Picture credit score: Jeff Fusco.
“Integrity, integration, inclusivity, impression and innovation” are the watchwords of Drexel’s new 10-year strategic plan, which was launched Dec. 17.
The 2-year enterprise is summarized in a short framework, known as “Drexel 2030: Designing the Future,” that outlines the initiatives, values and objectives that may information Drexel via the anticipated challenges of the approaching decade.
The plan was drafted towards a backdrop of adjusting developments in increased training, particularly demographic declines in highschool graduates and worldwide college students, and it was made extra pressing over the previous yr by the closure of Hahnemann Hospital and the acquisition of St. Christopher’s Hospital for Kids, the pivot to distant instruction, and nationwide requires racial fairness.
Whereas prior strategic plans launched high-concept aspirations just like the innovation districts and civic engagement, the temper of this plan is one in all integration. It’s a name to enlarge Drexel’s distinguishing model of training by converging its strengths in experiential studying, analysis and exterior partnerships.
“The ‘large concept’ right here is that we have to take every part that we do properly and join it in order that it has most impression…in order that the entire is way bigger than the sum of its elements,” mentioned President John Fry. “For the College, this implies working in another way going ahead in a way more holistic means.”
The Executive Planning Committee of college members and directors fine-tuned the ultimate draft all through the previous yr with suggestions from employees surveys and the person faculties and faculties.
Their ultimate doc is a template for the transformation of Drexel’s construction, tradition and operations round a recent mode of training that transcends conventional boundaries of educational data and is in fixed dialogue with society and the world of labor. The Drexel of 2030 will marshal the College’s distinctive strengths — experiential training, impactful analysis, trade connections, civic engagement — to ascertain knowledge-clusters round well being, tech/engineering, design, and social sciences to unlock new partnerships, agilely develop market-relevant packages, and improve experiential and distant studying choices, all within the service of tackling social challenges and whereas fostering an inclusive and equitable tradition.
Accountability for implementation of the plan will likely be overseen by Elisabeth Van Bockstaele, PhD, who was designated in December as Drexel’s Chief Technique Officer along with her different roles as senior vice chairman of Graduate and On-line Schooling and dean of the Graduate Faculty and Graduate College of Biomedical Sciences and Skilled Research within the Faculty of Medication.
Monetary help for these developments will come from enhancements in operational efficiencies, a fiscal framework that rewards modern tutorial packages and profitable analysis, and present and future capital campaigns.
Drexel’s Duty Heart Administration (RCM) funds mannequin will likely be totally applied alongside the strategic plan, based on Government Vice President, Treasurer and Chief Working Officer Helen Bowman. Underneath RCM, revenue-generating items of the College assume full duty for managing their very own revenues and expenditures whereas sharing in surplus funds on the finish of the yr.
The funds mannequin will enable Drexel to reward tutorial items for specializing in initiatives the College has prioritized.
When the pandemic upended the College’s funds, Drexel was capable of refinance its variable charge loans underneath a hard and fast mortgage at a really low 30-year charge. This allowed the College to repay $80 million to the endowment that it borrowed to amass St. Christopher’s and to develop and renovate Bentley Corridor for the Pennoni Honors Faculty.
Nonetheless, the pandemic is anticipated to problem enrollment for the foreseeable future on high of unfavorable demographic shifts. In response to Bowman, delivering on the mission set forth on this plan would require that the College diversify its income stream, which is at the moment 80 p.c derived from tuition.
This creates stress, mentioned President Fry, to guarantee that every part Drexel invests in is worth it.
“I believe that monetary stress really will likely be our good friend; we are able to’t waste any time or cash,” mentioned President Fry. “We have to develop our monetary margins to put money into the actually good concepts which have come out of this strategic plan.”
What follows are the principle objectives set forth within the plan, with deeper explanations from members of the Government Planning Committee.
Broaden Drexel’s Analysis Affect
Objective: Generate new data and impactful options by rising fundamental and utilized analysis and fostering transdisciplinary collaborations, each throughout the College and with exterior companions.
Drexel’s current achievement of incomes an R1 (Highest Analysis Exercise) Carnegie designation lays the inspiration for in the future qualifying for inclusion within the even-more-prestigious Affiliation of American Universities, reserved for the most important and most profitable analysis establishments.
To realize its aim, the College should develop a analysis tradition round its core tutorial competencies with a watch towards assembling transdisciplinary groups to sort out tasks with social and business impression.
To find out Drexel’s current areas of analysis power, members of the Government Planning Committee carried out an audit of college analysis from 2017 to the current and sorted the outcomes primarily based on trade classification schemas. This can be a grouping primarily based on the Occasions Larger Schooling Classification system.
