A Vision for Johns Hopkins University Through the Year 2020

A Vision for

Johns Hopkins University

Through the Year 2020

2020

We are Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins is an extraordinary institution.

We are a university of ﬁrsts.

We were America’s ﬁrst research university,

a model emulated throughout the United States,

and, more recently, around the world.

Ours is the university that gave birth to modern medical

education, with its synthesis of research, education and

patient care.

We founded the ﬁrst research-based school of public health.

We were a pioneer in the serious investigation of the

humanities and social sciences, from the conception of the

ﬁrst modern classics department to Arthur Lovejoy’s founding

of the history of ideas to our elite writing seminars, among the

ﬁrst such programs in the country.

We are home to the oldest music conservatory in the

United States.

We forged groundbreaking interdisciplinary programs in

areas such as biomedical engineering, the brain sciences,

cell engineering and bioethics.

We have been at the fore in bringing a systems perspective

to grand challenges in areas such as health care, infrastructure,

energy and the cosmos.

e restless spirit that is the hallmark of Johns Hopkins is reected in the distinctions that have

been earned by its faculty and graduates.

Our current faculty alone includes four winners of the Nobel Prize, six winners of the Lasker

Medical Research Award, six winners of MacArthur “Genius” winners, two recipients of the

Presidential Medal of Freedom, 31 members of the National Academy of Engineering and the

National Academy of Sciences, 47 fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 57

members of the Institute of Medicine. Our faculty have received Kennedy Center Honors, won

the inaugural Breakthrough Prize in the Life Sciences, and been recognized as the National Phy-

sician of the Year. For more than three straight decades, our faculty has ranked rst in the nation

in the merit-based competition for federal research grants. After leaving Hopkins, our graduates

have received 15 Nobel Prizes, 32 Lasker Awards, six Pulitzer Prizes, multiple Grammy and Oscar

Awards, and countless other honors.

And yet the true measure of our institution is shown by the breadth and depth of the intellectual

achievements that have commanded these various forms of recognition. Hopkins faculty measured

the age, shape and composition of the universe. ey led path-breaking developments in pediatric

cardiology, cardiopulmonary resuscitation

and renal dialysis. ey authenticated the Dead Sea

Scrolls, established the philosophical movement of pragmatism,

and conducted the rst large scale

study of inequality in American schools. ey created the rst fully integrated

prosthetic arm,

designed the proximity fuse that helped to defeat the Axis powers in World War II, and developed

the system of water purication through chlorination adopted by every major municipal water

supply system across the United States.

So too, our alumni are among the most inspired global leaders, taking important roles in industry

and nance, education and engineering, government and foreign service, music and the arts,

literature and journalism, the health sciences and medicine. ey are extensions of the values of

the university and carry its mission into the world. Our graduates have gone on to become the

president and chief executive ocer of IBM, performed the rst successful articial heart trans-

plant, and developed the Apgar score that assesses the health of newborns. ey have founded the

International Campaign to Ban Landmines, served as the rst Chief Technology Ocer of the

United States, and become the mayor of New York and one of the most successful entrepreneurs

and impactful philanthropists in U.S. history. ey have inspired the modern environmental

movement, earned recognition as the most quoted living person in e Penguin Dictionary of

Modern Humorous Quotations, and been elected President of the United States.

Our excellence is also exemplied by the humanist ethos of Hopkins, the ways in which we are

deeply engaged in improving the human condition. No academic institution has demonstrated

more of a commitment to the developing world, or played more of a role in seeking to remedy

the impact of the gaping disparities in wealth, health and education around the globe. From our

eorts to combat the spread of HIV in Uganda, to our work demonstrating the power of Vitamin

A to prevent child blindness and mortality in developing nations, to our discovery of the eects

of zinc in treating and preventing millions of childhood deaths from intestinal disease, to our

initiatives delivering cost-eective medical device prototypes and transforming the provision of

electricity services throughout Asia and Africa, we have marshaled energetic responses to narrow

this divide.

Ours is a proud legacy. We are a fearless society of scholars engaged in the uncompromising

pursuit of truth.

We explore fundamental questions of meaning, pursue creative achievement,

advance research basic and applied

, joined together in common service to the world of knowledge

and the betterment of humanity. We translate bracing discoveries into practices that can trans-

form the world. ese traditions reect, more than anything, a culture that gives pride of place

to freedom of thought, to collegiality and discovery, and to the relentless pursuit of excellence.

In his inaugural address, our rst President Daniel Coit Gilman made a passionate case for these

values, calling on members of the Hopkins community to strive for the “encouragement of research

and the

advancement of individual scholars, who by their excellence will advance the sciences they

pursue, and the society

where they dwell.” Across the decades, our community has honored and

rearmed these principles.

But as much as our culture has been shaped by a deep commitment to the values of exploration

and intellectual freedom, it has been equally dened by the notion of “selective excellence,” the

belief that no university is capable of achieving excellence in every eld of intellectual endeavor,

and that schools must make choices as to which areas to prioritize and disciplines and programs

to mount. Such strategic thinking is essential for any institution but particularly important

for ours: Although our university has been blessed over the years by truly extraordinary acts of

philanthropy, our endowment is considerably smaller than many of our institutional peers. An

endowment provides a university with nancial stability in uncertain times and the capacity to

invest in strategic priorities into the future. And yet, Johns Hopkins ranks below more than 90

other private four-year research universities and liberal arts colleges in the United States in the

size of its endowment per student.

Despite these daunting resource constraints, the university has not merely survived but excelled.

Johns Hopkins is a resilient, mission-driven place that refuses to wait for the ideal conditions, but

instead seizes upon all opportunity for brave innovation. is is a core feature of our institutional

DNA.

