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General Assembly Remarks Welcome to the January 2009 General Assembly! We are honored today to have special guests from Handong Global University in Pohang, Korea. Youngin Kim, Vice President for Administration Please help me welcome them to ESU. I hope you all had a wonderful break and you are excited to begin a new semester and ready to tackle some ongoing challenges! For these remarks I have included only five accomplishments representing significant areas.
Well, now we move to one of those recurring challenges – funding! As requested by the Governor and the Regents, we have completed our plan to reduce our 2010 budget an additional 4% (beyond the 3% reduction for 2009). Before I summarize where we stand today I want to discuss the process we used to get where we are today. In meeting with the Vice Presidents, we determined the amount that could be absorbed centrally and the amount we allocated out to the units. The following is the result of that conversation. As you can see the total 7% reduction amounts to approximately $2,500,000. As we reviewed our budget and many of the services that are funded centrally, the Vice Presidents and I determined we could account for approximately $1,000,000 of the reduction. This left $1,500,000 to be allocated to the units. I want to dispel the rumors going around, such as: “The entire reduction was allocated to the College of Arts and Sciences” And on and on and on… In fact a 4.2% reduction was allocated to each unit including: I have been assured by Provost Mehring that a 4.2% reduction was allocated to each school and college. The specific amount allocated to departments and programs was determined by the respective dean. I and the other vice presidents allocated our 4.2% in the manner least impacting operations. What is next? Stay tuned, the Governor’s State of the State Address is tonight and her budget proposal is due out tomorrow. Once we see her budget we will know if we must do more. If so, we will use a similar process for any significant increases. I firmly believe that we hold our fate in our own hands. I am committed to continue to move forward to the best of our ability. We have had an excellent strategic planning process which is nearly complete. Together we can continue to move forward making excellence our goal in every facet of ESU. The remainder of my remarks will focus on an area which requires all of our attention now and for the foreseeable future. The areas about which I will speak relate directly to the Strategic Themes developed in our Strategic Plan. So that we all recall them they appear on the screen. I have also invited several faculty and staff members to participate on Implementation Teams for each Strategic Theme. I anticipate this work will begin in the next couple of weeks. The items that I will discuss, in some manner, relate to each of these themes. Keep in mind that the goal is the pursuit of excellence in all areas, including those that are currently falling short. As an institution, and as individual faculty members and staff members, we do many things exceptionally well. I will mention some of those as I progress through these remarks. However, today I want to raise two primary issues as critical to our long-term success, and, by the way, as part of a solution to our budget challenges as well. Where do we begin on this journey toward excellence? Let’s begin at the beginning. The first step toward excellence is the recruitment of good students. Keep in mind that we are a state supported regional institution. Not only do we have to recruit the students, we must support them as well. What does that mean? It means we must meet them at their level of capability when they arrive at ESU and we must help them develop the skills they need to succeed! If we accomplish that we will be well on our way to accomplishing the second step. Retaining the students we recruit at a rate higher than just the average, is the second step toward excellence. We are also charged with measuring learning outcomes (assessment) as a critical step toward our ultimate measure of success. Finally, improving our graduation rates beyond the national average is also a step on the road to excellence. The rest of my remarks, for the most part, will focus on the first two steps along this journey. Let’s start with student recruitment. Whose is responsible? The answer may surprise you. Everybody is! Let’s get a little more specific. Each of us has a role to play in the process and each role is critical. Let’s begin with the admissions staff. What is their job? The best analogy I can devise is that of a prospect scout. The admissions staff spends a great deal of time working with data from ACT, building relationships with High School counselors, visiting with prospective students and describing ESU to the best of their ability. Note, I did not say they were recruiting accounting students or elementary education students. Although they must be well versed in the programs we offer, they are not experts. That role belongs to the faculty. What is the role of the faculty? That depends. If you are in a high demand major, you may be able to fulfill most of your responsibility by visiting with students at Hornet nights and during campus visits. That said there is a critical role which department chairs must