Page 5 - BusinessWest May 1, 2023

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During Kumble Subbaswamy’s tenure, the UMass Amherst campus became much more of a destination for top students.
could then go about its business of achieving its mission of teach- ing, research, and outreach. And there was no guarantee this would happen — it’s a complex job where you have multiple audiences. You have the system office; you have to keep them happy. You have to keep the campus happy, you have to keep the unions happy, you have to keep the local legislative group happy, and so on. So none of that was a given.
“But when we were able to focus on improving the campus ... one important focus that became self-evident as I was looking at the data was that, while we claimed to be the best public university in New England, the data didn’t really show that, especially student- success data. We were much further behind UConn, for example.
“That was the beginning of what I’ll call installing a planning culture — always being data-driven and doing plan assessment and improvement on a continuous basis. That was not necessarily the culture on the campus, at least not in a systematic way. So when
I look back and identify one important thing that helped turn the campus around, I would say it was creating a cul-
ture of strategic planning, being data-driven, and
always thinking about improving those aspects
in which we could be doing better or where we’re
not doing as well as our competition.”
BusinessWest: What was the biggest step for- ward taken by the university during your tenure?
Subbaswamy: “Improvement in graduation rates would be one example, but there are other measures, such as people doing internships, job placement, and more, and all this showed up in U.S. News & World Report rankings, because there is strong weight given to graduation rates, and without being overly selective, when you achieve high graduation rates, you get lots of points.
“It’s not that we’re pursuing rankings, but those metrics that we care about, and achieving prog- ress with them, really does help. And when we went from number 52 in national public university rankings to number 26 — we’re hovering right around 25 or 26 — that made people take notice of Massachusetts.
“That rise in the rankings gave everyone
associated with the university a point of pride; alumni started tak- ing notice, parents and prospective students started taking notice, guidance counselors started taking notice. It started a positive cycle where more and more highly qualified students started applying, our classes got better, and our results got even better.”
BusinessWest: Talk more about how that rise in the rankings was achieved.
Subbaswamy: “Back in 2013, based on what was going on, as well as part of our requirement for re-accreditation, we developed
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“That rise in
the rankings
gave everyone associated with the university a point of pride; alumni started taking notice, parents and prospective students started taking notice, guidance counselors started taking notice.”
BusinessWest
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