- Good afternoon.
And thank you for joining us for the annual
State of the University address.
Frank was just reminding me that this is the seventh time
we have done this together.
So you all should know the drill by now.
During our time today, there will be several ways
for you to interact with us and ask questions
or make comments so at the conclusion
of Frank's presentation, we will both take questions,
first from anyone who sends in a question
through social media or delivers a card
to Suzanne Shaw and we will ask those questions first
and then when we're completed with that or if there
are none then we will have people directly ask questions.
We'll bring you a microphone and anyone can ask a question
on any topic from the floor.
Welcome Keyshore, I look forward to your question.
(audience laughing)
I promise we'll start with you after all of the social media
questions are done.
I want to begin this afternoon by saying that we had
an extraordinarily good year last year on all fronts
but one.
I bet you can guess the one.
It's state funding.
In the last eight months, our system has experienced
three reductions in funding.
If you look at this slide, you will see that last year
we were scheduled to receive 91.6 million dollars.
That was the biggest increase in history,
about a 4.8% increase.
We'd had our cooperative mechanical engineering program
funded.
We did not get all of the increase and we did not
receive all of the engineering funding.
Instead in FY 17 we had a withholding of 6.3 million dollars
of operating money and we had a withholding of almost
$600,000 of the engineering fund.
Then the FY 18 budget came out.
That's a year that begins July first.
That's the year that we are in now and we had
a 6.58% reduction in funding,
that's the 6 and a half million dollars there
and we lost half of our engineering money.
And then shortly there after that this summer
at the end of June, the governor announced additional
withholding of 2.7 million dollars plus the other half
of the engineering fund.
That's a nine percent reduction in budget from this year
to last year.
You can add all those numbers up and see how much
we're down in the last two years.
Let me put these numbers in context for everyone.
This is not a new trend.
If you go back to 2002, state budget for all of higher
education took about 16% of the budget and so in the last
15 years that's been reduced to now, state budget
has about 10% of the money dedicated to higher education.
We receive less money today from the state
than we did in 2002.
That is true for all universities
and that's before factoring in inflation.
But I would tell you the cuts that we received this year
and they're shown on the board were certainly the most
dramatic cuts that we have received from the state
in six plus years that Frank
and I have been doing this work.
Unfortunately, we project the trend to continue
for several years and as a result of that, we've created
what we hope, what we believe will be a new, sustainable
funding model.
It has four key principles, they're on the board now.
It begins with maintaining affordability.
A good part of our growth is a result of the value option
and we can't give that away.
Second, becoming more efficient.
We must prove to the state and our students as well,
frankly, that we're good stewards of the tax and tuition
money that we receive.
We need to continue to grow revenue beyond raising
tuition and fees.
A part of that is enrollment growth and part of that
are new programs and other initiatives.
And if we do these things, we'll also be evaluating
our tuition fee and scholarship structure.
I wrote about these items in detail on August 8, 2017
in a Clif Note.
They're on the blog we keep on the president's website.
Frank and I have discussed all of them at every division
and college meeting that we have attended.
That work is still online.
The link is on the board and I would encourage you
if you haven't read that material to go back
and read it and see the details.
Despite that major funding obstacle, we had some
really incredible achievements last year and I want
to review some of those with you.
And we thought the easiest way to do that
would be start by showing you a video.
You're the first group to see it in final form.
It's hot off the press.
It's our What's New at MSU video.
It's about four minutes long.
(serene music)
- [Narrator] Onward, upward.
That vision started as a teacher's college in 1905.
Onward, upward.
It continued when we became Missouri State University
a century later.
Onward, upward.
That vision?
It's what keeps us moving forward.
To this.
(up-tempo music)
Onward, upward is adding new chances to learn.
Check out new graduate degrees for vital fields
in agriculture and computer science.
It's elevating the Darr School of Agriculture
to a college
and continuing to be a leader in faculty research
with more than 24 million dollars in grants.
We move Missouri State forward
with incredible student experiences,
including a chorale performance for the ages.
- We have one of the great chorale programs anywhere.
- [Narrator] Onward, upward is helping our neighbors
research ways to improve Springfield
with the Community Focus Report and then assisting
the Northwest Project.
(people cheering)
Trees?
We love them, and Tree Campus USA loves that we love them.
We are the top university for students that have
visual impairments and one of the five best
in the state for first generation scholars.
- I'm first.
- I'm first.
- I'm first.
- My name is Shelby and I'm first.
- [Narrator] Another fall enrollment record
included over 1,500 international students
who want to move onward, upward.
(people cheering)
Our international flair encourages students
to become travel bears.
New chances are offered in Cuba, Uganda, Ireland and Japan.
It's an ongoing commitment to be a keystone university
in inclusion.
Onward, upward.
What once was old now is new.
The Oldham family helped us build a place
for our students who fought for our country.
But we don't forget active service members.
The ROTC Bear Battalion brought home
a championship of their own.
Then there are landmark renovations
at Glass and Ellis Halls.
The inhabitants of Glass are doing big things.
That's five-straight national titles for the Ad Team.
(people cheering)
Golf, baseball, swimming, volleyball.
We're Missouri Valley Champions times four.
(people cheering)
Our student-athletes won in the classroom, too.
A record number graduated and moved onward,
upward to what's next.
(people cheering)
And none of this would be possible without our Foundation.
