The university’s strategic plan overwhelmingly passed in the University Senate yesterday after months of debate.

The plan contains ambitious new initiatives to improve graduate studies, international programs and the community surrounding the university, as well as a new proposal to overhaul the university’s CORE curriculum.

The overwhelming margin of the vote – 68 senators were in favor of the plan and only five voted against it – gives Provost Nariman Farvardin and university President Dan Mote the green light to move forward with the plan, which aims to make the university “world-class” and a top-10 public research university.

“I’m ecstatic,” Farvardin said after the vote. “The most important thing is the university came together in the end.” Farvardin also chaired the strategic planning committee.

Multiple amendments were rejected, keeping intact key segments of the plan dealing with a proposed overhaul of general education, a new resource allocation process that gives more power to the provost and a salary review plan for tenured professors. Some faculty members of the senate repeatedly criticized those measures all the way up until the vote, but though the CORE overhaul was one of the most contentious parts of the strategic plan, an amendment to negate the proposed changes was more than 50 votes short of passing.

In the general education section of the strategic plan, few details are outlined other than three categories into which classes will fit: “2020 Perspectives,” “Ways of Thinking” and “Pathways to Knowledge and Creativity.” The strategic plan states that a committee will be set up at a later time to outline specific details of the new general education plan.

Though faculty senators had previously opposed the CORE overhaul because of the way it would impact students’ educational experience, they yesterday abandoned content-related opposition and focused on the unfairness of being forced to vote on such expansive changes without seeing a final version of the new general education program.

“We do not disapprove or approve of this section identifying the three dimensions. We ask merely that we have the opportunity to discuss this element of the new general education plan when it is presented to us,” said Claire Moses, a woman’s studies professor who sponsored the amendment.

Ira Chinoy, an associate professor in the journalism school, was one of numerous members of the strategic planning committee who defended the overhaul of CORE.

“It’s one of the things that can make an undergraduate education at Maryland unique,” he said.

Another amendment that failed would have created a committee to examine whether a proposal to standardize the university’s post-tenure review process was necessary. The proposal would allow the salaries of some faculty members to be decreased if they failed to meet goals established after an unfavorable performance review. Some faculty members have decried it as effectively eliminating tenure.

“I believe tenure is essential to academic freedom, but it comes at a price,” said Ann Wylie, Mote’s chief of staff and a member of the strategic planning committee. “To protect tenure, we must be responsible defenders. We must have the ability to sanction those who flagrantly disregard their obligations to the university.”

Former Student Government Association President Andrew Friedson, in his one of his last acts in the position, also spoke in favor of post-tenure review, and said that while only a small number of faculty disregard their responsibilities, the number of students they affect is huge.

The most dangerous amendments, in the eyes of the provost, were a set of four that would have either eliminated or weakened a proposal in the plan that would allow him to more quickly reallocate funding. If the university can’t reallocate funds to increasingly important and popular departments, implementing the strategic plan will be exceptionally difficult, he said.

“If these amendments are approved, then the entire strategic plan will become meaningless,” Farvardin said.

All the related amendments failed.

The strategic planning committee didn’t object to several other amendments, including one asking for health insurance and tuition remission to be extended to domestic partners.

Though top administrators congratulated one another when the plan passed, the provost acknowledged their work was far from done.

“Quite frankly, what we’ve done in the past seven months is the easy part,” Farvardin said.

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