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The world has entered a period of great change that provides exciting new opportunities and challenges in teaching, research, and service. Indications of such change in the region, particularly in Cuba and Haiti, will certainly have implications for Greater Miami and the University. The globalization of economic, political and cultural relations demands that the University pay greater attention to Latin American and Caribbean relations with other regions of the world.
Over the past 25 years FIU has attracted outstanding scholars in international studies. The internationally recognized Latin American and Caribbean Center coordinates and provides support to faculty, primarily in the social sciences. In addition to conserving its strength in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the University will continue its efforts to develop demonstrable, interactive strengths in European, Asian and African studies over the next twenty years, as exemplified by the launching of the African New World Studies Program, while expanding its expertise in the study of interdisciplinary issues which cut across area studies boundaries. These initiatives will be supported by the new doctoral programs in International Relations and Comparative Sociology.
Florida International University is in a strong position, because of location, intellectual resources, and capacity, to assume a leadership position, not only within the State University System, but indeed, among US urban public universities in shaping and developing the relationship of the urban university and its community. Fostering strong programs of research, teaching, and service relevant to the local urban community is not inconsistent with, but indeed contributes to, the development of the University's reputation and capabilities in basic research and strong undergraduate education.
The movement of people and materials by means of an efficient transportation system is critical for any metropolitan city or nation to survive in an increasingly competitive international market. Traffic congestion, inefficient land use, and skyrocketing highway construction costs all point to the need for faculty research focused on an integrated intermodal transportation system.
Most of FIU's academic programs have some perspective related to urban issues, including all colleges and schools. Doctoral programs with an urban interest are those in Public Administration, Social Welfare, Education, Economics and Comparative Sociology. Within the College of Arts and Sciences the departments of Visual Arts, Theatre and Dance, Music, Creative Writing, Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Modern Languages promote an appreciation of the culture of metropolitan South Florida. Most of FIU's disciplines and centers contribute to its urban mission. Centers with on-going urban activities include the Joint Center for Environmental and Urban Problems, the Institute for Public Opinion Research, the Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship Studies, the Center for Labor Research and Studies, the Southeast Florida Center on Aging, the Women's Studies Center, the Institute of Government, the Small Business Development Center, the Center for Banking and Financial Institutions, and the National Center on Nutrition and Aging.
Population growth and careless exploitation of natural resources have created local and global environmental problems that will worsen in the next ten years. Because Miami is an expanding urban center adjacent to fragile and unique marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems, FIU is challenged by problems of the urban environment, the natural ecosystems, human health, transportation, aesthetics, and the conflicts and interdependencies between them. Our subtropical climate and multiethnic community insure that our solutions to environmental problems will be relevant to developing countries -- especially in the Western hemisphere -- which have some of today's most severe environmental problems. In addition, our ready access to tropical environments and familiarity with tropical cultures will enable us to successfully apply our knowledge to threatened tropical ecosystems.
The University's academic programs in Biological Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemistry, Environmental Studies, Geology, Landscape Architecture, Mechanical Engineering, and Environmental and Urban Systems lead the thrust in environmental research and training, with more faculty in other departments. The Department of Environmental Studies, the only such unit in the State University System, focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of environmental problems. The premier research program, in Biological Sciences, specializes in tropical plant biology and ecology. College of Business research focuses on social and technological issues in the environment, including environmental ethics. The Drinking Water Research Center brings together efforts of chemists, geologists, biologists and environmental engineers. The Joint Center for Environmental and Urban Problems joins the work of social and policy scientists, and Engineering programs work on waste management and reduction.
The presence of the federally supported Cooperative Park Studies Unit at University Park will boost environmental research, training and service activities. The Southeast Environmental Research Program (SERP), established in the College of Arts and Sciences in 1993, will serve as a coordinating office for environmental research. The location of the National Hurricane Center at University Park in 1995 will support the development of the International Center for Hurricane Damage Research and Mitigation at the University. The potential presence at University Park of other federal agencies, such as the US Geological Survey, will strengthen academic programs with an environmental emphasis.