They have 19 million reasons for being recognized
for excellence in fundraising.
Onward, upward.
That's what's new at MSU.
(upbeat music)
(audience clapping)
- So we'll be using that video in a lot of different
places this year as we promote the university
literally all around the world.
Let me follow up on some of the things
that were referenced in the video to give you
little more detail.
Enrollment has continued to increase.
We set both system and campus enrollment records
for the sixth consecutive year, six years in a row.
We're now at 26,216 students in the system
and 24,350 on the Springfield campus.
In part, that's a result of a record freshman class,
our biggest freshman class since we went
to selective admissions.
We have the most graduate students ever,
over 3,500 and the most underrepresented students ever,
almost 3,200 as a part of that accomplishment.
More importantly though we graduated a record number
of students, awarding over 4,600 degrees
and over 300 certificates.
We added new academic programs in areas of critical need.
We began several new retention initiatives
to retain more of our first generation Pell eligible
and underrepresented students.
As a result, St. Louis Graduates
and the St. Louis Regional Chamber recognized
Missouri State University as one of five Missouri
colleges and universities, only three of which were public,
for leadership in graduating low income students,
first generation students, and students of color
with less debt.
I'm very proud of that recognition.
We increased the diversity of our faculty and staff
and we once again met our target of 20% of new hires
being from diverse backgrounds.
We made significant facilities investment.
If you haven't gone through Ellis Hall, you should.
It is a brand new, phenomenal building and we dedicated
it yesterday.
But we also did renovations on the third floor
of the professional building, in the computer lab
in Cheek Hall, in Blair Shannon where there
are all new bathrooms.
Glass Hall renovation will be completed in about five weeks.
A brand new health and wellness center is going up
and Hass-Darr Hall in West Plains will open in January.
And, maybe most importantly, in about a week
we should have a new parking lot open on Walnut Street.
(audience laughing)
For all our faculty in here know that most of the money
for renovation has gone into academic space.
Over 50 million dollars this last year alone
has gone into renovating academic space across campus
with most of that going into Glass and Ellis Halls
but also the other facilities mentioned.
We improved safety on campus.
Probably the most important thing we did was hiring
and emergency preparedness manager, David Hall.
We did that through a reallocation of funding
where we closed other positions to be able to hire
David and as a result of his good work
and the good work of his team, we are better prepared today
to handle a crisis than we have been ever on all
of our campuses.
We've expanded our entrepreneurial activities
at Jvick and the eFactory and for the second year
in a row we received more than 40 million dollars
of external support through grants and sponsored contracts
as well as contributions through the foundation
which had its second best year ever.
And finally we won four conference championships
in athletics with our athletes earning the highest
overall grade point average in history and frankly
the success of the baseball program in making
the super regionals for the second time in three years
raised the profile of the university significantly.
These were all group efforts and so thank you for everyone
who played a role in improving our university
as we move onward and upward.
One major disappointment this year was our inability to fund
an across the board pay raise due to all of those cuts
in state funding that I referenced.
This was the first time in my six years in this position
that that occurred and while we still did increase
compensation as you can see on this slide,
including contributing more than two million dollars
to our pension fund more this year than last,
we must do better next year and that is the number one
priority of the executive budget committee as we move
into conversations about that.
Building on the really good work of everyone here
and everyone a part of our team,
here are the three focus areas for the coming year.
The first two areas were our focus areas last year
and we have added the third, funding, in anticipation
of further decreases in state funding for next year.
We've built an action plan based on these three areas
of focus and I want to share key highlights
of that with you.
I anticipate Frank will expand on some of those
academic initiatives that I reference now.
So there are certain things that we can do to both
increase revenue and improve student success
and if you look at the list that's on the board now,
the last four bullet points do just that.
As we work to increase retention and graduation rates
of our students through, restructuring summer school,
providing enhanced transition support, expanding
advising services and restructuring and reassigning
GEP 101 classes.
Those are all retention initiatives and the more students
we retain, the more that remain here and graduate with us,
the side benefit of that is additional revenue
that comes into the budget.
So those are consistent.
We can work on the revenue side while at the same time
making our students more successful and increasing
the number of graduates that we have.
We will also need to strategically unbundle programs
into stackable, micro credentials
and create new opportunities
for students to be successful.
Maybe students that are not here with us,
non traditional students who want to come back
to the university.
We'll have a consultant on campus at the end of October
to help us work through what makes sense for us
in that venue.
And then finally we need to continue to grow enrollment
of both our domestic students and sustain enrollment
of our international students.
On the video you saw a reference
to 1,500 international students.
That's a great number.
It's 212 less than we had last year
and so we will be working to turn that number around.
And frankly that loss hides what would otherwise be
a bigger growth in our domestic students and students
from Missouri and the region.
If we look at the affordability issue,
there are a variety of things that are going on now.
The faculty senate has a task force working to
evaluate reducing the minimum number of hours
it requires to graduate.
Chris Craig is leading a task force
on open access textbooks and can we make progress
on affordability on that angle.
The math department has rolled out its first pilot project
on co-requisite math so that as we work to reduce
the number of students that take developmental classes,
classes that don't count towards graduation
in any way.
And we will be rolling out next year several pilot programs
on structured schedules, again to help students
make good choices in terms of the number
of hours they take before they graduate.
