Good afternoon everyone!

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the Trojan Way Dedication Ceremony. Thank you all for being here.

Today we celebrate a significant addition to our campus鈥攁 pathway and central plaza that represent our commitment to enhancing the student experience, fostering campus engagement, and embracing the future of our university.

Before we begin, I鈥檇 like to make sure we recognize a few of our special guests:

Would members of the George W. Donaghey Foundation Board please wave so we can recognize you?

Would any members of the 糖心Vlog传媒 Board of Trustees wave so we can recognize you?

Would any members of the 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Board of Visitors wave so we can recognize you?

And finally, would any members of the 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Centennial Campaign Cabinet please wave so we can recognize you?

Thank you all for your support of this project.

I would also like to thank President and Mrs. Bobbitt for being here today. I deeply appreciate your support of this institution and its mission.

Thank you to Congressman French Hill for being here, and thank you for your support of 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock.

And I would like to recognize Chancellor Emeritus Joel Anderson, on whose shoulders I stand. Thank you for being here Joel, it means the world to me.

And a heartfelt thanks to all of you for joining us today in our celebration.

The idea for this project emerged four years ago, one year into my tenure as chancellor. I asked our then-facilities director to give me a grounds tour so I could see what needed to be done. When we finished the tour and I had my long list of things to address, we returned to our starting point, the Library Plaza. As I looked around at the empty expanse, I wondered aloud what we might do to make the plaza more user friendly. I noted that this spot should be the heart of the campus with the student center on one side and the library on the other. But the plaza was nearly always empty, no one seemed to want to linger there. Dave asked me what I had in mind. And there the seed was planted.

I knew that if we could make the plaza a more inviting and comfortable place for students to hang out and meet with one another, it could really make a difference in how students perceive the campus. We had done a lot over the years to improve internal space with new residence halls, new classroom buildings, and we were starting work on a new learning commons on the first floor of the library. Yet the outdoor space was definitely in need of some TLC.

We started with a scope of work that just included the library plaza and I knew I鈥檇 need to seek outside funding. The Donaghey Foundation had never done anything like this before, but I took a chance on convincing them of the transformational impact a project like this could have. I introduced them to the concept of the living and learning environment of a university. I explained that improvements in the living and learning environment are important because they have the potential to create engaging spaces that support student wellbeing, that enhance high-impact learning, and that provide a strong sense of Trojan community. Through these efforts, our spaces not only become more functional, but also more welcoming, secure, and attractive.

The Donaghey Board liked the idea. In fact, they liked it so much, they invited me to think bigger and expand the project. So, I went back to the design team and asked, 鈥渨hat would it take to redesign the entire north-south promenade of the campus from 28th Street to University Drive, integrating it with the plaza and other adjacent areas?鈥� We went to work on that plan, took it back to the Donaghey Board in October of 2021, and here we are today about to see the results of what Greg Flesher would call a big hairy audacious goal.

The version of the campus promenade that you see on these screens was the result of many years of piecemeal development that did not have the benefit of a comprehensive plan with a substantial investment at one point in time. This is not uncommon for any institution that鈥檚 been around for a hundred years. The previous promenade was made of different materials鈥攂rick and cement mostly鈥攊t was bumpy and uneven, it was different widths at different places, some sections had a divided path, and the place where we鈥檙e standing right now, was a parking lot.

It would be hard to overstate the impact of this opportunity to create a unifying experience on this campus. Through the generosity and vision of the Donaghey Foundation as well as others who have stepped up to contribute to this effort, we have been able to turn a walkway into a destination.

I want to thank Shawn Luther with DCI for his work in creating a beautiful destination design that will take us into our next 100 years.

Thank you to WER and Nabholtz Construction for taking on what turned out to be a very challenging project with lots of buried surprises, and seeing it through to the end.

I want to thank our Facilities Director, Leslie Hutchins and her team, for their tenacious attention to detail and for putting up with my incessant questions for the last three years.

And of course, I want express my deepest appreciation to the Donaghey Foundation for inviting me to dream big, for supporting our vision, and, for graciously providing the funding to make this project possible.

It is now my honor to invite Greg Flesher, President of the Donaghey Foundation Board to come forward and say a few words.

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Over the last five years of my administration, we鈥檝e had a lot of hard work to do to right this ship and get it turned in the right direction. For a number of years prior, I would say that we were adrift, trying to find our place in a rapidly changing environment, unable to focus on the horizon, and often trying to do too much with too little. So, we needed to start the conversation about our core purpose as an institution of higher education, about our institutional priorities, and about how to meet the needs and expectations of our community. In a word, we needed focus. And we needed to infuse that into everything we did from there on.

Fast forward five years and now we can begin to see the results. Although there is still plenty of work to do and things to fix, I stand before you today to say that this ship HAS turned around and is sailing forward with a strong hull, an experienced crew, and a clear destination. There are several key indicators that should give us cause for optimism.

First, and foremost, we have demonstrated that in spite of strong headwinds, we CAN increase enrollment, we CAN bring people back to campus, and there is still a significant number of people in the State of Arkansas who believe in the value proposition of a college education. When we make it affordable, and reduce other barriers to entry, they will make this investment in their future. We are seeing that now with a 29% increase in new first-time freshmen this fall, an 18% increase in new transfer students, a 1% increase in undergraduate retention, and a 9.3% increase in residence hall occupancy. Residence hall occupancy is at its highest level in years.

A second key indicator is that we have demonstrated that we can live within our means and end each year in the black by a comfortable margin. While we still have to be prudent, we still have to budget carefully and be prepared for setbacks, I can reassure you that we are financially stable and will remain so as long as we maintain our current approach.

A third indicator supporting a positive outlook is the increasing level of investment that external entities have made in this institution. Over the last four years, our revenue from grants and contracts has increased by 45%. We鈥檝e gone from an annual award level of around $30M to a level of around $45M. This fiscal year, just three months in, we鈥檙e already at $13M and projected to top $40M. This is a testimony to the exceptional work of our research faculty and public service personnel. It is also reflective of our growing reputation as an institution of excellence. Word is getting out and our grant revenue is growing.

Our revenue from private donations has been equally impressive. Five years ago, we had a fledgling unfocused capital campaign with loosely defined objectives. We threw out the old campaign and started over by rebranding the new campaign as this institution鈥檚 Centennial Campaign for a new generation, and we made sure our donors understood that we were raising money for institutional priorities like access and affordability, program excellence and experiential learning opportunities, improving the living and learning environment, research support, and community engagement. Our donors connected with these priorities and we鈥檝e seen the results.

Today, we鈥檝e raised record levels of funding. As many of you know, our current capital campaign has a goal of $250M. Christian is planning a big milestone announcement very soon, so I won鈥檛 steal his thunder, but I can tell you that we are very confident that we will reach our goal and then some. The endowment portion of our foundation funds has grown from $84M five years ago to over $141M today. That鈥檚 an increase of nearly 68%. Today we average well over 7,000 unique donors each year with corporate investment (which we had very little of before) now at a level of $13M.

All of this investment in 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, both in grants and private giving, shows that we have earned the confidence and trust of our community. People are now asking us; how can we help.

And now, after years of cutting, we鈥檝e been able to invest these new dollars into improving our infrastructure, expanding our scholarship base, supporting student success, and supporting faculty excellence. These investments have helped us turn around enrollment and reinvigorate the campus experience. In addition to the beautiful new Trojan Way and the Library Learning Commons, we have refurbished 20 classrooms through corporate donor contributions and the Provost has upgraded labs and other academic spaces with a combination of different university resources. As our annual grant fund revenue has increased, we鈥檝e been able to commit an additional $500K to the research office to better support our research enterprise.

As heartening as this has been, we have struggled to make progress on one of our most important challenges鈥攅mployee salaries. Individual units and divisions have reorganized and restructured their operations in order to raise salaries for positions that were no longer attracting applicants and to address internal equity issues. We did a faculty salary study a few years ago, and were able to raise below median salaries to the median by rank and discipline using salary savings in the instructional reserve. We have a salary committee working on an equity analysis for staff. And finally, this year, using last year鈥檚 increase in student semester credit hours, we took the first step in raising salaries across the board with a $1,000 raise for all full-time employees.

We鈥檙e not done.

With this fall鈥檚 enrollment increase and the projected enrollment for the rest of the year, I am pleased to announce that we will implement an additional raise of $2000 for all eligible full-time employees effective November 1st of this year.

And we will keep working on this. That is my commitment to you.

I hope you are as encouraged by our progress as I am. I think we鈥檝e come a long way in five years. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that it鈥檚 not magic, and it鈥檚 not just hard work, although there鈥檚 plenty of that. It鈥檚 a matter of understanding who we are, what we have to offer, and what the world needs from us. If we can stay focused on our priorities, and if we can keep telling our story, tell people about what we do really well, to everyone who needs to hear it, we can keep sailing forward, getting stronger and getting better every year. We can do this, we are doing it, and I am deeply grateful to each and every one of you for your commitment to this journey. Thank you.

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Dr. Mary Yang, professor of information science at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, has joined an elite group of state scientists and academics as she was inducted into the Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA) Academy on Aug. 10.

鈥淚 am very excited to join the ARA Academy and deeply grateful for this opportunity,鈥� Yang said. 鈥淚 look forward to collaborating with ARA on research initiatives that benefit Arkansas and contribute to the advancement of knowledge.鈥�

Highlighted by a special welcome and recognition from Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the ARA welcomed Yang and six new members to the ARA Academy of Scholars and Fellows, the largest class in ARA鈥檚 15-year history, during a ceremony in the Governor鈥檚 Conference Room in the Arkansas State Capitol Building. The ceremony expanded the membership to 34 research scientists and engineers working across six institutions in Arkansas, which include the five research universities and the state鈥檚 largest federal lab.

鈥淭his is a very exciting day in our state to have the opportunity to recognize some of the best and brightest in research, not just in Arkansas but in the country,鈥� Gov. Huckabee Sanders said. 鈥淲e are so excited about what this organization does, and we have the opportunity to highlight these individuals. Not only do each of these individuals contribute a significant amount when it comes to research in the state, but most of them are also professors in the classroom. I know first-hand what a difference a quality, top notch professor can make.鈥�

ARA fellowships recognize scientists and engineers who reside at a university or institution in Arkansas for their ongoing, exemplary contributions to the state鈥檚 core research focus areas. Each fellow receives a $75,000 grant to advance their research vision.

鈥淎rkansas鈥檚 opportunities in the knowledge economy depend on a talented research workforce,鈥� said Bryan Barnhouse, president and CEO of ARA. 鈥淭he ARA Academy represents the vanguard of intellectual capital that helps the entire state be more globally competitive. The seven new members added today help our state reach its fullest potential through their creativity, vision, and collaboration.鈥�

Also serving as director of MidSouth Bioinformatics Center at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, Yang received her bachelor鈥檚 degree in engineering and physics from Hunan University, followed by a Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering, a Master of Science in Experimental Solid State Physics, and a Ph.D. in Computational Science and Physics from Purdue University. She completed her postdoctoral training in human genomics and bioinformatics at the National Human Genome Research Institute and conducted research as a research fellow at the same institution from 2008 to 2012.

Yang has also worked as a professional engineer in software engineering at Shenzhen Electronic Industry and Trade Co. from 1992 to 1995. She has certifications in NIH Post Doctor Completion, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Graduate Studies and Research from John Hopkins University. She is a member of several professional organizations, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Association for Computing Machinery, Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Society, and MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society.

She has received numerous awards for her academic and research achievements, including NIH Academic Research Enhancement Awards, the Engineering and Information Technology Faculty Excellence Award in Research, Innovative Research-Education Integration Award from the American Council on Science and Education, Best Research Paper Awards, and Outstanding Tutorial Education Awards from various conferences and societies.

Yang was among a cohort of seven new academics to join the ARA Academy, including John Imig of 糖心Vlog传媒MS, Antino Allen of 糖心Vlog传媒MS, Heather Nachtmann of the University of Arkansas, Igor Pogribny of U.S. FDA National Center for Toxicological Research, Grace Ramena of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and Jianfeng Xu of Arkansas State University.

***Written by Angelita Faller

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I want to begin with several thank you’s and acknowledgments.

For the last four years, Amanda Nolen has led the Faculty Senate as well as the Assembly through a number of challenging tasks and has done so with wisdom and compassion. Along with the Executive Committee, she has played a critical role in representing the faculty voice in restructuring, faculty governance, pandemic protocols, and strategic planning to name just a few of our most significant initiatives. I know that Dr. Nolen will continue to make significant contributions to this institution in the years to come, but I want to take this opportunity to say, Amanda, thank you for your excellent leadership.