The Workplace of Analysis & Innovation intends to encourage researchers each by expeditiously seeding rising concepts and by serving to to coordinate cross-college groups.
In response to President Fry, Drexel’s future rests on the College creating a proper infrastructure for backing “large bets.” Thus far, Drexel has completed this via mechanisms like Drexel Areas of Research Excellence (DARE) and thru investments in particular person faculties. It has additionally occurred informally, by empowering people with imaginative and prescient and motivation — as was the impetus behind the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute and the Center for Functional Fabrics.
“We’ve been capable of do issues like this previously, however we have to make {that a} common means of doing work,” mentioned President Fry. “The best way we’ve completed it previously has typically been discovering individuals who need assistance and determining the way to set them up. There’s nothing unsuitable with doing that to get began, however you need a system that persistently encourages these bets, and investments that make sense.”
The Workplace of Analysis & Innovation needs to “double down” on the DARE method and use extra Rapid Response-style grants comparable to those it created for COVID-19 and racial-equity analysis through the summer season. These well timed, small-scale seed funds put Drexel researchers forward of the curve to compete for exterior grants.
“We spent $170,000 on COVID-19 analysis and $100,000 on racial-equity tasks and we funded 40 groups,” mentioned Government Vice Provost for Analysis & Innovation Aleister Saunders, PhD. “We awarded the COVID-19 funds in mid-April and as of now, these researchers have nearly $2 million in follow-on funding, six patents, a medical trial, 30,000 items of PPE produced, and quite a few new partnerships. It had an incredible impression.”
The Workplace of Analysis & Innovation additionally hopes to develop its enterprise improvement companies to help college researchers in writing grants and constructing out the type of numerous, interdisciplinary groups which are most tasty to prestigious nationwide grant sponsors.
Saunders equates this work with “planting seeds.” He notes that Drexel’s funding in high-tech knitting machines for Westphal Faculty of Media Arts & Design Professor Geneviève Dion bore fruit within the type of the Heart for Purposeful Materials. “Who would have thought {that a} designer 10 years later could be getting $4 million in Division of Protection cash this yr with doubtlessly $10 million slated for subsequent yr?” he requested.
One concern raised by college members is how analysis will likely be assessed for its worthiness to obtain College help. What about social sciences and liberal arts analysis that isn’t more likely to appeal to large grant {dollars}?
Saunders mentioned the analysis subcommittee has developed a framework that allows Drexel to grasp unconventional methods a given analysis undertaking could have strategic worth.
“We now have to create a standard language by which we perceive what our actions are and aren’t,” mentioned Saunders. “Our standards are for deciding what issues are and the way to help them. Some issues are going to generate {dollars}. Different issues usually tend to generate partnerships. We now have to weigh that out. We now have to foster issues which are early stage and in addition determine the way to transfer the issues which are already well-established to the following stage.”
To find out Drexel’s “core competencies,” the analysis subcommittee sorted Drexel’s current scholarly publications utilizing commonplace tutorial classification techniques and requested affiliate deans of analysis to categorise present tasks.
This revealed clear current strengths in well being, tech/engineering, and design. Embedded within the notion of “design” is analysis “in service to society,” a time period that the Workplace of Analysis interprets broadly.
“There are a number of paths towards social impression,” defined Saunders. “You can begin an organization primarily based on know-how that we’ve patented, or you can begin up a program like Mariana Chilton’s Heart for Starvation-free Communities that helps feed individuals. Ted Corbin and John Wealthy are taking their Serving to Harm Individuals program to scale by shifting this system throughout the nation; that’s like an organization taking tech and rising it to scale. It’s OK that these tasks aren’t primarily based on mental property. The precept is similar, and we must always help one of these innovation and impression.”
Harness the Energy of Partnerships
Objective: Combine and align curricula, scholarship, neighborhood engagement and world partnerships in an internationally acknowledged problem-solving mannequin for college/neighborhood collaborations.
Drexel’s distinctive tutorial design places the College ready to function a nationwide mannequin for reshaping the connection of universities to exterior companions.
Already, Drexel scholarship is enriched by relationships with the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea and the National University of Equatorial Guinea. Quite a few college members and alumni have taken their innovations to market by pairing with enterprise individuals affiliated with the Coulter-Drexel Translational Research Partnership Program or the startup incubator ic@3401. In West Philadelphia, Drexel’s neighborhood companions contribute to residents’ high quality of life by offering native jobs and social companies.
The analysis subcommittee then grouped Drexel’s analysis into three massive classes, as proven by this overlay, to give you three general classes of Drexel strengths: tech/engineering/design, well being and social sciences.
