today we're going to take a look at perhaps a ten year period to give us
some context of what's going on help us set the tone for a great academic year
this year so we'll just go ahead and get started and the first thing I'll do is
talk about enrollment over the last 10 years we've had a 10% increase in
enrollment that's a good thing our enrollment has declined a little bit
over the last couple of years that's a function of several things one when the
economy is good enrollment at 2-year schools tends to go down another is the
demographics of our area our largest high school is West Plains High School
thank you dr. John Mulford who's the superintendent of our R-7 for showing
up today and some of the high school classes have been a little bit smaller
than in the past the demographics of that and so that is
pretty equal across two-year schools in the state of Missouri we are now as of
today and by the way is CJ Collins here CJ Thank You CJ developed an app for us
that gives us a website that you can look at our enrollments kind of like
watching the stock market did except that you're wanting it to go you're
wanting our enrollment to go up which means our negative number to go down so
we're looking at that but as of today where our enrollment was 1% down from
this time last year our credit hours were 3% down from this time as measured
against this time last year now we will measure it according to the 20th class
day and we still have some dual credit to enroll, Clif, I had told you that
I thought we had all of our dual credit in but actually we still have some dual
credit to enroll and we still have drops that will happen in fact when is the
when is the, when? Tuesday? Tuesday, and what do we call that the
administrative drops for those that haven't shown up so we will drop some
students and then we'll have students that drop so that number is going to
fluctuate a little bit but we think it'll be pretty close to this
Dr. toddy is a little more optimistic than I am but pretty close to this now
the good news is that our online credit hours are up 16% and we get $18 per
credit hour over the normal tuition for online courses so we will be making some
money there another good news story is that our grizzly lofts have set a
all-time high and that we have 122 students living at the grizzly lofts
the prior high point was 88 so we're doing well there so our enrollment over
the over the years looks like that
number of graduates and if I had to pick one number of and how do we measure
success at Missouri State University West Plains I pick graduates an eight
percent increase over 2008 from what we graduated 17 to eight but an average of
273 graduates and the number we should all be extremely proud of is the total
of 2726 graduates now those are graduates we
awarded more degrees than that because many of those students get two degrees
when they walk across the stage but we've had 2726 graduates at Missouri
State University West Plains over the last ten years fall to fall retention as
you remember that spike in enrollment that we had did not quite correspond
with the resources to handle more students generally we get more students
and then we get the resources to handle more students so there's a little bit of
a lag time but the good news is that now after receiving programs like trio and
Title 3 our retention is going up significantly over the last
couple of years
faculty and staff diversity this is something we can be extremely proud of a
145 increase in the percent of faculty and staff diversity on our campus over
the last 10 years and student diversity a 100 percent increase in the percent of
student diversity if we are going to graduate students and tell them that
they are ready to operate in a global market on a national level they need to
talk to people that don't look exactly like I I look so having diversity on our
campus both in students both in faculty and staff is extremely important to us
it's part of our one of our five goals for general education global awareness
and valuing so this these two slides are important and and rather challenging in
the ozark area that we live in so I think we can be extremely proud of these
two inflation I want you to look at this slide because we're gonna refer back to
inflation several times throughout the rest of this presentation but inflation
has been over the last ten years risen to seventeen point six percent state
appropriations now as you see here starting in fiscal year '08 with
our budget was five million four hundred forty six thousand dollars five hundred
and seventy three today our budget is now this is budgeted five million eight
hundred twenty six thousand two hundred and seven dollars now these other
numbers are what we received the final what we received from state in
appropriation the last number is what we have budgeted for the governor could
have a hold back like we had last year and that number would go down but right
now this is where where we are and as you see that's pretty close to
where we started in fiscal year 2008 however if you account for inflation we
in 2008 the value of those dollars today would be six million four hundred and
three thousand four hundred twenty so we have had a significant drop in the
monies we receive from the state now our tuition history we recognize that we
live in the seventeenth poorest u.s. congressional district in the country
out of 435 we're 17 from the bottom now the good news is we're moving in the
right direction we used to be 10 and then it was 11 and 14 and we're moving
