President's State of the University Address: Text

As prepared for delivery

NOTE: President Pinto refers to slides that can be seen in the video version of the address.

Thank you, Greg Loving, for your service as our Faculty Chair. With your first and milestone year now approaching its conclusion, I look forward to a second and hopefully less virulent year of working together.

Today in our audience, we’re also fortunate to have some individuals who generously devote countless hours working for the betterment of the University of Cincinnati. I want to thank Chairman of the Board Ron Brown and Vice Chair Tom Mischell, and Trustees Kim Heiman, Phil Collins and Greg Hartmann, who are representing our university board here this afternoon, 

Let me also take a moment to acknowledge someone who has played a key role in moving our university ahead: our Executive Vice President and Provost, Kristi Nelson. She has led our Next Lives Here implementation since she returned from retirement in 2017. This is her last all-university faculty meeting before she retires for the second time at the end of June. Thank you, Kristi, for your willingness to return and for your tremendous leadership as we launched our strategic direction. 

As we look toward Commencement at the end of this month – our first in person in over a year – each of us is eager to put the pandemic and its months of disruption, distancing and distress behind us.  Its reality sent us scattering 13 months ago – right in the middle of last Spring Semester, right at the beginning of the third year of implementation of our strategic direction Next Lives Here.

Before I focus on the achievements of Next Lives Here during the current academic year, I will take a few minutes to provide you an overview of where our campus stands with managing COVID 19.  text

As of the end of March, this semester we have conducted more than 35,534 COVID tests on students. 

On our positivity rates, since January, we have consistently been below Ohio and Hamilton County’s rates of infection. 

This week, both Ohio and Hamilton County are still slightly rising and above 4%. As of yesterday, our latest week of testing showed our positivity rate below one-half of a percent. 

Overall, our campus community has done an outstanding job in practicing the health protocols.  A special kudos to our students, who have taken this seriously and allowed us to operate without disruption. 

The consistently low infection rate in our campus community is something we should all celebrate and acknowledge.

We also owe a tremendous thanks to our Public Health Response Committee, our COVID Health Incident Command Team led by Dr. Ryan Hays and Dr. Art Pancioli; UC Health; the College of Medicine; University Health Services; Resident Education and Development; and so many units across all our campuses.

Earlier this week you should have received my email message with the good news that on-campus vaccinations for our students, faculty and staff are launching in a few days with the help of UC Health. 

Governor Mike DeWine agreed to use a portion of the state’s vaccine allotments for students in higher education across the state, as well as here at UC for faculty and staff.

UC Health begins student vaccinations on campus on Saturday, April 10, with an allotment of 12,000 one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccines and on April 14, it will offer an initial 1,400 doses to faculty and staff 

Appointments will be required and my email and our website give details about how best to do that. 

It is important to note that we ultimately hope to receive enough vaccine to inoculate all students wishing to be immunized before the end of the semester. 

We also hope to receive additional allotments for faculty and staff, but I encourage those who can, to get their vaccines wherever and whenever they can as quickly as possible.

I’d like to thank UC Health and its president, Dr. Richard Lofgren, for making this vaccine program possible, and I want to acknowledge the work of Dr. Dustin Calhoun in the College of Medicine in organizing and launching this program so rapidly. 

Our students in the College of Nursing and the College of Pharmacy are also to be commended for helping with the regional vaccination programs, and the Pharmacy students are also helping with our on-campus injections.

With the rising numbers of people receiving vaccines, we also have communicated this week our plan to bring staff and faculty back to the workplace in three phases over the summer. 

Careful consideration of the immunizations across the country and in our region gives us confidence that we can do so safely with the continued use of social distancing and masking, and with consideration for special needs where possible. 

Based on the modeling done by our medical and research experts to determine when we can expect a safe return to the workplace, we will begin the first phase of the return on June 15, with phase 2 and 3 on July 6 and July 15, respectively.

In the meantime, Summer semester will continue much the same as Spring semester with nearly 23 percent of courses in person and 77 percent fully online or hybrid.

Looking ahead to Fall Semester, we plan to be back on course with expanded in-person learning.

Of course for those who do research, we will continue our on-campus research through the Summer and Fall, just as you have been doing safely for many months.

