The Case for
FACULTY LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION Ensuring exceptional teaching and research
OUR LEGACY, OUR PLACE. UMass Lowell is a place with a legacy of purpose and resolve. Since the 1890s, this campus has educated the professionals and entrepreneurs who have fueled the regional and national economies. It has also been helping to solve society’s most vexing problems with wide-ranging research and engagement in mutually enriching partnerships with community, business and government.
A stunning—and carefully planned—transformation over recent years has reinvigorated the campus with increased enrollment; greater student success; new academic programs; greatly enhanced student life; global partnerships; new academic, student life and research buildings; and a move to Division I athletics. This transformation has brought about a surge of national and international attention, a rise in national rankings and a spirited new energy to the campus. The university will continue to commit time, hard work and resources to keep UMass Lowell an engine of economic growth and innovation. But we need help. Our first-ever comprehensive fundraising campaign—Our Legacy, Our Place—will span the next several years and help support vital campus programs and initiatives.
The campaign seeks support for five strategic priorities: • Student Access & Success • Faculty Leadership and Innovation • Living & Learning • Excellence in Athletics • Sustainability & Engagement In this piece, we focus on Faculty Leadership and Innovation, shining a spotlight on the critical role faculty make in teaching, research and outreach. Generations of students depend on us to work together to nurture, enrich and pass on the proud legacy of this place.
OUR FACULTY: They Work at the Horizon Our professors are always looking ahead for promising research opportunities, productive collaborations across disciplines and new methods to teach effectively in a dynamic world.
UMass Lowell professors are among the best to be found anywhere. They are outstanding teachers, groundbreaking scientists, artists, engineers, health professionals, writers, education and business experts and musicians. Their work opens doors, improves communities, inspires innovation and entrepreneurship, and saves lives.
Supporting faculty research and outreach translates directly to solutions for problems facing humankind, expanded opportunities for students and a higher public profile for the campus. Corporate and foundation partners also benefit from the university’s enhanced ability to address complex challenges effectively.
As UMass Lowell continues its rapid rise to world-class status, we must recruit and retain top professors and provide them with ample resources in classrooms, labs and creative spaces. Also, maintaining a low faculty-student ratio enables a personal approach and leads to higher retention and graduation rates.
Our Legacy, Our Place: The Campaign for UMass Lowell is an opportunity for alumni and friends to invest in this critical work.
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Over 94% of our faculty hold the highest degree available in their fields.
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THE TEAM THAT MATTERS: Our Faculty and You Professors are vital to success at UMass Lowell, and so are you. Investment in the work of faculty produces huge returns for students, for community and for solving the world’s toughest problems. Outstanding professors help draw motivated, eager and committed students who want to learn from the strongest possible faculty. Professors, in turn, benefit from working with high-achieving students, whose insights and curiosity drive discovery. And finally, the leading-edge research, scholarship and creative work generated by outstanding professors have a wide-ranging impact on many sectors of our economy and society.
Professors teach, guide and inspire students. They also engage in academic exploration and research, resulting in advancements that make the world a healthier, safer, more humane place.
Our Legacy, Our Place has three primary goals to support faculty leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship: • Recruit, retain and support top professors. • Encourage innovation with centers, programs and interdisciplinary initiatives. • Make innovation matter by supporting entrepreneurship.
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Our faculty-to-student ratio is 1:18, with 50 percent of courses carrying 19 or fewer students.
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RECRUIT, RETAIN AND SUPPORT TOP PROFESSORS: Necessary for Everything We Do Competition is fierce among top universities for the best faculty—those who are equally adept in the classroom and research laboratory, writer’s studio or clinical setting, who combine expertise with imagination in ways that set them apart.
In order for UMass Lowell to compete on an equal footing, we need increased private funding. This funding will enable us to offer significant incentives that include research and teaching support, professional development and travel resources, and support for creative projects and community engagement programs.
Endowed professorships and chairs are an especially high priority, as they position UMass Lowell for success in recruitment and retention. A hallmark of great universities, such positions honor exceptional faculty, stimulate new ideas and creativity and even attract other scholars to UMass Lowell who want to work with outstanding leaders in their fields. Students benefit as well through opportunities to work with the leading scholars who hold these positions. Further, the prestige of endowed positions helps professors leverage external funding from corporations and foundations.
By attracting top faculty and supporting their academic and entrepreneurial endeavors, UMass Lowell will take its place as a national leader in innovation in higher education.
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We’ve added more than 133 full-time faculty since 2009, close to a 25% increase.
