The Reinvention Center was established in April 2000 as the only national organization to focus on undergraduate education exclusively at research universities. The catalyst for its creation was the Boyer Commission Report, Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities (1998), which offered a vision of undergraduate education at research universities that builds on their unique assets and is synergistic with their research and graduate missions.
Soon after the report’s release, Shirley Strum Kenney, who served as chair of the Commission and was President of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, concluded that the work of the Commission could best be implemented by creating a national network of American research universities committed to strengthening undergraduate education. She volunteered to host the “Reinvention Center” (UERU’s original name) at Stony Brook.
Dr. Wendy Katkin, Associate Provost for Educational Initiatives and Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University was selected as the Reinvention Center’s first director. An Executive Board was formed to provide overall direction and policies.
In its first six years, the Center developed programmatic initiatives to encourage research universities to inventory, implement, and evaluate the impact of the Boyer Commission’s original recommendations. During this period, the Board and the Director also worked to find the best ways in which the Center could support and institutionalize cross-university collaborations and initiatives.
This activity led to collaboration in the development of grant proposals for initiatives designed to improve undergraduate education; a series of publications – including Reinventing Undergraduate Education: Three Years after the Boyer Report (2002); Eight Years after Boyer: Ten Indicators of Excellence in Undergraduate Education (2006); and the development of what were then biennial national conferences where faculty, policy analysts, and education leaders share their insights in a series of keynote addresses, panels, and break-out discussions.
In November 2004, Judith Smith, Professor of Physiological Science at UCLA and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (as well as Dean of Honors and Undergraduate Programs), made a suggestion that would change the evolution of the Center and create a new organizing principal for its collaborations. The suggestion was to create a network composed of faculty who had all-university (or all-college) administrative responsibilities for undergraduate education. This network is now known as the UVP, or Undergraduate Vice Provost/President Network. Twice a year, UVPs gather at one of our member institutions to hold a two-day meeting on topics of current relevance.
The UVP network became even more critical in 2007 when the Center transitioned to a member-owned, fee-based consortium. While its name and foundational mission did not change, what was truly a center at Stony Brook became a consortium of universities hosted by a member university.
At the time when it became a fee-based, member-owned collaborative, the Center was fortunate to have the support of Donna Shalala, then-President of the University of Miami. President Shalala volunteered the University of Miami as the new institutional home for the Center. The hand-off from Stony Brook to Miami was led by Wendy Katlin, who continued to serve as director from her New York base, as well as by William Scott Green, Senior Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education at the University of Miami.
In November 2010, Patricia Turner, then Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at the University of California at Davis, was named Executive Director. Wendy Katkin, who had served as founding director for over a decade, was named Director Emeritus. Dr. Turner served as Executive Director until January 1, 2013, when she moved from UC Davis to become Dean and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at the University of California at Los Angeles.
On January 1, 2013, a new Executive Director, Dr. Alan Lamborn, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs at Colorado State University, and a new chair of the Board, Dr. Claudia Neuhauser, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Minnesota, Rochester, were named. At the same time, the University of Miami also handed off host institution responsibilities for the Reinvention Center to Colorado State University, Fort Collins.
In her “handing off” letter, President Shalala wrote Colorado State University President Tony Frank: “We agreed to host the Center at Miami because we believe its mission and activities are critical to American higher education. The Reinvention Center represents and advocates the distinctive kind of undergraduate education only research universities can provide. A unique consortium of 65 institutions, both public and private, the Center integrates and disseminates the educational insights and successes our research faculties have developed and are devising. It helps us all to focus on the multiple ways research and discovery refresh, animate, and strengthen undergraduate education. . . . Thank you for this signal contribution to our collective work.”
The Reinvention Center has flourished during its twelve years at Colorado State University, thanks to the initial support of then-President Frank, then-Provost Rick Miranda, and especially to the leadership provided by Alan Lamborn, UERU’s Executive Director from 2013 to 2018, but also CSU’s Dr. Blanche Hughes, Vice President for Student Affairs and UERU Board member 2013-present. The Lamborn-Hughes Institute, which UERU hosts each summer at Colorado State University, honors their collaborative leadership at CSU and beyond. UERU may well not exist today were it not for Dr. Lamborn and his colleagues’ determined leadership.
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Since 2013, the Reinvention Center changed its name more than once as well as more than doubled its institutional membership! All the while, UERU has undertaken new and increasingly ambitious roles in support of its members and in nationally collaborative efforts to make good on UERU’s founding commitments. UERU has generations of leaders and successive cohorts of Board members and Home Office Staff to thank for supporting these developments, including UERU’s 2025 Board President & Chair, Nikos Varelas of the University of Illinois, Chicago, and current CSU President Amy Parsons and CSU Provost Marion K. Underwood.