We will continue to work on our diversity
and inclusivity efforts.
We have more progress that needs to be done.
We live in a state where the NAACP has issued
a travel advisory for Missouri.
St. Louis is still in turmoil.
There is work we need to do as a state and on our campus
and again, this will result in increased retention
and graduation rates for our underrepresented students
as we work to make them feel an equal part
of our community with any other student with any
other background.
They don't always feel like that and there's continued work
we need to do there.
And if we do these things, frankly, only if we do
these things, can we then evaluate and revise
the tuition and fee schedule.
That's a directive from our board.
They have told us at the August retreat
that they want us to focus on efficiency
and revenue growth first before we bring any proposed
tuition and fee increases to them.
Working together, I believe we can make progress
on all these actions and that will allow us to grow revenue.
Why do we care about that?
Because if we grow revenue, then we will be able
to hire additional faculty and work to reduce
the student faculty ratio.
We'll be able to increase compensation for faculty
and staff.
We'll be able to increase our graduation
and retention rates as well as the number
of credentials awarded, improve our student experience,
help grow the economy of our state,
all the while maintaining affordability.
We live in challenging times.
Our country is divided across many lines.
We saw that carried out yesterday if any of you watched
any of the pro football games that were on television.
The world has become a scarier place.
The tone and style of national
and state political leadership has changed
and frankly not for the better in my view.
People are hurting.
It would be easy for us for despair and or apathy
to take hold and so let me leave you with this,
two final challenges.
First, let's continue to be positive.
We're making a difference in the lives
of tens of thousands of students.
The university is thriving despite the funding cut backs.
Our influence and profile as a university in the state
has never been higher.
Second, let's continue to emphasize our public affairs
mission of community engagement, ethical leadership,
and cultural competence and let's do it with an emphasis
on inclusion, civility, and kindness.
Every employee, every student, no matter their political
or religious views from very conservative to very liberal
should feel a part of the Missouri State University family.
If we can make them feel that way, this will continue
to be a special place to attend school and to work.
Frank is now gonna report on some of the academic
achievements of the past year and comment further
on various academic initiatives underway.
Frank?
(audience clapping)
- Thank you Clif.
In my comments today, I know that there are some things
that I will highlight that are unique and perhaps different
but before we get into highlighting things
I want to point out that this semester
we have 5,300 sections of class or lab that are going on
every week.
And what we do in those classes and laboratories
and settings is sometimes seen as mundane
but it's the heart of the university
and what we do in those classes to inspire our students
makes all the difference.
And while I'm going to highlight some things
that are beyond the classroom in many cases,
I never forget the importance of the heart
of the university and the class and the lab sections
that we run.
Starting with my highlight section of things,
I'm going to emphasize various types of active learning
and also collaboration.
And the second half that I talk about,
I want to emphasize that we have some challenges
and go into a few of the details but also indicate
a few things that we hope to do to make successes
of the challenges.
We had a great start and thanks to the College
of Natural and Applied Science and the dean's leadership
in that role, we had a natural science event,
a once on a century natural science event,
a solar eclipse for this point in the globe
that we were able to have a euphoria about,
a learning experience and bringing the community
into that event.
What a great start!
I have to admit I was nervous and it turned out
probably the best start of the year that I think
has ever occurred.
And if we could regress just a moment to back
to our enrollment numbers, all of those numbers on there
are record enrollment numbers.
The ones that didn't get mentioned by Clif
are dual credit, where we surpassed 2,800 students
in our dual credit program and I've got to re-mention
graduates because at graduate college level,
that 35 number has haunted me for a number of years
and so we got there.
But what's not on the record in different segments
on the screen is to get there, many programs
grew in their majors.
Many programs.
But I want to highlight a few because they show
that growth occurs where we have economic realities
and demand.
Our pre nursing program has 670 people in that area.
Because of that kind of number and pressures
in the community and our state, we will try
to expand that nursing program to taking in more
than 61 for our bachelor's program to taking in
at least 72 next year and hopefully progressively
in years to come, gradually build that further.
Our computer science and computer information system
programs in different colleges have increased
about 50% over the last five years
in their undergraduate majors.
Our cybersecurity program at the graduate level
is relatively new but it increased about 50% this year
going to 50 in the masters degree.
And, finally I want to mention our doctorate
in the nurse anesthesia practice program
has 135 students and we are becoming a national,
known entity in that area.
Online I saved in not mentioning its growth
but if you notice that this semester
we have a little over 14% of our credit hours
are online.
In the summer it's a whopping 53%.
The last fiscal year we have almost 16% of the credit hours
in online education and we assume that's going
to continue to grow.
That process, last year, we started a new approach
for our faculty and we had a boot camp in which our faculty
in the College of Natural and Applied Science,
12 of them we through a compressed period of time
to gain some skills and also at the same time
develop a new class.
Because of that, we will have four new online classes
in biology, five new classes in our geography,
geology, and planning department,
and one each in terms of math and chemistry and physics.
We will run another boot camp this year.
The doors are open.
We're taking solicitations for all those who want to join
right now.
In addition to that now I want to move into
some of the highlights of specific college areas
and I thought I'd start with the fact that our
masters degree in computer science had a very late
approval process in mid summer and yet we start
with 15 students in that program.
And to aid the program and the whole of the computer science
area, we have a renovated laboratory in Cheek Hall
that will accommodate 50 students.
