from 44.3 percent for the 2002 entering cohort of first-time undergraduates to 52 percent for the 2008 entering class. Six-year graduation rates have also been moving steadily upwards, improving by four and a half percentage points over five entering cohort years (2002 through 2006). Appendix 1.5 presents retention and graduation rates for recent cohorts of entering undergraduate students.
Faculty and Staff
Rutgers employs more than 3,000 full-time faculty members and nearly 7,000 full-time staff to administer and support its academic and research programs, making it one of the largest employers in the state of New Jersey. SeeAppendix 1.6 for a breakdown by general job title and by campus of university staff. Rutgers’ faculty is nationally recognized for excellence: individual members have been honored with an array of prestigious awards and grants, including MacArthur fellowships, National Medals of Science, National Medals of Technology, and Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships. As of December 2012, 17 Rutgers faculty are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 17 are members of the National Academy of Sciences, five are members of the Institute of Medicine, and seven are members of the National Academy of Engineering.
Rutgers takes great pride in the fact that just in the past year, faculty members have been the recipients of an eclectic and prestigious range of awards: J. Frederick Grassle, founding director of the Rutgers Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, received the 2013 Japan Prize; Joachim Messing, the Selman A. Waksman Chair in Molecular Genetics was recognized by the Wolf Foundation of Israel; Richard Frenkiel, senior consultant at WINLAB (the Wireless Information Network Laboratory at Rutgers) received the 2013 Charles Stark Draper Prize for his pioneering contributions to the world’s first cellular systems; and Endre Szemeredi, State of New Jersey Professor of Computer Science, received the 2012 Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters’ Abel Prize, one of the top honors in mathematics.
The undergraduate student-faculty ratio of full-time equivalent students to full-time equivalent instructional faculty for fall 2012 was approximately 14:1.
Research and Development
A strong research and development enterprise depends on the excellence of its faculty and its graduate education programs, and on the presence of a supportive research infrastructure. Research centers provide critical opportunities for faculty at Rutgers to engage in projects that transcend traditional academic disciplines. At Rutgers, there are nearly 200 specialized centers, many of which are interdisciplinary and have attracted substantial grant money.
Total expenditures in research and development reached an all-time high of $473.2 million in FY 2011, with $259.7 million in expenditures for grants obtained from federal agencies. Federal research and development expenditures accounted for 55 percent of all research and development expenditures, while state expenditures accounted for 14 percent, industry expenditures four percent, nonprofit expenditures five percent, institutional expenditures 20 percent, and expenditures from other sources accounted for three percent.
New products and services are tangible outcomes of research at Rutgers. For these to be developed, the technology from Rutgers’ research must be transferred to the marketplace, a process that begins with the disclosure of inventions and the filing of patent applications. In fiscal year 2011, Rutgers disclosed 182 inventions, was granted 25 initiated patents, formed nine start-ups, executed 75 agreements, and received $5.9 million in licensing royalty. Rutgers ranked 11th among public institutions in the Association of American Universities in the dollar amount of royalties received in fiscal year 2005.[1]
Summary of Periodic Review Report
Although there were norequirements to meet Commission standards or any recommendations for actions to continue to meet standards recommended by the Commission at its last opportunity, Rutgers is pleased to report significant progress toward its internally-identified goals related to Transforming Undergraduate Education, a major initiative at the institution(Appendix 2.1).The new Core Curriculum has unified programs in an important way and Newark and Camden are now progressing with their implementations of the initiative.
Results have been impressive. In addition to the Core Curriculum, new admission processes are in place, retention rates have gone up, and campus life has been transformed. In fall 2012, Rutgers enrollment reached an all-time high with 58,788 students enrolled in credit courses universitywide.
Rutgers is on the brink of what may be the largest group of changes in its very long history. With the integration of most of the academic units from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey pursuant to The New Jersey Medical and Health Sciences Education Restructuring Act of 2012, effective July 1, 2013, Rutgers will add two medical schools (one of which includes a faculty practice plan), an NCI-designated Cancer Center, an additional nursing school, a dental school, a school of health-related professions, a graduate school in the biomedical sciences, a school of public health and University Behavioral HealthCare, a clinical care entity. President Barchi will oversee the university’s expanded mission, increased enrollment, increased number of faculty and staff, new degree programs, and new venues for instruction. The budget will grow by 50 percent. For a full description of these changes, see Rutgers Complex Substantive Change Request, submitted to MSCHE on December 19, 2012 (Appendix 3.1).