2009 Fall Convocation Speech - Community Needs
Speech Segments
‘Community Needs’ Video Transcript
Meeting community needs.
Meeting community needs has been a priority for this University since the very beginning. And, I think we need to review a number of things about how well we meet the community needs.There’s a quote from Ed Weidner, I’ve actually been reading a lot of his stuff and listening to his presentations, so I guess that’s why I’m bringing some of his things up today. Of course, I’ve also quoted David Ward, who is not our first chancellor, but certainly one of our great people here.
Ed Weidner said the university and the community are one. He didn’t say they are alike. He didn’t say they live close together. The university and the community are one. Now, that may not be a literal comment, or it should be taken that way, but we need to ask, are we paying attention to our constituents. Whose needs are we meeting?
I think many of you know that there’s been a national debate regarding access vs. cost vs. quality in higher education. It’s been going on for quite some time. And, it includes legislators, universities, media, and the public. And this truly has been quite an ongoing debate or even argument at times. And there’s frustration on all sides. As universities in higher education, we think we know what we ought to be doing. Legislators think they know what we ought to be doing. And they don’t match up, believe it or not. They’re not always the same ideas. So there is this real discrepancy and expectation on either side. Legislators, the public, the media have their sets of expectations on universities and then we have whatever ours are at each individual university.
I have to tell you, I think we’re losing that debate. And we have to pay more attention to it. I think we have to address how we can better hold firmly to what we truly believe is important.
In light of the criticism that we get as universities — not UWGB specifically, but we are certainly included in that — we have to make sure that we are paying attention to that, that we know what the legislators are expecting. Doesn’t mean we have to do everything they tell us to. Far from it. We’re not going to change our curriculum on the basis of what a legislator wants us to teach. Those kinds of things are just simply out. But what other considerations are being proposed that make some sense to us, given the context that we’re in with regard to the larger culture or society?
I can tell you some of the things we’re going to have to look at. They’re not new. They’re not going to be surprising to most of you. We have to pay attention to degree count; the number of degrees awarded. That particular item of interest has changed a bit from retention and graduation to simply degree count, completion count. And it is now being talked about as certificates, associate degrees, and bachelor’s degrees, all of those. Program completers. That has become a very, very important measurement tool for everybody but us, it seems. It’s somewhat important to us.
Access. We have to pay attention to access. Cost containment. Job development. I know some of you don’t think much about job development, but I can tell you, everybody else does. We may not think much about that sitting in this room, but outside these walls, a lot of the discussion focuses on funding activities and programs that develop jobs.
Finally, economic development. Now, we’re doing some great things in all of these areas, but we have to focus it a little bit differently to meet some of the challenges that we’re going to have.
The Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation is a great response to some of these, as is EMBI, another great response to the kinds of things legislators and the public are looking for from universities.
I think we also need to look at our academic programs. Lets look at our repertoire again. Do we have the right programs in our catalog, and we’re actually teaching and graduating undergraduate students.
We need to look again at access, location of programs, class scheduling. Around whose schedule are classes determined? Lets take a look at that. Lets anticipate the demographic shift from traditional to non-traditional that’s happening in this state. We expect to have about a 30 percent decrease in the number of high school graduates over the next several years. That’s going to impact us. Most of our new students come as traditional age. That’s going to shift to some degree, so lets anticipate that and lets deal with those kinds of issues.