Provosts' Welcome Week Speech

Fall 2009-2019

Opening Video

Chancellor's Remarks

Recognition of Service

Provost's Remarks

Let me add my welcome back to the

This year, we welcome approximately 2,600 new and returning students.  This year we will set a 20 year record high of students in campus housing and they begin their official move in this weekend as the campus springs back to life after a short-lived but wonderful summer.  Among those 2,600 students are over 360 new first-time freshmen and over 250 new transfers. 

They come to us with hopes, dreams, and unique goals.  Some know exactly what they want out of their college career; others are here searching for their direction. 

Whatever their purpose, they are here!  We are all now part of their lives.

The Class of 2013 is an interesting group.  By definition, they are Millennials.  Their lives, experiences, and view of the world are very different then the World War II generation, the Baby Boomers or Generation X. 

As many of you know, I like to review and quote from the Biliot College's Mindset List and their comments on incoming generational classes. 

"The mindset of this new generation of college students is quite different from that of the faculty and staff about to prepare them to become the leaders of tomorrow.

As millions of students head off to college this fall, most will continue to experience the economic anxiety that marked their first two years of life just as it has marked their last two years of high school.

Members of the class of 2013 won't be surprised when they can charge a latté on their cell phone and curl up in the corner to read a textbook on an electronic screen.

The migration of once independent media—radio, TV, videos and CDs—to the computer has never amazed them.

They have grown up in a politically correct universe in which multi-culturalism has been a given.  It is a world organized around globalization, with a McDonald's everywhere on the planet.

Carter and Reagan are as distant to them as Truman and Eisenhower were to their parents. Tattoos, once thought "lower class," are, to them, quite chic. Everybody knows the news before the evening news comes on.

Thus the class of 2013 heads off to college as tolerant, global, and technologically hip…and with another new host of The Tonight Show."  

Most students entering college for the first time this fall were born in 1991.

1.       For these students, Martha Graham, Pan American Airways, Michael Landon, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, and Gene Roddenberry, have always been dead.

2.      The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.

3.      They have never used a card catalog to find a book.

4.      "Magic" Johnson has always been HIV-positive.

5.      Rap music has always been main stream.

6.      Babies have always had a Social Security Number.

7.      They have never had to "shake down" an oral thermometer.

8.      They have always lived with high-stakes educational testing.

9.      The European Union has always existed.

10.  Condoms have always been advertised on television.

11.  Women have always outnumbered men in college.

12.  There have always been flat screen televisions.

13.  Britney Spears has always been heard on classic rock stations.

14.  Natalie Cole has always been singing with her father.

They are:  Team-oriented. 

They work and socialize in groups. 

Are very engaged in the community and in service.

Extremely close with their parents

Savvy with technology

Easily bored if there is nothing to do

Though we must always be cautious about over generalizing and stereotyping, research suggests that as a group, Millennials approach living, working, and learning differently. 

But in addition to what many have called "traditional" students, almost one half of our students are older, returning, and/or graduate students.  Our oldest undergraduate student matriculated this year was born in 1947. 

The very nature of our student population requires us to be sensitive not just to our developing understanding of the new generation of students, but to those returning or starting their university education later in life. 

By way of comparison, the songs that were playing as you were seated this morning were songs from the hits charts in 1991.  In 1947, "White Christmas" and " Near You" topped the charts.  For those of us who may struggle to appreciate the music tastes of many of our students, know that there are some who remember what a vinyl record is and who recognize Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters.

This past academic year was fast paced and productive.  Over the next few minutes I hope to bring everyone up to speed on the exciting accomplishments and advancements that this university has made and to take a few moments to celebrate people. 

I would also like to update you on several projects and lay out some goals for this coming year.  I am reminded that "the mind can absorb no more than the seat can endure" so I will try to keep things summarized.

2008-2009 Accomplishments

Academic Plan

I am very pleased that the Faculty has developed and approved a five year academic plan for UW Superior.  A logical next-step to the completion of our seven strategic priorities, the Academic Plan outlines who we are, who we serve, where our curriculum is headed, and types of initiatives we foresee us undertaking. 

The academic plan highlights our outreach activities, our research and creative activities, and advisement philosophy, and our commitment to professional development and assessment. 

We look forward to presenting our Academic Plan to the Board of Regents Education Committee in October.

Advising

I am also pleased that Faculty Senate approved common learning goals for academic advisement.  We have been fortunate to have the Executive Director of the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) visit our campus twice and to assist us in the planning and development of our advisement responsibilities. 

Campus Life and Leadership

A vibrant campus life is crucial to any campus.  Over the past several years we have seen staffing and service changes in almost every area of campus life. 