Our undergraduate, as I said,
is a booming process right now.
There is demand in that area, either short term
programming or the long term or the graduate,
all of them.
If we look down the line and look at another college,
the College of Arts and Letters, we have a two and a half
million dollar grant that was achieved by Dr. Andrea Hellman
that is helping teachers in the Ozarks in their process
where they take people that are not first
in their English language but second in that language,
how do we teach them in the public schools?
In the parochial schools?
And so we have partners from Monett, McDonald County,
Neosho, and Springfield and we anticipate at least
that that two and a half million dollar grant
is gonna help a lot of students, at least 85,
who are teachers now but still students of ours
who will get a certificate but they'll also get
an endorsement from the state for the skills
they have developed in teaching English language.
Moving on to some of our learning opportunities
that have expanded now as we have a college of agriculture.
Due to long term connections and the help and work
of the foundation, we took another farm into our wing.
Now we are land poor, so to speak, but land rich
from the teaching standpoint.
This 80 acre farm provides another opportunity
for students to have active learning sites
and almost immediately after we had the approval
in March at the board of governors meeting,
Dan Monsanto assists us in some field plannings
and our students are working those plannings even now
in the harvesting process.
If we go on into the College of Agriculture
and look at the array of things that they have
at their hands, so to speak, we are the envy of many
land grant institutions.
We have indeed 190 acre fruit science station,
a 3300 acre journagan ranch, a massive woodland area,
a Shealy farm with 256 acres.
We have sites for learning in all areas
of agriculture and forestry now from row crop
to cattle raising.
If we take another step in looking at what we do
in the College of Business, it's already been known
for a long time that we moved back into Glass Hall
but in that process we have five active learning areas
for student development, including a trading lab
that has a real time stock market approach
with a fairly expensive software package of Bloomberg's
and in that process, our finance students will have
classes in that room.
We also have a lab that is going to be dedicated
to sales and marketing and when I heard they had
one way mirrors in there, I knew the sales pitches
that are coming out of our students are going to be
pretty high because they're going to be critiqued
on how to do it.
In addition, you'll notice the other laboratory areas
in the creating work together think tank type processes
that that building will provide.
If we look to another college, the College of Education
is a situation where we have increasingly tried
to get our students into the school systems.
So we have an active internship program that's the envy
of the state and in that internship program,
we're now starting our third year where 25 students
in elementary education spend a year in doing
what they've been shown a little bit how to do
and now they really learn how to do it.
Everything from the assessment side to the direct teaching
and lesson planning, they are involved
with master teachers.
We have a One Missouri project in which, now for a couple
of years, we worked with inner city districts
in St. Louis, Riverside, (mumbles) and also Plattenville
and in Kansas City, Lee Summitt, where we offer
the opportunity for students that are in
the underrepresented area to come to campus
for a little short time in the summer, get some help
on what it would be like to come to college
and how to get there.
And then if they come here, we can also assist
them by working back with the school district
with the overall idea of placing them there in student
teaching and placing them there eventually
in a job to come.
Chris Craig and a number of you have worked on
our Bear Power project, which a lot more information
will be coming on that project which we plan to take
some students from 17 to 23, 25, of intellectual disability,
give them a college experience that gives them
a certificate in hopes to move them into being
a employable person.
If we take a look at the College of Health
and Human Services, by the way I had another picture
and I took it out about how they moved that up the steps.
The elevators weren't working and so they all
got together, and this is a cooperative thing.
We have a balance instrument now that's in envy to anyone,
almost $150,000 instrument that was able to be
obtained because everybody worked together
that has an interest there.
Physical therapy, audiology, athletic training,
occupational therapy, worked together,
now we can have research and student activities
connected with that instrument being present.
MSU Care is another area in which we heard about
this last year as we opened it October 15,
a year and a half ago, almost two years now.
We have served over 4,000 clients in the last year
and now we are doing about 400 a month
and in that last year over 1,000 or approximately 1,000,
were individually clients.
Some men came and repeated sessions.
Most recently, we've opened our vision screening
service learning program to those people to come in
that need care.
Finally,
I'm looking at the College of Humanities
and Public Affairs who have always been active
in study away.
We had a project in Haiti where Elora Hobbs had her class
doing work with young children, among others there,
and some older, and testing them for the need
for glasses and assisting them in that way,
among other things that they did while in Haiti.
We had another project to cite here
that went to The Netherlands where the students
of political science of Kevin Pivos were able to
gain insights into a different system of government,
slightly different, and collectively then,
we see that if we look at lots of study away
that's going on, we served over 700 students
in the study away experience.
Most of that growth is in the short term study away
type experience and that amounted to 34 different
programs last year, which was a 26% increase
over the prior year.
Victor, thank you for giving me some stimulus
to talk about that.
At the graduate level, one of the interesting activities
that has occurred is after little by little growth,
the masters of professional studies now is the second
largest graduate program.
It's interdisciplinary and it offers great flexibility,
both of which are things that there is a group
of students that look for those kinds of things.
In addition to the masters of professional study,
we have a masters degree that is interdisciplinary
and collectively it's those two numbers that give you
the 148 on the right as far as the majors in those
two areas but the vast majority of them, about 95%
are in the professional studies program.
Our graduate partnership in Unicesumar in Brazil
is quite unique.