We need to build on our exceptional foundation to preserve and strengthen our great enterprise

. . . for our students, for our faculty and sta, and for those we serve around the world.

Our Challenges

A number of serious challenges approach higher education in the coming years. None is unique to

Johns Hopkins, but each could carry profound consequences for the future of our institution.

•

e imperative of collaboration. We no longer, if we ever did, live in a world where solutions to

our most compelling challenges can be achieved entirely within one academic discipline, or

even one division. Great universities will never lose the discipline of the disciplines. And yet the

urgent questions of the day – healthcare delivery, global climate change, the future of our urban

centers and economic destabilization, to name only a few – are not conned to intellectual silos,

and neither will be the solutions we devise. What is more, the search for knowledge will often

require a commitment of expertise and resources so great that a collaboration that spans institu-

tions may be the only option. ese trends only will be reinforced by the growing insistence on

interdisciplinary cooperation expressed by external funders.

• e transformative capacity of technology. Over six million college students in the United States

now take at least one class online each semester, and the rate of growth for online education

far exceeds that for more traditional higher education courses. Technology provides universities

an unparalleled opportunity to spread knowledge and ideas to students and populations

around the world. At the same time, new technologies oer the capability to enrich the

traditional residential experience, reimagine pedagogy, expand research collaborations, drive

institutional sustainability and forge ever stronger connections between alumni and the

university. In these ways and more, technology holds the potential to transform radically the

educational experience and recast the reach and mission of the modern university.

• Preserving access to a college education. Our nation is facing declines in household wealth and

widening disparities in income while the cost of a university education only continues to rise.

College tuition and fees have risen more than 400 percent over the last three decades, and

student loan debt across the country recently exceeded $1 trillion. e median list price to

attend a single year of a four year private university is now roughly the same as the amount

of income that a median household in the United States earns in a single year. Our university

has made inroads in recent years in reducing the average net cost of attendance for Home-

wood undergraduate students on nancial aid, but the surging cost of higher education raises

important questions about how universities will continue to provide access to the best and

brightest students

irrespective of their family’s nancial state.

• Meeting student expectations in an ever-changing world. Students are arriving at universities

with heightened expectations for their educational experience. Coming of age at a time when

a keystroke can instantly

connect them to the world, our students are demanding a university

education that extends well beyond the

campus walls, one that oers a greater understanding

of the communities of which they are part and that

marries a rigorous academic experience

with rich opportunities for learning through real world application.

And in an era dened by

the creation and sharing of information in a knowledge-based society, our students

more than

ever recognize the need for building and honing their capacity for integrative thinking and

creativity, for critical judgment and reasoning skills, and for eective, persuasive communication.

• e globalization of higher education. Unprecedented economic expansion in the developing

world is fueling a global market for higher education. is trend is a double-edged sword.

ere has been massive growth in the demand for tertiary education, with the percentage

of students in higher education more than

doubling in India and tripling in China in the

last decade alone. Increasingly, these students are committed to

securing an education of the

highest international quality, opening the door for U.S. universities to become truly global

universities, beacons of knowledge to the world. At the same time, countries such as China,

Singapore and Saudi Arabia recognize the foundational importance of the research university

in realizing a host of developmental goals, and are investing heavily in national universities of

their own that are aimed at challenging America’s dominance in higher education.

•

A decline in government investment in research and clinical funding. Despite the many compelling

reasons for public support for the research enterprise, scal pressures are jeopardizing these

investments. In the last

decade, the purchasing power of National Institutes of Health grant

funding has declined roughly 20 percent.

e federal budget sequestration and related scal

pressures threaten billions of dollars in federal research funding. And over 40 states have

cut their support on a per student basis for public research universities over the past decade,

many by 30 percent or more. is retrenchment is occurring at a moment when

academic

medical centers can expect to see reductions in reimbursements for patient care from federal,

state and private payers. e potential consequences of these trends for the academic mission

are grave: declines in research, delays in career development, a decrease in students and re-

search faculty, and ultimately, fewer discoveries to advance knowledge and heal the world.

• Wrenching needs at home and abroad. Universities cannot be islands of privilege in a sea of

pressing needs. Many American cities are working to emerge from post-industrial decline –

none more so than Baltimore.

e nation seeks to recover from the worst economic downturn

since the Great Depression. e world faces

heart-rending disparities in health, education,

civil and political liberties. Colleges and universities hold the capacity to contribute so much

for the betterment of the communities of which they are a part. ere is a dawning recogni-

tion that our institutions of higher education must harness their collective intellectual and

moral strengths to heed this call as never before.

The Path Forward

Few of the enumerated challenges are entirely new to Johns Hopkins.

Indeed, several have received close and searching inspection in reports and analyses developed

over the years by university task forces, symposia, trustee reports, and external reviews of schools

and divisions. rough these reports – most recently, the Report of the Committee for the 21st Century

(1994), the Report of the Commission on Undergraduate Education (2003) and the Framework

for the Future

(2009) – our community has grappled with issues ranging from the challenges of

interdisciplinary research and education in a highly decentralized environment, to the rejuvenation

of undergraduate education, to the eort to expand access for students through a need-blind admis-

sions process. In considering our response to the many challenges ahead, we are fortunate to be able

to draw on a rich and thoughtful set of insights that have been developed through collegial debate

and reection.