I also want to thank Melody Weigel, Cody Henslee, and Rosalie Shahan for their very capable leadership of the Staff Senate. Not only have you continued to bring assistance and recognition to your fellow staff members, but you have increased the level of engagement with the Faculty Senate to promote your common goals and strengthen your voice. I commend you for that.

I want to thank the leadership of the Student Government Association and the Graduate Students Association over the last few years鈥擪atie Zakrzewski, Landon DeKay, and Ashley Chamberlain with the SGA; Natalie Snow, Brandon Burdette, Rebekah White, and Christine Jones with the GSA. You have had the difficult task of maintaining student engagement in spite of the pandemic, and you have done so admirably. For instance, idea of initiating a racial barriers committee came from students and the committee maintains a significant student involvement today. Thank you for all that you do and have done for your fellow students at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock.

There are many others, too numerous to mention, who have stepped up and shown true leadership over the last few years. From recruitment and retention initiatives to new academic programs, new grants, new partnerships, and new infrastructure鈥斕切腣log传媒 Little Rock has been on the move, thanks to all of you who rose to the challenge of keeping our institution strong and relevant in the face of challenging circumstances.

Finally, I want to thank the members of my leadership team, old and new, for their courage and creativity; and for coming back to work every day even when sometimes it seems like running away with the circus might be a more attractive option.

I鈥檓 going to devote the rest of my remarks today discussing what we鈥檝e accomplished and where I think we鈥檙e going from here, but before I do, I want to say a few words about the budget because I know many are anxious about that. Based on an analysis of what we鈥檝e spent so far this year, we expect to end FY22 solidly in the black and to post another net position gain. We were helped a great deal by federal CARES funds, but we also had a lower level of spending because of reduced travel, events, and supplies due to the pandemic.

In preparing for next year, we had hoped to be able to do another careful variance analysis like we did last year, but due to problems with the Workday budgeting software as well as a staffing shortage in the budget office, we weren鈥檛 able to get there. So, for the FY23 budget we are essentially rolling over the FY22 budget with adjustments based on confirmed information and historical trends. We will submit a balanced budget for FY23 and will continue to work on the budget detail into next fall. In addition, as we head into the new fiscal year, we will be completing our new institutional strategic plan, which should guide us in making budget adjustments going forward. We continue to have a healthy reserve and are in no danger of not meeting our obligations.

And now I鈥檒l turn to our other initiatives.

It鈥檚 no secret that in the last two and a half years, I鈥檝e been rallying the campus community around four institutional priorities that represent our institution鈥檚 role and scope and thus, our commitment to the State of Arkansas. My goal in doing this is to bring into sharp focus the value proposition that 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock brings to the table. That is, that our institution is indispensable to the future of Arkansas, particularly central Arkansas. Why is it indispensable, why does it matter that we are here? It matters because we are in the best position to build relationships within our own community and to build pathways to careers for our students. We are in the best position to build a strong workforce and a strong economy in our own community; and to ensure that Little Rock is a place where people want to live and work. That鈥檚 not to say no one else can do that, but we have an opportunity to do it best for central Arkansas; and we must embrace this advantage to secure the future of this institution and for the benefit of all. We cannot take it for granted that everyone knows this value proposition. We have to reinforce this message every day in what we say and more importantly in what we do.

Our four institutional priorities are centered on reinforcing this message. Enhancing student access and student success brings more students, particularly those more likely to be disenfranchised, into the higher education pipeline and into a supportive environment where they have a chance to get to the next level of success. This is good for the community, it鈥檚 good for business, and it helps build a sustainable future for central Arkansas.

The relevant academic programs that we offer are responsive to the needs of our community, they are experiential so students make stronger connections to their career path, and they can be accessed in a variety of formats to reduce barriers to education. Our quality academic programs prepare a high-level professional work force for an advanced and diversified economy.

Our research portfolio does three important things for Arkansas. First, it largely addresses real-world issues making significant contributions to public wellbeing. Second, our applied research can often be commercialized and turned into businesses that help build our economy. Third, it gives our students, even at the undergraduate level, the opportunity to work and be mentored in a research environment giving them a significant advantage whether pursuing advanced study or a specific career path. You need only attend our annual research expo, such as the one last Friday, to understand what this opportunity does for our students and their level of preparation. The work these students do is simply stunning. And it wouldn鈥檛 happen if research was not a part of our mission.

Finally, our public service is the very essence of community-building and community strengthening. From the University District Partnership, to Children鈥檚 International, to the Small Business Center, to AEDI, to MidSouth, to Public Radio and more. We invest our time and treasure beyond the boundaries of our campus to provide much needed services that would not likely be available otherwise. This too is part of our value proposition because not only does our public service make valued contributions to the community, but by integrating these services with our academic and research activities, they help us expand our research portfolio and provide additional opportunities for students to learn by doing.

So, how have we worked on these priorities in the last few years? What have we accomplished?

Obviously, we have struggled with enrollment declines in recent years, but we have worked very hard to make improvements in both recruitment and retention, and in particular, we鈥檝e made progress on improving affordability. We know from surveys and other data that cost remains the primary barrier for students entering or staying in college. For many years, 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock raised its tuition and fees every year to address rising costs and flat state funding until we got to the point where we became the most expensive public university in the state. It has been my goal to change that, and we have. We have held our tuition constant for the last three years and will do so again next year in spite of pressures on our budget. In addition to that, we have greatly increased our capacity to award need-based scholarships adding tens of millions of dollars to our endowment through private gifts. When you put these two things together we have been able to lower our net price of attendance by 13.5% in two years, and we are now in the middle of the pack cost-wise. We鈥檝e made big improvements on virtually every step of recruitment through new technology, new protocols, and new personnel. I鈥檓 happy to report that as of Wednesday, new freshman applications are up 20% for this fall.

We are also beginning to invest in the recruitment of non-traditional students. You may have seen in the news recently that we are partnering with Amazon in their Career Choice program that covers the cost of tuition. We already have 76 applications from local Amazon employees for the fall semester. Starting this summer, thanks to Donaghey funding, we will be hiring a full-time non-traditional recruiter to work with companies and others to recruit more non-traditional students. Also, thanks to Donaghey funding, we have a new graduate recruitment program called the 鈥済et your feet wet鈥� scholarship. This program is designed to encourage college seniors who might not otherwise consider going to graduate school to try it out and get their first course for free. We brought in twenty-five new graduate students this year and we鈥檙e doubling the size of the program for next year.

We are making strides in retention support. This slide shows just some of the initiatives we鈥檝e invested in, largely through grants and gifts. The highlighted programs are new. We have greatly expanded our capacity to offer mentoring, coaching, and intervention services to all of our students. Through the Child Care Connections program we are now able to offer child care funding to PELL-eligible undergraduates. Our new Career Services Center is now in full swing assisting students with internships, job searches, career preparation and other critical services. We are also increasing our investment in student activities and clubs to enhance the campus experience and provide additional learning opportunities.

In the category of student success support, I also include investments we make in our living and learning environment because students (and all of us) benefit by having up-to-date, functional, accessible, and welcoming environments both in our educational spaces and our shared congregational spaces. You no doubt saw our recent communication about a variety of campus improvements, but let me share a few more. We are in the process of transforming the center of campus into the true heart of our campus that it should be. We have completely remodeled the first floor of the Ottenheimer Library transforming it into the new Learning Commons housing our various tutoring centers and providing more space for student learning. We have refurbished the first floor of SUB formerly occupied by Rhetoric and Writing and brought in previously far flung student services like TRIO, McNair and PEAW so that most of our student services will be concentrated in the center of campus. We are about to begin a remodeling project on the second floor of Ottenheimer to provide optimum space for our new Multicultural Center. Student Affairs has invested over $1 million in campus living and the DSC to make much-needed upgrades in those facilities. New signage is in the works and will be in place over the summer.

The newest project that will help tie all of this together and improve the connections to the rest of campus is a $5.5 million Donaghey-funded redesign of the library plaza and the north-south campus walkway. The new Trojan plaza will feature bistro seating with a natural tree canopy for shade, various plantings with seat walls, a raised stage area, and space for outdoor art installations. Oh, and by the way, all of the brick pavers will be removed and replaced with a mobility-friendly alternative. The current north-south campus corridor, which was built in different phases with different materials and different designs will be completely replaced with a unified design and a spectacular border of flowering native trees. This project will begin in late summer and probably take about a year, but I guarantee you, it will be worth the wait. This project will be transformational for the look and feel of the campus and will greatly enhance the living and learning experience of our students.

In the recent campus survey on values, we asked faculty, staff, and students to comment on what makes us unique, what, we do well, and what we could do better. The answer to all three questions included academic programs. Respondents identified us as unique in our program variety and flexibility. They said we particularly do online education very well and that we do a better job than others in providing opportunities for internships, research with faculty, and community engagement. This slide provides a graphic of some of the many educational partners we have at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock that invest in our programs and help us offer some of the best experiential learning in the state.

Some survey respondents felt that we should expand these opportunities across more of our programs, and I couldn鈥檛 agree more. I鈥檇 like to see every department and school on campus have a career path-oriented advisory board that can help them build their community connections, update their curriculum, expand their internship base, and develop new sources of investment. Industry and community partnerships are the key to growth of programs and the key to ensuring relevance to our constituents.

Building on another of our strengths, I鈥檇 like to see all programs provide opportunities for students to work directly with faculty on projects鈥攔esearch, creative works, community initiatives鈥攚hatever it is, this is an important part of what makes us better and we need to make sure every academic program is doing this in some form.

As chancellor, I am committed to investing in our academic programs to build on our strengths and meet the needs of our community. Last year I asked the Donaghey Foundation to fund an internship expansion program so we can offer paid internships in organizations and agencies that are important career-path partners, but that don鈥檛 have the means to offer paid internships. We have funding for 20+ internships now and we鈥檒l expand that as needed. Departments that are interested in developing these types of internships can contact the career center for more information.

To help programs build capacity, the Provost and I will work with academic units and deans to identify strategies for building better career-path connections as well as potential sources of investment. Meanwhile, the Academic Strategic Planning Committee is hard at work analyzing our academic portfolio and preparing goals that reflect the kind of educational experiences and opportunities that will ensure our relevance into the future.

Our research portfolio is growing and we continue to work on several fronts to secure more funding for this priority. Our grant awards have been growing steadily and we are developing donor sources to supplement this, for instance with incubator funds to develop new areas of research. You鈥檙e probably familiar with our biggest grants through MidSouth, Nanotechnology, Information and Computer Science, and Emerging Analytics. I applaud the hard work of those units and I鈥檓 pleased to see that they continue to grow and thrive. But I want to bring to your attention to a recent grant that I believe has the potential to bring another discipline into the spotlight and strengthen our connections with the community. In December, we learned that we are one of eight universities to receive a grant from Forward Arkansas, a non-profit organization established to improve educational outcomes in the K-12 system. Thanks to project leads Kent Layton and Sarah Beth Estes, we were awarded a $100,000 planning grant to grow our teacher education program and increase the number of teachers in Arkansas, particularly in high-need locations. This will help produce the kind of program capacity I just mentioned and will help us make a stronger contribution to the supply of teachers in Arkansas. This is a great example of why it matters that we are here, and why research is a vital part of our mission.

You may be interested to know that we invest very little of our regular institutional funds in our public service operations. These units run mostly or entirely on grants, contracts, and gifts, and yet, they provide great value for our campus in the form of community engagement, experiential learning opportunities, and research collaboration. One example of this is the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center. The ASBTDC provides consulting and training to people across the state who want to start or grow a small business, but in addition to that, they also facilitate what they call the real-world classroom, which brings faculty, students, and small business clients together to work on projects to help those clients prosper.

Another example is the University District Partnership, which serves as a revitalization program for the neighborhoods surrounding the 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock main campus. It works with our 501(c)3, the University District Development Corporation to rehab or rebuild houses in the district for income-qualified first-time homebuyers. This year we are building seven new homes, the most we鈥檝e done at once since the unit was formed in 2006. In addition to the great work they do lifting up the University District, they also provide experiential learning opportunities for our students. Each semester the UDDC works with the Innovation Clinic at the Bowen Law School to have law students assist in acquiring titles to donated property. This fall, they also worked with students and faculty from the Social Work and Public Administration programs to interview community stakeholders in preparation for redeveloping the University Plaza.