If there is one big lesson we have learned from this monumental curve in the road and from the progress we have made with our strategic direction, it’s that our destiny is to never look backward. 

Instead we look ahead to a “new and next normal” – one based on future-looking strategies that create the best potential for student success.

And why do we say this? 

Because, as we said when we launched Next Lives Here: We choose to lead by design, rather than follow by default. We choose to reinvent and thrive, rather than merely survive.

Today, in fact, I want to take time from the recent months of tribulation to do something we haven’t had much of an opportunity to do. I want to celebrate how far we’ve come. I want us to appreciate our successes – your successes.

To begin the report, let me remind you of our vision: Leading urban public universities into a new era of innovation and impact.

We are guided by the direction that Next Lives Here sets for us.

And we are driven by a growth mindset for quality and impact in Education, Innovation, and Knowledge andCreativity. 

Most importantly, all our work is supported by values of inclusion, innovation and impact.

This slide is a representation of our overall strategy to accomplish our vision. In the grey outer annulus we have the growth initiatives that underpin our Next Lives Here Platforms of: Academic Excellence, Urban Impact and Innovation Agenda

For example, with the launch of our Next/Now campaign in Fall 2019, we committed to build the philanthropic resource base of our university to support our Next Lives Here aspirations.

In Spring of 2019, we launched Strategic Sizing to grow the quality impact of our educational programs.

In Spring of 2020, the Cincinnati Innovation District was established by Gov. DeWine, based on the work of the 1819 pathway.

And just last week we launched Research2030

Today I am going to report on the progress of these growth initiatives and the intertwined Next Lives Here pathways.

Within strategic sizing we are seeking to expand the ability of the university to serve more students, and further grow the quality of our programs.

This is foundational to our Bearcat Promise, CPS Strong and Inclusive Excellence pathways in Next Lives Here.

And because of your outstanding work, we have now enjoyed eight years of successive highs in total enrollment – each year surpassing the prior, to bring us our largest number of students in history. 

In August, Fall Semester 2020, we reached a record headcount of 46,798 students;  let’s not forget this was during a pandemic. 

I am told by our friends in Enrollment Management that the increase is slated to continue into the next academic year with an expectation that we will cross 48,000 students in Fall 2021 

The strong interest we are seeing in students to study at UC is a testament to the stature that our faculty has established for UC, as well as the tremendous success of our recruitment efforts across the university and our colleges.

Within this record student body, we also attracted a record enrollment of diverse students – with 23 percent being students of color.  More reason to celebrate.

On another important metric for our Next Lives Here Pathway - Bearcat Promise – our six-year graduation rate – we reached our highest level ever at nearly 73%. 

Each upward tick is a monumental push, and we will keep going to achieve graduation rates that place us among the leading public universities in this country.

We have also achieved gains in scholarship funding. 

Institutional student aid, excluding grants, has risen more than 15 percent in five years and our Darwin Turner Scholarships are up 50 percent.

At the same time, scholarships from gifts are up 42 percent. 

All of this helps to address one of the chief reasons students drop out. – affordability.

With the picture of this young man I want to illustrate a major success for our CPS Strong Next Lives Here pathway.

Here, you see Grant Chapel, a graduate of Hughes STEM Academy across the street from our Uptown campus. 

He is a great example of the interconnections of our growth initiatives and our pathways to support student success.

Grant is a second-year student in the IT Program in the College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services, a rapidly expanding baccalaureate program.

He is the youngest of five sons and the first in his family to go to college.

A Gen-1 Program student, he works at a paid internship this year at IT@UC, in addition to taking classes.

The School of Information Technology enrolled Grant while he was still in high school, as part of a novel program called Early IT.  The program originated with 30 ninth-grade students at Hughes. This happened in 2017, when the program was available in just one school.

Today it has grown to 32 school districts across the state of Ohio. 

The Early IT program has created a truly revolutionary paradigm for access to higher education for students in Ohio, and has built both the size and reputation of the School of Information Technology.

Another hard-earned gain for CPS Strong results from evidenced-based intervention programs and support that we have provided to our CPS students at UC Blue Ash and the College of Arts and Science. 