fulfill. That is the selection of the best faculty members to recruit students. We do not all share the same talents or interests. Earlier in my career I was very good at recruiting students. Today, I do not think I would be the best person to recruit students. I think I can do a great job with prospective students’ parents. What about those hard to recruit disciplines like the sciences, foreign languages, math, and many more? Well the role of faculty is more critical and requires more time and more effort. Developing relationships with high school teachers and counselors becomes a critical life line. For those disciplines recruitment must start much earlier, the junior or senior year of high school is too late. Those faculty members must get more creative and more proactive. What about other staff members on campus? The simple answer is each of us must be advocates for ESU on campus and off. We must welcome visitors to campus and treat them just as we would like to be treated. This is one of those things I believe we do well at ESU so, thank you, and keep up the great work. Every academic department employs student workers and is filled with talented and successful majors. We need to develop creative ways to involve these students in our recruitment efforts. Every program has graduates and very successful ones at that. We must also find creative ways to identify appropriate alumni and utilize their skills to assist us in recruiting students. We need to work to develop programs to encourage and enhance both student and alumni involvement in student recruitment. Once we recruit the students to attend ESU how do we keep them here? The process is frequently referred to as “Retention.” Let’s all work from a common definition which is the one by which we are measured by the federal government and the Regents (and this is an area of emphasis in the Regents Five Strategic Questions for Higher Education.) A simple definition of retention as reported in IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) is: A full-time freshman who starts her/his academic career at ESU returns for their sophomore year! Why do I think we need to make recruitment and retention priorities? The data says so! We will work from two different kinds of data. First, we will examine opinions, which will include student and faculty opinions, from our National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE). Two different results will raise concerns to be addressed. Where we fall below national averages and where we have significant opinion gaps between students and faculty members. The second kind of data is our numerical data measuring specific issues. Beginning with the opinion data, I am using results from the 2007 NSSE survey of ESU. In order to determine if there are gaps between the opinions of our faculty members and our students, we will examine responses to the same questions by our faculty on the 2007 FSSE at ESU. The first set of responses we will examine relate to timely feedback to students. We will look at the freshmen then at the seniors to see if there are differences and to identify areas for improvement. We begin with freshmen. We will review the responses of ESU students and three comparison groups, other Kansas Schools, Selected Peer Schools, and the NSSE average . As you can see, ESU is below all three comparison groups. As we examine the opinion of our faculty you will note a significant difference in perception from that of our students. Let’s now look at the results of the same questions for our seniors. As you can see, we fare much better when compared to the comparison groups and there is a significantly lower difference between the perceptions of our faculty and our students. My view of the results of these opinion questions is that we have some work to do with our freshman. Let’s now examine the perceptions of faculty/student relationships. In the case of these questions we are looking at all responses indicating faculty members are “available,” “helpful,” and “sympathetic.” As you can see, the results are similar to the previous question. We are below the comparison groups and there is a significant difference in the perceptions of our freshmen and our faculty. Again we examine the same responses from our seniors and, once again, we see that ESU exceeds our comparison groups and the faculty and student perceptions are close together. We are doing a very good job with our seniors, but we need to do some work at the freshman level. It appears we have a clear signal from our freshmen that we could improve. As I indicated earlier, we will look at two types of data. The opinion or perception data appear to indicate a possible area for improvement. Do the numbers indicate the same issue? Let’s look at the raw numbers and some calculations. Since it is somewhat difficult to make judgments from raw numbers, there are some normal calculations we make every year which make comparison much easier. This table reports our first to second year retention as we report it to IPEDS. Here are our numbers for the past seven years. The red year represents our worst year in the past seven the whitish year represents our best year in the last seven. Unfortunately there are more years which are closer to our worst year. And the most recent year is only 2.3% above our worst year. One question you might ask is what