These are two more examples of why it matters that we are here. So, take heart. We鈥檙e doing great work here鈥攊ndispensable work, and we can do more. Help me spread the word that 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock is the community鈥檚 best educational partner. Best in educational opportunity, best in flexible, career-path education, best in community engagement. And let鈥檚 continue to build on these strengths.

I want to conclude by showing you a video that illustrates a lot of the things I鈥檝e been talking about鈥攑articularly the value of our location, the value of industry and community partnerships, the value of experiential learning, and the profound experience it produces for our students. If you watched the video I presented at the last Board of Trustees meeting, you will recognize some of the voices of our community partners, but in this video, we鈥檝e added the voices of some of our students. Please enjoy.

Thank you, and I will be happy to take questions.

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糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Presentation by Chancellor Drale to the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022. Note: Embedded video was excerpted from the Zoom recording provided by the 糖心Vlog传媒 System office. The resulting video quality is less than ideal. Transcript below.

{Chancellor Drale} Good morning, Trustees, Dr. Bobbitt, and esteemed guests. It is my pleasure to welcome you to our campus, and the theme of my report today is Connecting Our Students to Arkansas’s Future. While most of our students stay in Arkansas after graduation, we know that our real job is making sure that the education we provide will connect students to a bright and productive future for themselves but also for the state of Arkansas.

So today, I’m going to talk about several elements that go into making those connections and connecting our students to Arkansas’s future.

I’m going to focus on access, which really means getting students into the educational setting so that we can help them plan their future and prepare for their future.

Also about support for student success so that once we get them here, they have the proper tools and experiences that will help them connect the dots to what they’re doing after they graduate.

And then finally, the community connections that help us bring all of that together so that students can actually see through our connections with partners in business and industry where that educational pathway is going to take them, and they can start having those experiences while they’re still in school.

So, let’s start with access. We know that for a lot of our students, the cost of education is still a primary barrier for them. For the last two years, we’ve really been working on the affordability factor. In addition to our one-time $15 million dollar donation for need-based scholarships that we got about two years ago, we have been working for the last two years on endowed scholarships and not just any kind of endowed scholarships. We’ve really changed the template on our gift agreements to emphasize need-based scholarships.

So all of our scholarships that come in now, some of them may have merit elements to them, but they are all need-based oriented so that we can increase then the number of opportunities for our students. As an example, or not an example, but as an illustration of this, I can share with you that we have grown our endowment in the last two years by $44 million since 2019, and as part of that, we’ve added 50 new endowment accounts also since 2019, most of those are scholarships.

So this all goes towards that affordability issue and trying to make sure that we can help Arkansas students get in the door so that we can start working with them. Also starting in the fall, we are offering a half off scholarship initiative that for qualifying students, they will get half off their tuition not just for their freshman year, but if they remain in good standing, also for their sophomore year. So these are some ways that we are starting to work on that affordability access issue.

Now also what we’re doing there is improving access to and the quality of our financial aid information. Some of you know that we’ve really done a turnaround in our financial aid operation, and one of the things that we’ve added fairly recently is something called “Scholarship Universe.” It’s a scholarship matching tool. It is a service that we subscribe to, but what it does is really kind of interesting. It takes all of our internal scholarships and puts them into this database, but it also surveys all of the external scholarships so when students go to this app and they enter their information, they get a list not only of the institutional scholarships that are available to them, the private scholarships that we provide but also external scholarships that might be available to them for which they qualify. So Rotary Club or Lions Club or whatever it might be, and then our financial aid counselors can work with them to stack those scholarships to prepare a package that will maximize their benefit and make college all that much more affordable for them.

All of this together has addressed what is called the “net price.” If you’re not familiar with this concept, let me just remind you that the net price is the average actual price that students pay for cost of attendance. So, this illustrates that over the last three years or two years since fiscal year 19, we have lowered our net price by 13.5%. We’re very proud of that and we intend to continue working on that to enhance that affordability aspect of working with our students and getting them in to college to have those educational experiences.

The second area is the focus on student success. And this is an area that we’ve either invested in anew or reinvested in things that we’ve already had. So what you see here is a list, it’s actually not a complete list, it’s a partial list of our student support, our student success support programs and the ones that are highlited are all the ones that are new that we’ve started up just in the last couple of years. And I’ll tell you all this also that 90% of this is private funding supported, so we have gone out and raised the money to support much of what you see here.

I want to just highlight a couple of the new ones. I won’t go through this whole list. The endowed Student Retention Initiative Office is something that we started up several years ago. The anonymous donation we got a couple of years ago allowed us to endow that office in its entirety, and it provides a whole range of services that I’ll talk about also in this list. But they’re there for advising and counseling and coaching and all of those things.

One of the things that the office does in conjunction with student affairs is something called the Care Team. And the Care Team is an intervention team. It is there to intervene when it is noticed either by a faculty member or staff member, an advisor, or the student him or herself can self refer for students that are having challenges whether it’s financial, whether it’s academic, whether it’s trying to find daycare. Whatever it is, this Care Team will intervene and help that student find solutions to their problems and remove those barriers or at least mitigate those barriers and try to keep them in school. This has been tremendously successful. This team also has a full-time licensed social worker on the team to help students deal with any kind of issues that may be in that category.

We’ve had additional investment in our student leadership programs, and you’ll see some of those on here. One of the programs that I also want to highlight is called Trojan Works. Trojan Works is a comprehensive work study program, but what’s different about this is it does two things that are different than the typical federal work study program. It, first of all, takes the federal work study program combines it also with an institutional work study program for students who don’t fully qualify for the federal program so they can still do work study on campus even if they don’t qualify for federal work study. But here’s the really unique thing about this: we don’t just provide campus jobs. What we do is we add workshops. All the students that participate in this have to participate in workshops for financial literacy, communication, professional practices, and a host of other things that, in addition to their work experience, help them prepare for professional life and professional career paths. So we’re very proud of that. That is donor-funded; also, of course, the federal part is federally funded. So that’s Trojan Works.

Another thing that we’ve done is the Internship Expansion Program. We have a lot of paid internships that are available to our students, but we also know that there are organizations out there that can provide great experiential learning but for a variety of reasons aren’t able to provide a paid internship. So we have a program that works with those organizations to provide a stipend to students who want to intern at that organization or that business and still get paid even if the organization can’t provide that payment.

We also have a wide variety of programs that offer student success coaches, academic coaches, expanded mentoring programs. We’ve done a little bit of this prior to 2019, but a lot of that was cut or we disinvested, you might say, in some of those programs and we have reinvested and added more to all of that activity.

And the last one that I’ll highlight in this category is called Child Care Connections. We just got a federal grant for this, a CCAMPIS grant for about $600,000, and what this does is this allows us to work with students to find qualified child care. This is working with students who have small childeren so what it does is since we can’t actually provide a child care center on campus, we don’t have the means to do that right now, but this program allows us to work with students to essentially provide a voucher program. They can sign up for this program, and then we can work with them to find qualified child care in the community. In case you’re wondering what CCAMPIS stands for, let me see if I can remember this, I think it’s Child Care Access Means Parents In School. That’s what it’s all about is trying to keep those students with children in school in a viable way.

Next category I want to talk about is community connections. And this is kind of coming back to our internships and those kinds of experiences, but one of the things that we pride ourselves on being in the capital city is to take advantage of the opportunities and the resources that we have here in Little Rock and in the surrounding communities.

Most of our, well in fact, all of our pre-professional programs have some kind of field placement: internships, clinicals, teacher placement, and so forth. And we’re expanding those internship opportunities in the liberal arts field as I just described with our Internship Expansion Program. So these are all experiential learning opportunities that really transform the educational experience by helping students connect those dots to their career path. But in addition to those, we have other kinds of field prep partners as well that make up this sort of fabric of community connections.

So we have educational partners up here. We have other types of field prep partners who serve as clients in capstone courses and who also work with us in other kinds of experiential learning opportunities. These include government agencies like the Department of Corrections, Department of Children and Family Services; non-profits like Easter Seals and Heifer International; and local small businesses. These are all operating as educational partners by serving as clients or experiential learning partners with our students in our regular classes. There’s a long list of these types of partnerships too numerous to mention today, but you’ll see on the previous slide some of the logos here of the people that we’re working with.

Other educational partners involve some pretty significant projects that we have going on. 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock’s Construction Management program is proud to partner with Vilonia High School’s new K-12 Conversion Charter Pathways Academy in construction. So through our high school concurrent enrollment program, Vilonia construction students will be able to earn college credit in two stackable certificate programs that build towards an associate degree in Construction Science. We have students engaged in this program right now, and we expect to see some of the first graduates this spring.

Also on December 1 of just last year, 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock along with 糖心Vlog传媒 Pine Bluff, the Forge Institute, and Acxiom Corporation announced the Consortium for Cyber Innovation that will leverage shared resources to grow industry presence in cyber technologies in Arkansas through workforce education and applied research.

These are the kinds of things that we’re working on to enhance the learning experiences of our students but, more importantly, to create opportunities for them to connect with people in our community that are in the professions, the industries, the government agencies, the organizations that will be career paths for our students, and we’re very proud of those connections.

Another area that we’re working on in terms of enhancing the student experience is working on something we’re calling “the living and learning environment,” and we have several projects underway right now where we’re trying to enhance the physical environment that our students are living in and learning in. So we have a couple of these on tap. We’re working with industry and other donors to support this work.

We have, for instance, well, this is the Windgate Center so you know about the Art + Design Center that was funded by the Windgate Foundation. That has been a great partnership. Windgate has actually been supporting our art program for many years, and this building really has been the culmination of that, and with this building we were able to create exactly the kind of spaces and facilities that our students need to become professional artists. We often think of art as a liberal arts major that doesn’t have a career path, well, our art and design program does have career paths, and we emphasize that a lot.

Also we have worked with companies like Associated General Contractors and Clark Contractors to help build new facilities. So here, you’re seeing the Business Information Modeling Lab, and here, you’re seeing the Clark Project Management Lab.

We have had, in the last two years, six sponsored instructional spaces created for our students in these partnerships with our industry partners. We have over 22 advisory boards on campus that are filled with these community and industry partners that help us create these experiences, promote the living and learning environment for our students, and help us in any number of other ways to promote experiential learning for our students.

Some projects that are coming up that we’re working on right now is the Learning Commons. What we’ve done is we’ve taken the ground floor of Ottenheimer Library, and we are turning this into something called the Learning Commons. We are taking all of our student tutoring services, the writing center, the math center, the communications center. All of that. We’re bringing it into the library, bringing it into one place so that in the heart of the campus, students can come to the library and have a variety of learning support systems right there. If you have a chance to look at this before you leave today, Ottenheimer’s just to the west of us, to the west of this building, and it’s not 100% done yet, but it’s getting there. If you’d like to poke your head in and take a look, you’re welcome to go in there and look. It’s going to be a great facility. We’re very excited about that.

Another project that we have in the beginning stages is just outside of the Learning Commons — the Library Plaza — is to redevelop that into a completely new space for students and our employees that will serve as a physical part of the campus so that it will be aesthetically inviting. There will be a tree canopy, there will be tables and chairs, and a beautiful setting for students to congregate in and to enjoy as they come in and out of the Donaghey Center, as they come in and out of the library, and as they come in and out of the Starbucks which is right around the corner from that. And we think that this will also enhance the experience of our students. And we have secured private money, too, to pay for that.

We also, as you know, have been talking about a redevelopment project for the southside of the university which is the University Plaza property, which we own. We have had tenants in that space. We have also occupied the space ourselves. But we really think that this needs a complete redesign to make better use of it. We are anticipating launching a P3 project through the RFP process. Now, the image you see here is not the artist image of what we’re going to have. This image is actually from the 2005 master plan, a couple of my predecessors ago, and this was the vision for a southside entryway into the campus. And we still think that it can be a grand doorway, gateway into our university. It won’t look exactly like that, but it will be, I think, a dramatic improvement when we get that project fully underway.

So those are things we are doing in terms of improving the elements of access, improving the elements of student support.

I want to just add very quickly that we’re also in the process, I mean, we’re moving ahead, but we also realize that we have do some strategic planning to make sure that we stay on track with our fundamental institutional priorities. And you’ll see in this somewhat unlovely graphic here that I made myself on my computer so it’s not professional, but the idea what we did this year is we launched a strategic planning process that you know, and I know you always hear about people doing strategic plans and then they put them on the shelf and they think, “Okay we’re done with that. Our accreditors will be happy with that.”

