On Tuesday, April 26th, I presented (along with Tony) a newly refined purpose for the Provost's Office beginning July 1st. Once approved, the new org charts as well as our purpose statement and accompanying approach to purpose fulfillment will be available on the Provost's website. Our refined purpose is:

I had the pleasure of attending the Western Academic Leadership Forum conference in Portland, OR, on April 20-22, sponsored by WICHE. Deans, directors, and provosts discussed topics varying from lessons learned and strategies employed in/after the pandemic, to addressing faculty recruiting and retention strategies, to information on the enrollment dips felt nationally due to the demographic cliff of college-age individuals. It was my first face-to-face conference in over two years, and for many other participants also. We all agreed we felt a bit “rusty” presenting and conversing in person, but it was a very positive experience.

WALA, another WICHE initiative, kicks off with a two-and-a-half-day professional development seminar in July, provides mentoring to the participants throughout the year, and culminates at the WALF conference the following spring. I was honored to be asked to be a faculty member for the Leadership Academy for 2022-23. The two-day kick-off is in Boulder, CO, in July 2022.

In March, the Summer Salary task force completed its review of summer pay rates for full-time academic faculty. The task force concluded that the budget could not withstand an increase for summer 2022. In lieu of an immediate increase, the task force made the following recommendations:

My daughter just turned 12. She celebrated, appropriately, by being taller than her mother, who turned 12 not as recently. In fairness, this may not be saying a lot. My wife is far above average in countless ways (e.g., intelligence, humor, ability to put up with me, etc.), but “height” is not among them. Still, the whole thing challenges my perceptions of time and space. I know people say this and have buried the cliché into the ground, but it feels like yesterday that my daughter was dressing up for Halloween as Yoda because she perfectly met the height requirement. Now she’s sharing clothes with the woman who gave birth to her. Life is a trip.

 

Speaking of distorted perceptions of time and space, the last two weeks have flown by, partly because I was on leave and/or out of town for several days since our last newsletter. In that time, a few of my most important conversations have focused on transfer recruitment, especially given that this is a peak recruiting period. We bucked the national enrollment decline and had our biggest transfer cohort ever in fall 2021, but this year we are running behind last year’s totals. It may be somewhat attributable to systemic factors that we cannot fully control, but the team is doing what they can to reverse the trend. These efforts include tailored email and texting outreach to prospective students (including a list of all CSN graduates this spring), “tabling” sessions in high traffic areas of the CSN campuses, a cavalcade of transfer advising appointments, a revamped transfer website (thanks, Vincent!), and a new social media marketing campaign.

 

Outside of that, most of my other commitments involved the continuation of ongoing projects, from work on scheduling and degree pathways, to dual credit planning, to workforce development programming. For this latter effort, we are preparing a grant proposal to secure funds provided by the American Rescue Plan Act that would help us establish high-need programs in this area. A significant portion of these funds is designed to address the “direct and immediate needs of the community as a result of the pandemic and its negative social and economic impact,” with a particular focus on helping individuals from low-income communities find a path back to sustained employment.