Based on these reports and many conversations over the years with the university community, I

have prepared these ten priorities for the university through the remainder of the decade.

e goals seek to chart a course for the university that meets the looming challenges and captures

the boundless opportunities ahead, while building on our strengths and honoring our history and

traditions. en professor and director of radiology and eventual Hopkins president Bill Brody

put it well in the Report of the Committee for the 21st Century: “e vision that we have for Johns

Hopkins University in the 21st century is thus not so much that of a university whose mission

has changed as it is that of a university whose traditional mission is realized in new ways.” e

ten goals are not watertight compartments, but are overlapping and complementary, interwoven

threads that will help to shape the direction and the identity of our university, into the future.

e priorities are arrayed under the three over-arching themes articulated in my inaugural address:

One University,

Individual Excellence, and Commitment to Our Communities. In addition,

there is now a fourth thematic heading: Institution Building. e inclusion of this theme reects

the importance of marshaling the required resources, policies and institutional arrangements to

support the realization of our academic mission. One such undertaking that will sit at the heart

of our institution building in the coming years, and serve the priorities in the Ten by Twenty, is

the $4.5 billion Rising to the Challenge campaign launched in May of this year, the largest fund-

raising eort in our history.

e reader will see that among the touchstones of the Ten by Twenty are principles such as

accountability, dialogue and transparency, and this document itself was forged with these principles

in mind. ese priorities took shape through conversations across our university, including more

than thirty meetings over the last several months with over a thousand members of the university

community. A broad range of faculty, students, sta, deans, trustees and alumni lent their ideas,

their aspirations, their voice to this document. And our conversation is only beginning. Starting

next year, an annual report will be provided to the Hopkins community on our progress and

achievements as a university along each of these goals. e reports will be posted on the Ten

by Twenty website, and set out qualitative and quantitative measures of our progress as well as

benchmarks and

targets where appropriate. I will hold myself accountable through these reports to

the goals, to the trustees, and to each of you. ere will also be opportunities on this site for mem-

bers of the university community to participate

in the creation of ideas and projects to advance

each of these goals in the coming years.

Our list of rsts is not yet complete.

If there is one thing that marks Johns Hopkins it is our restless spirit in the pursuit of excellence, our

unwillingness to coast. History shows that we are constitutionally incapable of resting on our laurels.

I look forward to working with you on all that lies ahead.

Selectively invest in those programs and activities that

will advance signiﬁcantly our core academic mission.

Strengthen our capacity for faculty-led interdisciplinary

collaboration and launch a set of innovative cross-cutting

initiatives that will contribute substantially to the world of

ideas and action.

Enhance the impact of Johns Hopkins Medicine, the

Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of

Nursing, as the world’s preeminent academic health

sciences enterprise by deepening collaboration among

these entities and with disciplines in other parts of the

university and across the globe.

One University

Selectively invest in those programs and activities that will advance signiﬁcantly our

core academic mission.

We are one of the leading research and educational institutions in the world, with elite programs

in medicine and music, nursing and international aairs, biomedical engineering and public

health, writing seminars and bioethics, and astrophysics and cosmology, to name a few. Our tra-

dition of excellence can be traced to the

founding of the university, when luminaries such as Basil

Gildersleeve in classics, James Sylvester in mathematics,

Ira Remsen in chemistry, Henry Rowland

in physics and Henry Newell Martin in physiology taught the rst generation of Johns Hopkins

students, and surgeon William Halsted, pathologist William Henry Welch, internist William

Osler and gynecologist Howard Atwood Kelly helped to found a world-class medical school

and hospital. ese scholars laid the groundwork for the manifold strengths of the university we

know today. Our schools, divisions and programs are now the envy of the world.

Our areas of distinction were built on a concept of “selective excellence,” an approach that connotes

purposefulness,

choice and discipline. We will need to remain true to these principles as our

schools and divisions set our academic priorities in the coming years. To support the highest degree

of rigor in our pursuit of these ideals, our decisions must be informed in the rst instance by

objective data and sound analysis. Over the last several years, we have taken several steps towards

this goal. We have strengthened the quality of academic decision-making by developing systems

to track the composition of our faculty, the prole and performance of our doctoral students and

trends in our funded research. Our schools are now subject to external review, as is each of our

school’s departments on a periodic basis.

e information we obtain from these analyses should then

inform our academic priority setting

within departments

and schools. And the priorities that emerge from this process

should determine

budgetary and organizational decisions,

not the reverse. Of course, by

denition, a commitment

to selective excellence means that certain academic priorities will be advanced while others will be

de-emphasized or not pursued at all. Predictably, there will be tension between protecting excellence

in our existing

programs

and investing in the innovative programs of tomorrow.

We will need to remain true to principles

of purposefulness, choice and discipline as

our schools and divisions set our academic

priorities in the coming years.

ese decisions are never easy, nor are they self-evident. Even so, we can draw guidance from certain

core principles. Our lodestar at all times should be the values that rest at the heart of our enterprise:

excellence, integrity, intellectual rigor, freedom of inquiry. Our mission must allow space for the

many facets of the quest for knowledge, with fundamental research occurring alongside applied

science, the search for meaning married to the search

for solutions. And nally, we will ensure

that our investments are aligned with our core academic mission if, in

the best traditions of the

academy, they emerge from discussions that are premised on transparent, participatory

processes

that allow for informed and respectful debate and deliberation. In so doing, we will honor our

tradition of selective excellence and our remarkable multiplicity of strengths, while building an

even stronger university that meets the challenges of the future.

Strengthen our capacity for faculty-led interdisciplinary collaboration and launch

a set of innovative cross-cutting initiatives that will contribute substantially to the

world of ideas and action.

Johns Hopkins has long been home to profound acts of collaboration. We have championed the

role of interdisciplinary cooperation as a means of solving the world’s most complex problems and

fundamental questions.

