Executive Summary		Our Vision
	Preamble What Do We Believe In?   What Do We Stand For?   Where Are We Going?		Our Mission Statement Institutional Identity   Institutional Capabilities   Institutional Objectives and Outcomes

Executive Summary	Top

    UMUC: The Global University in Maryland 

UMUC’s success depends on people, both within and outside the institution, working towards a common vision that includes what we believe in and what we stand for. As the international experts with the sole focus on serving working adults for more than 50 years:
	We believe in lifelong learning: We focus on helping our students and clients embrace lifelong learning through quality programs and products designed to serve their educational goals.
	We stand for quality: Our commitment to quality encompasses every aspect of what we do: relevant and rigorous curriculum, challenging faculty, creative delivery, and responsive support systems.
	We believe in the centrality and primacy of the learner: We exist to serve our students at times and places convenient to them, and to enable them to achieve their learning objectives with minimal non-academic obstacles.
	We stand for access: We provide affordable gateways of opportunity and lifelong learning partnerships to all those willing to meet our standards.
	We believe in the wisdom of continuous renewal and innovation: Visionary leadership, empowerment, trust, accountability, teamwork, and risk taking help us to achieve our goals. We support our employees with the resources they need to develop their skills and do their jobs. We reward them through recognition of their talents and achievements.
	We believe that the marketplace will serve as the test of our effectiveness: We have a responsibility to shape and inform demand, as well as respond to it, and to balance the economic power of the marketplace with the wisdom and social accountability of a public institution of higher education.
	We believe in a participative culture: UMUC is an organization that values mutual respect, openness and trust. People are valued, and all individuals within the organization have unique and important contributions to be made. The ideas, opinions and input of all are not only welcomed, but considered essential to the achievement of our goals.
	We believe in the growth of our own employees: Just as we stand for the growth and development of our institution and its constituents, so do we believe in the growth of our own employees. In order to respond to both the known and unknown challenges that lie ahead, we must be mindful of and continually support our own learning and growth.

Preamble	Top

The high-performance University of the 21st Century must embrace quality programs, products and services as its cornerstone. It must nurture and tap the talents, ideas and energy of its extended family of stakeholders to realize this ambitious goal. University of Maryland University College (UMUC) is poised to assume the role as a model institution of higher education as we enter the next millennium.  As a healthy enterprise that recognizes the remarkable history that has brought UMUC to its current position, we begin our journey to develop and embrace UMUC’s transformational vision by recognizing our core human values. They are highly related to trust, integrity, hard work, and teamwork. We also begin our journey towards our vision by acknowledging our responsibility to balance the needs of all of our important stakeholders — our customers, our partners and our patrons in both the public and private sectors, our employees, and the larger world of the burgeoning market for higher education products, programs and services. In beginning that journey, we determine the following:  What are our core values? What Do We Believe In? How do we translate those core values into the fundamental principles by which we choose to design our own future (and not allow others to force our future upon us)? What Do We Stand For? Given those values and principles, Where Do We Want To Go? Based on our core values, the fundamental principles by which we will operate and thrive, and how we define success, we light the beacon towards which we will continually navigate: What Is Our Vision?

