Photos by by Kaley Joy, Marc-Gregor Campredon, Life Sciences Institute
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Laurie K. McCauley is a passionate believer in U‑M’s bold aspirations to redefine the power of higher education to advance humanity and to impact areas where we can make significant differences in solving the world’s most vexing problems. Leaders & Best asked her about the innovative approach of the Look to Michigan campaign, why partnering with the community is so important, and what excites her most about the potential for this campaign.
The Look to Michigan campaign is focusing on four collaborative priorities that address core impact areas where U‑M can make significant differences in our communities and in the world. What do you think are the defining challenges of our time and how do you think these priorities will address them?
Our donors and alumni are among the most active and committed in the world. We are constantly asking those communities what is most important to them. As we designed this campaign and held listening sessions during our strategic vision work, an answer emerged, loud and clear: U‑M should be tackling the world’s most urgent challenges.
That’s quite a mission! But for more than 200 years, we’ve been doing just that, whether it’s developing vaccines, researching solar and hydrogen technology, or providing a top-tier education to people from around the world.
Today’s challenges are complex and interconnected. Climate change, novel diseases, health care disparities, social inequalities, societal polarization, and rapid technological advancement don’t have well-defined borders. But we have the tools to make major impacts in these areas.
Great care has gone into framing the big-picture challenges in a way that best leverages the groups of experts we know can tackle them. For instance, our work on sustainable societies combines expertise from engineering, public policy, and environmental science to address climate change while also considering social and economic impacts.
The collaborative and interdisciplinary aspect of the priorities makes this our most innovative campaign yet. Why will this innovative approach enable us to make a significant impact for the public good?
Real-world problems don't typically align neatly with academic disciplines. Disciplinary boundaries are often useful for educational purposes, but to address the complexity of societal challenges, we benefit from finding creative ways to cross them. That’s why I’m so excited about this campaign, and its reflection of Vision 2034.
There is a lot of anxiety in the world right now about societal problems. Climate change and human health issues touch our daily lives. Political polarization and related problems weaken our democracy and can cost us relationships with our friends and family. No one wants to be complacent with these things unfolding. We’ve experienced a tremendous outpouring of enthusiasm about framing the campaign in terms of impact. I think it’s gratifying and moving for people when they have an active hand in actually doing something about these civilizational challenges that can feel intractable.
Another wonderful aspect of this approach is that it fosters creativity and unconventional thinking among world-class researchers and faculty. I’m not a gambler, but I would bet that this new era of proactive interdisciplinarity on campus creates more than one headline-creating breakthrough.
We’ve observed how effective this approach can be in the health fields. In my own field of oral health, delivering effective care pulls in state-of-the-art research from genomics, behavioral science, generative AI, 3D printing, and many other disciplines.
Our interdisciplinary approach to the challenges like climate change and human health is essentially using the same paradigm we use in medicine on a grand scale—marshaling all the expertise across our university in the same direction.
Partnering with the community is another important element of this campaign. Can you speak to some of our key community partnerships, in Detroit, for example, the good work that is resulting and why it’s important?
Our commitment to be the defining public university means supporting our students, faculty, and staff, but it also means making beneficial impacts in communities across the state. In the case of Detroit, that charge has required a lot of listening—to community leaders and residents, and to our many partner organizations there. When we broke ground at the University of Michigan Center for Innovation (UMCI) last year, we had multiple key speakers ranging from Governor Whitmer to Mayor Duggan. Committed Detroit philanthropists from Ilitch Companies, philanthropist Stephen Ross, and Principal Lisa Phillips of Cass Tech High School shared the stage with Detroit City Council President Mary Sheffield and our own President Ono. We are proud of developing the UMCI in a collaborative way: engaging with people across the city to learn about how we can provide real opportunity to Detroiters by leveraging our academic expertise.
Our School of Public Health works closely with community organizations on projects addressing health disparities. The School at Marygrove is another broadly collaborative effort aimed at cradle-to-career education for Detroit students. Wolverine Pathways is a program that helps prepare seventh- through 12th-grade students from under-resourced communities in Detroit, Southfield, Ypsilanti, and Grand Rapids to prepare for success in college.
I’m really inspired by the Culture Corps, a U‑M Arts Initiative program. That program matches undergrads with internships in arts and culture organizations across Michigan, including Detroit. It can be difficult to break into arts and culture organizations, and we are fortunate to have Detroit arts organizations like Detroit Public Theatre, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and a dozen others giving students real-world experience in the arts.
Why do you believe U‑M is uniquely able to take on the defining challenges of our time in service of the public good? What are some examples of things we’ve done or have the ability to do?
I think three elements make U‑M a powerful force for positive change. First, our breadth of and depth of expertise are on par with any top-tier research university in the United States. We have top-ranked programs across disciplines, from medicine to engineering to social sciences. And for a large enterprise, we have proven nimble when the situation demands. We rapidly pivoted to COVID-19 research and community support during the pandemic. We were the first major university to provide access to artificial intelligence (AI) tools for responsible use for students and customizable AI tools for our instructors. And there is no end to the list of medical breakthroughs and research milestones produced by our faculty.
Second, our track record of dedicated public service is very substantial. Michigan Medicine alone provides $469 million in charity medical care and hundreds of millions more in training, research, and community outreach every year. Our community engagement runs the gamut, since almost every school and college has programs that center community engagement. A professor from the School of Public Health is running workshops on air quality in Detroit through the Engage Detroit Workshops Grant Program. The School of Music, Theatre & Dance offers continuing education, youth programs, and an adult choir to bring the joy of music to people at any age. We also support inclusive health and wellness initiatives that are open to people on campus and beyond. For example, our Adaptive Sports and Fitness program provides opportunities for all people, including those with disabilities, to engage in sports and fitness activities, fostering both physical health and community connection. As President Ono says, we are the University for Michigan, and we have ongoing projects from Grand Rapids and Detroit to the Upper Peninsula in service to realizing that vision.
But the element that really gives us an edge in problem solving is our highly collaborative culture. Our history of creating interdisciplinary research units tells the story: Places like the Life Sciences Institute, Precision Health, MI Hydrogen, the Center for Cell Plasticity and Organ Design, and the Center for Social Solutions are organized around the idea that impact and progress are what matter most. That’s the lens through which we are looking at major societal challenges. This approach is motivating for faculty and extremely exciting for donors who may not be experts on the university landscape, but know they want to make a difference.
What excites you the most about the potential for this campaign and the support that will be generated?
Every aspect of this campaign has its origins in what faculty, students, staff, and donors have told us is most important to them. The genesis of this campaign came from whiteboard sessions with our community as to what Michigan can distinctively do to make a difference in our world. It continued with our work on Vision 2034, which was the most collaborative project I’ve ever seen on our campuses in my three decades here. Our development team has been excellent at using data to capture donor interests and goals, as well as insights about our approaches to the pressing challenges articulated in the campaign. This is an effort we all created together. That has already given this campaign a special energy. People are hungering for good reasons to have hope about these issues. They want to know our institutions are not afraid to throw down the gauntlet on colossal challenges. And that is what we are doing! I think that will be inspiring to people—I know it’s inspiring to me.