We invested in success coaches to provide guidance to CPS alumni as soon as they are admitted after high school graduation. Thanks to committed work, the outcomes have proven to be significant.  

I am very proud to report we observed a 11% reduction in summer melt of CPS students enrolling at UC Blue Ash, and significant increases in fall-to-spring retention of CPS graduates at both Blue Ash and the College of Arts and Sciences. Many thanks Dr. Bleuzette Marshall and Provost Nelson for their leadership of this pathway.

Across our university, from admissions to advising to international affairs, to faculty and staff at every level, I want to congratulate each and every one of you for our remarkable progress in fulfilling the Bearcat Promise.

Strategic sizing as I have mentioned previously is about empowering growth in size and quality. Where the potential for growth in size is limited, we have invested in quality. 

For example, through Next Lives Here we have made investments of $500,000 in permanent funding in the College-Conservatory of Music to integrate digital media into all aspects of the college; institute initiatives to enhance retention, graduation and placement rates; and increase the diversity of the opera program, and the quality and diversity of the musical theater program.

At the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, an investment of $500,000 in permanent funding will advance research output, improve rankings in three programs, and enhance diversity and quality in graduate programs. 

At the College of Law, more than $900,000 in permanent funding will provide scholarships to increase diversity and quality of enrollment.

ooking at growth in our research mission, we have launched a new strategic plan, led by the Office of Research and Vice President Patrick Limbach.

With UC Research2020, we will define the American research university of the future, building on our foundation as a Carnegie Research 1 university.

Research2030 has two main objectives in support of our overall university vision:

• National Prominence. Our goal is specifically to rank in the Top 25 of public research universities.
• Research with Impact. Our goal is to be recognized as a leader in research that improves people’s lives and solves problems that matter.

A cause for celebration are the latest research funding numbers. 

Last fiscal year, UC and our affiliates attracted the highest amount in our history – a record $525 million in research awards and contracts.

Not counting student aid or federal CARES funding, UC’s portion reached the highest level in a decade.

We’re moving aggressively in the right direction – with research funding levels up 27 percent over the prior year and up 47 percent since 2015.

Congratulations to Dr. Limbach, to the Office of Research team, and to our university researchers – faculty, staff and students – for this tremendous progress.

Another game-changer for the university has been the establishment by the Governor, of Ohio’s first Innovation District, powered by the talent and ideas at the University of Cincinnati and Children’s Hospital. 

The Cincinnati Innovation District provides the physical location for the confluence of private-public partnerships in education, research and innovation. These will lead to economic opportunity for our region

The district, launched by the state of Ohio a year ago with a $100 million investment, is led by our 1819 Innovation Hub. The model, which we pioneered, is now being adopted for innovation districts recently announced in Cleveland and Columbus

The anchor for the CID is our 1819 Innovation Hub. It is shown on the slide. 

Right across from the 1819 Hub, another key development in the innovation district – our UC Digital Futures Interdisciplinary Research Building – is under construction and on target for completion in summer 2022.

On April 13th, we will mark its topping off beam-signing ceremony.

his addition of the Digital Futures Building to our research enterprise holds tremendous promise in pursuing high-tech, scalable solutions to the problems and opportunities in our digital and increasingly urbanizing world. 

The building will also serve as the headquarters for;

• Our new Nonprofit Leadership Initiative, 
• Community Change Collaborative, 
• Sustainability@UC, 
  
• The UC Space Research Institute for Discovery and Exploration, 
• and the Ethics Center research programs. 

We are recruiting external community partners to co-locate with these activities. 

We have also assembled an emeriti group of faculty to serve as advisors and consultants for digital futures research programs that have been launched.

The Next Lives Here Innovation Agenda platform launched the 1819 Innovation Hub, about two-and-a-half years ago.  As I said earlier, the Hub serves as the anchor for the CID. It is fully occupied with 17 companies and nonprofits located in the building.

Four of those companies signed leases in the middle of the pandemic, proof of the Hub’s significance, and the desire of organizations to partner with UC.

The 1819 Hub adds a new dimension of learning, innovation and research to our community and is now fully integrated into university’s academic life.