From Gordon “Reds” Wolman’s creation of the pioneering Department

of Geography and Environmental Engineering, to contemporary initiatives such as our Berman

Institute of Bioethics, the Institute for Cell Engineering and the Brain Science Institute, we have,

time and again, achieved distinction through interdisciplinary collaboration. Many of our highly

regarded graduate programs draw students and faculty from more than one school or depart-

ment, while undergraduate interdisciplinary majors such as international studies, public health,

biomedical engineering and neuroscience consistently

stand among the most popular choices for

our students.

However, it is also true that our organizational and budgetary arrangements can impair faculty

and student success

in mounting interdisciplinary ventures. Our structures too often inadvertently

impede the enterprising impulses of our faculty, sta and students to connect. e report of the

Framework for the Future underscored this point, observing that “dierent sources of support,

attendant responsibilities and policies have created logistical barriers

to collaboration” across the

university. ese hurdles are only compounded by the geographic dispersion of our university

across multiple campuses. To be sure, robust collaboration must be built on strong and vibrant

disciplines, which are marked by shared norms and methodologies and fuel rigorous inquiry. We

will never lose the “discipline of the disciplines”. And yet, if we are to honor our tradition of en-

trepreneurship, we need to ensure that those disciplines can be easily permeated, that it is as easy

to work across the disciplines as it is within them.

Accordingly, we will systematically identify and redress the barriers that stand in the way of academic

collaboration.

e responsibility for creating such an institutional environment rests with the

collective academic leadership of the schools and divisions. ere is ample precedent for how to

make collaboration work across Johns Hopkins, and our School of Education and Carey Business

School will provide the capabilities and the platforms for a more diverse array of possible connec-

tions across the university than ever before. e university’s relatively thin annual operating sur-

plus places a premium on careful cash management to protect our liquidity and weather sudden

downturns in funding. e task will be to imprint our record of collaboration in every corner of

our policies and practices, from faculty appointments to tenure and promotions processes, from

joint degrees to doctoral education, from research costs to teaching and laboratory spaces, from

schedules and the academic calendar to the harnessing of technology to bridge our campuses and

create connections among scholars that might otherwise never have formed.

We will also invest strategically in new and existing collaborative

ventures. We are involved in one such enterprise

that has the

potential to transform powerfully the scope for, and support

of, multi-disciplinary enterprise in our university. Over the last

several years, deans, directors and faculty thought-leaders have

identied multi-disciplinary projects that they believe will benet

from investment, in areas as diverse as individualized health, the

science of learning, big data, the fate of our urban centers, the challenges of water scarcity, space

and cosmology, and global health. At the core of these endeavors will be a cadre of jointly ap-

pointed faculty who can act as human

bridges between and among the disciplines. Mayor Michael

Bloomberg has already made a stirring investment

in this vision with his gift of $250 million to

endow fty

professorships that will anchor cross-disciplinary work across the university. All said,

in the Rising to the Challenge

comprehensive campaign, nearly a a quarter of the funds raised will be

directed to collaborative initiatives that will knit together the university’s disciplines and divisions

and build from the core academic objectives of our schools.

rough commitments such as these, we will come together as a university as never before, advancing

the visionary work of our scholars, heeding the extraordinary possibilities at the crossroads of ideas,

and cementing our status as one of the world’s leading interdisciplinary universities.

If we are to honor our tradition of

innovation and entrepreneurship,

we need to ensure that it is as easy

to work across the disciplines as it is

within them.

Enhance the impact of Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Bloomberg School of Public Health and

the School of Nursing, as the world’s preeminent academic health sciences enterprise by

deepening collaboration among these entities and with disciplines in other parts of the

university and across the globe.

Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Nursing

together comprise nothing less than the preeminent academic health science enterprise in the world,

the home to groundbreaking innovations that have advanced human knowledge and healed millions,

birthed the model for medical and public health and nursing education we know today, and yielded

dramatic and far-reaching improvements to patient care. Our East Baltimore campus is one of the few

in the world where elite schools of nursing, medicine and public health are adjacent to one another

and within steps of a premier hospital and where faculty collaboration within and among schools is

a widely recognized element of the culture. Without doubt, one of our priorities in the coming years

will be to fortify and strengthen these commanding institutions so they continue to stand as models

for education, research and clinical care to the nation and the world.

Nearly twenty years ago, the Report of the Committee for the 21st Century observed that the entities in

East Baltimore

possessed “overlapping and sometimes competing roles and functions” and called for

a greater integration of programs across that campus. One important step towards this goal was the

creation of the virtual entity of Johns Hopkins Health System in 1997 to enable the Johns Hopkins

Health System and the School of Medicine to work together more easily under a single leadership

team. Uniting our expertise in research, patient care, and education, we created an integrated

academic medical center that led to the biggest hospital expansion of its kind in United States history,

and we launched a comprehensive revision of our medical school curriculum for the 21st centu-

ry called Genes to Society. ese eorts were complemented and enriched by connections to the

Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Nursing, each of which is recognized as the

leading school in the nation in their eld.

e terrain of medicine and health care continues to shift. e move away from fee-for- service to

population health models and the need to address fundamental questions of cost and access to health

care will demand an emphasis on collaboration as never before. Our deans and senior leaders in East

Baltimore are building ever stronger linkages to each other’s divisions. e deans of the three schools

now serve on each other’s advisory boards, the schools work closely together on specialized research,

educational and clinical projects, and the Whiting School of Engineering, the Krieger School of Arts

and Sciences, the School of Education, the Carey Business School, the Applied Physics Laboratory

and the Berman Institute for Bioethics are increasingly integrated into these activities as well.

rough the remainder of the decade, we will continue to place a premium on collaborative discovery,

in areas such as genomics, pathobiology, clinical research methods, patient safety, patient self-man-

agement of chronic illness, individualized health and ethics. We will forge even deeper ties among the

three schools in research support, facility development, inter-professional education, innovative clini-

cal program delivery, and faculty recruitment to advance the mission of an integrated academic health

center. Finally, we will continue to explore partnerships with other entities across the nation and the

world when doing so would advance our core academic, research and clinical priorities.