We have 22 students that started that masters
of professional study program with an applied communications
option and that is done as a combination where our teachers
actually teach online for part of their program
and on the ground.
So Shawn Wall was on the ground there.
Now our interim dean and taught a class
and finished it up online but we'll also use teachers
from Unicesumar and so it's a unique experience.
It adds to the cultural competence, I think,
of all those that get involved as a teacher
and indeed I think this is one of the important
experiments we're trying.
Another type of collaboration I wanted to emphasize
is where we have colleges collaborating with our center
that brings in students in the international way,
in the international leadership and training center.
The College of Education has their first cohort
of students.
Gilbert Brown's been heavily involved with that,
coming into do a graduate certificate
in what higher education is all about
and for the third year, our College of Agriculture
has students from Ningxia University.
This year, some of those 41 students are in other places
on campus as well.
Moving now onto some of the challenges
and some of the actions we might take for success,
one of the things that we do that continually
is upon us is the accreditation or another type
of outside approval process.
This day, in fact, we had accreditors here
that I met with this morning in speech language
and audiology.
Last week we had nursing here for our nursing board
approval process from the state of Missouri.
So we have accreditations that are continually
one way we try to assure our quality of our programs.
There are others but this is this year.
If we look at performance measures now,
performance measures are changing.
This is a challenge because we met all of our
performance measure every year now for five years
and we're gonna meet it again this year.
But now they are going to change and half of them
are going to be new.
In the efficiency section of that slide,
we have two new measures, affordability
and operating salaries per FTE.
I don't have a clue yet how they're going to
have the metrics on those though so I'm not gonna mention
much about it but it will be a challenge.
On the left hand side here, completions per student FTE
is a new measure and I'm going to be redundant
and re-show this indication of what our past history
has been in awards and I have two major purposes.
Of the 4,900 awards that we gave last year,
certainly the vast majority are in degrees
but certificates now number over 300.
Both types will be able to be countable as far
as we know and so let's not to forget using certificates
that we have that can be valued by the student.
Secondly, if you look at all of those awards,
we've been on a good increase but the increase
depends on our starting point in all of the areas
so we can't forget that.
Looking at that same type of data in a little different way,
we have all colleges contributing and one thing
I am going to like about this measure is the fact
that every thing we do with our students
in a positive way will be counted in the end,
whether they come in as sophomores,
whether they come in as transfer students
or graduate students, all is going to be counted
because it's the output that's going to count.
A second think I like about it is that we're able
to show that nothing should be forgotten across our colleges
as long as they're contributing outcomes
and it's not just freshman to sophomore retention
that will be important.
If you look at the bottom of the screen,
you see 30% of our awards last year were given
to graduate students.
Again, my old graduate dean comes out
but if you want to forget the graduate program,
you drop out 30%.
That's not a healthy way to look at the future.
Cliff has mentioned that because we have
125 hour requirement for graduation,
we thought it was time to look at that
at the faculty senate level.
They are looking at it and he didn't get to show
all the pretty pictures here of the people
so I thought I should do that part.
But, one of the real background pieces
of information that come out of the reason to look at this,
number one, we're the highest in the state
for the requirement.
Number two, almost four out of five of our programs
could be completed if we didn't have a university
requirement of 125 hours.
They're completable in 120 hours without any change.
Number three, I think it's worth noting that in having
the charge that came from Cindy McGregor to this committee,
the idea was that if we would make a change,
nobody who was in that other one fifth and has accreditation
and other reasons for more hours
would have to make a change.
We're also taking a look at summer school.
Perhaps this is a more complex problem.
You notice we have people from basically all parts
of campus from up in housing, from financial aid,
as well as faculty and the registrar's office.
Again, this is an area we would look at for one primary
reason, how can we better serve our students?
And in looking at that, Tom Hickey is the chair of this
committee as he is the other one,
the questions are something like this,
can we increase enrollment by having greater flexibility
in the summer school process?
The answers are not absolutely clear.
But that's the type of question that we want to look at
and we already know that our departments
are frequently dividing the summer school into
components of four weeks and sometimes two weeks.
We also know that our inner session, prior to summer school
is effectively dying.
So, we need to look at this and see what is our best
approach for the future.
We can impact success in a lot of ways.
Our Jump Start programs have been going for many years
and this is a program that serves students
who didn't quite meet our admission requirements
but if they'll come in the summer they can continue on.
We had 52 of those students last summer.
Thanks to Wes Pratt and a number in student services
and Rochelle, a lot of people working together,
we have a transition program now for a different
kind of student, a student that is here
but can probably profit from a little more attention
about what the experience of transition is all about.
The last thing on my slide here is to illustrate
one other thing, we're going to change
the admission requirements and raise the criteria
in one direction and that is below a ACT composite
of 17 will not be admissible.
A small change but an important one because our data
shows those students have not been very successful
and they need some help prior to coming
and we will be doing them a favor if we make that change.
Retention, of course, is always on our mind.
We promote retention in a number of ways
but the GEP program is our starting point for that.
Right now we have 28 sections that are first generation
or college sections and we'll try to increase that number.
The total number is 96 and we have a long ways to go
but in the process we want to get better utilization
of Blackboard.
We want to introduce the student educational planner
and get 'em involved in GEP 101 in using that
educational planner and try to work on retention
in those kinds of ways.
