NDWorks sat down with David Go, the Viola D. Hank Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and the vice president and associate provost for academic strategy. One of his main responsibilities is the implementation and execution of the academic elements of the University strategic framework.
Q: NDWorks: Are there particular initiatives or collaborations that illustrate the kind of progress the framework was meant to inspire?
A: David Go: I believe if you distill it down, the framework can be summed up in its first page; we state our aspiration. We’re going to be the leading global Catholic research university, on par with but distinct from the world’s best private universities. And the way we’re going to achieve that is we’re going to get better at thinking as an institution. Thinking as an institution is really what the framework is trying to inspire us to do to achieve our aspirations.
An example, which was a little bit more unexpected, is the neuroscience and behavior major. This major serves almost 500 students. It’s one of our most popular majors on campus and is shared across the College of Science and College of Arts and Letters. We started it about 10 years ago, and it grew much more quickly than we anticipated. We’ve been trying to catch up to student demand for the better part of a decade. The strategic framework gave us the impetus to think better as an institution, to bring the two colleges together and ask, “What do we really want to do with this program? How do we want to make sure we support it?” Efforts led to the hiring of a number of new faculty in both psychology in Arts and Letters and biological sciences in the College of Science.
We’ve also prepared a new curriculum that is currently being evaluated by the different colleges. It’s going to reshape neuroscience education here for the next decade and beyond. I think that was something that was unexpected. You don’t see neuroscience mentioned in the strategic framework, but the idea of thinking as an institution spurred us to tackle this challenge that has been persistent for several years now.
Q: NDW: Strategic plans can sometimes feel abstract. How are you translating Notre Dame’s framework into concrete actions and priorities across campus?
A: DG: One of the first things I did in my role was to think about how we operationalize and implement the strategic framework. I went through the entire strategic framework line by line, and I pulled out 50 things we actually say we’re going to do. Probably the highest-profile activities that you’ve seen across the University are the strategic initiatives, but those are only a small portion of the total 50 things. And that is how I break down this complex 36-page document into actual implementable actions that we can take as a University, whether it be in one small unit or division or across the entire University.
Q: NDW: The University-wide initiatives are an important part of the strategic framework. What are some of the exciting advancements called out in the framework beyond the initiatives?
A: DG: Investing in our students is one of our key foci of the strategic framework. Going back to the 50 items, there’s a specific line that says we’re going to do more undergraduate research and cocurricular opportunities. In the College of Engineering and the College of Science, we’re interested in how we can more effectively help our students find undergraduate research opportunities. So, we created a new software called Student Research at Notre Dame or STRAND, where faculty can post projects and students can apply for them. We’ve seen more than a 50 percent increase in undergraduate research participation in the College of Engineering across every demographic group. We are now expanding it to include the College of Arts and Letters and also running a pilot program within the Keough School of Global Affairs. This is an exciting, perhaps less splashy, way of making sure we provide an excellent education for our students.
Q: NDW: If someone at Notre Dame is wondering how their work connects to the strategic framework, what would you want them to know?
A: DG: It all comes back to that first page. We want to be the leading global Catholic research university and to do that takes a village. It takes the support of numerous staff to help our students and our faculty do what they need to do best, which is education, research, and scholarship. The Notre Dame experience is not just about knowledge transfer, it’s about the formation of the whole human. So in my mind, everyone contributes to that aspiration. And if they don’t know a specific thing to do, the number one thing to keep in mind is, how can I help us think better as an institution? How can I, in my day-to-day job, reach out to someone else who does something similar and say, “Hey, what happens if we work together on this problem?” Or, “We share best practices,” or, “We ensure that we are always in lockstep as a team as to what the goals of the team are.”
Q: NDW: We are three years into a 10-year strategic framework. How do you or will you measure success at this stage?
A: DG: I very much still feel like we’re in start-up mode. There are things that I would say we have gotten to a steady state and other activities that we’re just now implementing, planning, or conceiving.
As we look at individual activities, we measure how successful they are. A good example is the Pathways program for the University. What we’re seeing are far more numbers of international students applying, being admitted, and matriculating to the University, which helps us better embrace our Catholic mission by better representing the global Catholic Church.
At the end of the day, I measure success by if we become natural at thinking as an institution; it is something we all do on a daily basis. Our Catholic educational mission is crystal clear and it doesn’t waver. And as long as we continue to be aligned with the North Star of our mission and take solid actions that propel us toward our aspirational goals, we’re probably doing a good job.
Q: NDW: What are the next areas of focus as implementation of the framework continues?
A: DG: There’s a lot of fun, good, useful things on the horizon. One is our Center for Academic Transformation and Excellence, which is a beautiful project involving a lot of people across the University. It’s going to be the one-stop shop for supporting our students in the division of undergraduate education. It will bring together a number of disparate groups that are supporting students, whether it’s the Balfour-Hesburgh Scholars Program or the Transformational Leaders Program, under one roof, both figuratively and literally. We are in the process of renovating Bond Hall to serve as that home for our students. I think that’s a great example of something on the horizon.
For more information, strategicframework.nd.edu