happened in 2005 to cause such a dramatic change? Some of you will remember that in the spring of 2005 John Gardner was brought to campus to make a presentation. Since John’s most significant contributions in higher education have been to improving persistence, I will assume that is what he discussed during his visit here. That demonstrates two things: First, there was recognition that first to second year persistence was a problem at ESU. Second, when significant numbers of people recognized the problem, attempts were made to improve. That was the genesis of our First-year seminars. It is also a time when many individuals on campus had a raised awareness of the issue. How do we know what the numbers mean? National statistics are published each year according to the admission categories of institutions. The admission categories, from highest to lowest are: “highly selective;” “selective;” “moderately selective;” and “less selective.” Our admission standards place us in the “moderately selective category.” Published in the Consortium for Student Retention Data Exchange (CSRDE) Report, which reports on 400+ member institutions, the averages are as follows: As you can see, with the exception of the 2005 cohort, we are below the national average for our admission category. I think this reinforces the fact that we can improve the manner in which we deal with our freshmen students. Let’s look at what we have lost each of the last seven years. We spend a good deal of money and a great deal of time of staff and faculty to recruit students to ESU. We need to spend more of each on keeping students here once they come here. What is a reasonable target for ESU’s first to second year retention? Since fostering student success is our primary mission, shouldn’t we set our goal above the national average? Let’s look at a goal of 75%! If we set this as a goal, what would be the financial impact of achieving this goal? Noel-Levitz has a model to estimate the revenue we could recapture if we increase our annual retention. The model does account for additional losses of students after the sophomore and junior years. Using ESU’s fall 2007 numbers and assuming an increase to 75% first to second year retention, the revenue generator model Noel-Levitz has created indicates that we would increase our revenue by: $ 174,124 for their sophomore year, After three classes are admitted and assuming continuation of a 75% retention rate, our budget would experience an annual increase of $444,233 at the tuition rates represented in the example. I am pretty sure we could find four or five faculty positions in that amount. You will recall that near the beginning of this presentation I asked whose responsibility retention is and I gave the answer, “everybody’s.” That means that the single avenue to success is a concerted institutional effort with everybody doing their share. I believe the sports analogy is Teamwork! Think about the things we could do with those additional revenues…. Well, it is easy for me to stand up here and say rah, rah, let’s all go do it! But what is it we need to do? The answer is to get started with programs and policies that lead to our goal. In order to help everybody understand what things need to be done, I want to share with you some of the best practices reported by universities around the country. The Noel-Levitz Research Report – Student Retention Practices at Four-year Institutions provides a great deal of guidance regarding national trends in best practices, both those most used and those most ignored! Let’s take a look at the responses in their survey.
Let’s take a look at responses to some of the least used practices.
Finally, they identify the three top strategies and the three greatest challenges Let’s begin with the strategies. Top Strategies:
Now let’s look at the Top Challenges:
So, where do we go from here? What should we do?
I believe the answer to each is YES! How should we begin? I have recommended to Dr. Williams that we use the salary savings from the Enrollment Management position for this year to retain a firm to help us answer each of these questions and assess where we are today. Let’s get the answer from those who know best! I know I have not spent any time discussing assessment. This is not an indication that it is a low priority. Rather, it is an ongoing priority which Provost Mehring and the deans are already addressing. Assuming we can improve our recruitment and retention, we will improve our graduation rates, and isn’t that what it is all about? Providing opportunities for students? So let’s look forward to reading this headline in the future. I know that each of you work very hard for ESU. The issues I have raised today may cause some change in some of our priorities for the first couple of years of implementation of our strategic plan and that is the reason for doing such a plan. Two years ago this March, the theme of my inauguration was “Achieving Greatness Together.” Because of your efforts we have accomplished many great things during the past two years. The future is before us and we hold the success of ESU in our hands and I am confident that we can continue to Achieve Greatness Together. As always, I thank you for all the wonderful things you do every day for ESU and I wish you a great spring semester. Thank you!
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