in the right direction not nearly as fast as all of us would
want but we are moving in the right direction but raising tuition has a
significant impact on our students so we have worked very hard to keep tuition
down this is about a 21% increase in tuition over the last 10 years now let
me put that in context to other universities and schools around the
country over the last 10 years in fact in one year from 2010 to 2011 University
of California raised their tuition 32 percent in one year there is a site that
I went to that had over the past over ten year period from 2004 to 2014
listed 25 schools for you these were four-year schools that had raised their
tuition somewhere either between 96 and 137 percent over that 10-year period
and this was all over the country Colorado Utah Arizona Georgia California
Michigan Florida Texas Tennessee Virginia Illinois so keeping our tuition
down compared to a 32% increase in one year or over a ten-year period from
ninety six to one hundred and thirty seven percent is it's very very good now
let's put it in context of our local area now we could not find data
exactly for just tuition but if we take in-district tuition and fees for the
some of our competition if we look at OTC and Three Rivers taking there in
district tuition and tuition and fees in this 10-year period
OTC has increased tuition and fees by thirty nine percent and Three Rivers by
fifty eight percent again looking at our 21% we have tried very hard to keep
tuition down to accommodate our students now let's take a look at these three
slides together and you see the blue line is the inflation seventeen point
six percent our tuition has exceeded inflation on the Springfield campus
tuition is under inflation we have we've had to increase just a little bit and
our tuition exceeds inflation but you also see the Appropriations received and
that is significantly under inflation it hasn't kept up with inflation so our
appropriations received over this 10-year period
falls in the seven percent range inflation at 17 percent and our tuition
at twenty one point six percent in context of what's going on around the
country and around the state this is a significant accomplishment that you all
have worked very hard to to make possible and we've taken steps to lower
the impact of fees on our campus this year we have a common fee and if you are
an A+ student a plus pays for your common fee now we did not raise fees we
just took several fees and lumped them together into a common fee and so who
here is a second year or third year student raise your hand you're saving
money this year because you're gonna pay a common fee
which if you're an A+ student your a-plus scholarship will pay for and you
don't have to pay for that out of your pocket state appropriations per FTE how
much money do we get from the state per student adjusted for inflation so as you
can see in fiscal year '08 it was five thousand and six dollars if you adjust
that for inflation seventeen percent inflation that is five thousand eight
hundred and eighty six dollars compared to today where we receive four thousand
seven hundred twenty seven dollars so basically if you account for inflation
we get a thousand dollars less per student from the state today than we did
ten years ago now I I show you all those graphs so
that when we talk about some of the great things that you have accomplished
over the last ten years you can see that that was overcoming these significant
obstacles that that we have done on the West Plains campus this is another graph
that kind of says the same thing it's the but it shows Missouri ranked against
the rest of the United States again Missouri has over the percent of change
in state spending per student inflation adjusted has dropped by over 20 percent
over the last ten years and that's a little bit you want to be
at the bottom of this scale if you're in higher education you want to be at the
bottom of this scale Missouri is a little bit over the top of the top half
it well into the top half let's see what we've done on the West Plains campus
with these obstacles full-time faculty we have increased by 26% and we have
been able to give raises we started off in 2007 eight
the average faculty salary was fifty two thousand five hundred twenty
two if you adjust that for inflation today that would be sixty one thousand
seven hundred and seventy four now our average faculty salary is six and
benefits the salary and benefits sixty seven thousand nine hundred ninety one
so not only have we kept up with inflation but we have gone beyond
inflation for the faculty same for our per course and the way we pay per course
hours is if you have a bachelor degree in two thousand seven eight you would
earn four hundred dollars per credit hour if you had a master's degree you
would earn five hundred dollars per credit hour and a PhD a doctorate you
would earn $600 per credit hour again we've increased that by twenty percent
inflation seventeen point six so over and above inflation we have increase the
rate of hour per course faculty and that's really important because per
course faculty teach about 50 percent of our courses here at Missouri State West
Plains for the staff now if you take out the four grant-funded positions we have
only increased staff by six percent and we want to increase faculty more than we
want to increase staff at an institution of higher education where teaching is
what we are all about and putting students in classrooms we want to keep
