Viewpoint

Bepko

Reviving the spirit of community commitment

Gerald L. Bepko
IU Vice President for Long-Range Planning and Chancellor of IUPUI

Higher education associations are calling on institutions to re-invent engagement with community needs in a way that revives the spirit of the 19th-century land-grant colleges and their commitment to social and economic development in their regions.

Urban universities, like IUPUI, have a brief but well developed set of community connections that puts them in the forefront nationally as models for engagement. Representatives of urban universities regularly share engagement strategies in such forums as the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.

Four opportunities for engagement seem especially appropriate for IUPUI: (1) health education, research and outreach; (2) information technology; (3) arts and culture; and (4) promoting civic involvement.

In campus planning, IUPUI has developed breadth in disciplines associated with health--not only in the health schools, but through cross-school collaborations. Nearly every academic program helps make IUPUI responsive to the growing national emphasis on longevity and quality of life.

IUPUI is also developing as a regional resource in high speed applications of information technology. Under Myles Brand's and Michael McRobbie's leadership, IU was successful in attracting to IUPUI the Network Operations Center for the Abilene Network (or Internet2 backbone) and TransPac, the Asia-Pacific Network. A Communications Technology Complex planned for IUPUI will provide technical infrastructure and advance academic preparation of students for careers in informatics and new media. The recent Lilly Endowment grant of $29.9 million to fund the Indiana Pervasive Computing Research project will create six labs, including three at IUPUI, for research involving advanced telecommunications at IUPUI in areas such as high performance networking, wireless networks, telecommunications convergence and distributed storage. This will build on the central role of IUPUI and Indianapolis in IU's telecommunications infrastructure.

IUPUI also collaborates with the Indianapolis community to advance arts and culture, both to provide the purely aesthetic pleasure and to promote tourism as an area of economic development. When our Herron School of Art moves to the main campus, it will be a bridge linking IUPUI even more closely to the arts and culture corridor on IUPUI's southern perimeter.

Lastly, IUPUI has long been a university where community service is valued, stemming from the practice-based traditions of educating health-care providers. This service orientation continues to evolve in new areas. Our Center on Philanthropy, the POLIS Center, the Center for Public Service and Leadership, and the Office of Neighborhood Resources are just a few of many vehicles for engaging university resources with community needs.

In this issue of IU Home Pages, we invite you to learn more about how IUPUI continues to grow as an engaged urban campus by renewing the land-grant spirit for the 21st century.