We’re doing this a little bit differently. We’re talking about this as an integrated strategic planning process, and we’re going sort of in and out of those concentric circles so at the core we want our plan to reflect our role and scope, our mission, our values and all of that. And we’re going to come up with a five-year plan that identifies institutional goals and objectives, but meanwhile when we’re doing that, we’re also going to have what we call component plans. So we’re going to have a variety of other groups, and it won’t all happen at once, but it will happen over the course of the next few years, those component strategic plans like academic, the academic, the master plan, the enrollment management plan which we already have, and other plans that feed into that. Those will all be integrated with the institutional plan so that we can make sure that we stay focused on the things that we think are so important: access, support, student success, and the other areas of our role and scope which include research and community service. So we think that this is all going to come together and serve us very well, but I wanted you to know that we have this strategic planning effort in the works as well. We just launched it this year.

Finally, I want to leave you with a sense of why we believe it is so important to help students connect with the regional community and what this ultimately means to our students, to our local leaders, and to our professional partners in the Little Rock area. So right now, we’re going to show you a brief video, so please enjoy this video, and then when we come back, I’ll introduce you to a few students.

{video presentation TRT 5:33}

So now I’d like you to meet several of our students who have taken and are taking advantage of these connections, and so, I’ll let them say more about themselves. I’ll just tell you that we have Stephen Malec, who is a finance real estate and financial services major. He’s interning with Windstream, and he’ll start working for Windstream after graduation.

We have Turner Hudson, a mechanical engineering major who’s also in the Chancellor’s Leadership Corps, one of those student leadership programs I was talking about, and has interned with Cromwell Architects Engineers.

And then we also have Nikki Mullen who is a graduate student in systems engineering, and she’s interning with NuShores Biosciences.

I’ll start by inviting up the first individual, and that will be Stephen.

{Stephen Malec} Thank you, Chancellor Drale, and thank you to the Board. Thanks for being here today. It’s a pleasure to speak to you. My name is Stephen Malec, and I’m a senior Finance major, as Chancellor Drale mentioned, with concentrations of Real Estate Finance and Financial Services and Risk Management. When I first enrolled here at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, I was not only new to the university but to the State of Arkansas as well. So this is where my wife is from and where we ultimately decided to raise our family.

Pursuing an education and potential career opportunities as a nontraditional student in a place where I didn’t really know anyone initially felt like a large mountain to climb. However, the learning resources, outstanding faculty, flexibility, and great networking opportunities made available here have all been key contributors to making my experience a rewarding one.

Being a student here has made me feel more supported than I could have imagined. I found this is a place where teachers become mentors, and classroom assignments often expand well beyond the conventional realm. For example, within the real estate finance program, I was challenged to complete an extensive research assignment centered on the relevance of Little Rock as an inland port city.

In addition to this real world work, I’ve also had the opportunity to meet, network with, and heard industry experts who are land planners, architects, developers, and brokers in the real estate profession. This type of interaction is all part of what makes the student experience here extraordinary.

Additionally, I’ve had the opportunity to be involved with various organizations as a School of Business ambassador, vice president of the Epsilon Pi chapter of Beta Alpha Psi, and the vice president of the Accounting Society. Within these roles, I’ve experienced many great networking opportunities with various leaders in the Central Arkansas business community. The events organized by the Career Center, I believe, play a crucial role in helping students to connect to opportunities. I experienced this firsthand in the fall of 2020 when I attended an internship market event. As a result, I was a selected intern with Windstream’s Finance Leadership Program this past summer where I continue to work today.

The organizing of these types of events has led to the placement of many of my peers with leading organizations and has materialized for me into a full-time contract with Windstream, beginning in May. I believe the experience I have had as an intern has played a pivotal role in shaping my future and has been an exciting opportunity to put much of my educational experience into practice.

I’ve also learned greater insight as to what can potentially help me to add greater value within an organization and achieve future success. As an intern, I have discovered a greater sense of direction involving my selection of electives, a stronger appreciation for technical skills such as data analytics and a heightened interest for returning for a graduate degree.

Balancing the demands of full-time enrollment, family, and working part-time can be challenging. However, the flexibility made available by accommodations such as synchronous hybrid class options and virtual networking events help make the balance more manageable. In my view, being able to actively learn and continually work is perhaps the most mutually beneficial relationship a student can experience. I believe internship opportunities should be a center focus for college students everywhere much like they are here at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock.

Overall, my experience has surpassed my expectations, and I am hopeful for an exciting and rewarding career in this great state of Arkansas. I appreciate being able to speak with you today and all your leadership efforts to further elevate the student experience and help the student body achieve greater success both in and out of the classroom.
Thank you.

{Turner Hudson} Good morning! I just want to start off and say thank you for letting us speak to you today. I know you all have very important busy schedules, so it means a lot for students like us to come up and be able to share some of our experiences that we’ve had here at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock.

So like Chancellor Drale said, I am Turner Hudson, and I am a senior in the College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, studying mechanical engineering, hopefully graduating this May, fingers crossed.

I’m also not only a member of the Chancellor’s Leadership Corps, but I’m also a mentor in that, so I’m able to give back to the students as they come in to campus and show them where to be involved.

Along with that, I’m also the chief of staff for the Student Government Association, former IFC president, as well as the member of the Delta Chi fraternity here on campus, so if you can’t tell, I like to be involved. I like to be in the middle of things.

I’ve loved all of my experiences here at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock and wouldn’t trade them for anything. So this past summer, I had the great pleasure of being able to intern at Cromwell Architects Engineers. At Cromwell, I worked very closely with a lot of other mechanical engineers that have worked in the HVAC design industry for many, many years and learned a lot of tricks of the trade, as they’ll say, along with just being able to learn what kind of software and stuff that they do.

During the first two weeks of working there, it actually felt like I learned more in those two weeks than I had the entire two years prior in school just because of how much I was being able to do things hands-on and work with them, so it was a lot of fun.

And being able to actually use some of that information that I’ve learned excited me because it showed me a little bit of what I was working toward is actually important and actually useful and actually beneficial for me. During that time I got to work on designing some HVAC systems, some piping systems for some different buildings around Little Rock.

One thing I always like to tell people because it kind of cracks them up is the 糖心Vlog传媒MS surgical annex was designed by Cromwell, and I got to help with some of the plumbing. So if you go on the third floor of the 糖心Vlog传媒MS surgical annex and use the bathroom, I designed that. Unless it doesn’t work in which case I didn’t do it. But yes, it was a lot of fun being able to do thing like that. I went out a lot of time with them and helped them scan building and get different architectural scans that they do and see how they do that part of it as well.

So, all in all, it was a great experience and even if I’m not able to work at Cromwell in the future, I hope to be able to work in some sort of architectural firm so it kind of helped me decide what path I would like to take whenever I do graduate.

So, again thank you for your time, for letting me speak today, and thank you for listening. Thank you.

{Nikki Mullen} Hello, everybody! My name is Nikki Mullen, and I am a mechanical and material systems engineer PhD student. I actually graduated from 糖心Vlog传媒LR in 2020 for my mechanical systems degree, and during that time I was able to do an internship program.

So the engineering department has this really nice program that for three credit hours you can partner with a company and relay what you’ve learned and make sure everything worked out, right? So what I got to do was I got to intern at NuShores Biosciences, which is actually a startup company that started here at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock at the Center for Integrative Nanotechnology Sciences. Dr. Biris had come up with the bone scaffold that I’m not sure if any of you guys are aware of… yes? Awesome.

So we started up this startup company at 糖心Vlog传媒MS, and it has now progressed to their own facilities out in West Little Rock. And so when I first started, I was actually the second employee to start at NuShores Biosciences. And the CEO Sharon Ballard had a custom curriculum set up for interns and so with this internship, it’s a very strict eight-week curriculum where they give you this project. You are the head of the project. You also have your mentor, but at the end of this eight weeks you present, and you relay all of your work. Well, my work was actually to come up and compile all the requirements for FDA approval. Now, that’s not a little project, that’s a big boy and remember, I am a junior in college. So to echo what one of my other students said, in that two years that I had been in school, it was nothing compared to those eight weeks at this industry, so I learned so I learned a lot during my degree.

Something unique about 糖心Vlog传媒LR was that in our classes, we would also have these projects. So, for example, one of my electives was mechatronics. In mechatronics, we were assigned to build a dancing robot, and with this dancing robot we, actually, each group focused on one side of the wheel and with this, we had several different backgrounds: electrical, mechanical, gear ratios, the motor, and all these different things, and we got to come together as a group.. electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, and work on this project very similar to what happens in industry.

And so when I got into industry, I got to see this as well, how the company works on a project as a group and how things slowly come together from the very beginning all the way up to its fruition, and I don’t think my degree would have been nearly as impactful if I did not have this internship. Because originally, I did not plan on staying in Arkansas. I wanted to work at a research company to develop medical devices, and without this, I would not have known that we had a medical device company here in Central Arkansas.

And to relate that even more, one of the other students in my degree plan, Nigel Kelly, he also needed a couple of extra credit hours, and I said, “Hey, why not internship at NuShores Biosciences? It’s a lot of work; it’s very hard, but I feel like you’re going to learn a lot.” And so he did. His original dream and goal was to work for NASA, aerospace industry. When he saw how much work went into designing a concept and working on a project like that just in the medical industry, it completely changed his mind. He now loves NuShores as a full-time student, and he is staying in Arkansas as a result. That wasn’t the original case, and I know this situation with several other people hat I’ve talked to.

By getting to work in these companies and getting to see what’s happening on that surface level, you develop a bond with that company, and you’re able to say, “Hey, I really like what I’m doing,” or “This probably isn’t for me.” Because a lot of students, they’re coming right out of high school; we don’t know what we want you know? It’s brand new. There’s too many options and possibilities. So by actually working with a company and getting to see what you would be doing everyday, it kind of solidifies what your dreams are or what your thought for your career path is. And there are so many different industries around here, you know. Molex, Caterpillar, these are just engineering groups, but to get these guys to work with the university and say “Hey, let me show you what we need and let me contribute back,” it really does keep us in Arkansas, and it just gives us a great opportunity to see what is actually happening out in industry.

So just to relay back, thank you guys so much for letting us talk. I am very grateful to have this opportunity and thank you very much. Thank you.

{Chancellor Drale} I want to thank Stephen, Turner, and Nikki. Those were great presentations. That concludes my campus report, but we will be happy to take any questions, and you can also ask any questions you might have of our students that are here with us today. Thank you all.

The post 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Presentation | U of A Board of Trustees January Meeting appeared first on Office of the Chancellor.

Let me start by naming the elephant in the room. Obviously, our enrollment is not where we want it to be. I know that some of you are worried about what that might mean for this year, so let me put your mind at ease. The headcount decline is not that far off from what we predicted based on enrollment trend analysis; and that analysis was done last spring before we knew that there would be a delta surge. The good news is that we budgeted for a decline. We projected a 6.4% decline and we have a 7.9% decline not including the Law School and concurrent which are both up. Our SSCHs have declined a little more than that because we have more part-time students this fall than we did last year. The revenue shortfall is likely to be around $2.7 million. We have more than enough federal CARES funds to cover this shortfall and that is precisely what the funds are for. Therefore, I do not anticipate any additional cuts to the FY22 budget.

Another bit of good news is that our residence halls are filled at nearly the same level as last fall, so we shouldn鈥檛 see a decline in housing revenue this year. Our new student enrollment (both freshman and transfers) is down this year, but only by a few percentage points, so it鈥檚 down less than projected and that may be evidence that we are making progress on the enrollment pipeline, which will have lasting positive effects on future enrollment. Our graduate enrollment is up by 1.6%, which is very good news.

As we think about how to address the enrollment challenges at this institution, it might be tempting to look for a place to lay the blame. While we do need to continue to analyze the data and look for opportunities for improvement, some variables may be beyond our control. We don鈥檛 yet know the full impact of environmental conditions and we need a little more time to figure that out. So I鈥檓 going to suggest that we strenuously resist the lure of finger-pointing because it simply is not productive. The energy we expend in arguing about who should be blamed could be better spent building up our assets.

I believe the best use of our energies going forward is in planning for the future with intentionality and positivity. This is the very moment we should be focused on strategic planning because this is the very moment we need to be focused on rebuilding 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock into the university we want it to be, and that it can be.