We believe that our success depends on people, both within and outside the UMUC family, working towards a common vision. When we oversee and nurture fundamental and sound principles of hard work, focus on what is truly important, fair play, honesty, and public service, we believe success will surely follow. To meet UMUC’s aspiration to become the Global University in Maryland, those core values translate into the following: we believe in lifelong learning, the centrality and primacy of the learner, the wisdom of continuous renewal and innovation to serve our students’ needs, and the importance of the marketplace as a test of our effectiveness.
	We believe in lifelong learning: By focusing on helping others to embrace, sponsor and enable lifelong learning, we are committed to the concept of a lifelong educational partnership with our current 70,000+ students, clients, and customers worldwide. We believe in our global mission, the market niche of the workforce, our products and programs to serve those markets, and our uniqueness as a model for the Global University in Maryland. These qualities represent the most important competitive advantages we hold as the purveyors of first choice in lifelong learning opportunities.
	We believe in the centrality and primacy of the learner: We believe that we exist for one purpose, and for one purpose only: to serve our students, clients and customers. We believe that enabling our students to achieve demonstrable and relevant learning outcomes is paramount to everything we do. We believe in bringing our programs, products and services to our students at times and places convenient to them, rather than expecting our students to come to us. We believe in rigorous academic achievement and high standards of excellence for our students, while at the same time eliminating non-academic obstacles, annoyances, and frustrations.
	We believe in the wisdom of continuous renewal and innovation: We believe in organizational restlessness and self-scrutiny, abhorring complacency, and not fearing our ability to constantly examine and test our mission, goals, principles and practices against the marketplace and its needs. To that end, we constantly wear the hats of explorers and pioneers. We believe that, in order to effectively engage in continuing renewal of the business, we must believe in UMUC’s people, supporting them with the resources and skills they need to do their jobs and rewarding them through recognition of their talents and achievements. We believe in empowerment, trust, and accountability, teamwork, action and risk taking, and visionary leadership.
	We believe in the importance of the marketplace as a test of our effectiveness: We will balance the economic power of the marketplace with the wisdom and social accountability of a public institution of higher education. We will provide our students with critical thinking and communication skills to fulfill our social responsibility to developing an informed citizenry. We believe in the importance and the inevitability of a global economy and, coupled with that, the importance and inevitability of technological proficiency to enable a sound global economy. We, therefore, believe in the power and wisdom of the marketplace. It is the marketplace, rather than regulatory structures of a bygone era, that will determine which institutions deliver value for the money in terms of access, service, and quality. And it is the marketplace that will influence our decisions about how to respond to the professional workforce needs of our customers.

We stand for quality and access.
	We stand for quality: Our commitment to quality encompasses every aspect of what we do, including all credit- and non-credit offerings, our outstanding faculty, our exemplary service orientation, and the technology we employ for instructional purposes. We stand for enhancing those levels of quality in academic programs, products and services that are second to none and not merely acceptable to our students and other customers. We do all that we can to ensure that our educational product has soundness and currency and that our instructional programs are undergirded by responsive and humane support services and features that are state-of-the-art. Continuous quality improvement is our hallmark, and that explicitly means we unflaggingly seek better ways to reach our clienteles, evaluate our products and their delivery, and use the results of those assessments to make those products better.
	As a forward-looking, future-focused enterprise, we know that higher education is undergoing rapid and dramatic change, and we want to be ahead of the curve in every sphere — content, delivery, and culture. For that kind of academic integrity, innovation, and pioneering spirit, we are regarded as an international leader in education. Quality also implies value and affordability. We define value as "relevance" to our students. And, for most of those customers, relevance translates to "development of the workforce."
	To that end, we represent value that surpasses any effort by any other single institution of higher education in the world. We serve Maryland employers’ workforce needs through enrolling individual subscribers in our degree and professional development programs. We extend those programs and services to national and international clients, as well. Similarly, we serve an increasingly global workforce with a "customer-focused" philosophy through partnerships with major employers to both diagnose and meet their organization-wide needs for education and training. But equally dramatic, we serve this country’s national interests by exporting quality and affordable college education globally, including members of our armed forces and their dependents overseas. In so doing, we shrink the globe, help to create a stable and informed world citizenry, and bring economic development value to the State of Maryland. Affordability means that we stand for making top-quality programs available to as broad a spectrum of our market as possible. We do so by constantly striving to drive our costs down without jeopardizing quality. We stand for a metric of affordability that doesn’t simply compare tuition rates, but compares value and learning outcomes per dollar invested by the student and other customers.
	We stand for access: We open doors to lifelong learning opportunities in the workforce, whether it is a first-time bachelor’s degree, advanced post-baccalaureate education, or professional development to help our students stay current in their chosen careers or to develop new career paths. To enhance access, we meet our students more than halfway; we are flexible in our policies regarding academic credit for what students have learned in their life experiences and transfer of credit from other institutions. We take the degree to the student, geographically or situationally. We use every feasible instructional delivery mechanism or platform to extend our degree opportunities to our students. We stand for providing gateways of opportunity for those students who missed their chance for a college education during the traditional college-age years. We provide hope to those who recognize that higher education is the "great equalizer" for them socially and economically. In building lifelong learning partnerships, we help to create an informed citizenry of adult critical thinkers, effective communicators, masters of change, artisans who instinctively understand the power and utility of modern technology, and people who understand the richness of their own diverse culture, appreciate other cultures, and who will pass this knowledge to future generations.

