You’re invited to provide your imagination.

You may have heard that last year hundreds of faculty, staff, students, trustees, and alumni spent a Saturday “imagining CGU.” Through a variety of participatory exercises, we rediscovered our university’s strengths and core values. We reaffirmed that we want to work on some of the most important challenges facing our region and our world. We are a university concerned more with “following the problem” across the disciplines and out into the world – and concerned less with what John Gardner once called “the increasingly precise pursuit of the increasingly irrelevant.”

Heeding Peter Drucker’s advice, our strategy to achieve this vision builds on our strengths. We are focusing on what makes us different and special. We are creating even more fluidity across the disciplines and professions. We are doing even more to mobilize the remarkable resources of the Claremont Colleges.

Each CGU graduate school has developed a vital, feasible strategy that connects its strengths, the needs of students and society, and the realities of the educational marketplace. Each school is implementing a fundraising action plan. Beyond these school-level changes, CGU is also innovating university-wide.
 
Launched two years ago, the Drucker Institute extends the Drucker legacy to new audiences in new ways (http://www.druckerinstitute.com). It galvanizes and connects Drucker Societies around the world. The Drucker prize for nonprofit innovation is a huge event. Director Rick Wartzman has a regular column in BusinessWeek online called “The Drucker Difference.” We hope the powerful new presentation called “The Responsibility Gap” might do for ethical leadership and effective management what An Inconvenient Truth did for fighting climate change.

The new Claremont Center for Mathematical Sciences (CCMS) is pulling together the 50 mathematicians of the Claremont Colleges. Spearheaded by CGU’s School of Mathematical Sciences under Dean John Angus, the CCMS plans to:

Distill and share what the Claremont Colleges have learned about teaching college-level mathematics.

Improve the education of mathematics teachers from diverse backgrounds. CGU, in partnership with Harvey Mudd College and the University of Southern California, is the second location in the country for Math for America, and we have just welcomed our first six scholarship winners.

Wholesale the Claremont tradition of “math clinics” where students and faculty research important issues with sponsors in business, government, and civil society.

Dean Stewart Donaldson and the School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences are designing a What Works Consortium. Pulling together the others schools at CGU, the Claremont Colleges, and partners outside Claremont, it will:

Analyze evidence on what works using diverse sources and methods.

Create new research methods and pedagogical vehicles for connecting evaluation and decision, academy and practitioner.

Convene leaders to examine what works where – and then connect them in a network of information, training, and action.

Elsewhere in this issue you’ll read about the new School of Community and Global Health. Rarely in academia do you find such a transition of an existing, high-quality institution (ranked fourth in the United States this spring in the “index of academic productivity” which combines publications, citations, and research funding per professor) to a new home, with a new vision. Several things made it possible, including an entrepreneurial leader in Dean Andy Johnson; the talent and support of our faculty led by Provost Yi Feng and FEC chairs Kathy Pezdek and Daryl Smith; and the boldness of our board of trustees, led by Chair Deborah Anders. And of course our distinctive mission and values.
 
I could list other innovations responsive to “Imagine CGU.” New curriculum, especially transdisciplinary courses. New information technology. A “signature course” in Arts & Humanities. Student-led innovations, from courses to mentoring programs, from online journals to research conferences. Our new website.

But my goal is not just to inform you but to invite you. Most of these innovations are designed to be inclusive. As they take off, we’re eager to connect with you. We seek your ideas and support. You’ll be hearing more from the deans and from our new Vice President for Advancement Gregory Pierre Cox and his team. We cordially invite you to become even more involved in your CGU in the exciting months and years ahead..


Robert Klitgaard, President and University Professor