Under the leadership of Vicki Hajewski our Health and Counseling Services are providing increased services and a new Coordinator for Career Services is on board with exciting new opportunities for our students.  There are new programs, activities and traditions that will add depth and perspective to the classroom experience.

Co-curricular programs can have a significant and positive influence on student development and student persistence to degree and I encourage you all to become part what is happening in Campus Life.

Budget

Unfortunately, much of the discussion and discourse last year focused on state budget issues and the anticipated affect state budget cuts would have on UW Superior as an institution and on faculty, staff and students as individuals. 

But while those discussions may have been seen at the time as distracting us from other agenda items, I am very pleased with the results of those conversations. 

As we approached those discussions, the Chancellor charged us to:

″         Focus on students

″         Have decisions made within the context of the campus' strategic priorities

″         Have open dialogue, civility, and respect for diverse perspectives

″         All leading to transparent and understandable decisions

I believe those goals were met.

In approaching the task of cutting almost $1,900,000 from the budget over the next biennium the campus did so from a strategic framework and from our identified priorities.  We resisted the easy decision of "across the board" cuts.  We supported the processes of shared governance and worked with key internal constituencies.  We valued employees and honored contracts, policies, and established procedures. 

And, we recognized that short term decisions may not be long term solutions.  In addition, with a focused effort and following the priorities established by the Continuous Improvement and Planning Team to also make some strategic investments.

2009-2010 Budget Investments

This coming year we are pleased to announce that UW Superior will:

• Significantly increase student assist dollars from what was spent last year.
• Invest in an integrated marketing and communication initiative
• Invest in additional tenure-track hiring
• Substantially implement a governance recommended departmental S&E formula
• Implement successful post-tenure review salary adjustments

For UW Superior, our process worked.  Thanks to the hard work, patience, and input of faculty, staff and students. 

Managing budget cuts is never easy and we have to acknowledge the hurt and disappointment that each of us face in light of salary cuts, furloughs, and uncertainty.

But, in spite of the disappointment and uncertainty, I am also reminded how life continues to carry on for individuals and families across this campus.

While budget cuts and furloughs certainly have not made things easier for these precious new additions to the UW Superior family, it is important to realize that life continues and our responsibilities for carrying for and educating the next generation of leaders continues . . .even during these economically challenging times.

Please join with me in welcoming our newest yellowjackets and congratulating their parents. 

2008-2009 Accomplishments

Liberal Arts Initiative

A major component of our Strategic Priorities and our Academic Plan is our Liberal Arts Initiative.  Our Liberal Arts Initiative has received our requested funding from the state though recent budget cuts will challenge implementation timelines and plans.

We have now hired coordinators for the Academic Service Learning Center, Writing Across the Curriculum, and the First Year Seminars – We have fully staffed the International Office and the First Year Experience.  I want to acknowledge the work of Dr. David Carroll, during his term as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs as he coordinated getting us to this point.

Opportunities for faculty and staff to become involved in writing across the curriculum, global awareness, academic service learning, the first year experience, and the senior experience will continue to increase.  This year, every unit on campus will be asked to build into their strategic plan how they are contributing to the success of this initiative. 

At this time, I want to introduce a special guest and recognize her significant accomplishment.  Each year, the System Advisory Council on Liberal Arts sponsors an essay contest.  Each campus has the opportunity to review and forward a maximum of three entries for the system-wide competition. 

Liberal Arts Essay Contest Winner

This past year, UW Superior submitted only one essay for competition, but I am pleased to announce that she was one of the three winners.  Her essay is moving and inspirational and it speaks to why we are all here at UW Superior. 

We are pleased to have Melissa Hepokoski with us today to read her essay "My Piece of the Web".  Melissa is an Elementary Education major beginning her student teaching and will graduate this December. 

Her future plans include becoming a full-time teacher and to eventually attain a master's degree in Education.  Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce Melissa Hepokoski.

I want to say a special thank you to Dianna Hunter and Yvonne Rutford who helped mentor Melissa during this process and ask them to come forward to present Melissa with a certificate.

New Academic Year

Thank you again Melissa, and what a wonderful introduction to talk about our goals for this coming year. 

Six Opportunities for Integration

As we look to this academic year, in my opinion, this is the year where work that has done in a variety of areas across the campus becomes integrated and synthesized. 

For several years, in small groups, committees, and departments, we have been working on specific issues such as retention, assessment, the Liberal Arts Initiative, campus life, admissions, budgeting, planning, and communication. 

Goals have been developed, and many components of initiatives are ready to take off.  This should be the year where those forces all come together and begin to work in an integrated way.  I see six opportunities for integration.