The health and general well being of its people are a priority for every nation. Access to quality health care is a critical issue for all Americans. FIU is positioned to contribute significantly to the health issues faced by Americans today. We train health professionals to provide culturally appropriate care, disease prevention, health and nutrition education, and to influence the design, implementation and evaluation of efficient health care delivery systems, and health insurance programs.
We know far more now about how to keep people alive with the technological advances of modern medicine. We must now expand our knowledge beyond the technological, biological and physiological bases of health. Future practitioners must possess a broad understanding of all the determinants of health, such as the environment, socioeconomic conditions, and the cultural, psychological, physical and behavioral dimensions of health. Medical education must place more emphasis on the health care needs of populations and the ways to promote wellness through lifestyle modifications in the context of the family, community, and environment.
With more people living longer we now encounter more of the degenerative and chronic diseases. This has cost implications which pose major challenges between the American ideal of providing comprehensive health care and the harsh reality of prioritizing and rationing services. The current trends in health management, with the conglomeration of health industries, insurance companies and providers, provide major challenges for FIU to train 21st century health professionals practicing in home, community-based, ambulatory, managed care and other long-term care settings.
Over 150 existing faculty staff the University's health programs in the basic medical sciences: anatomy, biochemistry, microbiology, nutrition, physiology, psychology, biomedical engineering and the related health fields of dietetics, public health, nursing, gerontology, health services administration, physical therapy, medical laboratory sciences/clinical pathology, health information management, occupational therapy, social work, and medical sociology/ anthropology. Doctoral degrees are currently offered in Biology, Psychology, Social Welfare, Dietetics and Nutrition; within Public Administration, a specialization in Health Services Administration; and within Comparative Sociology, a specialization in Medical Sociology/Anthropology.
In building upon these disciplines FIU can take advantage of the surrounding urban community to prepare the next generation of health care professionals and primary care physicians for practice in diverse community settings. With the national de-emphasis on highly technical specialty training, and reemphasis on prevention and primary care at the community level, FIU has the opportunity to be a unique innovator of curricula and interdisciplinary programs which groom health professionals and physicians to focus on the general health and primary care needs of people, especially those in the under-served urban community. In addressing this trend, rather than adopting a traditional model of a teaching hospital, FIU has the opportunity to develop clinical training through a network of hospitals and other community-based settings.
FIU is located in a diverse multicultural community comprised of persons of a variety of ethnic backgrounds and countries of origin. This rare mixture presents an incredible array of health challenges not seen in other areas of Florida, an opportunity not available at other SUS institutions. Training culturally responsive health care professionals for the under served through a state-funded medical school would allow economically disadvantaged minorities to attain medical degrees without accumulating very large amounts of debt.
In Southeast Florida health care issues are shaped by the challenge of delivering independent, dignified, healthy environments for the growing elderly population, and the legal and ethical health issues concerning immigrants landing on South Florida shores. FIU enjoys a particular advantage of being situated where it can serve the international community (i.e, Latin America and the Caribbean) as a center for training health professionals, as a source of health education programs (nutrition, fitness, etc.) and as a collaborator in health-related research projects (sanitation, water purification, transportation, environmental population, disease prevention, etc.).
FIU is ideally positioned to study and monitor the effect on health and well-being of pollution brought on by urban expansion into environmentally fragile areas. The health programs join in the University's thrust to specialize in disaster studies by focusing on the impact of natural disasters, particularly hurricanes, on the health of individuals, on health-related businesses and industry, and health-care systems, including communication, transportation, and evacuation of the sick and elderly.
By training health professionals who are prepared to meet these challenges, FIU is positioned to uniquely address the health issues faced by America in the 21st century.