our administrative cost as low as possible and are and have as many
faculty as we can so we increase faculty by twenty six percent we vote you know
we've only increased the administration staff by six percent and again we have
increased staff pay over and above inflation staff pay the average was
forty one thousand when you adjust that for inflation that's forty eight
thousand staff salary and benefits the average today fifty seven thousand
what have we done during this time there are a lot of things that as you look
around the campus and it's one of the reasons we wanted to show this is so
that when we walk by it every day you kind of tend to forget about it but
we've added a lot to our campus in the last 10 years now these numbers this is
the cost but that does not necessarily mean that Missouri State University West
Plains paid for that cost now I will talk separately about our Student
Recreation Center Gohn Hall and Hass Darr but as an example the sign by
Kellett cost twenty two thousand three hundred and fifty dollars how much did
it cost Missouri State University West Plains zero because we had Matt Morris
was on our campus at that time and Matt was responsible for managing that budget
and the contractor went over and and the length of time went over and the
contractor received a penalty for every day that it was late and we finally paid
zero for that thank you Matt Morse for for that we
gave that money to the students in the student capital fund and they gave it
back to Missouri State University West Plains as capital projects the Grizzly
greenhouse that was a grant again we didn't pay for that we were able to get
that from a grant so let's talk about the student rec center that was a grant
it was a FEMA grant FEMA paid for 75% of the cost of building that a one million
two hundred and seventy three thousand dollar project and then the university
had to pay the remaining 25 percent for us to fund that we went to the students
and said do you want this project because if you do we will have to impose
a student fee the students approved in a vote to approve a $25 a semester student
fee and that's how we are paying for the student rec center the very first use of
this student rec center and FEMA storm shelter was a student organize student
executed fundraising activity that raise money for tornado victims in Joplin very
proud of our students on that we have held red carpet day lunches in there we
had Welcome Week activities in there we have had career fairs in there when
Governor Nixon came to us to celebrate our 50th anniversary that's where we met
a great addition to our campus let's talk about Gohn Hall we took the ugliest
building on campus and turned it into one of the most beautiful buildings on
campus again when you look at the funding about $2,500 of that came from
the Gohn family the Springfield campus put in a million dollars and then the
West Plains campus reserves put in a million dollars to provide a facility
where our students can work on their bachelor and master's degrees without
having to drive the distance to Springfield a great asset for our campus
I have a lot of people that come to me from the community and say when are we
going to be a four-year campus what are we going to be a four-year campus and I
explained to them that well if we were a four-year campus tomorrow we would lose
all of our A+ students because you can only use a plus at a two-year school
the faculty at four-year campuses make more than faculty at 2-year campuses the
way that four-year campuses do that is by charging twice the tuition generally
that a two-year campus makes so let me ask you if this is a good business model
we will become a four-year campus tomorrow lose 25 percent of our students
and in the Seventeenth poorest u.s. congressional district in the country
double tuition who thinks that's a great business model Kathie Proffitt-boys is
here to enroll you in a business class that will convince you that might not be
the way to go but yet we have our cake and eat it too because we have the Gohn
Hall facility and under the Springfield accreditation courses not not a not a
replication and duplication of every course but in selected programs we can
offer bachelor and master's too right on our campus we have our cake and
eat it too let's talk about the next facility that we're building the Hass-Darr
facility again almost a five million dollar project but we're not
paying for all of that the state provided one and a half
million dollars for that some of which has gone to fire suppression that's
being put and placed into Putnam and the library but the majority of which goes
to renovating the old post office and we've raised almost a million and a half
dollars in donations to offset the cost of this building that includes the
Carol Silvey Student Union by the way we have our board member Carol Silvey
with us today it also includes the money for the
Veterans Center again Hass Darr and that the Darrs are going to visit tomorrow
and I'm gonna be happy to show them the progress we have on that there's a live
feed that's what I do all day is sit and watch the live feed of the building
building going up and it's actually going vertical now with steel beams and
you can you can watch that but I'm gonna show them but it'll have our Student
Union our bookstore our Honors Program our tutoring programs the Veterans
Center and admissions so that when students come they see our very best
building first and then potential students and then look at the rest of