Build Johns Hopkins’ undergraduate experience so it

stands among the top ten in the nation.

Build on our legacy as America’s ﬁrst research university

by ensuring that at least two-thirds of our Ph.D. programs

stand among the top twenty in their ﬁelds.

Attract the very best faculty and staﬀ in the world through

a welcoming and inclusive environment that values

performance and celebrates professional achievement.

Individual Excellence

Build Johns Hopkins’ undergraduate experience so it stands among the top ten in the nation.



From our university’s founding, President Daniel Coit Gilman regarded undergraduate education

as crucial to Johns Hopkins. He declared, “A university cannot thrive unless it is based upon a

good collegiate system,” and he built an undergraduate program to reect that belief. Today, it

is hard to imagine a great university without a strong undergraduate program. Known for their

independent spirit and enterprising intellect, our students use their time at Johns Hopkins not

only to learn but to challenge, to experiment, and to push past boundaries in a range of elds

and endeavors. ey renew the traditions of the university and carry the ideas of the university

into the world. A strong undergraduate program casts a broad halo over our entire university.

Over the last decade, the university made great strides in strengthening the undergraduate experience.

Our students have beneted from investments in undergraduate research and strengthened

student services and support, the rising quality and diversity of our undergraduate classes, the

creation of new undergraduate majors and expanded opportunities for local and international

internships, and the increased availability of nancial aid (including the bold and innovative

Baltimore Scholars Program). ese enhancements have been accompanied

by transformational

investments in the campus environment, student spaces (Charles Commons, Brody Learning

Com-

mons, the Undergraduate Teaching Labs), and academic buildings (Gilman, Hodson, Hacker-

man, and Malone Halls).

And yet, we can do far more to cultivate and support our next generation of scholars. Our students’

independence is a virtue to be nurtured, and we must continue to enrich and expand student

opportunities for entrepreneurial exploration. At the same time, we must help to create bridges for

our students beyond their own ideas, so they have a chance to be full participants in a thriving

intellectual community, one that will foster connections among thes roving independent minds.

We will start by drawing to our university the most talented and original

students from a diversity of backgrounds,

who will bring dierent

perspectives and

experiences inside and outside the classroom. At the

core of this aspiration must

be continued strengthening of our nan-

cial aid program, so that our university’s

undergraduate

admissions

will be made on a need-blind basis. Over the last three years, and

fueled by the endorsement of the university’s trustees, we have taken important steps towards

realization of this goal: Our net cost

of attendance for Homewood undergraduate

students who

have received nancial aid has decreased by 12 percent. However, there is still a marked gap in

nancial aid between Johns Hopkins and our peer institutions that we must redress.

Our students use their time at

Johns Hopkins not only to learn

but to challenge, to experiment,

to push past boundaries in a

range of ﬁelds and endeavors.

Once we have recruited the strongest possible class irrespective of nancial means, we will build

the strongest possible connections between our students and our faculty and sta in order to

provide a peerless educational experience. We will strengthen our academic advising to create

supportive environment for academic success. We will foster more programs and provide addi-

tional incentives for innovation in teaching and the adoption of evidence-based teaching strategies,

improve the execution of our gateway science courses, and harness technology to transform the

classroom experience. And we will fortify existing connections, and build new connections, among

our undergraduates and our graduate and professional schools in education, research and service.

Next, we will create welcoming and inspiring spaces for students to meet, collaborate and socialize

that are uniquely their own and connected to the larger community, including social spaces to

foster student interaction, outdoor spaces that encourage engagement with the natural beauty of

our historic campus, and multi-purpose event space for a range of activities and programming.

We will provide resources and support for our diverse array of student organizations and athletic

programs. And we will forge ever more enduring connections to our alumni, from whom our

university derives so much strength, building bridges between our current and former students

for mentoring, internships and other opportunities.

Finally, our students are expecting an undergraduate experience that does not end at our campus

borders, and so we will strengthen connections between our students and the communities

outside of campus. We will continue to enhance the number and range of innovative fellowships,

community-based learning courses, and civic engagement and service opportunities in Baltimore

and around the world. And we will invest in the

development of vibrant communities and gather-

ing places in the areas surrounding our undergraduate campuses,

with particular attention to the

continued revitalization of Charles Village.

Build on our legacy as America’s ﬁrst research university by ensuring that at least

two-thirds of our Ph.D. programs stand among the top twenty in their ﬁelds.

Johns Hopkins was founded on the belief that America needed and deserved an institution devoted

to promoting

and advancing graduate education for our nation’s most talented young scholars.

Reimagining the European university

on American soil, Johns Hopkins became the model upon

which all other American research universities were

built. Graduate education has been at the core

of the university’s mission to ignite discovery through the intersection

of transformative research and

teaching. Time and again, our graduate students have worked at the frontiers of scholarship, forging

new inquiries and discoveries, serving as bridges across teams of faculty in dierent schools, and

driving the quest for knowledge into uncharted terrain. Doctoral education is a dening feature of

our legacy and, as such, must command the attention of our schools and our entire community.

