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• First, and importantly, the campus is fundamentally strong: in academic plan, in personnel, in facilities, in governance, and in mission.
• The best opportunities for achieving our aspirations involve returning to our roots:
– interdisciplinary learning to last a lifetime, engagement with the community,
– access to high-quality programs that serve student and regional needs and
– fully funded growth.
• Building upon strong foundations and returning to our roots, we have, nevertheless, an exciting agenda ahead. I would highlight:
– Identifying and pursuing, as resources are available, the highest-priority elements of the Learning Experience. These include “high-impact” initial engagement and academic advising approaches suited to our unusually complex and individualized academic plan.
– Revising general education. I would fold the academic component of “high impact” into revised general education that achieves — from the very first class — engagement of our students in “hands-on” practical problem solving from multiple perspectives.
– Identifying, planning, implementing programs to serve our region and allow funded enrollment growth. The Masters of Social Work and Masters of Management are examples of programs to be implemented.
– We should be engaged in identifying further opportunities to achieve enrollment growth while serving students and the region. These include new academic programs, academic programs with demonstrable capacity to grow, academic program partnerships with other institutions, and student and academic services programs that provide growth through improved retention.
– Internationalizing the campus to enhance the value of our students’ learning and to assist in maintaining the vitality of the changing region we serve.
– Addressing facilities needs. Steps are well underway that involve Laboratory Sciences and residence halls. We need to continue to implement plans for the University Union; the Phoenix Sports Center’s athletic, health, and wellness capabilities; The Multi-Purpose Sports and Campus Events Center; and the Library.
– Creating a new campus master plan. Our current plan is outdated. We need to involve the campus and the community in thinking through how the campus should be arranged given developments we can now foresee.
– Initiating a major capital campaign. Our “margin of excellence” in academic programs and facilities will depend, increasingly, on growing our endowment and obtaining support for facilities that the State does not provide.
– Continuing implementation of the recommendations of the Report on Equality for Women with particular attention to addressing child-care issues.
– Diversifying our faculty, staff, and students in order to enrich all of our lives as well as the education of all our students as they prepare for a changing world and exciting future.
– Establishing integrated strategic budget and planning procedures that systematically engage the campus in “bottom-up” processes.
– Further engaging our surrounding communities in Northeast Wisconsin’s University of Wisconsin.
I found, in listening to you, that many of the ideas you shared could be organized around three themes: Learning for the 21st Century, Excellence across the Board, and Engagement. What do they all add up to? For me, the common denominator is “connections”; academic connections are the key distinguishing component of our academic plan; connections within the full learning environment is the central strength of the Learning Experience; and connections with the community are key to engagement.
I like playing with the image of UWGB as “the connected university.” Your mileage may vary. But, we are connected academically unlike any other university. And, in ways that, unlike any other university, can support learning to last a lifetime. We aspire to have opportunities for learning that connect what goes on in the classroom with what happens on campus outside the classroom and what happens in the community through hands-on practical problem solving. At UWGB, “getting connected” means more than having a high speed Internet link. It means being connected to the community as our region’s University of Wisconsin.