the campus a great asset that we have that's going up even as we speak other
facilities a lot of renovation that has gone on over the last 10 years
renovation and repair we're an old Campus we have where over 50 years old
and we inherited some buildings that are even older than that Looney Hall it was
the old high school which was built in 1918
that's World War one steel that's in Looney Hall now we've put a lot of love
into it over the years and it doesn't look like it was built in 1918 but that
that's an old building and a lot of repair has gone on not all of which we
had to pay for you see there the Drago College Bookstore and Putnam dining area
if you remember the ice storm we were able to use FEMA
money insurance money and then some of our reserves to renovate those buildings
but you can see over the years we have tried to put money back into our campus
and make it as the best campus that we could present now you're gonna see these
red circles disappear these are houses there are two ways to build a campus one
is to buy 17 acres with nothing on it and build it all from the ground up all
at once we didn't do that what we have done is to bit-by-bit make our make our
footprint on our campus and the green space and the buildings that we have
replaced old older homes that we have purchased and torn down and made into
the beautiful campus that we have today didn't happen overnight this has
happened over 10 years but where the FEMA rec center is there was an old
house there people in Cass Hall used to look out at what I affectionately called
the crack house you know and it had an old sofa sitting in front of it
some cars jacked up you know not not very pleasant to walk by as you're going
into our campus so we have taken the effort much of that supported by our
development office and the auctions that we have every year to make these things
possible academics about 10 new programs in academics over the last ten years the
AEL program is one used to be called GED and we decided that we would try to
manage the GED AEL program for West Plains John Wright and her group did
such a great job that the state came to us and asked us to do it for seven
County service area we had a graduation just earlier this month where students
who did not have a high school diploma we're able to get there
AE L certificate and some of those then enrolled in Missouri State University
West Plains as they continue their academic journey
the online degree program we now have the ability to offer our general
education degree online you can sit in your pajamas and get it get a a it's not
the only way you can do it but we win and that's around the country our GOCAT
program the greater Ozark Center for Advanced Technology a new program that
with Jim Hart Jim Hart's help and Dennis Lancaster's leadership and partnership
with R-7 and the city we have our mayor who is here with us today Mayor
Jack Pahlman together in a partnership we were able to offer an outstanding
program that teaches advanced manufacturing I mentioned the ten
different degrees that we have added to meet the needs of our community one of
which a program the health information technology ONC came to us and said you
know where today we we scan the records and we send them to a doctor in some
other office or or maybe the patient can't come in and we we get consultation
and in st. Louis or Kansas City and you know shipping those and if you go to OMC
you get on or Burton Creek you go into the the portal to find out when your
appointment is and make an appointment with your doctor and review your records
and your medication that requires someone with more experience and the
health information technology program was started that which is going in
gangbusters Amy or I thought I saw you here how many people do we have in our H
IT program this year forty something all with with jobs kind of waiting for them
after they complete this
athletics our men's basketball team went to the national championship first time
in the history of Missouri State West Plains we're celebrating our 25th year
of student-athletes on our campus this year and one year in 2011 they went to
the national championship they're ranked number one in the nation for several
weeks the lady volleyball players have gone seven times over the last ten years
it's kind of the norm not the exception and last year our Lady student-athletes
had the third highest GPA in the country for two years schools the program that
we have here stresses student athletes and I think I saw our volleyball coach
there thanks to her coach Paula Wiedemann stand up take a bow
I don't ask for a lot out of life roof over my head food in the mouths of my
family and to have the highest GPA in in the country so no pressure there but
athletics does a lot for our program here there are people that think we
don't need athletics on our campus let me tell you three things that athletics
does from your campus missouri state university-west plains first of all it
provides something for the students to cling to a to develop a spirit to
encourage participation students want a campus experience and by having
athletics we are able to do that another thing that it does is to bring diversity
to our campus if the numbers that you saw over a hundred percent percentage
increase in student diversity would not be possible if we didn't have our
athletic programs which brings diversity not only does it bring ethnic diversity
it brings students from around the world to our campus International Programs we
