Abstract
Urban and metropolitan areas face unique challenges in serving the multifaceted needs of their communities, but also have advantages that create some of the world’s greatest universities. Three scholars opened the 2017 CUMU Annual Conference with “Voices from the Field.” Each spoke to the changing role of urban-serving institutions and the place-based advantages CUMU members have in enriching their communities while strengthening the universities’ core commitments.
 CUMU advisor Barbara A. Holland, Holland Consulting, described the changing role of higher education and highlighted the distinct and powerful advantages urban-based higher education institutions have in shaping the success of the metropolitan areas they collectively serve.
 Ted Howard, The Democracy Collaborative, encouraged universities to move beyond current place-making initiatives and to adopt The Anchor Mission, distilling lessons from CUMU members who are pioneering new approaches to anchor mission work to have greater impacts on their institutions and communities.
 Andrew Seligsohn, Campus Compact, reflected on the inter-connected nature of two of higher education’s missions: (a) educating students for democracy; and (b) carrying out their anchor mission, as well as the impact of a civically-engaged student body on creating sustainable change in our communities.
Highlights
Holland Consulting, described the changing role of higher education and highlighted the distinct and powerful advantages urban-based higher education institutions have in shaping the success of the metropolitan areas they collectively serve
Our goal is to learn how to improve performance and measure impact through the implementation of an Anchor Mission strategy
One of the participants in the Anchor Dashboard Learning Cohort, Peter Englot, Senior Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs and Chief of Staff at Rutgers University-Newark, puts it this way: Our understanding of the anchor mission was that it is incumbent upon us as a placebased, urban university to leverage our intellectual, human, and material capital in partnership with others across sectors of our community to make a collective impact on addressing the challenges facing our community
Summary
The benefits of urbanity align with the major challenges for improvement and renewal in higher education performance, effectiveness, and impact, internally and externally These actions and strategies include the need: (a) to improve student success; (b) create productive and high impact learning environments for all students; (c) ensure broad access, attract/retain/develop a new generation of faculty and staff; (d) engage our teaching, learning and research activities with issues and opportunities of our region; (e) contribute to economic progress; and (d) develop partnerships and strategies that lead to new streams of funding and capacity, and more. Transportation hub: easy access to the world; sustained collaboration with global partners enhances teaching and research impacts; local/international expertise and discovery leads to new industries and other assets to the city and its academic institutions. More than just a laboratory for research and learning, these challenges inspire us to think anew about how we organize our assets and capacity, in concert with others, to identify solutions that will inform a hopeful future
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