Outside bodies have attempted comparisons and rankings of graduate programs in recent years. e

methodologies

behind these reports are far from perfect, and it will be vital that we develop and

hone our own measures for assessment and comparison of these programs in the coming years, ones

that are aligned

with the priorities of our institution and our own vision of excellence. Even so, the

external metrics point to real challenges facing our doctoral programs. ese challenges – none

of which is unique to our university – are manifest in a number of areas: from stipend competi-

tiveness and graduate scholarships to the time-to-degree completion; from high attrition rates to

ensuring the appropriate t between the doctoral students we prepare and the academic, indus-

trial and non-prot sectors in which they may seek employment; from the impact of new tech-

nologies on pedagogy to concerns of diversity; and the need to balance the depth and integrity of

the disciplines with the interdisciplinary collaboration required to address the next generation of

urgent social and scientic questions.

Over the last several years, we have taken critical steps to reshape the landscape of our doctoral

programs. We established a university-wide Doctor of Philosophy Board as an advocate for and

monitor of the university’s Ph.D. programs. We increased the level of graduate stipends at the

Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, where the disadvantage relative to our peers was the greatest.

We convened leading experts for a symposium on the future of Ph.D. education, published a

statement of rights and responsibilities for Ph.D. students and, most recently, launched an

inno-

vation fund to seed bold projects that will help to address the challenges identied above. Building

on all of these developments, we will chart a strategy that not only aspires to best practices, but

denes those practices. is commanding task will be led by the Doctor of Philosophy Board in

close collaboration with deans, departmental chairs and directors and faculty thought-leaders.

With the quality of the graduate experience as our polestar, we will confront forthrightly the

imperative for focused, courageous and innovative reforms that will allow us to reclaim our birth-

right as the wellspring for modern graduate education.

Attract the very best faculty and staﬀ in the world through a welcoming and inclusive

environment that values performance and celebrates professional achievement.

e university’s faculty and sta are the bedrock of our institution. ey ground our research,

teaching and service, and our tradition of excellence would not be possible without them. We

must ensure that through our practices, programs and ethos we are able to recruit faculty and

sta who honor the standards of our best. And we must ensure that once here, they are able to

ourish: that we give them the support and opportunities for advancement such that they do not

merely want to start their careers at Hopkins, but nish them here. More than any other factor,

our ability to attract, invest in, and retain our faculty and sta will determine the future of the

university for decades to come.

Over the next ten years, retirements and philanthropy will allow us to recruit a generation of new

faculty who will dene our university for decades to come. rough the Rising to the Challenge

campaign, we will undertake an unprecedented mission to invest in these men and women: Our

goal is to nearly double the number of endowed chairs at the university over the course of the

campaign. Once here, we must continue to take steps to support our faculty throughout their

time at Johns Hopkins, early in their careers through mentorship and transparency of process,

and later through recognition of their accomplishments. While we often ask a great deal of our

faculty, they thrive and excel in an intellectual environment that is without peer, a place suused

with bold innovation and a warm generous and collegial spirit that we must nurture and protect

in order to continue to attract the best and brightest minds to our community.

We must also be deliberate in our eorts to attract, develop, and retain a talented and diverse

workforce of engaged employees. Our objective is to cultivate a working environment with a

culture of intellectual curiosity, innovation and teamwork, a place where everyone can develop

professionally and make a dierence. To achieve those ends, we will provide our employees those

services and support necessary to ensure that a Hopkins position is conducive in every respect to

growth and performance at the highest levels. As one example, we will continue to oer a struc-

tured professional development process where employees can receive constructive feedback, are

recognized for their contributions, and are coached in areas of concern. is development process

will be complemented with rigorous training programs that help our employees develop the skills

they need to respond to feedback they receive and advance their careers.

Finally, we arm our uncompromising commitment to the values of diversity, respect and work-life

balance, each of which is indispensable to the achievement of excellence on the part of our faculty

and sta. Johns Hopkins is dedicated to guaranteeing equal opportunity for every person in

our

community, and the recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented minorities,

including into positions of leadership. Our ongoing work in this area includes the Mosaic

Initiative, our economic inclusion initiative, and our diversity innovation grants. We will create

a welcome, inclusive, respectful environment that inspires our faculty and sta to achieve their

personal best. And, we will continue to provide a range of programs and services that reect the

importance of achieving a healthy mix between work, personal and academic pursuits, including

steps to increase the availability of high quality child care options. Each of these values is a pillar

of a successful university, making it possible for all of us to perform and contribute at the level of

excellence that is the hallmark of Johns Hopkins.

Enhance and enrich our ties to Baltimore, the nation and

the world, so that Johns Hopkins becomes the exemplar

of a globally engaged, urban university.

Commitment To

Our Communities

Enhance and enrich our ties to Baltimore, the nation and the world, so that Johns Hopkins

becomes the exemplar of a globally engaged, urban university.



Johns Hopkins is nested in local, national and international communities. As Baltimore’s largest

anchor institution, rmly rooted in the history and development of the city, we feel the constant

pull of urban issues. e reach of our university also extends well beyond Baltimore to the nation

and the world, through our partnerships, our projects and our campuses. Our work in these areas

will strengthen both our communities and our university: Our ideas, passion and resources can

contribute so much to the communities of which we are part. At the same time, our relationships

with community partners provide a richer educational experience for our students, strengthen

scholarship and research across our university, and advance the founding mission of our university

to provide an education for scholars who will advance the societies where they dwell.