had students from Iran Turkey China Brazil on and on and on France Canada
the Canadian students usually speak English fairly well but it provides it
provides that and then finally it provides a link to the community we're
going to talk about giving to Missouri State West Plains over the last 10 years
and generally people give first to athletics and then our development
office cultivates them and shows them and exposes them to the rest of our
campus and the rest of our needs and then they give to the rest of the campus
in our former our current Board of Governor member who was a history
professor ended her career carol sylvie as the first director of development and
carol would you say that athletics is important in getting those community
members committed to giving to the rest for the rest of our campus and other
purposes so athletic serves a very important function
on the West Plains campus and giving to athletics again our community is very
supportive look at the booster membership trivia night golf tournaments
and athletic scholarships all by the community to support that and when I say
the community I include many of our faculty and staff on this campus who
have also given to these programs other another giving aspect that I'm extremely
proud of these are the Darrs which are are gonna view has Darr Hall tomorrow but
we have established three endowed professorships at Missouri State West
Plains for a two-year school that's that's very impressive now there are
numerous professorships and chairs on the Springfield campus and Clif I know
some of those to get three endowed professorships might be just three
separate conversations in some cases for us it took 481 conversations but we're
very proud of the fact that we have raised money that goes to our faculty to
bring up the faculty salaries that we have grant here's some more giving
Annual Fund the Hass-Darr I mentioned almost one and a half million dollars
which includes the Carroll Silvey Student Union and the Veterans Center Gohn Hall
annual auction philanthropic women for education of course we had an estate
gift by mrs. Brooks which was a significant part but I know that many
people including myself in this room have given to the Annual Fund to the
Carroll sylvie Student Union to the annual auction sum and our members of
the philanthropic women for education so I appreciate those who are supporting
their school through giving when you add all that up over the last ten years
eight million eight hundred and seventy nine thousand nine hundred and seventy
four dollars almost nine million dollars raised to
do many of the things that we have done on this campus and I think that's a very
amazing accomplishment again supported by many of you in this room and if you
haven't supported it Joe is here they'll be glad to help you show you how you
could support grants another thing that we've been able to use is an increased
number of grants we have the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College
and Career Training grant that just rolls off the tongue but that has been
used to help Gohn Hall it's been used to help our allied health program it's
been used to help our AG program here a significant grant of 2.5 million dollars
trio is responsible for some of that increase in retention that you saw
that's our Trio program 2.2 million dollars title 3 also helped in retention
we talked about the FEMA grant which helped purchase the student rec center
project threshold is something the state had that helped us do our high school
extravaganzas and our recruiting effort a veteran's incentive program there are
a host of other smaller grants that help bring art programs with the University
Community Programs office to our campus that help with the Ozarks symposium that
we have every year and with help with our a AEL program the GED program that
we talked about all total 11 million dollars in grants that's how we have
been able to overcome some of the obstacles to fund the accomplishments
that you have been able to make some of the other highlights we've had a
successful accreditation visit during that last 10 years we've had two
long-range plans we had our 50th anniversary and we had our milestone of
who made we made a promise I worked with Dakota Bates and twisted his arm to make
a promise that we would give 50,000 hours
here's Dakota Bates right there did we have a pleasant conversation and you
just jumped up and said yes I want to do this actually he was very enthusiastic
about this he was a little concerned about the level and the goal that we
said but we said I think we if we just use students it would be kind of tough
so we thought outside the box and we use students faculty staff alumni and
supporters of Missouri State University man woman child we get our hands on and
not only did we achieve our goal but thanks to Dakota who really worked with
our students to an alumni to make this happen we gave back 56,000 hours of
community service that year during our 50th celebration enormous accomplishment
Thank You Dakota core of opportunities all right do we have any students who
are core of opportunity scholarship recipients here no well we it working in
many of our offices we have core of opportunity students or former core of
opportunities uh Eric Jericho were you a former uh-huh so you didn't think I was
gonna catch it raise your hand man early degree program students in their
junior and senior year at West Plains high school can attend school here
selected students selected students the very top students can come to Missouri