Recruitment and Retention

Continuous Improvement

Research

Communication

Advising

Inclusive Excellence

Imbedded in each of these separate initiatives are cross-cutting issues and common themes.  It is time to emphasize the common features and begin to utilize an integrated framework.

1)         Recruitment and Retention

Though our enrollments are looking very good for this year, we need to continue to move deliberately to address our persistent retention problems.  

As we think about why students choose UW-Superior, how long they intend to stay, and why they may leave without graduating, it is hard to identify a department, unit, or office that does not have some impact and as a result, some responsibility. 

Recruitment and persistence are not just an issue for Enrollment Management, Campus Life, or Advising.  Student retention and persistence to degree is an issue for all of us. 

Last year, we held forums to hear from students, faculty, staff, and alumni on what they thought some of our issues were that needed to be addressed.  For those of you who were in attendance, some of what we heard was difficult. 

Through that process, and the Recruitment and Retention Committee's evaluative work, we have begun to address a number of the issues.  The information was useful and it has been and continues to be acted upon.  An updated progress report will be posted on the web.

Further, the Committee is in the final phases of developing a comprehensive look at retention issues and a set of proposals for the campus to begin evaluating.  These proposals will touch on a wide range of issues from our integration of the Liberal Arts Initiative, our approach to service, our communication, our curriculum, our advising, to the look of our grounds. 

We are also undertaking the Equity Scorecard project.  This is a tool and a process to help campuses assess their effectiveness in providing the educational needs to historically under represented students.  Our goals are to foster educational excellence through closing any achievement gap of these students. 

We will be asking ourselves some tough questions, and examining data to look for information on critical performance gaps of student of color and other under represented students. 

No one person or office can solve our retention issue.  Only an integrated approach will work.  I look forward to these two reports and our campus actions on their recommendations. 

2)         Continuous Improvement

The second major issue ready for an integrated response is continuous improvement -- often talked about in terms of outcomes and quality assessment.  At an increasing rate, higher education is being asked to be accountable for the resources that we use and the outcomes that we produce. 

This year, we will have a focused site visit from our regional accreditation body, the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association.  This is a follow-up visit from our accreditation processes seven years ago.  The focus will be on the progress we have made on implementing the major components of a liberal arts education since that time.

This spring 2010 visit will be followed in 2012-2013 with our regular 10 year accreditation visit.  This does mean we will be spending a great deal of time and effort preparing documentation and evidence for the Commission over the next several months in particular and over the next several years in general.

We have made tremendous progress, but we have a long way to go.  As I have said many times before,  I do not believe we should "do assessment" simply because somebody tells us to or because we are afraid someone else will tell us how to it.  We should want to know how successful we.  We should assess what we do because we want to know that we are doing EVERYTHING to the highest level. 

But in spite of whether or not I am a true believer in outcomes based assessment or that I think we should always aspire to do better and have the evidence to prove it, everyone here today must understand that outcomes based assessment is not just a suggestion from the federal government or from our accrediting agencies. 

Outcomes based assessment is not an option.  It is our responsibility.  The actions that we have taken over the past several years have brought us to this point.  I believe that we are now ready to integrate assessment throughout our curricular processes.

We have talked about goals and methods.  We have increased our ability to collect and monitor data.  We have reiterated our commitment in our Academic Plan. 

We have implemented requirements such as the Senior Year Experience for all programs and attached assessment expectations to those programs.  We are ready to take the next steps.

Per our Academic Plan, this year, I look forward to discussions with Faculty Senate on developing and adopting common liberal learning outcomes for all UW Superior programs, on adopting assessment methods for advisement, and on identifying assessment measures for our general education program.

In addition, we will be taking additional significant steps to further integrate assessment.

The first set of academic programs will complete the Self-Study for Continuous Improvement.

We will be expanding assessment equipping opportunities through CETL

We will be implementing a standardized planning and reporting program called WEAVE online for all units on campus to post and track their strategic plans and results.

And, we will implement the expectation that every program and unit on campus contribute to furthering our retention and liberal education goals.

As part of a broader Continuous Quality Improvement effort, let's continue to examine all that we do.  Institutions and individuals should not be satisfied with statements such as "if it is not broke don't fix it" but should strive for a culture of "if it is not perfect, let's make it better".

I believe strongly in assessment and continuous improvement not just for this institution, but also for me personally and for my office.  Having completing approximately three and a half years as your Provost it has been exciting, tiring, and a great deal of fun. 

As I continue to develop and seek input on how I can improve there are several targets that I set.  Last year I committed to demonstrate improvements in access and communication. 

Along with Jan Hanson and Vicki Hajewski, we held several forums to keep faculty, staff and students updated on campus initiatives and seek input on various issues. 