Eventually, we'd like to have a second year experience
in a hands on way, probably of either study away
or service learning but there are other possibilities
in research and so on.
Clif has mentioned remedial classes or something
that takes time, money, and often is discouraging
so the co-requisite model is one approach.
Last spring, Margaret Weaver ran a co-requisite
English session where they joined the remedial class
with the regular required class.
She wrote a pretty extensive report, I read it.
My conclusion was there's hope that it can be successful
but it's not a proven fact.
So, we'll now run more remedial, excuse me,
more co-requisite classes in English this fall
and, as Cliff has noted, we'll have one in college algebra
being linked to Math 101 in a sequence for next spring
and right now we're doing a co-requisite model
in math 130.
Perhaps a bigger impact overall is good advising
as to what kind of class best fits the matron
and so on.
Math pathway approach is something we need to pay
more attention to.
Structured schedules, again, have been mentioned
but this is simply the idea that all over the country
they're finding that if you give less choices
to your first enrollment, students are going to do better
and those are called structured schedules.
All of our GEP students will be pre-registered
in a section so they can hit that first (mumbles)
or whatever section best fits them.
In the College of Business they volunteered
that the pre-business students will be in a structured
schedule of three classes, not all total,
and we also will have the pre-nursing students, again,
in a structured schedule model and we'll probably do that
by using the student educational planner
and strongly getting the students working with
the advisement process and making that happen
in the pre-nursing program particularly.
If we take a look at the advisement initiatives,
we know and have always felt advising was important.
That doesn't mean we can't always do better
in advising and recently the deans and working
with our departments have gotten most of the degree plans
updated, so four year degree plans are available
and all will be soon.
In that process then in GEP, their four year degree plan
will be utilized and it will be a part of the advisement
process for the longer term.
Moving on to some other types of activities,
the transfer council has advised that at least
for transfer students and we've decided for everyone
they should see an adviser at least three times.
And so that will be put into practice.
So, there are a lot of things that can impact
our success to graduation.
Elements of retention, all the way along the line
but if we look at all the things we've mentioned,
structured schedules, no one of them fixes an issue
and a lot does depend on student motivation.
In my box down at the bottom of that slide,
I try to point out the fact that the student
has a responsibility here and they have a lot
of variables in their lives too.
Financial and family which we cannot control.
We can control how much we care about what we're doing
with the students and it's not just programming.
It's how much we care and put into practice
at every level of what we're doing.
So thank you very much for your attention.
I appreciate it.
(audience clapping)
- Alright, I know some people need to leave
and that's perfectly fine but we will take first questions
that were either written on cards or sent via
social media to our vice president, Suzanne Shaw.
Suzanne, do we have any questions?
- [Suzanne] Okay, can you hear me?
- Yep.
- [Suzanne] For those who have cards, we have a couple
people in each aisle who will come by and pick them up
and I will start with the social media questions.
The first one is campus safety, a current issue.
What changes, if any, should we expect to see
following recent clarification of title nine protocol?
- Great question.
As you all may have seen in the Chronicle
or on news, the Secretary of Education withdrew
the guidance from the Obama administration
on sexual assault from 2011 and 2014.
We seem to, we talked about this this morning
at admin council so I know what the changes are.
It gives more flexibility to universities
in terms of standard of proof.
On a criminal trial, the standard of proof
is beyond a reasonable doubt.
Colleges, before 2011, either chose preponderance
of the evidence or clear and convincing evidence.
The Obama administration required universities
to do preponderance of the evidence which simply means
what's more believable?
Do you believe this student stole from this other student
or assaulted this other student, et cetera.
So the new language allows universities to choose
their standard of proof for disciplinary measures.
It also allows for mediation of sexual assault claims
that have been precluded under the theory
that victims are often pressured in those situations
into accepting a resolution that they found unacceptable
and then the third thing, what was the third thing?
60 days, thank you Wes.
The third thing was right now the requirement is
that a complaint has to be resolved within 60 days
and they have taken that away and given additional time.
So, nothing that they put out last week changes
what we have to do and so we plan to make no changes.
Our, and that's a good thing.
I will tell you, there's no university in America
that does better than we do on title nine, period.
We have a great team.
We give both students due process.
We have had students found not responsible
that have been accused of sexual assault,
both on the investigative stage and at the hearing stage.
We have had a student who made a false claim
who was ultimately found responsible for making
that false claim and we have expelled a dozen or more
students from the university who were involved
in sexual assault.
So we are doing really well on this.
There is no need for us to change it.
Our team has written the Department of Education
saying this is what we do and this works.
So no changes in the short term that will be referenced
in my Clif Note tomorrow.
No changes in the short term.
We continue to aggressively prosecute those
alleged to have been involved in sexual assault
while making sure they get a fair hearing.
Good question.
Suzanne, next question.
- [Suzanne] Okay, the next one is more for Frank
with regard to academic research.
What actions will be undertaken to expand and encourage
research among the faculty in order to be
a high research institution?
- We saw the data in the film clip that we had
about 20 million dollars.
We will continue to encourage faculty go for
external funding because that's key to our research.
All the deans will continue to have programs
that will incentivize faculty in the research process.
Sometimes it's through a monetary incentive
for going for a grant and sometimes a small incentive
for a publication.
It figures into our tenure and promotion process.