State during their junior and senior high school year and then in two years
graduate with a high school diploma and an associate's degree the Cass hall and
Looney Hall consolidation and the grizzly lofts management again grizzly
Lofts right now 122 students will get only bigger in the future so let's look
at the accomplishments that you this team has been able to do over the last
ten years because this should set as we go forward and look at how to go forward
let's remember what we've done in the past under some very difficult obstacles
I might add 10% increased enrollment we talked about the increase in diversity
26% increase in full-time faculty expanded academics three new buildings
twelve building renovations three professorships 11 million dollars plus
and grants almost nine million dollars in donations and the most important
thing we do because if you take the lifetime earnings expanded earnings of
those graduates what they would earn in addition not just a high school graduate
but now that they have an associate's degree there are additional lifetime
earnings that's about seven hundred and thirty six million dollars over the last
ten years that we've put back into the state of Missouri in the Ozark region
now I'm well aware that not all of those students stay in Missouri or not all of
those students stay in the Ozarks but every one of those students has
benefited from walking across the stage major accomplishments again despite
declining state funding inflation and numerous obstacles including the flood
okay now that's what we've done together as a team
and when I say we and a team we must make sure that we include Clif smart
and our colleagues on the Springfield campus they are very much a part of we
and the team it would have been impossible to have Gohn Hall, the salary
increases that we have seen, and the levels reached in our grants and giving
would not have been possible without president smart and the MSU system Clif
has it has gone with me to ask people for money for Missouri State University
West Plains in fact I'm more successful when he comes with me so I'm kind of
pulling him along quite a bit so thank you for all the work that you have done
to make these things possible now my last slide
yes the years take their toll and you had a couple of pounds a few more grey
hairs every year and after 10 years that's what you end up with but I've
decided to take this opportunity to announce my retirement this will be my
last academic year at Missouri State West Plains I'll retire sometime in the
summer of 2018 my retirement plans are very simple Elizabeth and I have a very
extensive bucket list that we're going to be working on and that includes
family and travel I'm going to pursue other priorities with those as the main
main focus now as much as I look forward to all of this it'll nevertheless be
bittersweet I poured my heart and soul into Missouri State University West
Plains over the last 10 years and because this campus means so much to all
of us it was important to me that my
retirement plans included ample opportunity for a full search for the
next Chancellor and a smooth transition of leadership Clif and I have discussed
this and we both want the next Chancellor to succeed now this briefing
has just reviewed many of the major triumphs and milestones that we as a
team have been able to accomplish together and we should all want the next
Chancellor to excel as you work with that person to reach even greater
heights in the future I am the seventh leader of Missouri
State West Plains that we didn't call them Chancellor's in the very beginning
but basically the seventh Chancellor and I've been here longer than all except
one Marvin green and each Chancellor has stood on the shoulders of the one before
to reach even greater heights and I am confident that the next Chancellor will
do the same with your help now rest assure for me what stands out in my
heart and mind or as I look back over the last decade of work is the students
who have overcome extraordinary obstacles to achieve remarkable success
and rest assure over the next academic year I plan to fully support and work
with those students so now after looking at the past and the present it's time to
discuss the future and how Missouri State University West Plains fits into
the Missouri State University system I would ask our system president to lead
that discussion so please welcome Clif smart to the podium let me begin by by
thanking dr. Bennett for ten really good years we started at the University at
about the same time and so for about three and a half years I was general
counsel and providing support to drew in this campus and then for the last six
and a half years have have been in the system president role I can't tell you
that how much it's been a privilege to work for someone who cares so much about
this place who's dedicated who brings energy to the job every day who brings
that that dedication to you but also a commitment to the system in terms of of
how we advance the ball and Drew has been a great teammate and and friend
these last 10 years and as you've just seen the campus has done tremendously
well under his leadership that begins with enrollment but doesn't in there as
you've seen on the slides we've had growth in facilities programs grants
gifts to the foundation including the creation of three endowed professorships
salary increases enhanced community engagement diversity athletic success
and on and on I'm very excited to see how the acquisition of the Grizzly lofts
