Looking forward
to the future
 ant
to grab a sandwich, watch a movie, buy art supplies or relax beside a shimmering 19th-century stained-glass window? Featuring classical brick columns and eclectic glass panels, the new Trabant University Center and parking garage on West Main Street is already a favorite hang-out for students, employees, alumni and community residents. The project, with an adjoining parking facility, cost $27 million and was supported entirely by private gifts, University funds and a bond issue, which will be repaid by student fees and income generated by a new bookstore annex, the parking garage and dining facilities. A foodservice laboratory, operated by the Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management program, offers hands-on experience for students who work in Vita Nova, an upscale dining room on the second
floor of the new center.
By 1997, students in the College of Business and Economics will be
able to meet with professors and visiting executives in a shining atrium
at the center of MBNA America Hall. A new classroom building, Gore Hall,
will be completed by 1998.
By the spring of 1997, meanwhile, the state-of-the-art, $8 million Allen Laboratory will be completed at the
College of Agricultural Sciences. The construction of the world-class
facility has been supported by federal and state funds; private gifts,
including slightly over $1 million from Charles C. Allen Jr., Delaware '40,
and $1.5 million from the poultry industry; and University funds. Specific research projects in the new
laboratory will include, efforts to create more disease-resistant poultry.
Four new, major renovation projects-of Memorial Hall, Wolf Hall,
Townsend Hall and the north wing of Brown Laboratory-are planned for future years.
Once those projects have been completed, the University will
continue to direct its resources toward additional, ongoing renovations
and the maintenance of existing facilities. Even new facilities require
constant maintenance and improvements.
"We're still digging ourselves out of a hole," Tom Vacha explains.
"Most of the facilities in 1990 were suffering from deferred maintenance,
and we're still playing catch-up, but were making excellent progress. The
University is just like a person's home. If you ignore it completely, it's
going to fall apart. We will not let that happen here."
In addition to structural make-overs, the University will enhance
a number of academic programs in coming years. Toward
that end, Provost Mel Schiavelli recently submitted a proposal to leverage
the University's strengths by merging five small colleges to form two
larger units. Recommended by college deans, Schiavelli says, the
reorganizations will promote increased interdisciplinary dialog and
teaching, while making additional resources available to smaller colleges.
The reorganizations will improve scholarship, assist fund-raising
efforts and allow the University to "play off its strengths," Schiavelli
predicts. The plan reflects the University's key academic objectives, which
include providing appropriate intellectual resources to help students and
faculty achieve academic success. Improved intellectual resources--encompassing information technologies, faculty expertise and classroom
and laboratory facilities-are essential for recruiting highly talented and
diverse students and professors, Schiavelli notes.
"We have a global economy," notes Roland M. Smith, vice president
for student life. "Students today may go to work for a company with
employees from Europe or Japan or Indonesia. They need to develop the
skills that will enable them to work with people from different
backgrounds. The University is an excellent place for that to happen."
Recruiting a talented and diverse student body requires additional
funding for scholarships and other forms of financial aid, including both
merit-based and need-based support. As mentioned, support for
undergraduate
scholarships has increased by 140 percent since 1990. But,
more support is needed. The University's ultimate goal, Schiavelli says, is
to meet the financial needs of all qualified students who want to attend
the University of Delaware as well as to provide merit scholarships for
exceptionally well-prepared individuals.
Additional professorships and fellowships also are among the
University's financial needs. In an increasingly complex world, young
people are searching for positive role models. Consequently, the
University has a responsibility to recruit more outstanding "University"
citizens like Wayne Craven in Art History, Barbara Gates in English,
Michael Klein in Chemical Engineering and the many others on campus who
are dedicated to teaching, research and community service.
Gates, an imminently respected Victorian scholar who taught the
University's first course in women's studies in 1971, also finds time to
offer lectures at public libraries and serve on campus planning
committees. "I think of myself as a teaching scholar," Gates says," I write
and I think and I try to be creative, but at the same time, I make sure
that all this knowledge enters the classroom as well as the pages of
learned journals and books."
For Klein, research, teaching and service are interconnected
activities. "You can't focus only on one of those three activities and hope
to do it well," says Klein, whose reaction engineering studies are widely
respected by fundamental scholars while also offering practical solutions
to real-world problems.
Craven says that his latest book, American Art: History and
Culture, grew directly out of his sophomore-level survey of American art.
"The material came out of my class preparations, underwent refinement and expansion in my research and
now goes right back into my classroom. To me, that's a natural cycle in the
process of teaching.... I hope I can continue to make some contribution to
the University as a whole, and in some way be useful beyond my own
classroom and research, in the years ahead," Craven says.
With support from donors like the
Gore family,
Charles C. Allen Jr.,
Morton Collins, Chaplin Tyler, the DuPont Co., MBNA America and
countless other individuals and organizations, the University of Delaware
will make sure that Craven's vision of a creative, productive and even
awe-inspiring academic environment continues to be fulfilled, says
University President David P. Roselle.
"The University of Delaware's goals are competitive compensation,
increases in financial aid, improvements in the living and learning
environments and putting considerations about our students at the very
center of all that we do," Roselle says. "As we have advanced toward a full
realization of these goals, we have increasingly been able to mix together
wonderfully capable faculty and staff with highly talented, enthusiastic
students in appropriate instructional venues, supported by the most modern
equipment. In addition, our institution is, in all ways, a very nice place
to be, offering a myriad of extracurricular and leadership opportunities
for our students. That is our formula for success and the reason the
University of Delaware is becoming one of the nation's most acclaimed
institutions of higher education."
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