None of those things are new but they are continuing
actions and I would tell you that I think
our grant program, in fact our international travel program
to present research was underutilized the last two years
we've had it.
We had money left over.
That's because we need to have the people applying
that have done things and moved on
to making those presentations.
I don't see us putting a lot of new funding
but anytime a person is able to really do something
outstanding, I think the deans and department heads
work with them in special ways.
- [Suzanne] Okay, thank you Frank.
The next one is budget related.
Will Missouri State encourage those that can retire
to do so in order to create job security
for those who are not retirement eligible?
- Read that again.
- [Suzanne] Will Missouri State encourage those that
can retire to do so, creating job security for those
who are not retirement eligible?
- Probably not in any kind of official program.
I don't anticipate us having a retirement incentive
program this year.
We have not found that those save money.
Frankly, for us when we did those under Dr. Kauffer
and maybe Dr. Nietzel, I don't think ultimately
we saved money in those programs.
I think it is always appropriate for employees
to have conversations with their supervisor,
their department head about their retirement plans.
I think it would be improper for us to pressure people
to retire for any reason,
whether it saves other people's jobs or not.
But again, it's not improper to have conversations
with your supervisor about when you intend to retire
so that there can be planning that takes place
in that regard.
- [Suzanne] Okay, thank you.
The next one is for Frank.
Will advisors have to become certified
with a master advisor program and if not, why?
- I don't know where we stand in terms
of requiring all of our people advising
to have gone through our master advising program
but as I recall, most of them have gone through.
I simply don't know that that's an absolute requirement
so the deans can help me out here.
But I do know that most people go through that.
The requirement is not always the best way
to get people's attention.
I think encouragement is going on and we will continue
to encourage them to go through the master advisor program
and I'd also say that that doesn't quite apply
to all levels of advising so there are other ways
that advising needs to take an upward movement,
often by colleagues helping out and showing new people
what needs to be done.
- [Suzanne] Okay, thank you Frank.
And last question from social media and from cards
is network security.
Can you tell us more about the email phishing scams
that took place last week and how are they resolved?
- Some of you may have noticed that last week,
I think on one of them, 2,200 people got a phishing scam
that if you clicked on the link, went to what looked like
a log in for your my Missouri State account.
If you clicked on that, and people did,
then if you then put in your password,
and I think six people did, the scheme, the goal,
was to get to your personal account
and change your payroll deposit.
That would've meant that your check would instead
of going to your bank, would go to the bank
of the criminal.
I believe that we caught all of those.
Jeff Morrissey and his team very vigilant on this
and got back with the employees that made that mistake
to make sure that they changed their password
so that no one lost their check for this month.
That would have been significant.
So let me, we are always working to be vigilant on this.
Literally thousands of phishing schemes are caught
and never make it to you but a handful get through.
Here's a tip, we will never ask you to log in
and put in your password in an email you get.
We will never ask you to log in and put in your password
in an email from the university.
Never do that.
Never do that.
Now, how do we change your password?
You have to go to the website yourself.
Alright?
So that's a different deal.
We change our passwords regularly because that's
a part of our security piece.
If we send you an email, we may tell you to do that
but we're never gonna send you the email for the log in.
If you ever get an email that says, log in and plug in
your password, it is from a criminal trying to steal
your money.
Don't do it.
(audience laughing)
If you lose your money and you come back to Steve
and say, hey I logged in and someone stole my money,
we're gonna say, sorry, don't log in.
Don't log in.
Now, we're gonna try to roll out some training.
We're gonna train all of our staff.
We've already trained 700, although frankly,
one of the people we trained logged in
and put in their password.
(audience laughing)
I know we laugh about this but we are getting
literally hundreds of these every month
and so we've gotta be cognizant, even in a world
where we get dozens and dozens of email.
Be careful.
There will be a note in a week from Tuesday in Clif Note
kind of going through this and explaining it
in more detail.
We're gonna do some additional extensive training.
We want to get all our staff trained by the end of the year
on this.
Next semester we'll take this to departmental meetings
and work on faculty.
Again, be careful in terms of these kind of scams.
When you see the Clif Note a week from Tuesday,
there will be some clear, hey, here's some tips
that you will know besides the big one that this is a scam
and it's in the email address is the key.
The one for the 2,200, if you looked at the email address,
Jeff, what was it?
(man speaking softly)
So the university is never gonna send you an email
from someone called Melissa@JBcabinets.com.
(audience laughing)
So when you combine that with we're never gonna ask you
to log in, two big clues that was a scam.
Again, we just gotta be careful.
We laugh about it and I don't mean to berate you
or belittle this but I mean, I get 'em too
and I'm not immune from making mistakes.
We just gotta all be cognizant that there are people
out there trying to hack into the university
and your personal information and your bank accounts.
Alright, I think we've done all of those.
Who has a question in the audience?
And I promised Keyshore we'd start with him
so let's get a microphone down here.
I can't imagine that people aren't staying
for Keyshore's question.
(audience laughing)
- [Keyshore] Thank you.
- Yes sir.
- [Keyshore] Thank you Clif and thank you
for being a great president of a great university.
- Thank you Keyshore.
(audience clapping)
- [Keyshore] I have three questions as such.
(audience laughing)
- Three, did you say three?
- [Keyshore] Yes.
- Alright, let's do 'em one at a time.