Think about the university as a habitat. We can live in this habitat in one of two ways. We can be passive and wait to see what comes up and hope that it will sustain us and serve everyone鈥檚 needs. Or we can be proactive in planning our community and plant a variety of crops that are sustainable, appropriate to the environment, and fully nourishing. That doesn鈥檛 mean we can鈥檛 experiment and try new things, but we need to make sure that we have the basic needs covered and that we are growing things that do well in this habitat.

I want to spend a few minutes talking about my vision for integrated strategic planning going forward and how it will help us focus on rebuilding our campus community. You may recall at the spring assembly I announced that we will be developing a new institutional strategic plan this year in preparation for our midterm HLC review in 2024. [share graphic]

I鈥檓 going to start by sharing with you a draft of what I鈥檓 calling the integrated strategic planning framework. In this framework, all of our planning activities are part of the same integrated framework that is anchored by our mission, role and scope, values and vision.

Everything we plan should be based on the essence of who we are as an institution. Our role and scope as a comprehensive metropolitan research university determines our institutional priorities, which I鈥檝e shared with you on several occasions. From there we develop an institutional strategic plan that will integrate with all other planning. It will be time-bound, probably five years, and will have around five institutional level objectives with specific measurable and achievable goals that we intend to accomplish in five years. As we move out to the outer ring, you鈥檒l see what we are calling component plans. This is not necessarily a comprehensive list and they certainly won鈥檛 all happen at once, but this is where our more detailed plans emerge to specify component area objectives, goals, and strategies.

So, here鈥檚 an example. Let鈥檚 say one of our institutional-level objectives is to improve the affordability of a degree from 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. That speaks to our institutional priority of student access to higher education. A goal tied to that objective might be to lower the net price of attendance. Net price is essentially the sticker price of attending college minus the average discount. You might have read in the paper several weeks ago that we鈥檝e been successful in lowering our net price by 11%. But let鈥檚 say our goal is to reduce our net price by another 15% in five years. That is specific and measurable. But instead of trying to list all of the strategies in all of the various areas that would be contributing to that goal, we would ask the component area planners to incorporate this goal into their own goals. Not every area would necessarily have a role in this, but it would likely be more than one area. Advancement would be setting goals to bring in more endowed scholarships, student affairs would be working in several capacities to get more students connected to more sources of financial support, and the student retention office would be working to reach more students with financial risk factors to direct them to appropriate sources.

Of all the component areas, academic planning is going to be a key component of our rebuilding efforts. Much of what we decide in other areas depends on what we envision for our academic future. Coming back to the habitat metaphor, we need to be intentional, we need to figure out what to grow and how we need to cultivate essential crops. Those decisions will impact how we develop our physical plant master plan, our research plan, our outreach plans, our marketing plan, and others. For that reason, I have asked the Provost to begin this conversation with academic groups simultaneously with the institutional-level strategic planning process.

As important as our planning efforts are in setting a vision and keeping us focused, we can鈥檛 wait until all the planning is done to take action. We need to use what we know now about our role and scope and our current set of circumstances to start rebuilding now. For instance, we know that we need to enhance student life on campus by supporting student organizations and services that have experienced disinvestment in recent years. We also need to address the physical state of the campus, which has also experienced deferred maintenance and disinvestment. These elements can impact our enrollment need immediate attention.

Here are a few of the things we are working on. Almost all of it is supported by private funds.

• First, In the area of fundraising in general we have set a goal of raising $20 million this year. At two and half months into the fiscal year, we are already nearly half the way there. This is an indication that we have done a good job in building good will in the community and we have been diligent in building partnerships with entities that have a stake in the success of our students and our institution. The people we鈥檙e talking to care deeply about the future of 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock.
• We鈥檙e using mostly privately raised funds to reinvest in student services that enhance the student life experience on our campus鈥攊ncluding student organizations, student programs like the CLC, student activities, mentoring, gathering spaces like the Multicultural Center, etc.
• We have created 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock鈥檚 first true Career Center that will not only provide career services to our students, but will work with the campus to expand internship opportunities. This year we have a pilot program to provide student stipends for otherwise unpaid internships. This allows us to expand opportunities in the arts and humanities and in public service organizations that might not be in a position to offer paid internships.
• You already know about our retention initiatives operation and the CARE team that works with at-risk students. We will see an expansion of services in that area this year because the endowment that supports it has grown.
• After several years of cutbacks and deferred maintenance, we are using a combination of private funds, year-end savings, and CARES funds to address critical maintenance issues on campus as well as facility upgrades and beautification projects; all of these will directly impact the student and employee experience on our campus:
  • Very thankful to the volunteers who have helped improve our grounds in time for students to return to campus, but we know that we need a more sustainable solution. Will be hiring a company to help our grounds crews clean up and enhance our campus grounds from top to bottom. We will likely seek an annual contract to keep it up. We know that first impressions are critical to families and prospective students visiting our campus, so this has to be a priority.
  • We are building a new Learning Commons in the Ottenhiemer Library on the first floor that will house many of our academic student support services and will be a terrific environment for individual or group study; across the library plaza you will notice that SU-B is getting a make-over in preparation for TRIO and other student services to move in. I want to say thank you to the Provost for spearheading these efforts.
  • We are developing more and more partnerships with local industry to upgrade our instructional spaces. This morning I had the pleasure of dedicating the new Clark Project Management Lab in ETAS for Construction Management. This is one of many of these types of investments we have secured, and more are on the way
  • We have secured private funds to redesign the Library plaza itself into a more user-friendly environment that will have seating, shade, and a lot less brick. We are working on funding to expand that redesign all the way up and down the main campus walkway. Stay tuned, more on that later. But by next semester, you should see quite a few dramatic improvements in our living and learning environment.
  • The work continues in preparation for a complete redevelopment of the Plaza shopping center area on the south end of campus. This will be a P3 project with private investment, but it will transform that part of our campus and give us a mixed-use environment to help us meet the needs of the university, our students, and the community we share in the University District.

There are a lot of other things I could list for you, but I鈥檒l stop there and conclude my remarks by saying that we have the capacity to build the university of the future with intentionality and purpose. Focusing our efforts on this important task will be the best long-term strategy for bringing in more students and promoting their success than just about anything else we might consider. I hope you will join me in rebuilding our habitat.

The post University Assembly – Chancellor’s Report appeared first on Office of the Chancellor.

The last time I presented a campus report to you was in November of 2019. A lot has happened
since then.
I鈥檒l provide a brief recap of the last 15 months as context, but I鈥檒l spend the larger balance of my
time talking about our institutional priorities as we move forward.

Looking Back

In the year 2020, 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock faced at least five major challenges, any one of which easily
could have consumed 100% of our attention and energies. At the beginning of the 2019-2020
academic year, we were preparing for our institutional accreditation visit in February, while at
the same time responding to a 9% decline in enrollment and the budget shortfall that it
produced. We started making cuts in October, just after I became Chancellor, but based on the
net position loss that we had already carried over from the previous fiscal year, I knew that we
would have to seek retrenchment to make any real progress. So, in January, we began the
process of academic planning and submitted a retrenchment and restructuring proposal in May
that would consolidate our academic colleges and eliminate or downsize some academic
programs. At the same time, we were in the first cohort of the Workday ERP transition. Even
though we were excited about the potential of Workday, the process of preparation and
implementation was, and continues to be all-consuming for critical members of our leadership
team.

In March, as everyone knows, our world changed dramatically with the COVID-19 pandemic.
We immediately assembled a Coronavirus Emergency Response Team (CERT) to help us with
our plans to close the campus. Simultaneously, we assembled an academic team to help faculty
move all classes online, which we did by spring break. Even more complex were our
preparations in May and June to begin reopening the campus and to prepare for a fall semester
like no other. The management of COVID-related accommodations continues to be a significant
burden for all of us.

On May 25, George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis and the racial
justice movement became intensely urgent across the country and on college campuses like
ours. 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock has had a diverse student body for many years and has celebrated that
diversity in a number of ways; but we were not immune to issues of inequity and intolerance. It
became clear that we needed to do more. Over the summer I began to meet with students, faculty, and staff of color one-on-one and in small groups. I asked them to tell me what they
believed our campus priorities should be with respect to race and ethnicity. By July I was
holding campus-wide open forums for the same purpose and continued to do so through the
fall semester. Based on the input from these meetings, we put in place a number of initiatives
to raise awareness, promote conversation, and examine our practices for unintended
consequences. We have much more work to do on this front, but we know what is needed.

Throughout the year we faced all of these challenges with determination and unprecedented
levels of collaboration and collegiality no matter how exhausted we were. That鈥檚 not to say
there weren鈥檛 disagreements, but we rose above all of that to get the job done and I am very,
very proud of the work of our campus community at all levels. From the facilities staff that
disinfected our classrooms every day to the Workday team working long hours without
vacation for months on end, to our faculty and staff that worked with our students to keep
them going in the face of isolation and discouragement. Everyone had an important role to play
and did so with dedication and fortitude.

Looking Ahead at Our Institutional Priorities

This last October, I delivered to my campus a state of the university address. One of the things
that I shared with them is that times of crisis are an opportunity to reflect on what is truly
important鈥攖o sort out the transitory from the eternal, and to focus on what is lasting. I called
upon our campus community to remember our core mission and focus on our institutional
priorities in all that we do. For the last 15 months, I鈥檝e been working to instill this message in all
of our units and operations. I鈥檇 like to turn to those priorities now.

In accordance with our role and scope as defined by this Board, 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock identifies four
institutional priorities that fulfill our purpose as an institution. In this slide, you will see a
version of our role and scope narrative that condenses it into a concise statement of purpose. I
won鈥檛 take the time to read it to you, but will point out that it highlights our obligation to serve
a diverse student body, to offer degrees that meet the demand for professional and advanced
level preparation in areas of critical need, and to apply our expertise and resources to public
concerns and community wellbeing.

In the priorities graphic shown on the next slide, you will see that the four priorities are all
really part of one whole because they are symbiotic and not mutually exclusive. Below the
priorities, you鈥檒l see a box labeled 鈥淔oundations and Strategic Planning鈥�. These are the methods
and strategies we use to work on these priorities. Everything we do from enrollment and
budget management to academic planning, to fundraising has to be explicitly connected to one
or more of these four priorities.

After I quickly describe these priorities, I鈥檒l outline the work we鈥檝e done in each area.
Based on our fundamental purpose to provide educational opportunity to a wide variety of
students, priority number one is enhancing access to higher education and enhancing student success once we get students enrolled. We enhance access through broadening financial
assistance, better outreach across different populations, and by creating a more welcoming and
inclusive learning environment. We enhance student success by ensuring the high quality of our
instruction, and by building a sustainable student support infrastructure that is timely,
responsive, and effective.

Based on our obligation to provide educational programs that fulfill our role as a
comprehensive institution and that meet the needs of our community and state, priority
number two is to develop, maintain, and strengthen the right mix of liberal arts and pre-
professional undergraduate and graduate programs that will prepare our students for viable
career paths or career enhancements. We do this by maintaining a solid liberal arts core as the
basis of our general education and by making sure that our academic programs have demand,
both from prospective students and prospective employers. Whether it鈥檚 a liberal arts program
or a pre-professional program, we must be able to demonstrate the value of the credentials we
offer.

Based on our role as an urban research 2 institution that is dedicated to addressing public
concerns, priority number three is to develop, maintain, and strengthen a research and
creative work portfolio appropriate to our Carnegie status and one that applies our talent and
expertise to real life issues. We do this by supporting grants and contracts through our
sponsored research office, but also by providing opportunities for professional development,
incentives for pilot projects, and alternative funding sources for both sponsored and
unsponsored research.

And finally, based on our public service mission, priority number four is to promote community
engagement through our educational programs, our research and public service programs, and
through Trojan Athletics. By maintaining focus on this aspect of our role and scope, 糖心Vlog传媒 Little
Rock ensures that we maintain a strong connection to our community through a variety of
services and partnerships.

What Have We Done So Far?

So what have we done so far to advance our priorities?

Priority 1

Let me start with educational access and student success? One of the things I realized early on
is that nearly all of our institutional and private scholarships were exclusively merit-based and
many were designated for continuing students. These are important and valuable assets, but
they didn鈥檛 fully address the needs of our diverse, often first-generation incoming students. So,
for the last 15 months we鈥檝e put an emphasis on raising funds for need-based scholarships and
as you may recall, we secured a large anonymous donation last year addressing this priority.
We have also taken the opportunity to overhaul our recruitment, admissions, and financial aid
infrastructure to become more efficient, more effective, more data-driven than ever before.