For example, three courses in the University Honors program use the hub’s flexible classroom spaces and its makerspace to develop ideas and prototypes.

One of these courses, taught by Dr. Whitney Gaskins in Engineering, focuses on biodesign and participates in the International Biodesign Challenge. Last summer, in fact, a UC team competing in this competition won the Outstanding Field Research Award for LifeBrik, a multi-layer soil structure students developed to make urban gardening and farming more viable.

Another pathway supporting the Innovation Agenda platform is Co-op 2.0 

Co-op 2.0 is reinventing and expanding our models of co-op to ensure that UC’s leadership in co-op continues. 

Leveraging the 1819 Hub, our Division of Experience-Based Learning and Career Education working with the Office of Innovation expanded co-op opportunities with partners in 1819 with 300 additional co-op placements for our students in 2020.

The innovative work in the Co-op 2.0 pathway has also attracted state and national attention as well as funding: 

• Most notable a $12 million Department of Labor award for the NEXT Apprenticeship Program, which focuses on informatics and computing, targeted to serve 6,700 students over four years.
  
• Over $300,000 received through the State of Ohio is helping to establish UC as a regional workforce development training and credentialing hub. 
• We continue to innovate in this arena, creating flexible new models to serve more students.  Over the past year, despite the challenges of COVID, this has allowed us to continue to provide students with valuable professional experiences including:   
• Over 500 students in Service Learning and on-campus co-op jobs.
• Over 1000 student in digital skills training and credentialing.
  
• Over 900 in remote co-op placements.
•  And 350 students co-oping from the College of Arts and Sciences, evidence of our expansion into additional majors.

Urban health will be a key driver for our Urban Impact platform. Recently an important focus has been mental health, forming interdisciplinary research teams and focusing on closing the racial disparities in health care. 

I also want to recognize our new leadership for one of the major health challenges facing our region: cancer. 

We continue, with our partners UC Health and Cincinnati Children’s, to strengthen and the UC Cancer Center, under a new and centralized structure led by co-directors Dr. Syed Ahmad and Dr. William Barrett. 

Given the rate of cancer in our region, we aim to achieve designation as a National Cancer Institute, and we are taking actions and making investments to attract and retain world-class talent in cancer research.

We have retained Dr. Xiaoting Zhang, the top NCI-funded researcher at UC and a nationally recognized breast cancer researcher. 

In addition, we have recruited Dr. Krushna Patra, a research scientist from Harvard, to work alongside Dr. Davendra Sohal, a nationally recognized pancreatic cancer expert recruited from the Cleveland Clinic. 

Together, they are working on improving how we select the most effective chemotherapies for patients.

None of our growth in any area would be possible without a thriving resource base to unleash the unlimited potential of our students, faculty, researchers, programs and professionals across UC and UC Health. 

Next, Now: The Campaign for Cincinnati, launched in November 2019, is ahead of pace on our $2 billion goal, with $1.6 billion raised so far.

Today, I am thrilled to add to that amount, announcing a $10 million gift from the Robert and Adele Schiff Family Foundation! This visionary support will allow the University of Cincinnati Cancer Center to launch a unique survivorship program to expand its work across clinical care, research and education, and allow this program to grow as a national leader in caring for patients who have survived cancer. 

Aligned with Next Lives Here, the campaign has also raised $139 million for scholarships so far, and added $50 million in growth to our endowment in just 18 months. 

Congratulations to UC Foundation President Peter Landgren and the entire foundation team, their board, and campaign champions for this success.

Jim Collins a former professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and author of “Good to Great,” notes that moving from “good to great” is work that is never finished. He says, “No matter how far we have gone or how much we have achieved, we are merely good relative to what we can do next.” 

I share this, not to dampen the triumph of our accomplishments, but to recognize that our work at this great university we love is never static or completed. 

You as world-class faculty and staff know and believe that, too. 

And I want you to know I am grateful for your tremendous passion and talent, pushing UC to be the best. 

“Next” lives here at the University of Cincinnati because of you! 

And we will continue to explore what’s next and adapt our strategic direction to lead the pace. 

Thank you again to our faculty and staff for all that you do to make our university great. With you, I am eager to continue this adventure, together.