Computers and communication systems are changing the structure and operation of organizations. People working in offices or at home, in cars, airplanes, and even at community multimedia kiosks will exchange information by plugging their personal computer terminals into an international highspeed data network. Computers are sorting, organizing, and condensing massive amounts of information so information can be more readily and easily understood. When "ubiquitous computing" arrives, we will be limited, not by the quantity of information but by its quality, and our ability to retrieve, manipulate and analyze it. By 2001, computers will talk to each other as readily as humans now communicate over telephone networks, completing a merger of voice, video, and data technologies that began to blossom in the 1980s.
Classroom instruction is being revolutionized by these information technologies. The classroom is no longer limited to a physical location. Interactive multimedia learning experiences are creating "virtual" classrooms at locations far from the campus. Asynchronous learning technologies are linking faculty and students who are remote from each other -- across the room, across the hall, across campus, across town, across the state, across the nation, and around the globe -- thus providing education and training experiences more convenient for the consumer/learner. One inescapable by-product of technology-mediated instruction is that it will expand the definition of the classroom and create new possibilities in teaching.
Technology will inevitably modify the service area and demographics of the University. As State policies change, technology will be an equalizing factor, allowing the University to deliver exemplary programs beyond its traditional service area, not only in Florida, but in the Caribbean and beyond.
To remain in the forefront, the University must utilize the dramatic developments in information technologies to improve learning through new modes of instruction and new forms of management and administration. Ways of accessing, processing, and transmitting information will change every discipline's methodology, and all faculty and students must be encouraged to explore these new techniques and approaches.
The unprecedented growth of the information technologies, especially via the Internet, has had and will continue to have great impact on the delivery and application of research findings. These changes present the University with many new venues for academic and student support expansion. The increasing centrality of the Internet will supplement the multiple information sources provided by the University and especially by the libraries, which have a tradition of services that stress individual information needs. Four vital challenges faced by the libraries will be: (1) ownership of key information resources; (2) authentication of information; (3) training of users to access information in a non-traditional way, and (4) access to information that is owned by others. The library's role will expand as ombudsman for the increasingly complex world of information access.
Research on information systems poses an exciting challenge for the University, a challenge motivated by the important technological, commercial, governmental, and ethical problems in telecommunications and data management. All of the University's Colleges and Schools will seek to be innovators in the use of these technologies for education and research. Excellence in computer information systems research will be pursued by the doctoral programs in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and the Decision Sciences/Information Systems track in the Business doctoral degree. By the year 2001, FIU should be vying for a research leadership position in applied geographic information systems (GIS), and computer software for parallel processing.
Understanding the new ways in which students learn and the optimal learning style of the individual student will enhance the value of the higher education product. Quality should be the driving force for everything that is done in higher education -- both in instruction and in the delivery of support services. The issue of quality is important for institutional survival because distance learning via technology-mediated instruction is increasing the reality of competition between institutions of higher education on a global scale. This means that students will have the potential access to the best instruction regardless of where they are located. University Outreach, working in conjunction with the Academic Units, will expand the delivery of courses and programs via distance learning and other instructional technologies. Distance learning also provides the University with the opportunity to exploit its exemplary programs and faculty well beyond its traditional campus community.
The University will analyze and redesign its systems and processes to foster efficient use of resources and new technologies and to promote timeliness, reliability, dependability, courtesy, and convenience. The latest technologies will be sought to provide accurate and timely information to decision-makers regarding goal attainment, as well as changes in internal and external strengths and weaknesses. FIU will do this to respond to the needs and directives of its constituencies--students and their families, Florida residents, the Florida Board of Regents, the FIU Board of Trustees, accrediting bodies, research foundations--and those on whom it relies for its students, supplies and services, including secondary schools, community colleges, and contractors. Training, education and teamwork will be the primary tools used to facilitate quality improvement. FIU will encourage University-wide learning to create new patterns of management and leadership, and to enable quality-driven and empowered employees to accomplish their aims efficiently and effectively.
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