Langenberg

CHANCELLOR DONALD N. Langenberg and the University of Maryland Board of Regents have launched a 20-20-20 plan.By the year 2002 -- there is symmetry here -- they want the university to raise 20 percent more money, absorb 20 percent more students and work 20 percent more productively. They want the university to do this during a period in which income from state and federal governments is expected to be static or in decline.So what's a university to do?People are talking at the national level about several tactics that could make the university more productive.

A strategic plan for the University of Maryland system would demand three things from its campuses over the next seven years: more students, more work and more revenue.The university's Board of Regents will meet today at Frostburg State University and is poised to approve the outline. While campus chiefs and faculty have expressed some reservations, system officials forestalled major criticism by soliciting their opinions in writing the plan.University officials assume relatively flat budgets.

Brian Stevenson, of Pitney Bowes Management Services in Washington, wants to deliver the government's inter-office mail. Maria Thornman, of Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.'s Hunt Valley office, hopes to provide highway employees' workers compensation insurance. And Don Jarratt, of Ruppert Landscape Co. Inc., in Ashton, wants to cut the state's lawns.The state of Maryland is trying to reinvent itself. And these are some of the people in private business who want to help -- for a fee.The concept is privatization, or turning over some government functions to private businesses.

Failures Condemn UM, not Poor ExplanationsIn a letter about the question of professors' teaching hours in The Sun April 9, Donald N. Langenberg (chancellor of the University of Maryland System) admits that we in higher education have done a lousy job of explaining it to the people we expect to support us.I heartily agree. Besides the trivial subjects he cites as examples, I would add several more.Maryland administrators have done a lousy job of publicizing the names of top faculty members, if there are any, in trying to lure prospective students.

The University of Maryland System has lost some good professors and may lose more if it doesn't raise salaries substantially, Chancellor Donald N. Langenberg predicts.Some 70 faculty members who left the 11-campus University System since 1991 cited a better salary as the primary reason, a fact-finding committee reported recently.In another 60 cases, universities in the Maryland system failed to attract any "outstanding" candidates to fill teaching vacancies because of the state's relatively low salaries, the committee found.

Donald N. Langenberg, chancellor of the University of Maryland System, offered Coppin State College's graduating seniors a four-part prescription for their future yesterday: Work hard, be brave, take risks and "do what you love and love what you do."As the keynote speaker at commencement exercises held at the Baltimore Arena, Dr. Langenberg avoided the topical and the pointed, instead opting to dispense general advice to the 440 students receiving their diplomas.His remarks were brief -- barely 10 minutes -- and were received with polite applause.

Upheaval among leaders at the University of Maryland at Baltimore continued yesterday as Dr. Errol L. Reese unexpectedly announced his resignation as university president.In announcing his departure, Dr. Reese said that when he received the job in December 1990 he didn't intend to serve more than three or four years.But several people familiar with his situation said he left under pressure from University of Maryland Chancellor Donald N. Langenberg.Dr. Reese's announcement came only three days after Dr. Kimball I. Maull resigned as head of the Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

No one has set forth a better vision for Baltimore in the next century than Michael J. Hooker, president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. But sadly, we will have to make that exciting vision a reality without Dr. Hooker, who has accepted a new challenge -- running the five-campus, 51,000-student University of Massachusetts.Mike Hooker's first love is philosophy. When he arrived on UMBC's Catonsville campus in 1986, he already had a well thought-out picture of what he wanted UMBC to become, and what he wanted the Baltimore region to become.

Hyattsville -- Ever since the University of Maryland went through its massive metamorphosis some two decades ago, every new head, whether ''chancellor'' or ''president,'' has proclaimed the university's ambition for ''top ten'' distinction. Even during its present painful economizing, Chancellor Donald Langenberg insists that it has not abandoned its mission to reach that mythical summit.May I humbly suggest how the university can get there quickly and inexpensively? Declare victory! Unfurl a banner that reads:TOP TEN!

Chancellor Donald N. Langenberg tried to put it delicately, but the message he delivered to the Board of Regents this week left no doubt that certain members of the University of Maryland's family have not been acting in a familial way.While outlining his "vision" of the university's vast system and how he hopes to guide it in the years ahead, Dr. Langenberg urged the regents to clamp down on overly rambunctious campus leaders seeking full autonomy from...