impacts enrollment as we beyond the the traditional 7 County area as drew says
it has the most occupants in its history this semester
under our management and there's great potential for continued
growth as that partnership expands doctor Bennett has been a loyal
colleague and friend as well and I will miss him this year when this year is
over he has been a leader who advocated fiercely for this campus but a person
who also always stood with me after decisions were made whether he thought
they benefited the campus or not that's what a true leader and teammate does
evidence of dr. Bennett's success in advocating for your campus I think is
best seen in this slide drew showed you these numbers but just for the West
Plains campus and so I began in 2011 as interim president and you can see in
terms of the red line is Springfield this is state appropriations per
full-time equivalent student and you will see that during this entire period
the blue line for West Plains only goes up as the line for the Springfield
campus ultimately goes down so that this past year West Plains receives from the
state four thousand seven hundred and twenty seven dollars per student
now that's less than it was ten years ago but on the Springfield campus it's
four thousand one hundred and seventy-five dollars per student or
about six hundred dollars less that's a result of a formula that dr. Bennett
advocated for that I agreed to and that the board approved as a governing policy
frankly he doesn't always get credit for that kind of advocacy for this campus
but you should know there has never been a time that he was not pushing me as
hard as he could for additional funding for this campus and this is indication
that he has been successful in that despite it being a time of very
challenging funding from the state now when decisions were
made dr. Bennett always supported those publicly a hundred percent behind the
scenes he never stopped advocating for this campus so enough of the past moving
forward let me talk a little bit about what the
next steps will be in in the Chancellor search because we're going to need your
input and your participation for this to be successful it's not going to be easy
to replace dr. Bennett but I am confident we will be able to
hire a new chancellor who will build on the really good work that has gone on
here in the last 10 years here is how we will proceed we will conduct a national
search this academic year with the goal of having a new chancellor in place by
August 1st 2018 this will allow us to avoid naming an interim chancellor and I
so much appreciate drew giving us the full year to be able to conduct that
search and do that second I have named Matt Morris vice president for
administration as the search committee chair Matt would you stand up Matt's
here with me today many of you know Matt as he served here for almost six years
as the director of business and support services and he's now vice president on
the Springfield campus for administration third Matt and I will
hold an open town-hall meeting next month or in October sometime in the next
six weeks to gain input on what you want in a chancellor
we'll also distribute a survey seeking input on this issue as well we'll get it
to all employees we'll also have it posted online so that
community members and students will have an opportunity to weigh in if they would
like to before the town hall meeting we will appoint a search committee made up
of faculty staff students and community members from West Plains along with
several leaders from the Springfield campus who regularly interact with this
campus and charge them with conducting a search and narrowing the field of final
candidates down to somewhere in the in the nature of three to six people some
of whom will be brought to campus so you can interact directly with them often in
this day and age search committees ultimately only bring one one final
candidate to campus that is not our tradition either on Springfield or in
West Plains and so you will be involved in having an opportunity to interact
with more than one finalists for this position five if you would like to serve
on the search committee or if you would like to nominate someone else to serve
on the search committee you can do that by sending those names directly to me
through the president's email account that's on the board I'm confident
everybody can remember that it is president at Missouri State DOT edu
don't send it to my personal account send it to this account and we'll we'll
do that in the next two weeks because our goal is to put the search committee
together very soon so again if you have ideas of who should
serve on that committee in any category students faculty staff community members
please send those names to me and Matt and I will
we'll put a very strong representative search committee together in the next
two to three weeks after the campus visits and after receiving your feedback
in checking references then ultimately it's my job to make a recommendation to
the Board of Governors on which candidate should be selected we may or
may not engage a consultant to help us in that process that decision hasn't yet
been made but whether this occurs or not I commit to you that the process will be
very transparent and that your input on the candidates will be considered and is
important now it's drew indicated the new
chancellor will face serious serious challenges in the year ahead you saw the
slide of Missouri and the decrease in funding for higher education in dr.