We are now getting students admitted and 鈥渟cholarshipped鈥� in a day when it used to take us
weeks or months. We are using data more than ever to fine tune our recruitment efforts and
we put into place a strategic enrollment management plan with specific goals and
responsibilities.

In the area of student success, we made significant investments, mostly with private funds
raised for this purpose. We have created a fully endowed Office of Student Retention that
provides proactive support for students in the form of academic coaching, mentoring, crisis
intervention, and life-skills training. We have created what we call a Care Team with licensed
social workers and other support specialists that can assist students with a wide range of
personal challenges that might otherwise derail them in their pursuit of a college degree.

In the division of Student Affairs, we had gone through several years of bleeding out our student
experience programs and when I became chancellor, I realized that we needed to do something
about that. One of the things we heard from our students of color over the summer is that they
didn鈥檛 feel that they had the support for their organizations and activities that they once had.
So, once again, mostly with private funds raised for this purpose, we are reinvesting in this area.
This includes support for the Chancellor鈥檚 Leadership Core and a newly reconstituted
Multicultural Center. I don鈥檛 know if there is a causal relationship here, but I鈥檓 happy to report
that our freshman retention rate has gone up 10 percentage points from (64% to 74%).

Priority 2

Much of our efforts for the second priority were tied to the comprehensive academic planning
process we undertook in the last fiscal year. Academic planning is really a continuous process of
review and we had started on this several years earlier as we prepared for our HLC
accreditation visit. So, we knew a fair amount about the internal metrics of our programs, but
we didn鈥檛 know enough about the external perceptions of them. At the beginning of 2020, we
hosted focus groups of business and community leaders to find out what they knew about us
and whether or not we were meeting their needs. What we discovered is what you might
expect; some programs were well known and appreciated; some were not known or were not
seen as meeting needs. We incorporated that information into our academic planning process
and ultimately to our retrenchment proposal.

In alignment with our institutional role and scope, we are placing a renewed emphasis on
career path assistance. We are asking all of our academic units to be more explicit about how
the activities their students are doing in the classroom connect to what they will be doing after
they graduate. Whether it is core skills like critical thinking and effective communication or
disciplinary experiences in the majors, our students need to understand how these academic
experiences give them an advantage in their post-graduation endeavors. To that end, we are
redirecting our marketing efforts to focus on programs, student experiences, and career
potential, and we are also launching a new Career Center later this spring. We continue to
collaborate with business, industry, government, and community partners to develop high
quality programs and to provide unique applied experiences.

Another key ingredient to ensuring that our academic programs are effective is professional
development for faculty members. We have long supported our faculty-led Academy for
Teaching and Learning Excellence. In recent years we have been able to expand their capacity
and we now have an endowment for that unit. We are also supporting innovative training
opportunities such as the Mobile Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching that promotes
student-centered teaching practices.

Priority 3

For an institution of higher education, research can sometimes be a tough sell to people who
see it as something isolated from, or extraneous to, the core mission of educating students. So,
one of the first orders of business for me was to develop a better way of explaining what this
part of our mission is for and why it鈥檚 important. Research is not just something that professors
like to do or that we require as a rite of passage into tenure. For universities like ours, research
is a way to engage our communities to develop new products, solve urgent problems, and
contribute to the overall health and wellbeing of our society. But as important as that is, it is
not the only benefit. If you were to walk into one of our research centers or accompany one of
our faculty members in their field work, you would see something that might surprise
you鈥攕tudents. Lots of them, both undergraduate and graduate working alongside their
mentors on projects that give them invaluable experience in their fields and a leg up when they
graduate.

The young man that you see in this slide is Hunter Dunne, he came to our Nanotechnology
Center to participate in a science fair when he was still in high school at ASMSA. He
subsequently enrolled in our Engineering program and was able to work in our nanotechnology
lab throughout his undergraduate studies. Hunter now has a masters degree and is pursuing a
career in the space industry.

We continue to promote student involvement in research through our signature experience
program and other research mentoring programs as a way of enhancing their education. Much
of this can be supported through research grants, but not all of it. There are ongoing costs and
investments that are needed to support this work. Therefore, I have made this a fundraising
goal as well as a grant-making goal. And we are developing marketing and outreach campaigns
to make the value proposition of research clear to our community.

Priority 4

Much like research, it is important that everyone understand that community engagement is
not just something that鈥檚 nice to have鈥攊t is a critical component of how we educate our
students. And this is where you really begin to see the blending of all four priorities. We build
community engagement in all that we do. Our academic programs work with community
partners who serve as clients for student projects, as internship and clinical placement
providers, as sources of mentorship, and as investors in our educational infrastructure. Our
research and creative work projects either directly engage community members in problem-
solving and cultural enrichment, or indirectly by sharing the results through public lectures, concerts, and workshops. Our public service units such as our public radio stations and Children
International engage our community constituents very directly and also provide internship
opportunities for our students that help keep them engaged and successful.

Our Trojan Athletics program is a model of increasing educational access and enhancing
student success. Athletic scholarships give many students an opportunity to attend college they
might not have otherwise, and the mentoring and academic support they get as part of their
program helps them to be very successful students, second only to our honors students in the
Donaghey Scholars Honors Program in average GPA. At the same time, Trojan Athletics is the primary
point of contact for many of our local community members and serves as an important
reflection of our identity.

One project that I鈥檓 very excited about and that I think is a good example of how we can utilize
community engagement to benefit 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, the University District community, and the
City of Little rock is the University Plaza redevelopment project. We are at the beginning of this
effort, but we have assembled committees made up of campus and community partners who
are exploring the possibilities of this development. They will canvas the needs and wishes of
students, neighbors, faculty, and other constituents to help us formulate a new vision for this
important gateway into our campus. We will keep you posted on our progress as we prepare to
release an RFP later this spring.

Conclusion

To wrap up my presentation this morning, we will share a brief video that illustrates how these
four institutional priorities come together to serve our students and our community. I would
also like to conclude by saying that in spite of our considerable challenges this past year, we
have not lost sight of what is important and eternal. And although we still have much work to
do, I believe the path forward is clear.

As always, we appreciate your support and encouragement on this journey.

The post Presentation to the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas appeared first on Office of the Chancellor.

As I was preparing my remarks for today, I thought that a good alternative title to State of the University Address would be 鈥淟ove in the Time of COVID-19鈥�. Much like the characters in the Garcia Marquez novel, we now have the opportunity to reflect on what is truly important鈥攖o sort out the transitory from the eternal, and to focus on what is lasting. I would submit to you that the singular lasting value that we must hold dear is the transformational value of education. As an institution, we are called upon to find a path to sustainability so that value is not lost to our community and the students we serve.

Corollary values that we must also champion as a responsible member of our community are the values of good citizenship and environmental harmony. We must help promote the strength and health of central Arkansas through our educational, research, and public service programs, and that includes supporting our underserved populations and championing racial equality. We must also strive to create a clean and sustainable urban environment, finding ways to integrate form and function with our natural resources.

I believe that 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock and its constituents are best served when we strengthen our institutional focus and build our infrastructure and planning activities around that focus. So let鈥檚 start by taking a look at where we fit in Arkansas鈥檚 educational landscape鈥攐therwise known as our role and scope.

If you look at our role and scope statements approved by ADHE and our Board of Trustees, they describe, over several paragraphs, what our purpose is among the various higher education institutions. I鈥檝e taken the liberty of writing an abbreviated version in a single paragraph as a means to sharpen our focus as we go forward:

糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock is a comprehensive metropolitan university that serves a diverse student body and assumes a special role in addressing the needs of central Arkansas in its academic, research, and public service programs. While maintaining a strong liberal arts core education, 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock offers undergraduate and graduate degrees that meet the demand for professional and advanced level preparation in areas of critical need for local, state, and regional development. 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock is committed to a research and public service portfolio that applies its expertise and resources to public concerns and community wellbeing. Partnerships play a key role in enabling the university to extend its reach and increase its effectiveness. [Adapted from the 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Role and Scope Statement of the 糖心Vlog传媒 Board of Trustees]

From this statement of purpose, we can readily identify our most appropriate institutional priorities. I鈥檝e mentioned these priorities in previous statements, but I want to reiterate them here.

Based on our fundamental purpose to provide educational opportunity to a wide variety of mostly urban students, priority number one is enhancing access to higher education and enhancing student success. We enhance access through financial assistance, better outreach across different populations, and by creating a more welcoming and inclusive learning environment where our employment profile reflects the diversity of our community. We enhance student success by ensuring the high quality of our instruction, and by building a sustainable student support infrastructure that is timely, responsive, and effective.

Based on our obligation to provide educational programs that fulfill our role as a comprehensive institution and that meet the needs of our community and state, priority number two is to develop, maintain, and strengthen the right mix of liberal arts and pre- professional undergraduate and graduate programs that will prepare our students for viable career paths or career enhancements. We do this by maintaining a solid liberal arts core as the basis of our general education and by making sure that our academic programs have demand, both from prospective students and prospective employers. Whether it is a liberal arts program or a pre-professional program, we must be able to demonstrate the value of the credentials we offer.

Based on our role as an urban research 2 institution that is dedicated to addressing public concerns, priority number three is to develop, maintain, and strengthen a research and creative work portfolio appropriate to our Carnegie status and one that applies our talent and expertise to real life issues. We do this by supporting grants and contracts through our sponsored research office, but also by providing opportunities for professional development, incentives for pilot projects, and alternative funding sources for unsponsored research.

And finally, based on our public service mission, priority number four is to promote community engagement through our educational programs, our research and public service projects and programs, and through Trojan Athletics. By maintaining focus on this aspect of our role and scope, 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock ensures that we maintain a strong connection to our community and that the value of having an institution like 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock in Central Arkansas is readily apparent to all.

Now, some of you might be asking yourselves, what about the budget and resources? What about enrollment? Aren鈥檛 these important institutional priorities as well? I would argue that these objectives are very important, but they are a means to an end, not the end in itself. Yes, increasing enrollment is a vital institutional objective, but not because a larger enrollment by itself is a social good, but because it represents increased educational opportunity and attainment, and those things are social goods. Larger enrollment also represents an increase in resources. That increase in resources is not the social good, but what it makes possible鈥攕tudent success, stronger programs, professional development, more community partnerships鈥攖hose things are social goods that are part of our mission and our role and scope. So yes, balancing the budget, increasing enrollment, securing additional resources鈥攁ll of those are necessary and important because they make it possible for us to fulfill our purpose as an institution of higher education.

Our commitment to more eternal values, helps us bring everything else we do into sharper focus. As we move forward, our assessment, our recruitment, our planning, our budgeting, our fundraising, will all be shaped by our institutional priorities. We will build up our student support infrastructure and we will do it with intentionality, knowing who our students are and what challenges they face. We will strengthen support for faculty and staff so that you have the means to teach well, create well, and engage your community with confidence. We will build up our strong programs and develop less strong programs that are in high need. We will build our capacity and reputation for meaningful research, creative activity, and public service. And we will do all of this with an eye towards sustainability so that future generations can concentrate on their opportunities without having to worry about funding for the bare necessities of fulfilling our mission.

Let me now turn to the state of our university as I see it.

The external conditions that we were facing a year ago, and indeed for several years now, haven鈥檛 changed considerably. We are still looking at a national demographic decline in college- age students. Fortunately for us, we are not wholly dependent on the traditional market, so we have opportunities to expand non-traditional enrollment in the coming years. We are still looking at flat State funding, at best, for higher education and COVID-19 has lowered that funding level for this year at least. This puts greater emphasis on increasing revenue from other sources, and a continuing emphasis on lowering costs. We are still seeing the effects of a cultural shift on the value of higher education. This year, 51% of our applicants chose to go nowhere for college. While some of that is undoubtedly COVID-related, we were seeing that trend already emerging last year. This highlights the importance of helping students and their families connect the dots between what they will do in college and where that will take them after graduating. We can鈥檛 assume they see the same value proposition that we do. Arkansas continues to have one of the highest poverty rates in the nation and we have to understand the full impact of that fact on educational attainment and do what we can to mitigate it. It also means that we have to get involved earlier in the process and help our community lift up those with the most need. The emergence, this year, of a global pandemic, has made life harder for all of us, but in a real sense, in mainly exacerbates conditions we were already dealing with, and will continue to face.

Internally, the conditions we faced a year ago, and in the years leading up to that point, have changed in very substantial ways.

