President Rao delivers inaugural State of the University Address

During his State of the University Address on Thursday, Virginia Commonwealth University President Michael Rao, Ph.D., detailed the university’s plans to make new strides in the coming year in the key areas of fundraising, student success, physical learning environments and the VCU Health System.

Rao used the address to celebrate VCU’s achievements and to outline his chief priorities for the university. While extolling VCU’s continued emergence as a nationally recognized urban research university – highlighted in 2013 with its inclusion as an up-and-coming university by U.S. News & World Report – Rao stressed to an audience of students, faculty, staff and others at the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts that important work awaits for the university to maintain its momentum.

“In the new year, we have a familiar focus: continue to elevate Virginia Commonwealth University as a premier urban, public research university in our nation, not only compared to our peers but relative to our greatest potential,” Rao said.

Rao said VCU will face ongoing challenges related to the prevailing national climate for funding of public universities, noting that “we can no longer expect that the state will fund two-thirds of a student’s education, as it did a generation ago. Now, it’s closer to one-third.”

Rao said VCU set fundraising records in 2013 in numbers of gifts, donors and VCU Alumni members, but that the university must continue to attract increasing private investment to provide the necessary resources for its students and to offer competitive compensation for faculty.

“I fear that we will soon hit a ceiling, in terms of what we can accomplish, if our resources do not match our talents and ambitions,” Rao said. “Nowhere is this more plainly true than in our ability to invest in the success of our people.”

Rao said he will persist in looking for creative ways to improve faculty compensation, which lags behind VCU’s peers. One new approach will be pairing donors with faculty members “whose innovation and expertise will continue to transform our university and our nation.”

Rao said he is proud of VCU’s students “whose academic accomplishments are raising VCU’s profile.” However, he said the university does not yet offer the competitive financial aid packages that its students deserve. VCU also needs to find the resources to improve graduate-student stipends, advising, scheduling, counseling, student support and access to courses, including online options.

A recent favorable development has been the positive student response to the university’s “Do the Math” campaign, which encourages undergradute students to take at least 15 credits each semester in an effort to graduate on time, thereby limiting their debt and launching their careers sooner.

“As we continue to emphasize excellence among our students – who are the future leaders of their industries and our commonwealth, who will advance diversity in all its forms and who will invest in our university’s success for the next generation – we must ensure that they are fully supported and prepared to succeed at VCU,” Rao said.

Despite the recent opening of the McGlothlin Medical Education Center and the Academic Learning Commons – buildings that Rao called “two of the most remarkable spaces in VCU’s history” – the university has pressing facility needs for students and faculty. In fact, Rao said VCU has the fewest square feet per student among Virginia’s research universities.

Rao said key physical improvements are in the works. They include the Institute for Contemporary Art (Rao hopes the ICA will break ground later this year), the major renovation of the Cabell Library (the work begins this year) and the Children’s Pavilion (underway, with an expected completion next year). In addition, VCU continues to add residential options for students. Two more experiential-themed residence halls – one tailored to leadership, one focused on entrepreneurship – will be built on Grace Street next year, joining the two residences added to the street in recent years with themes of community engagement and global education.

The VCU Health System is facing a new set of challenges with changes related to the Affordable Care Act. Rao said the VCU Medical Center, the state’s largest safety-net hospital, will need Medicaid expansion or an alternative funding source to continue to meet its mission, because the health system could lose up to $300 million in federal funds during a five-year period that starts in 2017. The university, he said, is working with the General Assembly to seek solutions.

The medical center is positioning itself as a leader in clinical trials and remains highly regarded “for treating complex illnesses and providing care for all people, with dignity, respect, professionalism and the highest-rated patient experience at all times,” according to Rao. The health system also provides more than $70 million each year to the School of Medicine to ensure the academic missions of teaching and research, and the medical school has undergone an important transformation in the way it trains physicians, using team-based, clinically driven problem solving.

“We are strengthening VCU as a national leader in educating future health care leaders, thanks to the most significant evolution of the School of Medicine’s curriculum in 30 years,” Rao said.

Overall, Rao said he is excited about VCU’s trajectory, and he is pleased that the university is increasingly being recognized for its strengths.

“The continued success and national recognition of our faculty have forever changed our culture and our expectations as an institution,” Rao said. “The engagement of alumni, partners and friends, not only as fans of VCU but investors in VCU, has helped us earn a truly national reputation for excellence.”

For more on the speech, visit the president’s blog, “President’s posts,” at http://blog.president.vcu.edu/, or read the speech in its entirety at http://www.president.vcu.edu/speeches/state-of-the-university.html. A full video of the speech can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bhyzqkqAq8.