Realizing the Vision:
Undergraduate Initiatives

Summary of proposals presented to the Executive Committee of Academic Council

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Michigan State University currently is engaged in an ongoing initiative to enhance the academic quality of MSU despite difficult economic conditions. The recently-released report, Realizing the Vision: Liberal Arts in the 21st-Century Land-Grant University , provides a blueprint for a set of proposals that will significantly strengthen the academic quality of MSU.

These bold and innovative proposals underscore our collective responsibility to enhance the academic quality of Michigan State through an ongoing process of self-examination and reflection. At a time when public support of public higher education is on a downward trajectory and constraints on resources are expected to continue for the foreseeable future, Michigan State must sustain the heritage that has infused it with a capacity for the creative and dynamic evolution of programs and structures across the disciplines of the liberal arts and sciences and the professional programs.

That is the broadest intent of the Realizing the Vision document, as outlined in four initiatives formulated to reinvigorate the liberal arts and the 21st century land-grant university:

• Strengthen the coherence and organization of the undergraduate experience at MSU;
• Strengthen graduate programs;
• Expand the university's successful living and learning programs; and
• Strengthen the liberal arts core of the university for the 21st century by changing college structures.

Provost Lou Anna K. Simon commits to continue multiple, full, and open discussions of those initiatives. Following a review of commentary received to date, building on faculty efforts already underway, and positioned within the context of the ongoing national dialogue on the role of the humanities, she has requested the advice of the Executive Committee of Academic Council (ECAC) on specific proposals related to those initiatives:

• Adding the title of "Dean of Undergraduate Studies" to that of Assistant Provost for Undergraduate Education,
• Consolidating the three existing Integrative Studies centers,
• Reviewing writing in the undergraduate curriculum,
• Addressing quantitative literacy,
• Strengthening the mentoring of graduate students,
• Establishing a new degree-oriented residential college in the liberal and creative arts and sciences,
• Expanding James Madison College and Lyman Briggs School, and
• Creating a new School of Planning , Design, and Construction.

Additional proposals , primarily related to the fourth initiative outlined in Realizing the Vision , will be forthcoming , intended to strengthen the liberal arts core of the university via changes in college structures. The current period of university review and commentary regarding those proposals has been extended to allow for additional cross-college dialogue and will continue through the last week of March, after which after which the next phase of discussions will begin.

Provost Simon has explicitly committed to further governance review prior to specific action by the administration and/or the MSU Board of Trustees as these and other proposals progress toward implementation.

Continue to summary of proposals