And naturally, the mutual respect between Drexel and high employers, cultivated over a century via the Drexel Co-op program, is an unmatched asset and the entree to many different collaborations with trade.
Within the Drexel of 2030, not solely co-op college students but in addition many college will likely be concerned with trade — via experiential studying programs, customized workforce coaching, or analysis that calls on their experience, on and off campus.
These preparations will give college a first-hand understanding of emergent developments that may affect programming. Drexel’s co-op employers are seeing shortages for abilities in synthetic intelligence and information evaluation, as an example, and adjusting to disruptive applied sciences and local weather change.
“Drexel is positioned extremely properly to deal with these complicated adjustments,” mentioned Government Vice President and Nina Henderson Provost Paul E. Jensen, PhD. “We will accomplice in a extra complete means in order that it’s not nearly co-op; now it’s additionally about analysis, about innovation, and about expertise improvement for his or her organizations.”
The Drexel Solutions Institute (DSI) is an instance of how Drexel has already begun to harness trade relationships for the mutual profit of scholars, college and companions, and it figures prominently within the strategic plan as a template for the way Drexel can actualize its mannequin of most real-world relevance.
The DSI was shaped in 2018 to create a single gateway for trade purchasers to faucet Drexel’s tutorial experience for assist fixing enterprise challenges or to supply customized workforce improvement utilizing a fee-for-service income mannequin.
DSI has already linked college, college students and co-op hires with tasks from firms comparable to Comcast Corp., FMC and SEI. Typically these relationships embody a course or lab element through which college students and co-ops problem-solve a present enterprise downside alongside company executives, threading idea and follow collectively in a hands-on undertaking that accelerates college students’ profession readiness and enriches Drexel’s tutorial choices. In return, shopper firms subsidize tasks to the extent that they require undertaking administration help or further college time.
Thus far, 12 co-ops and practically 200 college students have assisted company companions with neuroimaging research, market analytics and human-to-machine research. At Comcast, as an example, analysis with Drexel on how sure teams reply to e-sports packages will seemingly information them as they additional develop their e-sports enterprise, an trade with a rising market and workforce.
These tasks create résumé speaking factors for college students and be sure that faculties have cutting-edge class content material.
“This connectivity offers us unbelievable alternatives to — extra quickly than our friends — reimagine curriculum as a result of we’re working with our companions on utilized analysis issues and feeding what we be taught again into the curriculum,” mentioned Jensen.
Set the Normal for Reducing-Edge, Adaptable Curricula
Objective: Quickly develop and ship agile curricula to companions and people of numerous backgrounds and ages which are conscious of market calls for and the wants of a worldwide society.
The pandemic fast-tracked developments within the economic system — e.g. digital studying, cross-disciplinary considering, life-long training — that require universities to rethink how levels are designed and the way training is delivered.
It will seemingly imply extra distant and hybrid course choices, new certifications and badges for life-long learners, and core programs typically computing and information along with a liberal arts basis.
The pattern towards extra undergraduate on-line training is “crystal clear,” mentioned Jensen. He expects that every one faculties will see rising demand for extra hybrid packages, maybe even by on-campus college students, as distant modes change into the brand new regular.
This Venn diagram represents the aim of prioritizing packages that meet on the interdisciplinary nexus of Drexel’s core tutorial competencies, and the best way through which social impression overarches Drexel’s mission.
However to actually put together college students for the brand new world of labor, it will likely be incumbent on tutorial items to attract on trade relationships to future-proof curricula, and to quickly deploy modern choices.
“We occur to be in a time period the place issues are altering extremely quick,” mentioned Jensen. “Take ‘web of issues’ applied sciences…these have the potential to impression how most issues are completed. Which means there’s going to be a necessity in society for individuals who can perceive how these applied sciences apply to, say, well being care or any trade. The identical goes for the challenges we face with local weather change. You want individuals who perceive not solely the surroundings, but in addition know-how and enterprise, and so forth.
“In order a college, how can we transfer from conventional tutorial packages…to packages that deal with the extra complicated challenges we face in society?” he requested.
The route mapped out by this strategic plan requires decreasing the silos between tutorial items with joint packages and partnerships that span disciplines.
“There’s a pure tendency to think about your individual tutorial unit as your loved ones, and it’s a lot simpler to work inside your individual division than it’s to work with one other division, however we have to broaden our definition of ‘household’ to incorporate the Drexel neighborhood as an entire,” mentioned Don McEachron, PhD, educating professor within the College of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Well being Programs and member of the planning committee. “And I believe the President feels that we even must transcend Drexel and take into consideration the Philadelphia neighborhood as our household.”
