The research on our "new directions" shows us a community with a much bigger sense of itself than we used to have. We have taken on the preparation of undergraduates in the usual basic theoretical and applied fields but with an inter-disciplinary, multicultural, international, and critical perspective. We are expanding our menu of graduate programs. We have upgraded the rigor of the knowledge base for improving our performance. We have accepted the role of global thinkers, local players (and reversed it on occasion). The multitude of linkages with other organizations, cooperative programs, and extensive use of new technology and pedagogy all belie our historic tendencies to conservatism and isolationism. Many of us do maintain that not all change is good, that not all the new directions cited here are good (for students, for the university, in the short- or the long-term). We hope in this review to have opened the public discussion through which the winnowing of the undesirable from the desirable can take place. We think the units under discussion have arrived at assessment methodologies that can provide information adequate to make these judgments and decisions.

The new vision of the university that appears from these ruminations is of the interdependent relationship between the technical schools and the liberal arts and sciences. This vision is not only an embellishment and deepening of our polytechnic character, but opens the door to new directions and new ways of measuring them: does a given project enhance this commensalism? Does it promote inter-weaving of applied and general education? Does it create opportunities for ‘pure’ arts and science professionals and students to work with ‘practical’ personnel? This vision we think connects the thrust of the community building and collaborative management imperatives of Themes One and Two to the planning motive of Theme Three, through the device of continuous self-study.