Plans for the Future
Jan. 23, 2025
Dear Colleagues,
Over the last 75 days, I’ve met with well over 240 faculty and staff to talk about what we want the future of our university to be.
Here’s what you said to me:
You told me you wanted Brandeis to remain one of the most highly esteemed universities in the world for the quality of its students, faculty, researchers and staff. You wanted Brandeis to remain an R1, liberal arts university rooted in the values of its founders. You wanted Brandeis to excel at preparing students to thrive in today and tomorrow’s world. You wanted an institution with fewer silos, more opportunities for collaboration, and fewer administrative layers, and a place where faculty and staff can take great pride in their work and feel valued.
Perhaps most importantly, you wanted to stop talking about the future and act.
The trustees charged me with charting a path for Brandeis for the next decade and beyond. I told the faculty and staff in November that I couldn’t do this alone, and that we needed to work together.
At that time, I also told the community that Brandeis could not cut its way to greatness. Brandeis’s real challenge was increasing revenues, not reducing expenses. Accordingly, the university would launch a capital campaign and admissions would now report to the president with a focus on growing enrollments. The University hired Jordan Tannenbaum '72, who raised over a billion dollars for the U.S. Holocaust Museum, to lead institutional advancement and launch a Brandeis capital campaign. He’ll be meeting with you to identify needs and priorities as he plans our fundraising efforts.
In November, I told the faculty that even if we did all of this, it wouldn't be enough. The world is changing profoundly, rapidly and at an accelerating pace. Higher education is undergoing a transformation, and every institution will be forced to change to meet the needs of that changing world. I asked the faculty to lead the nation in reimagining the university, to reinvent the liberal arts for the emerging global, digital, knowledge economy.
In 1948, Brandeis pioneered a new vision for universities with the founding of a nonsectarian Jewish university committed to excellence in education, dedicated to repairing the world, and freed of the discrimination and antisemitism that had historically characterized American higher education. Seventy-five years later it is time for Brandeis to –once again– chart the future of the nation’s colleges and universities.
Last Friday, at their January meeting, I reported to the faculty on what you had told me in our conversations. I made proposals based upon those conversations and years of seldom acted upon faculty taskforce recommendations.
I offered a vision of Brandeis’ future where we would take action in three areas:
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Rethinking the Brandeis Core or general education requirements to focus on the knowledge, abilities, and values that all Brandeis students need to live successfully in the global, digital, knowledge economy.
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Expanding Brandeis’s focus on career, life planning, and preparation for the future. This would begin with orientation and continue throughout college and beyond. It would include internships and work experiences as well as the creation of a suite of elective liberal arts and work-related competencies (skills and knowledge) in areas such as communication, data analytics, critical thinking, digital literacy, and many, many more. Students could achieve competencies through their courses and work experiences. They would be awarded certifications or microcredentials for mastering them. The competencies achieved would be recorded on a second transcript that could be sent to potential employers or graduate schools. In this way we will better prepare our graduates for the world they will live in.
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Reorganizing the academic enterprise, creating four new units, reporting to the provost - 1) Arts, Humanities and Culture, 2) Science, Engineering and Technology, 3) Economics and Business, and 4) Social Sciences and Social Policy.
Each of the units would consist of liberal arts disciplines and their applications (culture, engineering and technology, business, and social policy). The liberal arts would permeate the entire institution and they in turn would be linked with their practical applications. The reorganization would reduce administrative layering, diminish silos, and reduce costs.
The four units are now empty vessels. I asked faculty to work with me to fill them - to determine which faculty and disciplines should be in each. This represents an opportunity for faculty to consider new collaborations, future programming, and research possibilities within and between units. This will build on the successful interdisciplinary education Brandeis is known for, with proven success in Business, Neuroscience, HSSP, AAAS, and WGS, and others
Taken together, enacting these changes will differentiate Brandeis from every other university in the country. Brandeis will indeed be the university that reinvented liberal arts education.
Not only will these changes be very attractive to parents and future students, based upon my research and conversations since coming to Brandeis, it will also fuel fundraising, drive positive media coverage, and demonstrate the academic vision and leadership of the university. It has the potential to make Brandeis hot.
At the faculty meeting, I asked for recommendations for faculty, two per unit, to serve as facilitators/conveners who would bring faculty together to continue our conversation. Nominations will be accepted until Monday, 1/27 at 5 PM using this form, and I will appoint the conveners by the end of next week.
I also plan to follow my talk at the faculty meeting with student and staff town hall meetings to bring the entire community together to discuss the plan. I am going to meet with divisions, academic departments, staff and other governing bodies within the university to get their input as well.
I proposed the frame for a house, and I need this community to help me furnish it. I hope to be invited back to a faculty meeting in February to report on the meetings and town halls I have held, and to hear from the conveners regarding their conversations with faculty. Between the February and March faculty meetings we will have another month to discuss and refine the proposals. In March, I look forward to continuing our conversation regarding the future and next steps. Our planning can then begin in earnest.
I’m looking forward to charting this course together.
Arthur Levine ’70
Interim President