The DARE initiative created by the Workplace of Analysis in 2015 is an instance of a mechanism for constructing transdisciplinary collaborations on the analysis facet, mentioned McEachron. McEachron is himself a member of a virtual-reality training undertaking that included teachers from a number of disciplines, and he is additionally a participant within the Cell2Society Getting older Analysis Community DARE initiative, which incorporates members from 9 tutorial items in addition to a number of exterior stakeholders.
“To create that infrastructure on a academic program stage, however, that’s totally different,” he mentioned. “How do you divide up the schooling revenue between two items? How do you recruit college students? How do you share the educating duties?”
That infrastructure has but to be constructed, he mentioned, however the work must be completed, as a result of the previous conventional mannequin of upper training doesn’t work in an economic system the place new industries could emerge within the timespan it takes to finish a university diploma.
“We now have to create this multidisciplinary academic course of in order that our college students can pivot in any route and are so good at crucial and artistic considering, so adaptable, so versatile, that it doesn’t matter what the world throws at them, they will alter,” mentioned McEachron. “I believe Drexel can try this higher than anywhere I do know of. We simply should put it collectively correctly.”
Improve and Broaden Excessive-High quality, Immersive Studying Experiences
Objective: Allow college students to reinforce and apply their training whereas creating skilled abilities and an appreciation for the range of human expertise by offering partaking, immersive studying experiences.
Many universities declare to supply “expertise,” however only a few have the deep relationships with the true world that Drexel has spent generations cultivating. In a February survey, 70 p.c of college {and professional} employees named the Drexel Co-op program as Drexel’s biggest power.
Drexel college students be taught alongside individuals from all walks of life inside clinics, prisons and neighborhood facilities, via community-based studying programs established within the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. By way of modern packages such because the Drexel Meals Lab and the Heart for Purposeful Materials, college students assist to prototype new merchandise and processes that promise to alter manufacturing, enhance well being, or cut back waste. Drexel graduate college students ceaselessly share bylines and patent purposes with college researchers and take part in ground-breaking discoveries that open up new avenues in science.
The long-term aim is to take away any monetary and bodily obstacles standing in the best way of any pupil, no matter program or diploma sort, whether or not on-line or in-person, from sharing in what makes a Drexel training so highly effective.
When the pandemic impacted some co-ops, the Steinbright Profession Growth Heart authorised digital and part-time paid co-ops for the primary time in its historical past.
“We authorised digital co-ops with the understanding that the genie doesn’t return within the lamp,” mentioned Ian Sladen, vice chairman of cooperative training and profession improvement at Steinbright. “Employers are going to wish to proceed to do it. College students will wish to do it. And we’re all going to get higher at it.
“Digital co-ops might also present us with a chance to develop our co-op footprint inside organizations that we have already got relationships with, and possibly with some that we don’t,” Sladen added. “You cut back points like transportation prices and dwelling bills that act as deterrents for co-ops in one other metropolis.”
Drexel should additionally go “past co-op” to create new methods for college students to work together with potential future employers. By way of the DSI, Drexel is creating customized options to deal with the wants of present and potential co-op employers, via preparations that will happen on or off campus and that contain college students in duties that transcend these sometimes assigned to co-op hires.
For instance, on the onset of the pandemic, California nonprofit Choices for All requested Drexel for assist designing digital life abilities packages for adults with mental and cognitive challenges. DSI assembled co-op and graduate college students to work on the undertaking alongside a lead college member with perception from a number of College items. The nonprofit will use to the programming developed at Drexel to develop into new markets.
“That type of an expertise you wouldn’t get in a agency,” mentioned Anna Koulas, vice chairman of the Drexel Options Institute. “It’s a way more heightened expertise as a result of they’re not doing one thing transactional or siloed.”
These trade partnerships additionally open the door to richer, extra immersive course materials. As an illustration, DSI assembled a particular subjects course on blockchain that was co-taught by the pinnacle of blockchain technique at mutual fund agency Vanguard with help from an interdisciplinary workforce of college who collectively lined the sociological, monetary, engineering and authorized sides of the know-how. The scholars labored in groups on a number of points of blockchain know-how that the agency will use to develop its future blockchain technique. Enrollment within the class maxed out in in the future.
“There was a requirement for a category like this,” mentioned Vice Dean for Analysis and Strategic Partnerships Rajneesh Suri, PhD, noting that Drexel has no single college member to show blockchain. “When individuals come from trade, they don’t know the way to educate, however they’ve a number of content material. We will facilitate their educating and make their transmission into the classroom seamless and really immersive for the scholars.”