In the two years leading up to our HLC accreditation review, we developed an institutional understanding of the importance of strategic planning and of tying that planning to institutional priorities. By the time of our visit last February, we had begun building the infrastructure to do this planning, in particular, by creating the Institutional Effectiveness Committee, but we still struggled with our focus and in identifying our institutional priorities. For many years, our institutional priority was largely defined as increasing enrollment. But for reasons that I have already described, this inverted the equation so that it was difficult for us to articulate our true institutional priorities as defined by our role and scope. An institutional priority based on a means to an end, meant that we really didn鈥檛 know or agree on those ends and that translated to our inability articulate those ends to others. It also meant that we focused too narrowly on a single means, namely recruitment, to accomplish anything we might have wanted to do. Budget cuts were across the board and indiscriminate. Until last year, we did not consider other means of balancing the budget. We have now applied structural reorganization in both academic and non-academic units to reduce administrative costs, and have used academic planning retrenchment to right-size our academic enterprise. These were much, much more difficult strategies than cutting across the board, but ultimately more strategic and less damaging overall.

I submit to you that we are now properly focused on our institutional priorities. We will continue to discuss and debate the best methods and the right mix, but we know that educational access and student success is our primary goal. We know that serving the needs of our community and state is also a primary goal. And we know that the means to these goals involve responsible resource management and strategic, data-informed decision-making.

Another internal condition that has changed includes the complete transformation of our recruitment, admissions, and financial aid operations. Since starting his new job a year ago summer, Vice Chancellor Cody Decker and his team have increased their effectiveness and reduced time to admission and scholarship from several months to just about 24 hours. We had record increases in new student applications, admissions, and scholarship applications. We still have work to do in the onboarding handoff between student and academic affairs, but the state of this operation is considerably improved. Vice Chancellor Decker will share with you more details on enrollment later in this program. We also responded to the IEC top recommendation to develop a comprehensive enrollment management plan, which we did last December and which now guides our recruitment and retention efforts. I was able to use that plan as a basis for acquiring external funding for both recruitment and retention for this year.

As you all know, the internal condition that was most pressing when I became Chancellor last September, was the rapidly growing loss in net position. I am pleased to report that we are making good progress on rectifying this problem. At the start of fiscal year 20, we had a net position loss of around $11 million. Half of that was carried over from the previous year and half was generated by a 9% decline in enrollment when we had only budgeted for a 1% decline.

Then, with COVID-19 related losses and costs, we added another $6 million to that bringing the total to more like $17 million. Then, in planning for 10.5% FY21 enrollment decline, we added another $6 million to that potential loss. So, if we had done nothing at all and had sustained all of the losses we planned for, we would have been looking at a net position loss of around $23 million for this year. Happily, it didn鈥檛 turn out that way. Through 3 rounds of general budget cuts, restructuring, retrenchment, spending restrictions, a good year in fund-raising, and by beating our SSCH projection by over 5%–when all the dust settles, we should be looking at a potential net position loss of only $6.5 million. Our goal, obviously is to get that to zero, but we鈥檙e moving in the right direction.

Some of you may have heard that we ended fiscal year 20 with a significant positive balance. That is true, so let me explain. The positive balance is based on our actual expenditures compared to our actual revenue. We did a very good job of spending less than we made and saving the difference in our reserves. A lot of that was due to the fact that we implemented a spending reduction when COVID hit and the State decreased our appropriations and then gave it back to us at the end of the year. We also had quite a few open positions at various times during the year and held off on filling them which gave us a lot of salary savings. However, it is important to understand, that those positions and those expenditures were all still in the budget and had we spent everything that was budgeted last year, we would have not only spent more than we brought in, but would have had to spend down our reserves by at least the $11 million loss we started with. The $6.5 million net position loss I am telling you we have now is based on our budgeted expenditures for this year. If we spend everything that is in our fiscal year 21 budget, and our revenue projections do not change, we will have to draw that $6.5 million out of our reserves to cover the expenses. We virtually never spend more than is budgeted (which keep in mind is not the same as revenue) and usually end the year under budget, so I am confident that we will not need to draw the full amount from reserves especially with COVID depressing travel and event expenditures. For fiscal year 22, our goal will be to make additional reductions to our budget and increases to revenue to eventually get to a net zero change position. We can accomplish this in part by budgeting more closely to our actual expenditures. We currently have over $60 million in unrestricted reserves; so we鈥檙e going to be OK even if we have to draw on reserves for a few years.

Let me conclude my remarks by highlighting some other changes we have made and outlining our next steps.

sing funds from the Foundation, we are building up our infrastructure for student success. We have a fully endowed student retention office with an intervention team and various coaches and mentors. We are using additional funds from the Donaghey Foundation to reinvest in the Student Affairs success initiatives, the Multicultural Center and other diversity initiatives, as well as the Chancellor鈥檚 Leadership Corps. We are also using Donaghey Funds to initiate a new Career Center starting this January.

As you have probably heard, we are launching several diversity initiatives with the intention of improving our learning and working environment. I just announced the members of two new committees: the Racial Barriers Committee and the Chancellor鈥檚 Race and Ethnicity Advisory Committee. These committees are designed to uncover unintended barriers to access and inclusion and to help us find ways to improve our environment for all people of color. We have also launched a campus read project for faculty, staff and students to participate in book discussion groups and to keep the conversation about racial equity front and center. This year we are also launching a faculty salary equity study to be followed by a similar study for staff. I鈥檓 pleased to report that Chief Carter and our Public Safety Office have enthusiastically embraced my recommendation to start meeting with students informally in a positive setting to talk through any issues they may have and to collaborate on campus-wide initiatives. They have already met with the SGA Executive Council and will next meet with students in an open forum this fall. I will hold my next open forums on race and ethnicity on November 11 and 12, so stay tuned for further details on that.

Community outreach has been an important theme over the last year. In addition to the many wonderful community-oriented projects you have initiated, we have partnered with Fifty for the Future, the Chamber of Commerce and the area school districts to support the Ford Next Generation Learning model to help students better prepare for post-secondary success. We are also partnering with Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott to reimagine the Asher Ave. corridor and we hope to launch a P3 project RFP for the Plaza property within the year.

We had an excellent year in fundraising last year raising over $45 million. We have reorganized and recalibrated both the Development Office and the Office of Communication and Marketing to better align with our institutional priorities. I鈥檓 putting an emphasis on endowed scholarships, endowed professorships, program support, including research support, and sustainable capital improvements. For the first time this year you are going to see a Holiday Wish List campaign that allows academic departments to identify specific items for donor support. This will bring in a lot of new donors and help departments connect with them in a more intimate way. In marketing you will see more emphasis on supporting specific programs rather than generic institutional branding. We want the community to connect with individuals and their experiences at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, so our strategy there now reflects that.

Moving forward it will be important for us to continue turning the ship towards a more intentional planning and budgeting process that is transparent and participatory. I look forward to working with the IEC and the campus community to re-evaluate our historical allocations and move towards a zero-based budget model where alignment to institutional priorities are clear. In the next few weeks, I intend to have a budget process for fiscal year 22 outlined and we will begin that process in November.

Moving forward it will also be important to continue to refine and improve our student outreach and support processes. We鈥檝e got a great start on this transformation, but there is more work to do, and we have to carefully analyze our successes and failures and learn from them with a commitment to continuous improvement.

Likewise, we must continue the process of rigorous program assessment and accountability to ensure that we are not taking anything for granted or resting on outdated assumptions. We cannot expect students and community members to invest in us if we cannot verify our effectiveness and relevance. We must be vigilant in this.

Next year (fiscal year 22), we will rewrite our institutional strategic plan to more clearly delineate means and ends and to more clearly identify measurable gains. The Strategic Planning Committee did a very good job with our current plan, but they were limited to revising an existing plan and ultimately, the plan did not have the authority of committing resources to goals. We will change that. The ultimate measure of our success will be that we have programs that students want to enroll in, and that we have graduates who contribute to their communities and that employers want to hire. The measure of our success will be a reputation for excellence and vital relevance to the community.

I have said before that I am very optimistic on the future of 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. We have great talent, great commitment, and a great deal of potential ahead of us. We have already demonstrated our capacity to address our internal challenges and respond creatively to external conditions. We have demonstrated a capacity for hard work, collaboration, and ingenuity and as long as we have that, we can continue to do amazing things together.

The state of 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock in 2020 is good and getting better. We have clear course ahead of us and I look forward to making that journey with you.

The post State of the University Address appeared first on Office of the Chancellor.

We are an institution that serves a diverse student body. About half of our undergraduate population is of traditional age, and the other half is non-traditional; and in both categories we provide an opportunity for many first-generation students to reach their aspirational goals. A large percentage of our students are working adults who are coming to us to 鈥渦p-skill鈥�, finish a degree, or set a completely new course for themselves as they work to change careers or develop a natural talent. We understand the need for our students to have access to professional experiences through internships, service learning, client-oriented project-based learning, and original research with a faculty mentor. Now more than ever, it is imperative for us to help our students make connections between what they do in our classrooms and what they will do in their careers and their communities.

Last summer as then provost, I led a retreat for the deans council where I began by asking them to reflect on our identity as an institution. What did they believe were our essential characteristics? What is at the core of who we are. What emerged was a set of values that dovetails with our role and scope. First, we provide an educational experience that enables our students, however they come to us, (traditional or non-traditional, under-prepared or Donaghey Scholar, baccalaureate or graduate student) to develop their professional capacity and enhance their social mobility. Second, we are intentional about contributing to regional growth and wellbeing through our programs, our applied research, and through the education of Arkansans who will pay it forward and help build a stronger Arkansas. And the third essential characteristic, recently developed in earnest, is that we are dedicated to continuous improvement in our institution through professional development, assessment, strategic planning, and the recognition of excellence.

In short, the identity that came into view describes an institution that recognizes that as we strive for distinction in our research profile, our public service centers, and our educational programs, we also understand the transformational responsibility that we hold for our students and our community.

With that in mind, I鈥檇 like to briefly outline where I think we are as an institution, and where we are going.

It is no secret that 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock has many current challenges. Our enrollment, excluding high school concurrent declined 9% from fiscal year 18 to fiscal year 19, and had declined 16% for the six years before that. Through a series of enrollment manager turnovers, and sometimes, no enrollment manager, 糖心Vlog传媒LR failed to develop an enrollment management strategy or to address many of the myriad structural problems with our student-facing services. Meanwhile, the budget and planning process foundered. With the exception of a major restructuring in 2014, annual budgets were rolled, sometimes with across-the-board cuts and sometimes with increases, but with no mechanism for meaningful analysis, prioritization, or strategic planning. Consequently, even though we made significant cuts last year, our E&G budget is approximately level to where it was nine years ago when we had 3000 more students. Even factoring in inflation, we鈥檙e off the mark in adjusting our budget to current circumstances. There is still a lot to sort out and analyze, but I can tell you that as an institution, we focused on making critical changes to our operations and most importantly, developing a comprehensive institutional plan with clear priorities and expectations.

At this point, we are concentrating on changes in three critical areas: 1) Integrated planning, 2) enrollment management, and 3) budget integrity.

Prompted by our preparation for our HLC accreditation visit this coming February, we began working nearly two years ago to remediate all of the areas where we thought we would be vulnerable. We beefed up our assessment practices, we worked on getting our policies in order, we set up complaint lines and consumer sites, and created from scratch, a decision support data warehouse with dozens of dashboards to provide data at your fingertips. In a relatively short period of time we addressed every conceivable issue in criteria one through four. The one big deficit, however, was criterion 5 concerning the integration of institutional planning with the budgeting process. 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, just did not have a history of true budget planning in the way that is now considered best practice. The summer before last, the HLC Steering Team insisted on bringing in a consultant for a summer retreat that would help us get started on building this process. From that retreat the Institutional Effectiveness Committee was created whose charge was to review budget units across campus for effectiveness, efficiency, and centrality to mission. It did that and submitted an extensive report with recommendations last February.

It took a while to get started on those recommendations, but now we have. And I鈥檒l talk about some of those in a minute. But concerning integrated planning, we鈥檝e taken some important first steps by asking the IEC to help us with budget reduction scenarios based on their analyses, and having them work with the campus community to gain broad feedback from stakeholders. Meanwhile, our new Executive Budget and Planning Director has created a new budget cycle planning process. And as you have already heard from the audit report, we have been addressing budget control issues to better align our budget practices with financial reality. We have a lot more work to do to create a fully integrated planning process, but we have done a lot of professional development in this area and are making progress. We have the HLC Steering Team members to thank for that. They are the ones who kickstarted this effort.