Given the positive attendance a most of the meetings, we will continue these types of forums to exchange information on a variety of topics.  

I also committed to having open office hours to provide greater access.  Attendance during these hours has been very steady, so I will seek to increase available times for the campus community. 

3)         Research

A third opportunity for improvement is a more integrated research and creativity connection on campus.  Our faculty and staff are known for engaging our students in research and creative endeavors at a highly advanced level. 

Whether in the arts, sciences, humanities, human physiology, social sciences, or business our students have opportunities to work with faculty who author books, perform, patent new ideas, and create and direct award winning films. 

Though we don't trumpet ourselves to have a "pure research" mission, there is an embedded, but all too often quiet commitment to engaging students in scholarly and creative pursuits that permeates this campus. Our new Senior Experience expectation is a reflection of this commitment.  This engagement should be celebrated. 

As I have been finalizing the post-tenure review process, it is evident to me that we need to stop being so quiet about the research, scholarship, and creative activity that is occurring on this campus. 

The accomplishments of our faculty and staff members are significant. To this end, we will be launching a new research page on the web, exploring the viability of an annual research/scholarship/creative activity publication, and staffing a grants and research office. 

Please forward me any ideas you have on how we can better support the tremendous work already being done.

4)         Inclusive Excellence

 A fourth opportunity for integration is Inclusive Excellence.

Inclusive Excellence is a planning process intended to help each UW System institution establish a comprehensive and well-coordinated set of actions that focus specifically on fostering greater diversity,

equity, inclusion, and accountability at every level of university life.

The central premise of Inclusive Excellence holds that UW System colleges and universities need to intentionally integrate their diversity efforts into the core aspects of their institutions.

Inclusive Excellence offers an approach for organizing our work in a deliberate, intentional and coordinated manner.  UW-Superior recently sent a team to Madison to begin the pre-planning phase of this initiative.  We look forward to the information that they brought back as we begin to review how we can move forward with this initiative.

5)         Advising

 A fifth opportunity for integration is advising.  For the several years we have been discussing advising and the increased importance it has on our campus.  With the help of Charlie Nutt, we have come to realize that Advising is Teaching, it is an autonomous field of scholarly inquiry and we have much to learn. 

Advising is more than just getting students registered for classes.  It is more than guiding them through an administrative process.  Though those components are indeed important, advising is about connecting with and engaging students in a real, personal, and professional way. 

It involves understanding student subpopulations and their specific needs. 

It involves understanding the student developmental cycle and what interventions may be most appropriate.  

This year, we will continue to learn more about the discipline of advising, develop more structured and integrated equipping opportunities for advisors, and establish assessment mechanisms to evaluate our success and opportunities for improvement.

6)         Communication and Marketing

A Sixth opportunity for integration is our communication and marketing efforts.    Today, I am pleased to announce our intention of creating a system for collaboration among all campus departments and offices to create and sustain a comprehensive and integrated communications and marketing program that meets the needs and strategic priorities of UW Superior. 

This team will:

• Oversee the development and implementation of the a long-term strategic marketing and communications plan

• Oversee strategic communication planning, media and public relations, publications, event marketing, branding, web communications, e-news, multi-media productions, graphic styles and advertising.

• Coordinate assessment and management of communication budgets across campus.

• Coordinate the development of marketing campaigns for six distinct audiences: alumni, prospective students (traditional and non-traditional), current students, campus employees, the community, and donors

• Collaborate in the development of individual marketing plans and/or tactics for specific departments and units as necessary.

• Articulate clear communication themes and messages for all campus units to disseminate

Heather Heart will lead this group in an interim capacity during the Fall semester.

If you haven't gotten the message, this university is on the move.  While we need integrated approaches to dealing with enrollment, retention, communication, advising, and assessment, and only limited funds to accomplish all that we would like, our Liberal Education mission is articulate, our agenda is bold, and our time is now. 

While our financial resources may have limits, there are no limits to our creativity and imagination as we face our challenges.

These are exciting times to be at UW-Superior.  This is a year where separate initiatives will coalesce together into an integrated whole.  The liberal arts initiative is well underway and academic roadmap.  Our planning and continuous improvement efforts are seeing results.

New facilities are on their way, and we welcome new students, new faculty, and new staff today to a campus community that eagerly embraces their participation and contributions.

Each of us contributes a significant part to this institution's identity.  This campus community is not the same as it was before you got here. 

And with your contributions this year, it will never be the same again.  As we begin this new academic year looking ahead to opportunities and challenges -- consider what you will bring? 

What uniqueness that is you will you share with the rest of us?  What footprint will you leave behind as part of our institutional character and history?