On October 24, 2010, the 12th UM-SJTU Joint Institute Board of Directors Meeting was held via videoconference at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. President Zhang Jie of SJTU and President Mary Sue Coleman of the University of Michigan (UM) co-chaired the meeting. Board members in attendance included Dexiu Ma, Chair of University Council, Zhongqin Lin, Executive Vice President from SJTU, Philip J. Hanlon, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, David C. Munson, Dean of Engineering, James O. Woolliscroft, Dean of Medicine, and Jim Penner-Hahn, Associate Dean in College of Literature, Science, and Arts from UM. In addition, Special Counsel to UM President Gary Krenz and all members of the JI Academic Program Group (APG) also attended the meeting.
First, Prof. James Holloway, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education of Engineering at UM, also a member of APG, summarized the report of JI’s first external review from October 23 to 24. The review board recognized JI’s tremendous growth and the strong programs JI has developed in the past five years. The board suggested a next five-year strategic planning and recommended measures to meet some of JI’s challenges.
Dean Ni presented JI’s accomplishments in the past five years:
1. JI has built up a strong faculty team with excellent faculty recruitment and emerging competitive faculty research.
2. JI has established a great reputation in the education program, with excellent student quality, innovative curriculum development, and impressive student placement records.
3. JI has developed an efficient governance structure and administrative support system which solved many administrative issues and established standard policies and procedures, with active faculty participation in academic governance.
Dean Ni then brought out the issues for JI’s future development:
1. Immediate and short-term space needs and plan for JI building.
2. Financial sustainability: projection of future financial needs and solutions for sustainable revenue sources.
3. Expansion of academic disciplines: needs and motivation of expansion and possible candidates.
There were enthusiastic discussions and debates about each issue. The Board came to the following Action Plan:
1. For JI building fund, each university will start fund raising effort, seeking donations from corporations and alumni. In the interim, the Law Schools will move to Xuhui campus in about one year and will leave more space to JI. For the immediate term, JI and SJTU will work together to meet the space needs.
2. For financial sustainability, JI will target a minimum enrollment of 300 students per year, obtain approval of tuition increase as projected from Shanghai government, and set up a special task force for recruiting international students, especially from America and Europe, to boost revenue as well as global education. For long-term sustainability, JI is seeking the ability to charge a portion of faculty’s salaries to research grants as the faculty secures more funding, as the common practice in the U.S. universities.
3. Expanding of academic disciplines should proceed with caution. It will be part of the next five-year planning effort.
Madame Ma and President Coleman made closing remarks. Both of them were very pleased with JI’s progress and looked forward to working on the issues together. They expressed confidence in JI’snext five-year development and the cooperation between the two universities.