Where we are going is largely dependent upon the answers to seven (7) critical questions: What will be our enrollment reach? That is, how big do we want to be, and how soon do we want to be that big? What will be our "product line"? That is, what will be the program mix among credit programs, non-credit, and other products and services? What will be our delivery mix? That is, will our bias be towards site-based delivery, or online delivery, or a continued mix of both? How will our expertise in distance education be defined? What will characterize our internal organization? How will our reputation for excellence overall be defined? Who will recognize our excellence? In keeping with the time-honored wisdom of Dwight Eisenhower who, during the planning for the invasion of Normandy, said "Plans are nothing; planning is everything," we openly and honestly admit that we do not have the definitive answers to these questions and, thus, you won’t find a plan imbedded in this document. But the process of asking these questions, vigorously debating the options and alternatives, and making decisions about them will indeed constitute the planning that will be so necessary for UMUC over the next several months.

Our Mission Statement      ( note )	Top

Institutional Identity

University of Maryland University College (UMUC) is the global university, with headquarters in Maryland, known for high-quality academic programs and outstanding faculty, products, and services to students and clients, independent of time and place constraints. UMUC serves mainly adult, part-time students through both traditional and innovative instruction. UMUC offers associate's, bachelor's, and master's degrees, certificates, and personal and professional development programs that respond to the needs of the lifelong learner. Degree programs are primarily in arts and humanities, behavioral and social sciences, business and management, computing, education, and technology. In addition, UMUC offers a professional doctoral degree in management. UMUC's non-credit programs include professional development in management, technology, executive leadership development and others, as well as professional certification programs and conference services. UMUC's statewide mission is to extend access to postsecondary educational opportunities for individuals who combine work with study, with a special emphasis on Maryland's professional workforce education needs. UMUC meets those needs through innovative online and classroom-based credit and non-credit programs, using a variety of delivery formats and scheduling options. Classrooms are located throughout the State at over 25 regional sites. UMUC's global mission is to sustain international eminence by extending access to American postsecondary degrees and non-credit programs worldwide. UMUC's international mission is two-fold: to serve U.S. citizens and their families overseas and to expand into international markets that, in turn, will enhance Maryland's economic development as a center for global commerce.

UMUC achieves its mission first by meeting the needs of the student--through an emphasis on teaching, faculty development, and student learning outcomes; through a commitment to lifelong learning partnerships with students and clients worldwide; and through innovative delivery of high-quality educational programs, products, services, and customized curricula. UMUC's principal constituency worldwide consists of citizens in the workforce who wish to begin, continue, or complete college degrees and to do so by continuing their studies along with work and family commitments. UMUC's programs, instructional formats, and infrastructure for academic support services are designed expressly to serve this student clientele, with an emphasis on relevance, convenience, and accessibility. Students take UMUC courses in classrooms at over 25 locations in Maryland and the national capital region; in classrooms on U.S. military bases throughout Europe and Asia through longstanding partnerships with overseas military commands; at work sites through contractual arrangements with employers; and anywhere in the United States and throughout the world via the Internet. Worldwide, UMUC delivers to employers programs and seminars customized to serve professional and workplace needs. At its Inn and Conference Center in Adelphi, Maryland, UMUC annually conducts hundreds of seminars, workshops, and conferences. While the typical UMUC student is in the early 30's, the age range of the entire student body spans the late teens through 80. Many older students who have begun their education at other colleges and universities are able to transfer credits to UMUC programs. Diversity of student age at UMUC is accompanied by a remarkable diversity in race and ethnicity. The strong diversity that characterizes UMUC students is expected to increase significantly in future years and to include many more national and international students and faculty. UMUC is dedicated to the fundamental tenets of collaboration and cooperation with other Maryland educational institutions, both public and private, and actively seeks partnerships with those institutions to benefit Maryland citizens. Indeed, UMUC is an "academic integrator," bringing other Maryland institutions into its half-century partnership with the U.S. military in Europe and Asia. UMUC has an unusual alliance program with Maryland community colleges, whereby students are able to attend both a community college and UMUC at the same time. The UMUC/Community College Alliance has both site-based and online program delivery platforms. UMUC also has, and will continue to build, collaborative programs with its USM sister institutions where markets will support those efforts and where the collaborating partners can realize mutual benefits. UMUC is an entrepreneurial institution, committed to seeking and forming innovative partnerships with universities worldwide to further its mission to serve Maryland. In addition, UMUC pursues relationships with the private sector both to become their educational provider of choice and to jointly explore new global markets. UMUC is classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a Masters I institution.