“Every time we discuss to a corporation, we’re making an attempt to find out what would profit the scholar and the curriculum: What would possibly we achieve from them and what can we provide to them to make sure that there’s a profit that may create a significant and worthwhile worth proposition,” mentioned Koulas. “On the finish of the day, we wish our college students to be in demand. We would like firms to hunt them out and this helps us place them for long-term success.”
Foster and Strengthen an Inclusive and Fairness-Pushed Tradition
Objective: Guarantee there is no such thing as a racism or bias in College insurance policies, practices and tradition and obtain equitable outcomes for all college students, college, and employees.
After the killing of George Floyd, President Fry pledged that the College would assess its inner tradition via the lens of fairness. The College convened an Anti-Racism Task Force to develop suggestions for incorporating an equity-mindset into Drexel’s tradition and insurance policies.
These objectives embody recruiting and retaining extra college, employees and college students of shade; demonstrating dedication to fairness via College investments; and embedding antiracism in pedagogy and evaluations.
Vice President and Chief Range Officer Kim Gholston mentioned the duty drive is confronting long-standing dissatisfactions — expressed in letters, tales and social media posts by college, college students {and professional} employees each traditionally and all through the summer season’s civil unrest — which have impacted Drexel’s means to retain personnel and pupil satisfaction.
“This didn’t occur in a single day and we’re not going to have the ability to appropriate it in a single day,” she mentioned. “It’s going to take time.”
She famous, as an example, that lower than 7 p.c of Drexel’s college members are Black, in contrast with 73 p.c who’re white. On the employees facet, 19 p.c {of professional} employees members are Black and a mean of 11 p.c of govt/managerial positions are held by Black staff, whereas 59 p.c of service/upkeep employees are Black.
“If we’re profitable remodeling our tradition, the Drexel of 2030 will likely be an antiracist group,” she mentioned. “I imagine success means Drexel turns into a magnet for these searching for a tradition of range, fairness and inclusion. It signifies that we now have college, employees and college students right here who really feel that Drexel is their dwelling.”
That in flip will change the complexion of Drexel management, encourage extra involvement by alumni, have interaction Drexel’s neighbors, and guarantee class curricula consists of the contributions of individuals of shade, she mentioned.
“It’s strolling the stroll and speaking the discuss of an inclusive surroundings that welcomes, engages and appreciates people,” she mentioned. “I believe once we begin to try this, a number of these different issues which are challenges for us, like recruitment, retention of individuals of shade, the extra want for trauma and psychological well being help…A few of these issues will go away over time due to the kind of tradition that we help.”
Empower College students to Be Function-Pushed, World Residents
Objective: Graduate adaptable, culturally competent, empathic alumni able to seizing alternatives for the betterment of themselves and their communities.
Drexel has spent a decade deepening its neighborhood ties to put pathways for future Dragons to play significant roles on this planet, and has constructed many participatory fashions to encourage Dragons as they form a optimistic future.
These embody the Dornsife Heart for Neighborhood Partnerships, the Lindy Institute for Civic Engagement, the Autism Institute, the Stephen and Sandra Sheller eleventh Road Household Well being Providers, and public faculty help packages run by the College of Schooling, amongst others.
The Drexel of 2030 will leverage these establishments in addition to its ties to different areas to develop partnerships that may yield elevated enrollment, co-ops, medical placements, curriculum sharing, and analysis consortia.
Within the meantime, Philadelphia will have to be nursed again to restoration, mentioned President Fry.
“How can we get Philadelphia again the place it must be, however a a lot better model of itself?” President Fry requested. “We’re going to should double down in some ways to assist lead the revitalization of Philadelphia and on the identical time not aspire simply to return to the place we have been, however to go far past that and make it a extra equitable metropolis.”
Some members of the administration have floated concepts for making a Drexel service corps made up of groups of scholars mobilized to help metropolis organizations and concrete nonprofits. Efforts started in the summertime to hunt out private and non-private grants for funding. The idea might be one other avenue for college students within the arts and tradition sectors, specifically, to realize project-based co-op expertise whereas tangibly impacting Philadelphia’s progress. In a typical yr, practically 86 p.c of Drexel college students do their co-op work within the Philadelphia space.
“We have to follow the issues that that we’ve been engaged on — public training, entry to meals and enough well being care, job coaching, and dealing with minority and women-owned companies in West Philadelphia,” mentioned President Fry. “That is so elementary to our mission as one in all Philadelphia’s most consequential and impactful anchor establishments, and to our aspiration to change into essentially the most civically engaged College in the USA.”
