Raising standards at the University of Kentucky

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Getting a University to Aim Higher</p>

<p>By ALAN FINDER
Published: August 1, 2007</p>

<p>LEXINGTON, Ky. — A thick loose-leaf book jammed with charts and graphs details Lee T. Todd Jr.’s ambitious plans for the University of Kentucky. But in a recent speech to a chamber of commerce, Dr. Todd, the university’s president, summed them up in three brisk words: “Research drives jobs.”
His own life story encapsulates the idea. Dr. Todd grew up in a small coal-mining and farming town in western Kentucky, graduated from the university and earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at M.I.T. He returned to his Kentucky alma mater to teach before leaving to spend 18 years creating two successful high-tech companies here, in a state better known for thoroughbreds and bourbon than for digital innovations.</p>

<p>The connection between research and job creation also suggests the scope of Dr. Todd’s ambitions. He wants to raise the academic performance and national standing of the university because he thinks that is the best way to improve the state’s economy and reduce the scourge of what he calls “the Kentucky uglies” — high rates of diabetes, lung cancer, illiteracy and poverty.</p>

<p>“What the state needs is a more educated work force,” Dr. Todd told members of the Scott County Chamber of Commerce during an address at a luncheon recently in nearby Georgetown. “We’re going to have to have more graduates in our economy if we want it to grow.”</p>

<p>Plenty of presidents at state universities across the country have come up with plans for growth and improvement. But few have created a strategy as rigorous, statistically driven or transparent as Dr. Todd’s, and few bring to the task his sense of mission.

<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/education/01face.html?_r=1&oref=slogin[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/education/01face.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;