The goals and objectives established by UMUC both support and provide institutional specificity to the broader goals and objectives of the 2000 Maryland State Plan for Post-Secondary Education and the University System of Maryland Strategic Plan. Accordingly, the following key objectives are embedded in UMUC's strategic plan: UMUC will help build and maintain a well-educated Maryland workforce. In accomplishing this objective, UMUC will a) develop new programs and enhance existing programs that prepare students for employment in areas of need in Maryland; b) increase enrollment in information technology programs; c) increase the number of partnerships with Maryland business and industry for training and retraining employees at all levels; and d) develop innovative programs in teacher education to respond to the State's critical need for effective teachers. UMUC will become the national and global leader in the international marketplace of electronic education, building a virtual university that sets the standard for quality and innovation and that distinguishes Maryland as a region of economic growth and educational opportunity. To fulfill this objective, UMUC will a) increase online program offerings and boost student enrollment in Maryland and throughout the world; b) develop and apply new knowledge to online pedagogy, curricula, and academic support services, training for online faculty, and advanced information technology delivery systems; and c) serve as a resource for other Maryland colleges, universities, and outside educational enterprises that seek assistance in pursuing distance learning initiatives. UMUC will respond to the needs of growing numbers of lifelong learners. To accomplish this objective, UMUC will a) provide greater access to traditionally under-served populations of adult learners in Maryland through affordable tuition rates, financial aid, responsive student services, and effective online and site-based delivery; b) facilitate degree attainment by African-American students to a level equal to or exceeding the level of established peers; c) increase the breadth of course and program offerings by developing new programs in areas such as health care, teacher education, and information technology; d) qualify for the Carnegie Foundation's classification of Doctoral/Research Universities/Intensive by expanding the number of graduates associated with the Doctor of Management Degree Program and new degrees developed in response to workforce needs; e) increase retention and graduation rates for all students by strengthening academic counseling and other personalized student services; f) increase the number of institutional scholarships for Maryland students; g) build a faculty and staff that reflect the racial, ethnic, age, and economic diversity of the students; and h) strengthen UMUC's longstanding partnership with the U.S. military throughout the country and overseas through both onsite and online delivery of programs and services to active-duty personnel and their families. UMUC will increase basic and applied knowledge within the academic community of adult learning, distance education, and online course development and pedagogy. To do this, UMUC will a) attract increased funding for research in adult learning, distance education, and online course development and pedagogy; and b) conduct ongoing research comparing learning outcomes of distance-learning students to those of classroom-based students.

Our Vision	Top

UMUC will be the Global University in Maryland, known for quality academic programs and outstanding faculty, products, and services to students and clients independent of time and place constraints. UMUC will be the benchmark institution for research, development, and application in pedagogy, learning outcomes, delivery, and support services. UMUC will be the hallmark educational institution for lifelong partnerships with students, the workforce, and public and private enterprises. Building on its proud tradition, UMUC will extend educational opportunity to those who will make our State, our nation, and our global society a better place to live and work.