As an institution that is not only in, but truly of this city, our success remains inseparable from

that of Baltimore. Our connections to the lives of local residents only continues to grow, whether

through the groundbreaking work of the School of Education in designing and opening Elmer

A. Henderson: A Johns Hopkins Partnership School, the rst

new public school in East Baltimore in 25 years; our invest-

ments through East Baltimore Development Incorporated and

the Homewood Community Partners Initiative; our students’

extensive volunteer projects and summer internships; our

full-tuition Johns Hopkins scholarships to the graduates of

Baltimore public high schools; our initiative to leverage our

investments in hiring, construction and purchasing to promote

the growth of local businesses; or our divisions’ commitments

in areas as diverse as public health, medicine, wealth creation and the arts. We are also, more than

ever, connected to the nation, shaping the national conversation on far-ranging issues of policy

in areas as diverse as international aairs, gun violence, and health care policy; strengthening our

nation’s security through science and technology partnerships; and providing care and services to

patients across the country.

Our ideas, our energies, our passion

and optimism can contribute so much

to the communities of which we are

part. We must continue to galvanize our

intellectual and moral strengths for the

betterment of our communities, and the

betterment of ourselves.

Finally, Hopkins is among the most international of universities, with an unparalleled network of

research and service projects throughout the world. Our work touches every corner of the globe,

ranging from our HIV research in Zambia, to our MBA students partnering with local companies

in India, Peru and Rwanda, to our geological research in Antarctica, to our trailblazing campuses

in China and Italy, to the Center for Talented Youth’s presence in countries such as Ireland, ailand

and Egypt, to the Peabody Institute’s musical partnership with Singapore’s Yong Siew Toh Con-

servatory. We are home to a school of public health with a unmatched presence in the developing

world, an elite school of international studies whose graduates work in approximately 140 coun-

tries, and a non-prot health organization that puts evidence-based health innovations into every

day practice for the world’s most vulnerable populations across the globe. All said, we operate

programs and projects in more than 130 countries, with over $230 million a year in foreign expen-

ditures around the globe, more than any other private college or university in the nation.

As we continue to expand our work in the communities around us, we will hold ourselves to

certain bedrock principles. First, we will conduct our work in a manner that is mission-driv-

en, grounded in scholarship, research and service, and pursued with robust faculty and student

involvement. is includes drawing on our research footprint to place students in internships,

fellowships and educational opportunities, and working with our network of alumni to develop

new partnerships for our university around the world. Second, we will commit to ensuring that

we develop sustainable and meaningful partnerships, ones that include our community allies in

the design and operation of the projects. ird, we will rearm and renew our mandate to spread

knowledge to the world. Our inaugural president Daniel Coit Gilman described it as “one of the

noblest duties of a university to advance knowledge, and to diuse it not merely among those who

can attend the daily lectures—but far and wide.” One of our missions in the coming years will be

to harness technology to expand our reach, open our classrooms and our journals, distribute our

wisdom and teaching, farther and wider than Gilman could ever have imagined in his time.

e goal, simply put, is to make Hopkins more engaged than ever in the city, nation and world

around us. We must galvanize our intellectual and moral strengths the betterment of our commu-

nities, and for the betterment of ourselves.

Strengthen the institutional, budgetary, technological

and policy frameworks necessary to set priorities,

allocate resources, and realize the highest standards

of academic excellence.

Reinforce our position as the leading university recipient

of competitively funded federal research support, while

increasing the amount of annual research investment

from other sources with appropriate cost recovery.

Develop the resource base necessary to support

investments in key academic priorities.

Institution Building

10.

Strengthen the institutional, budgetary, technological and policy frameworks necessary to set

priorities, allocate resources, and realize the highest standards of academic excellence.



As an elite research university, we are pioneers in rigorous, empirically-based analysis. We must

be prepared to turn that same searching eye on ourselves. As stewards of the university’s resources,

we must ensure that we have the structures and processes in place to make considered decisions

about its future, informed by healthy expectations, strategic planning, rigorous data and expert

analysis. To meet the challenges before us and

strengthen our position as one of the world’s pre-

mier academic institutions, we must adhere to best practices, prioritize self-evaluation and informed

decision-making, and constantly safeguard our commitments to innovation and excellence.

e university has taken a number of steps toward this goal in recent years. For instance, we

have begun external reviews of our schools and programs and launched a program of external

departmental reviews. And following a period of comprehensive study, the Board of Trustees also

recently adopted several far-reaching and bold changes in its structure and governance in order

to enhance accountability, improve its performance, and better position itself to respond to the

evolving challenges facing the university. One of the reforms reduced the maximum size of the

Board of Trustees from 65 to 35 members; another instituted term limits for the Board members.

A priority for the university and its schools and divisions in the coming years will be to create

and enhance processes and mechanisms that will allow us to make informed and considered

judgments about our future in uncertain times. is means, rst and foremost, putting into place

the capacity for data generation, aggregation and analysis that will allow us to understand our

strengths and limitations and make sound strategic decisions about the future. is capacity will

need to include the development of internal measures and evidence-based assessments of our

education, research and service activities. In light of looming funding pressures and restraints on

capital, the university is also developing an integrated decision-making process for how best to

deploy its scarce capital resources across divisions in support of its core academic mission.

Next, we will place a premium on open and participatory frameworks for decision-making, looking

to draw broadly where possible on the perspectives and expertise of the university community.

Finally, we will make certain that our decision-making and allocation of resouces is aligned with

the values and commitments at the heart of our university. For instance, we will continue to

make the investments needed to ensure that the digital delivery of educational content is a core

competency of the university that will advance our academic mission. As another example, we

will ensure that we are acting as responsible stewards of our natural resources, and incorporate

principles of sustainability in planning and programs across the university in areas such as energy,

building design, food choice and resource conservation.

Reinforce our position as the leading university recipient of competitively funded federal

research support, while increasing the amount of annual research investment from other

sources with appropriate cost recovery.

