I hope that you are having a good semester. From the grand opening of the Fine and Performing Arts Center to the college restructuring discussion, it has been a busy opening of the fall. I want to take this opportunity to welcome again all our new faculty and staff members. You have joined the University at an exciting time. 

In this update, I want to share with you a bit about several important issues: 1) endowed professorships and scholarships, 2) continued development of the Provost model; 3) enrollment; and 4) SACS.

Endowed Professorships and Scholarships

I thought that you might be interested to know that we have had an excellent year with regard to obtaining endowed professorships. Western was second only to UNC-CH in the number of new professorships completed last year and we now stand fourth in the system in the total number of distinguished professorships recognized by the state. UNC-CH is first, followed by NCSU, UNC-C and Western. We now have thirteen professorships in a wide range of disciplines. This year we added professorships in social work, optical engineering, nurse anesthesia, communication disorders, and physical therapy. We have funding in-hand for a 14 th and we are developing five or six more. Although our specific rank-order among the institutions may change, I would anticipate continuing to grow the number of professorships over the next several years.

Those of you who have been around higher education for awhile will recognize the critical importance of endowed professorships in defining the academic stature of the institution. Endowed professorships allow us to recruit nationally and internationally known faculty members in a variety of fields to help us assure that our curricula and the students’ education are at the highest national or international levels. It is exciting to see how donors have responded to the call to improve our academic stature and rankings.

Kyle Carter and I have also been talking about the fact that there are key areas in the institution where we have not yet obtained endowed professorships yet these areas are going to be critical to the future of the University. We have begun a conversation with Newt Smith regarding the possibility of creating a very limited number of internally-recognized titled professorships. These professorships would solve several issues for us:

· A number of our professorships carry time-limited appointments. Having an internal equivalent would help us retain excellent faculty members once the state-recognized professorship appointment expires.

· We could establish such professorships in critical areas where attracting senior-level scholars could greatly benefit the institution.

· And, we could appropriately reward existing faculty members whose work at Western has led them to national and international stature.

We are just beginning this conversation, so I hope that you will let Newt or Kyle know what you think of the concept and give them any suggestions you might have regarding how such a program might be implemented.

The second area that is of great importance for the future quality of the institution involves endowed merit-based scholarships. As we have become more competitive in our academic offerings and academic quality, we are attracting applicants who qualify for scholarships at other universities. We greatly need an additional one million dollars a year in merit based scholarships if we are to continue to attract increasing numbers of better students. Over the next several years, you will hear a great deal about this issue, and I encourage you to consider helping us identify people who would have interest in possibly endowing such a scholarship.

A final note in this section: we set out in 1996 to create an honors college that has many of the characteristics—as well as the enrollment—of some of the elite private colleges in our region. This year, we reached a milestone as the entering students in the Honors College had an average SAT of 1252. This compares very favorably with kinds of institutions to which we were “benchmarking” our efforts. Brian Railsback tells me that we also are near our enrollment goal for this college since we have registered approximately 1080 students in the college. This is a far cry from our founding number of 77 students. Congratulations to Brian and all faculty members who have worked so hard to develop this college. These numbers also speak to the need for additional merit-based scholarships.

Role of the Provost

Over the last ten months we have all been adjusting to the changing organization of the University as we implemented the “Provost Model.” Most of you are probably aware that there is no one nationally-recognized provost model and the specific organization and distribution of assigned duties depends on such issues as campus culture, personalities of the Chancellor and the Provost, and skills of other vice chancellors. It was important to me that I not “impose” a specific model on the campus—we don’t work that way as an institution—and that we allow the nature of the position to evolve naturally over some period of time. In the last several weeks, I have felt that the fundamental adjustments in the organization had begun to stabilize and that we could see more clearly where other adjustments needed to be made. Therefore, I finalized the specific job description for the Provost and shared a copy with the executive team. This description should provide sufficient clarity for us to move forward as an institution. 

Many of you may have interest in reading the full job description, so below is a link to the on-line version of the description. 

http://www.wcu.edu/chancellor/Staff/Provost%20job%20description.htm

Additionally, there have been some questions regarding distinctions between Dianne Lynch’s position as “Chief of Staff” and the Provost position. Attached below is the current job description for the Chief of Staff, and I think that you will see that there is little or no overlap.

http://www.wcu.edu/chancellor/Staff/Chief%20of%20Staff.htm

Generally, if the Chancellor needs to be directly involved, the Chief of Staff has responsibility to coordinate the activity on behalf of the Chancellor as needed. Likewise, the Chief of Staff represents the Chancellor in external meetings when appropriate and necessary. The last ten months have shown that this model works well and the increased coordination it provides will be of great benefit to the institution.

Please let me know if you have additional questions or concerns once you have had the opportunity to review these job descriptions.

Enrollment

You have probably seen the news story regarding the fact that Western had record enrollment this year with nearly 8,700 students attending. You may also have heard that there are some concerns because our enrollment was not at the level predicted (which was over 9,000 students). Among the three mountain universities, Western had the highest growth rate, but we did not grow at a rate consistent with being a “focused growth” institution. Moreover, we did not make progress in the academic quality of entering students. This year’s freshman class looks a great deal like last year’s freshman class. At the same time, our retention rate dropped a few percent—though it is still higher than it has been traditionally.

I mentioned during my opening address that it appears that we have reached the end of a “product lifecycle” with regard to our institutional positioning. Marketing consultants and admissions consultants have confirmed that statement. Therefore, we have already begun systematically reviewing our recruitment and retention efforts (at both undergraduate and graduate levels). While we have made significant progress in some areas, there is a great deal more to do.

Given the nature of the University, it is critical that we continue to grow both in numbers of students and in academic stature. I have requested that Provost Carter take personal lead in developing our approach to enrollment and enrollment planning. It is clear that our marketing messages must reflect the overwhelming improvements in the University that you have created. It is apparent that we have not yet effectively incorporated our hard won academic enhancements into our recruitment approaches. At the same time, we need to continue to improve our ability to identify students who are prone to drop out and to intervene to assist them in completing their degrees.

These issues will involve ongoing discussions, and I hope that you will consider taking an active part.

SACS

All of you are hearing about SACS. If you have not heard, you have not been around campus! Carol Burton is doing an excellent job of leading our reaccreditation self-study process and I want to again thank everyone on campus who is participating. Right now, there are two critical issues on which we must focus. First, the institution must have a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP). “Engagement” seems to be the arena in which we will develop our QEP and that is very, very exciting. Developed properly, this could be the single most significant action we will take as an institution over the next three to five years. I applaud you for focusing on this key area.

At the same time, we must increase our capacities to engage in effective and meaningful assessment of all major activities in the institution. We have just hired a new director of assessment, and she should help us with this issue. However, every department should be discussing assessment and have in place a strong assessment plan. If your department does not have such a plan, you should be working on it immediately. It is critical that we have effective assessments and that we can demonstrate our use of empirical assessment in improving our programs.

Well, this update is long enough. I would just like to end by publicly thanking our grounds crew and maintainers for the beautiful shape in which we find the campus this fall. With all the changes, this could not have been an easy task. I’d also like to thank all of the people in residential living and in the facilities management areas for their hard work in getting the Norton Road Residence Hall up and operational. I know that was a huge task and took Herculean efforts. Thank you for your hard work—it means a great deal to all of us.

Have a great Thanksgiving holiday and I look forward to seeing you soon.