Board of Trustees

Administrative Divisions

Chancellor's Update

Chancellor’s Update on Admissions, Research Funding, and Classroom Equipment

This update is to share with you a few significant developments in the area of undergraduate admissions and to let you know about their broader effects.

Since the academic year started, I have been leading a series of extensive meetings on a weekly or more frequent basis to discuss next steps with regard to enrollment.  These meetings have been very fruitful and they have “bubbled up” issues that needed to be handled.  Many of them were relatively straight-forward, but others required significant discussion.  A few brief items to give you a sense of the direction of the discussion:

• Betty Farmer is doing an excellent job assisting in the training of our admissions counselors on how to present themselves and the institution both in formal presentations and in one-on-one discussions with potential students.
• Most departments have completed program “fact sheets” – for print and web use - and they will be a great help.   Few students have interest in large printed view books; they want information quickly and in an easy-to-use format.  The fact sheets will provide them that information.
• The Admissions Office is able to bring prospective students to the university, but admissions staff members are not the people who will teach or work with the students once they are here.  Nationally, the best admissions programs link prospective students with appropriate faculty and staff members who will actually work with the students when they are on campus.  Many departments have identified faculty members who are willing to meet with or call students who have interest in their majors.  Fred Hinson reports that over forty faculty members have attended training sessions to facilitate this effort. This is very important.  No one else can better describe your program than you, and it really helps good students make choices when they interact with you.    Thanks to everyone who has agreed to help.
• We are seeking a new director for community college relations to work in admissions.  This position has been upgraded, and we hope to attract a person who has great experience with the North Carolina Community College System.
• We are developing a set of “fast track” programs so that community college students who have interest in majoring in a particular area will know exactly which courses at the community college will best fit with their chosen degree.  This will not affect the general articulation agreement; it simply gives students a “leg up” on finishing their four-year degree.
• A new and more intense summer transition program has been designed and has been submitted for funding to General Administration. 

In addition, UNC Vice President Harold Martin visited our campus last week.   I discussed with him our interest in improving student quality to see if we can negotiate some time to implement a more strategic approach to increasing quality. 

Finally, we will move our Admissions Office to new quarters.  Instead of renovating the second floor of the H.F. Robinson Building, we will move admissions to the Camp Building.  The Child Development Services Agency has vacated an excellent space that needs only minor fix-up and new furnishings to be a first rate Admissions Office.  The impact of this move is significant.  While this decision has not been a formal part of the PACE review, it has been inspired by it.  By moving admissions to Camp, we not only give them better space, but we save hundreds of thousands of dollars that had been put aside for major renovations to HFR.  This frees up funding that we can then move to two critical areas: 

Faculty Research 

First, Kyle has announcedan increase in the Chancellor’s Special Travel fund from $25,000 to $100,000 to allow faculty members more dollars to make formal paper presentations at regional national or international professional conferences.  The cap on any individual award from the fund will be increased from $500 to $1,000.  This fund will supplement departmental, college and Academic Affairs funding. The funds will be put into a pool in Academic Affairs and managed following their standard procedures.

Classroom Equipment

Based on the savings realized, I am announcing an additional $100,000 for equipment to improve our classrooms.

One final comment:  while “Banner” is not a four letter word, it sure feels as if it is one.  What you may not know is that many UNC campuses are implementing Banner at the same time.  Most, if not all, are finding it difficult.  I have been told by several of our staff members who are working on this project that Western is seen as “being ahead.” You may be interested to know that Western was one of only nine schools that were able to turn in their fall semester enrollments by the deadlines.  Changing enterprise software is very difficult.  Doing it with relatively little additional funding is almost impossible.  Yet, with the help of Robyn Render at GA and the other campuses that are going through this at the same time, the impossible is happening.  I again want to thank everyone who has helped with this process and also thank all of you for your patience as these complex systems are implemented.  We need to have a party when all of this is done!