Federal funding fuels our institution. It drives our research enterprise, is a magnet for graduate and

post-doctoral students, supports investments in scientic infrastructure, and spurs extraordinary

discovery in areas as far-ranging as the origin and fundamental laws of the universe, the workings of

the brain, the design of stealth aircraft, how genes fail in cancer, and how vaccines control infection

outbreaks. Johns Hopkins has ranked rst in the nation in the merit-driven competition for federal

research dollars for 31 years. In scal year 2012, we earned $2.6 billion in research and contracts

funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the National

Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation. All said, more than

half of our total revenue is derived from federal research funding sources.

However, we are operating in a time of considerable uncertainty. Over the past decade, there has

been a steady decrease in federal investment in research as measured in real dollars. Our reliance on

federal funding leaves us highly vulnerable to likely further reductions in federal support for research

and development. Accordingly, we will need to develop forward looking strategies that will preserve

and enhance our competitiveness for federal funding streams. e Best Environment for Research

and Scholarship project is an integrated cross-university initiative that seeks to lessen the administra-

tive burden on researchers, make it easier for Johns Hopkins faculty to carry out research activities,

and generate more support for this important work. We will also create innovate cross-disciplinary

initiatives to compete more successfully for these scarce research dollars. One example is the Military

and Veterans Health Institute, a cross-university initiative to integrate science, engineering and clin-

ical care to improve health and wellness for our military service members, veterans and their families

in partnership with the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Aairs.

Even so, we cannot stop there. In the coming years, we will need to pursue all potential funding

opportunities for our research, and strengthen our voice in conveying to funders the academic

world’s critical contributions to

solving the world’s most pressing problems. is will includes

integrated eorts across the university

to attract non-federal resources for research support, including

through innovative research-based collaborations with foundations, corporations, technology accel-

erators and venture funds. Our network of alumni will provide an indispensable

reservoir of wisdom

and guidance as we seek to forge these new partnerships and relationships. We will continue to

strengthen the capacity of the university to harness the potential of our intellectual property, in-

cluding through

licensing, commercialization and technology development. ese initiatives are vital

to the mission of the university:

ey will bring the benets of our discoveries to the world, while

allowing us to re-invest the resulting resources into core academic priorities and the groundbreaking

research of tomorrow.

10.

Develop the resource base necessary to support investments in key academic priorities.

Since the merchant Johns Hopkins’ original investment in our university, we have been the

recipients of dazzling

and deeply moving acts of philanthropy. ese donations have launched

life-saving innovations, catalyzed fundamental discoveries and touched the lives of countless

students. Nonetheless, in key respects, Johns Hopkins faces serious resource challenges. Relative

to its peers, Johns Hopkins has smaller pools of funding available at the central or divisional level

ith which to make strategic investments in the longer-term development of its core missions of

education, research and professional practice. Our endowment is just over $2.5 billion, less than

one-tenth that of Harvard University, and the numbers are even more arresting when considered

on a per-student basis. Neither our tightly restricted government funding nor our tuition income

bears the full weight of our operating costs. Our current structure is a fragile foundation on which

to stand an elite university.

At the same time, our costs are only continuing to increase in every component of our university.

We feel the pinch as we increase our student services, augment safety measures around campus,

contribute to community initiatives or bolster our student aid. e costs of attracting and retain-

ing our world-class faculty and sta continue to increase as well. Adding to this challenge, we

expect pressures on resources to escalate in the years ahead as the

federal government tackles its

own nancial constraints, as clinical reimbursements encounter downward pressure,

and as tuition

remains constrained by aordability concerns.

In this dicult funding environment, we must recalibrate our approach to the nancial framework

of our university, coupling new lines of revenue with targeted initiatives for cost control. We

will explore new sources of income, including online education, technology development and

global teaching and research partnerships. We will

remain focused on philanthropy, strengthening

relationships with existing donors and creating new

partnerships in order to continue to fund cutting

edge innovation and institutional priorities. Rising to the Challenge,

the comprehensive campaign

launched this year, reects a singular opportunity to build our endowment and align investments

with key strategic and academic priorities.

We must recalibrate our approach to the ﬁnancial

framework of our university, coupling new lines of

revenue with targeted initiatives for cost control.

Finally, every part of the university will need to do more

with existing resources and consider how

to reprogramfunds for the highest priority needs. We must fortify ourselves to make tough choic-

es when necessary. In one recent example involving administrative costs, we made a decision to

take $5 million in savings from our

university administrative budget and invest it in nancial aid,

to provide a new annual funding stream for this important priority and create a matching pro-

gram for endowment

fundraising. e university’s relatively thin annual operating

surplus places a

premium on careful cash management to protect our liquidity and weather sudden downturns in

funding. ese sorts of strategic decisions will be essential if we hope to provide a rmer nancial

foundation while still maintaining our culture of excellence in the years ahead.

The priorities in this document are only guideposts, a compass for our university. They are not a

strategic plan or a detailed blueprint, but a prelude. The true work will take place in the years that fol-

low, as these priorities inform the projects that we will all pursue across every corner of the university.

A ﬁnal aspiration for the university emerges from each of the others: That as we advance together, we

not only pursue this common vision for the university, but develop a greater understanding of who we

are as a university. Through collaborations among stakeholders and new connections across our com-

munity, as the remarkable distributed strengths of the university advance together in discovery and

research and service, what can emerge is an even stronger common identity, a uniﬁed voice, a sense of

aﬃliation with the university that is as powerful as the aﬃliations in the divisions and programs.

The hope in short is that the work that follows will bring us together as Hopkins as never before.

Building our collective future, and writing our collective story. As One University.

Conclusion