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ENCOURAGE INNOVATION: It’s All about Breaking Down Boundaries UMass Lowell’s faculty are constantly developing new initiatives that cross traditional academic borders and produce solutions for some of the world’s most vexing problems. Why does this matter? Because our global society is complex; its challenges can’t be reduced to simple categories but must be addressed by bringing together a variety of perspectives. Our research centers are forward-looking and able to respond quickly to emerging opportunities. They focus on outcomes, not simply theory, and they have a significant practical impact. In order to function most effectively, however, they require support from alumni, friends and corporate partners with an affinity for their missions. Your support can fund undergraduate researchers; seed new efforts that could result in significant research funding from large agencies or firms; help us generate excitement among K-12 students for our areas of research; foster new interdisciplinary collaborations; and help us promote our work.
Faculty researchers are making advances in such areas as renewable energy, disease eradication, curricular school reform, sustainable economic development and eco-friendly alternatives to hazardous materials.
Among our centers on campus are: • Center for Internet Security and Forensics Entrepreneurs • New England Robotics Validation and Experimentation Center • Center for Advanced Materials • The Baseball Research Center • Center for Terrorism and Security Studies • Nanomanufacturing Center • The Lowell Center for Space Science and Technology • Center for Women and Work • Center for Wind Energy • Jack & Stella Kerouac Center for the Public Humanities • The Center for Public Opinion Research • The Center for Sustainable Energy • Printed Electronics Research Collaborative • Tsongas Industrial History Center • Center for Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace
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We’ve grown annual research expenditures by 79 percent since 2007.
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SUPPORT ENTREPRENEURSHIP: Turning Innovation into Solutions Innovation—including scientific breakthroughs, better understanding of human behavior and improved delivery of health care—is one thing. Guiding an innovation to a practical application is another thing. That’s why UMass Lowell has built expertise in entrepreneurship; that is, turning new ideas into services and products that help the world and thrive in the marketplace. Beyond the fundamental—but often ignored—understanding that turning an idea into a product or practical solution takes a concerted effort, there is one key strategy for success: collaboration. You can be part of the collaboration by supporting any of our research or entrepreneurship efforts. The following are some of the significant partnerships the campus has fostered in both the private and public sectors.
The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is an umbrella for several initiatives that enable students and faculty of all disciplines to work together on solutions to major problems facing our community, the region and the world.
• The National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (I-Corps), a set of activities and programs that prepare scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the laboratory. • The Innovation Hub, located in renovated mill space in downtown Lowell, provides collaborative working space for entrepreneurs and ventures to test products and business concepts. It links start-up innovators with research and development, business mentoring and financial resources.
• The Raytheon-UMass Lowell Research Institute features state-of-the-art laboratories and classrooms that serve as a launch pad for collaboration and learning among university faculty and students and Raytheon employees. Initial research is focusing on technologies for radar and communication systems. • M2D2, the Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center, is a UMass Lowell-UMass Worcester initiative that helps entrepreneurs move new medical device ideas from patent to production and offers early-stage inventors and established companies easy, affordable and coordinated access to world-class researchers and resources. • The New Venture Initiative provides a path for university-owned innovation to become a startup. NVI also provides enhanced mechanisms, support and resources for external startups seeking to do business with the university.
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We are one of only 13 public institutions named an Innovation and Economic Prosperity University by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities.
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GO TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS: BECAUSE STANDING WITH OUR PROFESSORS MAKES YOU A HERO. Of all the many roles that our professors play in the education of students, the most important is this: They open the door separating childhood from adulthood and provide students the tools, experience and confidence to walk through.
Our students benefit from many aspects of college life: making lifelong friends; learning to live independently; trying out new recreational and cultural pursuits; testing their leadership wings. But the most important benefit is the education they receive from our faculty. Every day, our talented and dedicated faculty expand students’ horizons. They pass on facts and figures, but they also inspire vision, creativity, imagination and the willingness to question assumptions. And there’s more: faculty provide opportunities for students to engage in research, take on an internship, study overseas and bring their growing expertise to bear at area schools and other nonprofit organizations. Faculty show students how to be good citizens and how to effectively make a difference in the world. But they need your help. As we have described in these pages, it takes resources to recruit and retain top professors, to support their research and to help them make innovation matter by fostering entrepreneurship.
We hope you will stand with them at the head of the class by helping to create an endowed professorship or by supporting any of our research centers or entrepreneurship initiatives. Generations of students have benefitted from the support of those who came before them. Please continue this proud tradition by investing in the campus and the students of today and tomorrow.
IT’S YOUR LEGACY. IT’S YOUR PLACE. OUR PRIORITIES Our Legacy, Our Place has identified five key campaign priorities that will help shape the UMass Lowell of the future. In addition to Faculty Leadership & Innovation, they are Student Access & Success; Living & Learning; Excellence in Athletics; and Sustainability & Engagement.
Office of University Advancement | Charles J. Hoff Alumni Scholarship Center | 1 Perkins Street | Lowell, MA 01854 | 978-934-2223 www.uml.edu/ourlegacy-ourplace