In that Institutional Effectiveness Committee report last February, the number one recommendation was to produce an enrollment management plan and to frankly get our act together in our student onboarding processes, which at that point were severely impaired. With new leadership in Student Affairs that is now becoming a reality. Our Financial Aid Office is now functioning properly and instead of taking months to package scholarships and financial aid, we are now getting it done within 24 hours of receiving required documentation from students. We have given them more training, more access to information they need, and have cross-trained our admissions and financial aid employees so that they can help each other help our students in more flexible and effective ways.

Our new assistant vice chancellor for enrollment management brought in last spring has focused on renewing relationships with high schools, community colleges, and community partners so that we are now back on track in that area and have started implementing on-site, one-stop application days to admit and scholarship students at high schools and other sites by invitation. We have expanded our recruitment inventory to include more targeted initiatives and more cooperative events with other units in order to leverage our resources to the greatest effect. These improvements appear to be showing results. As of this month, our undergraduate admissions for fall are up 52% and new freshman admits are up 156% compared to this time last year. We know these numbers may not hold through the spring, but we are cautiously optimistic that the changes we have made are having a positive impact. There will be more to come. And, we will have a comprehensive enrollment management plan in place by the end of this calendar year. It will cover our recruitment and marketing plans and will also include retention goals and strategies鈥攕ome new and some enhanced versions of initiatives already under way. We also know that unmet financial need is one of the strongest predictors of persistence, so we are analyzing our scholarship portfolio to better address this need.Now on to the third area of budget integrity. As everyone who manages a budget knows, when your revenue falls short of your expenditures, there are only two things you can do: increase revenue and reduce expenditures. I am confident that we are on the right path to increase tuition revenue through better enrollment management, but it won鈥檛 happen overnight and we have to make rational projections based on prevailing trends. There are other potential sources of revenue we are looking at, but these will take time to fully develop. Therefore, we must work on a plan to reduce expenditures and we must do it strategically. We will do this in several ways and the specifics of each general strategy will be informed by feedback from the campus community and will be based on institutional priorities. Universities are often criticized for spending too much on administration. So, the first strategy will be to consolidate, reorganize and downsize to reduce administrative costs overall. A second strategy will be to downsize our physical plant by consolidating space needs and taking a few buildings offline. Third, we will continue the academic planning process with a goal of consolidating or eliminating programs with low demand. Meanwhile, our Institutional Effectiveness Committee is submitting budget reduction proposals for consideration by the campus community and the Provost is launching stakeholder focus groups to assess community needs.

We have a lot of hard work to do, but I want to emphasize that there are many individuals at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock that have already been working hard to make this a better institution. We are ready for the challenge and I am optimistic about our future. We have an important role to play in this state and in this city. Our students come to us with many different backgrounds and in many different stages of life. Our commitment is to be here for them. To challenge them to dig deep, and to provide a pathway to success.

I鈥檇 like to introduce you to three of our students whose stories represent the essence of who we are as a university. Rebekah Wilson is getting a BFA in Art, Kyle Hooks is completing his MS in Computer Science, and Shibani Lal is getting a double Business degree in Business Analytics and HR Management. We have a short video for you to watch and then I鈥檒l ask them to come forward and be recognized.

Rebekah, Kyle and Shibani; please come forward. Trustees, these students represent the power of educational transformation. We chose them not because they are extraordinary, although in many ways they are, but rather because they are typical students who exemplify what can be done with opportunity. They would be happy to take any questions you may have.

Thank you Honorable Trustees. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have for me.

The post Presentation to the Board of Trustees appeared first on Office of the Chancellor.

I want to begin also by saying that I am very aware that members of this campus community–faculty, staff and students鈥攁re concerned about our financial challenges and eager to know what we are going to do about it. I don鈥檛 have a complete answer for you today鈥攁t the end of my first week as your chancellor, but I do have a sense of direction and I have concrete plans for the next 60 days. Before I get to that, let me provide a bit of context for the problem-solving tasks we have ahead of us.

Last spring, I delivered a speech to the Assembly that outlined what I believe are the challenges we, along with many other institutions of higher education, face in the current environment. I took as my theme the title of Immanuel Wallerstein鈥檚 1999 publication, The End of the World as We Know It. The idea behind it was that the patterns and assumptions that have served us well in the past are no longer viable in the present, and are certainly not going to serve us well in the future. If you missed that speech or don鈥檛 remember the details, I encourage you to read it online on the Provost鈥檚 web site. But for now, let me recap a few of the most significant environmental shifts.

First and foremost, the financial structures that use to support higher education predictably and comfortably are now unreliable and insufficient. Second, enrollment patterns that used to be predictable and slow to change are now highly complex, quick to change, and much more difficult to predict. Where we use to be able to look at high school graduation rates as our primary predictor, now we must look at dozens of demographic factors and their broader contexts. Those changing demographics also mean that we are under pressure to unbundle and customize our educational offerings to meet the needs of a more diverse market for higher education. Third, the competitive environment is very different than in the past. Instead of having a quasi-monopoly for the region, we now have, much like the communications industry, everyone in every market. We can no longer assume that we have a privileged place in our own regional market. And finally, we are encountering a troubling doubt in the value of higher education itself. In the last few weeks, I have been happy to see the Little Rock Community rally around our university as a true value for the community, but too many prospective students are opting out of higher education because the return on investment is simply not apparent to them.

So what are the outcomes of these environmental shifts at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock?

We have seen the effects in declining enrollment of both new and returning students. This is not only because of declines in college going populations in general; but because of increased competition (all Arkansas higher education institutions are recruiting in Little Rock and some are offering courses here), and because of concerns about the cost and the value of higher ed.

We are also seeing significant budget pressures due to those declining enrollments primarily, but also stagnant state appropriations, and limits to raising tuition鈥攚e鈥檝e maxed out our price point and cannot go any higher than what the market will bear; in fact, we probably need to start moving in the opposite direction. It is also the case that our physical plant, which was built for a larger population, is not sustainable in its current form. We are quite literally spread too thin.

Because of the changing market, we are seeing less demand for traditional educational programs. Pre-professional programs are on the rise and the liberal arts are struggling. And we are struggling to reinvent our curriculum to both retain the essential elements of a university education and to respond to the needs of our constituents.

What do we do about these changing conditions? As I said last spring, there are five general strategies we must adopt: 1) We need to understand the dynamics of our new landscape and understand the difference between what has true value and what is merely comfortable; 2) We need to get up to speed in understanding our markets and develop compelling products and appeals for these markets; 3) We need to ensure that we have high quality across the board, not just in certain areas. We need to meet the public expectations of accountability through assessment and peer review. And that鈥檚 not just our academic programs, but all operational units; 4) As educators we need to be integrators and pathfinders for our students who, in a world of fragmented information, cannot always see the connections and the way forward. And 5) We must create a collaborative ecosystem where we work together to solve problems, internally and externally, instead of in competition and in silos. Partnerships will be a key theme going forward.

I believe we are making good progress on these broad strategies. I have been very impressed with the collaborative spirit on this campus and the spring of new ideas to enhance our university. I am very confident that we are up to the challenge.

Priorities

So now let me get down to specifics and speak to what I think are the most immediate priorities.

There are dozens of things that need attention at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, but we must be focused on the highest priorities and figure out the correct sequence of problem solving. Today, I will highlight three priority areas that we are working on now and will be our primary focus in the coming days.

Leadership

First is to secure essential leadership appointments. I will be appointing a new provost in the next couple of weeks. It is my intention to offer an appointment similar to my own and for the same reasons, with a two-year term and not as an interim. Other leadership decisions will follow quickly so we can concentrate on the pressing tasks at hand.

Planning and Budget

Clearly the most critical priority we have is to come up with a plan to balance the budget, and that has several components.

1. We need to produce realistic enrollment and revenue projections for the next two years and update analytic metrics. We will be working on this over the next month or so in preparation for the budget cycle.
2. Put into place a comprehensive planning and budgeting process that operates year-round, and specifically starts no later than November of each year. Along with that, we need to organize the advisory and feedback mechanisms to inform the budget model. Our new Executive Director of Budgeting and Financial Analysis, Linda Teater will be working with the IEC and others to help us draft that process plan in the coming weeks. We intend to start the budgeting process this November rather than in the spring as we have done in the past.
3. Next, and this is the hard part, we need construct a plan to balance the budget over a two-year period. This will be a combination of strategic cuts and revenue enhancement. We will rely on everyone to contribute to this plan, but particularly the IEC, the formal governance bodies, the academic leadership team, and the Cabinet.
4. In addition, we must start making budget adjustments now even while we are working on the plan because we know that we already have a revenue shortfall for this year based on lower than expected enrollment levels. Therefore, we will continue the soft hiring freeze (meaning that all vacant positions will be reviewed for critical need) until we have a budget plan in place.

Enrollment Management

Improving our enrollment management system is a co-equal top priority and the flip side of managing the budget. Although we must adjust to the enrollment trends of the day, that does not mean that we give up on enrollment. We have huge opportunities in this area. Over the last 5-7 years we have allowed many of our most important relationships to atrophy from neglect. In just the last five months, however, we have begun to turn this around through the efforts of Assistant Vice Chancellor of Enrollment, Edie Stewart and her team, and more recently through the efforts of our new Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Cody Decker who will elaborate on his efforts in his remarks today. Yesterday I met with e-Stem CEO John Bacon to hit the reset button and begin rebuilding that relationship to the benefit of both institutions. It was a very positive meeting, so you鈥檒l be hearing more about that in the days to come. We will also begin regular meetings with our community college partners, starting with PTC later this semester. Recruitment and onboarding are front and center to our enrollment management goals and Vice Chancellor Decker is already implementing important changes that we believe will produce positive outcomes next fall.

1. We are (finally) going to develop a comprehensive enrollment management plan; we have a good template to work from and a plan for development鈥攚e should have this completed before the end of fall semester
2. We are going to optimize the organization of admissions and financial aid鈥攚e are in the process of making key hires in those units and reorganizing responsibilities.
3. As I鈥檝e already mentioned, we are in the process of rebuilding and optimizing relationships with high schools and community colleges in our area
4. We are ramping up Retention Initiatives. We have put in place a new director of student retention initiatives, Heather Reed, and she will be working with the colleges, the support units, and the Retention Committee to move the needle on our retention rates.

Other priorities for this fall include preparing for our HLC visit in February, and preparing to launch Workday in June. These are two very big initiatives that have to be integrated into our other priority efforts. We鈥檙e in good shape on HLC preparation thanks to the able leadership of Erin Finzer and Brian Berry. Workday preparation has proved to be more of a challenge, but we working with the System Office to find feasible solutions and we are going to get there.

Another top priority, although I would probably call it a medium-term priority because it takes a little time, is to develop new revenue streams beyond tuition and state appropriations. I believe our Extended Education operation has significant potential to expand as we meet the needs of the 鈥渏ust-in-time鈥� unbundled educational market. We are also thinking very seriously about public-private development projects, particularly with respect to the University Plaza. In addition, we will look at potential energy projects and cost-sharing ideas, among others.

On the subject of revenue enhancement, I want to give a shout out to our folks in Development. Our Development Office has done a phenomenal job of bringing in gifts at record levels in the last few years and I expect this year to be even better as we ramp up what will now be our centennial campaign. We have taken the advice of our campaign steering committee to fold our current campaign into one that coincides with our centennial in 2027. So stay tuned for more good news on that front.

As we make our way through the budget planning process and adjust to the new normal, it is vitally important that we not lose sight of the need to invest in our strengths. As your Chancellor, I make this commitment to you that I will keep that goal front and center. As a modest token of my commitment, I am pleased to announce that I鈥檝e started an endowment fund for the Academy of Teaching and Learning Excellence in the amount of $25,000. I expect that endowment to be completed by next year. So Michael, Amar, and Laura, you鈥檒l be able to start investing that money in our faculty very soon.

On November 21st and 22nd, the Board of Trustees will hold their next meeting on the 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Campus. As the host institution, we will make a presentation highlighting our strengths and recent accomplishments. It will be held in Stella Boyle and is open to the public. I invite you to attend as your schedule allows and show your support for our institution. This will be an important meeting for us as we must demonstrate that we are up to the task of creating a sustainable future.

At the Faculty-Staff Convocation this fall, I said that we are capable of doing amazing things; and I believe that. So, I will end my comments today by saying I am absolutely confident that we will do amazing things together in the days ahead.

And by the way, although battered, and traumatized, and somewhat worse for wear, the butterfly bush is still alive and well on the campus of 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock.

Thank you and I will be happy to take questions.

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