UAHuntsville: Dave's Blog

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Reflections on the first year

So I’m no longer the new president – I can’t use that excuse any more. Many things have changed on campus in my first year and the changes will continue.

The Shelby Center for Science and Technology opened and is now our flagship building, the one you see when you enter via our new front gate on Sparkman.
The new parking garage (sorry, intermodal facility) should be open soon. Park there, walk to class or run to the Fitness Center.
We’re about to start renovating Wilson Hall and we’ll turn it into a fine new building for the visual arts, nursing and our continuing education programs.
Soon you’ll see a new greenway being constructed through the heart of campus to encourage you all to walk between our north and south areas of campus rather than drive.
My office and others from Madison Hall will move to Shelby King Hall to accommodate those moving out of Wilson during the renovations. We plan to stay at SKH in preparation for the construction of a new admissions/administration building to replace Madison.

We’ve also brought in several new leaders on campus: Jeff Sands moved from the University of Illinois to become Vice President for Advancement. Glenn Dasher, Jim Simpson, and Phil Farrington stepped up to become Interim Deans of Liberal Arts, Business Administration and Engineering, respectively. Rick Barth moved from the University of West Florida to head up Enrollment Services and Sandra Patterson, a UAHuntsville alumna returned from Atlanta to lead our admissions staff. At Convocation we’ll thank Lew Radonovich, our Provost for his academic leadership over the last eight years and welcome our new Provost Vistasp Karbhari from UC San Diego. Vistasp will be charged with the continued creation of new and challenging academic programs to attract, retain and graduate (on time!) the best students that we can. We recently instituted a Doctor of Nursing Practice with UA and a new undergraduate major in Earth System Science. Expect more new degree programs!

So good things have happened in the last year, but the State appropriation reduction meant that difficult choices had to be made in terms of raising tuition and closing down more than 40 positions. The final decisions were the result of the concerted efforts of dozens of faculty and staff over a six-month period seeking to minimize the effects of the budget cuts on our education and research programs. If you want to learn more about the justification for those decisions there is a Power Point presentation on the UAHuntsville web site (see one of the scrolling links in the top LH corner).

The ongoing economic situation in the state and the nation promises only more budgetary challenges. But these challenges are also opportunities. We can either roll over and play dead or we can focus on new income generation through increasing the number and quality of students, particularly out of state, increasing the endowment through more external and alumni donations and encouraging our faculty and staff to be more entrepreneurial in seeking external funding for their scholarly research.

The five-year goals for our continued growth and our academic and economic health are contained on the Power of 10 presentation that I made to the our Board of Trustees and also outlined at the inauguration are also available on one of the scrolling links on our web site.

We are already seeing positive results in student recruitment. Rick Barth and Sandra Patterson are having an impact even though they have only been on the job since January. We anticipate a growth of between 3 and 4 percent in our undergraduate class size this fall. Attracting and retaining these students is the key to protecting ourselves from the slings and arrows of outrageous budget cuts. A campus-wide effort is needed. Every student, staff and faculty member can help in our quest to improve our recruitment and retention. Every time anyone works to help a student see the value of a UAHuntsville education, every time we help to make a student feel welcome here and go out of our way to help a student, we improve the academic and financial health of the University.

We should not operate under the illusion that there are no more difficult times ahead, but together we can do much more to help ourselves towards financial independence than if we simply bemoan what others do to us. So go out and help retain our currently enrolled scholars and welcome the ever increasing number of potential students visiting our campus.