- [Keyshore] Okay.
I remember you wrote in one of your briefs
or I read somewhere that you would like MSU
to be the number one undergraduate choice
of students in Missouri so my question is
is MSU already at this time the flagship university
of Missouri as far as undergraduate studies are concerned,
well ahead of (mumbles)?
- So we came within four students of having more
Missouri freshman than the University of Missouri
in Columbia.
(audience clapping)
That makes them very nervous.
(audience laughing)
And I guarantee you they have new admissions folks,
they have a new leadership team.
They are working really, really hard to turn that around.
I happen to believe that we are a phenomenally good choice
for undergraduate programs and we're gonna do our best
to frankly continue to work very hard to also
become the number one choice for undergraduate students.
Now, that doesn't mean our graduate programs
aren't phenomenal, it doesn't mean our doctorate
programs and other programs aren't really good,
but 85% of our undergraduate students
come from Missouri and that is significantly more
than the University of Missouri.
More and more people are coming to visit.
More and more people are looking at us.
And that enrollment growth is important
both from a revenue standpoint, a profile standpoint,
our influence at the university.
You may have seen that the students that took the ACT test
in Missouri this last year chose us as their number one
dream school where they want to go to school.
We're also second.
So, we made a lot of progress on that.
- [Keyshore] Thank you.
- Question number two.
- [Keyshore] Thank you.
Last week I remember seeing a photo where
you are sitting and president of Missouri is sitting
next to you and you all are having conversations.
What was the verbal agreement made, if any?
Are they trying to take advantage of us?
- Say again.
- [Keyshore] Is Missouri trying to take advantage of us?
- I try not to let my friend Mun Choi take advantage of me.
We had a really good conversation for about
an hour and a half in terms of our legislative agenda
and how to work together in terms of funding
and what each school is thinking about in terms
of an approach and how to best approach
the governor of the legislature.
We talked about various academic programs
that we could work together on.
For example, could they set aside certain slots
for Missouri State University undergraduates
for med school who then ultimately want to study
in Springfield in their third and fourth years
of med school.
Very open to that.
We talked about some of the other big issues that are gonna
be on both our agendas next year.
We talked about tuition policy.
We talked about our agriculture work together.
And, by and large, while we compete for students,
by and large our interests most times are the same
and so the more we work together, the better we know
what each other is doing.
We talked about how their legislative,
their governor (mumbles) is gonna work this year
because you might remember they cut them all loose
and are hiring new people so we wanted to make sure
we were gonna get off to a good start on that.
The University of Missouri is a great partner
for us in a variety of ways.
They are the number one leader in higher education
for our state is the land grant.
The university, they need to take that position
and we want to be a good partner with them
and I think we'll have a good year working together
on a variety of things.
- [Keyshore] So when it comes to undergraduate programs
we are, MSU, is obviously very, very good and Missouri,
however, when it comes to masters degrees,
how do we compare with Missouri (mumbles)
universities in Missouri masters degree?
- Frank, do you have a sense of a comparison
between our masters degree programs here
and the University of Missouri Columbia masters programs?
- Is that a quality question?
- I presume so.
- I'm not sure whether it is a quality question
but the biggest comparison all the way,
I don't have a number to give you
but our masters program ends for a student here
with a significant prize that they started,
they went through, and they got a masters that they
wanted to get and we did treat them like they
were the top of the heap.
That is not true in a research university
of MU all the time.
Many times the masters in the basic areas
of the arts and sciences is a consolation prize
rather than a first prize type event.
There are areas where it is the primary ward
but we stack up in every way that we have to compare
on the accreditation side.
Beyond that, I can't say.
- Anything else?
- [Keyshore] Since you asked, one more final.
(audience laughing)
- I got nothing till 2:30.
I'm good.
(audience laughing)
- [Keyshore] Obviously you are a great president
and provost also is very, very great.
Do you promise us, the university constituents,
that you will never leave MSU and take up somewhere?
(audience laughing)
You will not take up a job somewhere else
like I heard some of the administrators have tried
to apply, et cetera.
What about you?
- That's a fair question.
I don't think Frank's going anywhere.
(audience laughing)
I think we got him.
(audience clapping)
So that's a fair question and I think the question
may be paraphrased, are you looking or interested
in other jobs?
The board asked me that this summer and my answer
to them was no.
I was approached by a major university last year.
I thought about it for a day and turned them down,
told them I was not interested because this is the best job
for me and so I know Missouri, I know Missouri politics,
I think I know our university.
I think we've had very good success in six plus years
with a great partnership with Frank
and so this is my last job and I'm gonna work it
as long as it's good and it that's two years
or six years or 10 years, whenever that's over
then I'll retire.
- [Keyshore] Thank you.
(audience clapping)
- Alright, anybody else want to ask a question?
Yes, up here?
- [Woman] Hi, will the university continue
to advocate for greater access to doctoral programs?
- Great question.
We are continuing to advocate for that.
Last year, a bill was filed and all the universities
and community colleges signed off on it,
passed the house.
It did not get action in the senate.
We continue to advocate for that and think that
has a great chance to pass this year.
The next step for us would be to add additional,
professional doctorates and so we, that will be a priority
this year and I think it has a reasonable chance to pass.
Anything else?
Okay, great.
Thanks for coming out tonight
and let's have a great semester.
(audience clapping)
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