Bennett's presentation I will simply tell you state revenue is not growing as
projected and other expenses continue to grow exponentially
I don't believe are recovering or growing economy is going to fix this at
least in the short-term income and corporate tax rates have been reduced
sales tax revenue is decreasing as a result of internet sales Medicaid costs
are increasing dramatically and there's a drive to reduce taxes further the
higher education share of the budget under both Democrats and Republicans has
gone from 16% in 2002 to 10% this year and the actual dollar amount
universities receive is less today than it was 15 years ago before considering
inflation and based on everyone I talked to we project this trend to continue in
the last eight months we go to the next slide you'll see the
reductions that Missouri State University as a whole has experienced in
last year's budget in January we received a six point seven million
dollar withholding then in the budget that that essentially was made permanent
with a six point five or six yep six point five million dollar reduction and
then we had a further withholding on top of that of another 2.7 percent or about
2.7 million dollars we receive our appropriation in one lump sum so there
isn't a separate appropriation for West Plains and a separate for Springfield
and a separate for Mountain Grove it's all rule together and as I mentioned
earlier there's a formula that divides that money out and that formula has
benefited this campus but if we look to what the reductions have been at West
Plains you will see that what that withholding was in last year's
budget I reduced the impact on that to this campus by covering 200,000 of that
centrally and then there was a further in this budget year there was a further
reduction and then a further withholding if you add all of those numbers up just
in the last eight months West Plains has lost nine hundred and one thousand
dollars through state funding cuts there were many reductions that had to
take place as a result of that for this year they were not across-the-board pay
increases and so ultimately it's been decided the university needed a new
sustainable funding model we've put together four principles to deal with
that I've got a talk I've got notes here to go through each of these right now I
think I'm gonna skip that for today I've written about this and my Clif note of
August 8th you can go on our website and look at that I'm going to be talking
about it at the state of the University address in Springfield which will be
live streamed on your computer and so you can follow that as I give that at
the end of September it'll also be broadcast on Ozarks Public Television
but ultimately the four legs of the stool of our continued emphasis on
affordability a continued emphasis on becoming more efficient in how we spend
both tax dollars and tuition money a continued emphasis on growth and
increased revenue through things other than tuition increases and then a taking
a good look at what our tuition fee and scholarship policies would be going
forward I would tell you students we get all of our money from two sources state
appropriations and your tuition and fees and so as state appropriations goes down
the only things we can do are reduce the services and become ever more efficient
or raise costs so you have a direct stake in how the state funds higher
education a continued decrease in the funding of
of the state for higher education directly means you pay more money to go
to school and so that that's just the world we live in I will commit to you we
continue to make our case for additional state funding directly through
interaction with policymakers and indirectly through data such as an
economic impact study through our alumni publications events and messages free
media that tell our story through our workforce development and
entrepreneurship programs through a new performance funding model which
emphasizes efficiency in which both campuses will do very well on through
our business partners but as you have seen it's been an uphill battle and we
appear to still be swimming upstream if we change to this financial model we
believe both campuses will continue to grow and thrive and that we can be
frankly the most efficient and effective university system in Missouri it's not
going to be easy change is never easy and leadership matters so the hiring of
a new chancellor will be critical if this model is to be successful let me
conclude by emphasizing that we have another tough budget year ahead of us
and that we will be pivoting to a new budget model I am very thankful that I
have an experienced capable Chancellor and team on this campus to work with
this year as we again seek to overcome challenges of ever decreasing state
funding well then let's just end by giving dr. Bennett a round of applause
for the really good world
you
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