 Welcome everyone, so I'm very excited to be with you today at the State of the University. This is my first one, so I had to follow a lot of instructions from the team to tell me what I'm supposed to do and hopefully I'll do okay. So I hope that you had an opportunity to read the reading report and also I cherish the opportunities of having listening sessions with all the different constituencies of the university and today we're going to do this in a little bit differently. This is a big year, we're celebrating 50 years in Bristol and this is how the campus used to look 50 years ago and so a lot of wonderful things have happened and a lot more wonderful things will follow. I want to thank Mel Toph, he's Mel here today because he's the one that brought my attention that this is a very important year, the 50th year and thank you for that and we have a fabulous publication that our marketing and communication folks put together and we have a copy for each one of you to take. It's a very nice publication featuring what has happened the last 50 years and giving an insight of what's going to happen in the future. So building the university the world needs now, it's the phrase that attracted me to this university and I talk to you a little bit about that when I first came and there could be a lot of ways that this could be interpreted. What attracted me the most is that first universities have to adapt and change. I saw that Roger Williams has all the potential to adapt and change and also has all the right ingredients in place to truly become such a university. Now as you know we run a survey and not everybody was in agreement with this statement this is a comment that we get can we stop pretending that we are forever will be the university the world needs now. It's embarrassingly presumptive and there is one model for what university should be and that little under resourced Roger Williams University thinks that it knows what the world needs and I sort of sympathize with that statement however I still feel that we have all it takes to become the university the world needs now but it will take all of us to work together and to figure out how we're going to do that. So today's remarks will start off the state of the university and go by division by division however I believe you read the report and so I'm not going to go into into great detail I want to focus more on goals for the year and use the results of the survey as a basis of my comments and then we'll have a Q&A. So we had 212 respondents on the campus survey which was good but not terrific I would love to have everybody respond to the survey we got a huge amount of excellent information all the cabinet has read them I have read them one by one kept a lot of notes and these are going to be helping us with the strategic planning process as a guide moving moving forward these are the different categories and I don't know if you can read the slide here and I'll read some of them that we got responses the the majority but the majority the largest percent of of comments questions for about academics the second one was diversity diversity and equity third was morale fiscal health vision strategic planning Roger Williams problems student body distinctiveness it goes down so you get an idea of what the areas that we got responses were focused on most questions as I said about academics and diversity and equity diversity and equity in a broader sense comments about diversity and equity racial diversity and but also pay equity treatment by others acceptable treatment that some of our colleagues experience and things like that when we map the most popular words this is how the map word academics was biggest leadership comments were about restrictive culture disconnected leadership top down styles too many administrators on the morale side there was no safe place to report do a lot more with a lot less treatment how we treat each other silos divides so there are these are the comments in this area and not this surprised me and I'm sure none of this surprised you what brings pride dedication was the number one um there's no question that faculty and staff care about our students and you can see the other areas as well so I'm on a 66th day I'm not counting today and I'm still new but I'm sure there are some other people that are new this year who is new this year can you please stand all right welcome so um the written report went out there is one area that I think we should boost next year was the area about the academics and the faculty achievements and one change will make next year which will have a portions of the report from the different schools so every school the faculty and the dean will provide this information of highlights of what happened in the different different schools this has not happened in the past but I strongly feel this should be part of the of the reporting in the future now focusing on academic student success we did very well this year we had the class of 2018 we had 84.9 percent first to year first the second year retention which was up 3.8 percent and basically we had 40 more students enrolling this fall because of that in the class of 2017 you can see the numbers on the screen we had about 27 students that were retained so it was amazing that the old university worked together the academic advisors the the deans and to support the students because not only it was wonderful for the students but also financially it makes a big difference for us or about 1.3 million dollars additional revenue by us managing to retain these students by the way when you see the little yellow icon on the bottom this is a question that came from the response that came from the survey so that's what the yellow icon so this is directly from a survey what roles do flexibility innovation and alternative paths to learning play in the changing role of higher education so I'm a fan of trying different programs and you saw right away we made some changes we changed the children policy we changed the dog policy and and I'm all for trying and experimenting different things and piloting and if they work we continue or if not as we expected we adapt them and we improve them and however we have to become more nimble and faster for example the the curriculum approval process I've heard for many people it takes way too long and and faculty are hesitant to even propose new programs because they don't want to go through this whole process well that's something that the faculty can change and we'll be happy to help from administration but it's a faculty issue and and experimenting and changing things is is how we're going to become the university the work needs now again like as I mentioned how can we make the curriculum process less frustrating it's a faculty issue so we'll be happy to help the faculty to change the process and and it should change it should not change take years to to go through things that could be decided in a couple of weeks or three weeks so that's an area that that faculty is supposed to to work on it and we'll be happy to help I would be happy to get involved personally I'm an academic also if you think I could offer something in this area there were some questions on professional versus liberal arts programs and this is addressed to me your background is in applied science as you see what is valuable about college majors and programs in the humanities and social sciences well one of my degrees is in economics I do have some economics background but what attracted me to my to my college Tufts when I went to Tufts was exactly because combined professional education with very strong liberal arts and I think that a well educated person regardless what what their their their focus is should have grounding in in humanities and social sciences as well and Roger Williams has all the all the components to do that and so that's sort of how I feel about liberal arts I think liberal arts are an essential component of Roger Williams not only to support students in other professional schools but also to generate their own graduates and thinkers and scholars in these in these areas another question comment looking at the place of the liberal arts and the professional schools moving forward what should the resources be focused there are programs that are and have been at very low enrollments for long periods of time does it make any sense for the university to continue to offer these this will be part of our planning process yes there are some programs not only in liberal arts but also in professional schools that are small and we should take a look at them there are some that are large but they're so expensive to run that we should look at them as well so this is part of the of the planning process it will take take place this year strategies how to get the university to bring different disciplines to collaborate to solve society's problems there are a lot of silos here and when I talk about silos people assume it's the Bristol versus university college there are a lot more silos within Bristol schools that should be working together don't work together and the departments that should be working together don't work together and of course the biggest issue now is bringing the university college and Bristol campus together and and in that spirit we are planning a university college showcase it's going to be on November 15 I'll be there it's 9 30 to 12 o'clock where you come and meet people to learn all about university college it's open to the entire community here and I hope it will well attend it university college offers a number of great programs these are some pathways here you can see and and some of you may be surprised that the the school serves the university college serves about half the number of students that that Bristol serves here 2,654 students last year so it's a big deal it's not a small place out there in Providence and and you can see the breakdown of various constituencies constituencies in the school around university college vision what do you see for the future of university college as it pertains to working with high schools and adult learners what is my vision so this is a vision that will all create together James is a terrific visionary and leader of the school but it's something that as we bring the two campuses closer together we should create the vision should be created together and already great things are happening the the whole higher education is changing not everybody goes to college now and not everybody goes to four-year college when I went to college or sort of the expected path but now there are many different ways that students see higher education and we have an amazing tool for us to deliver for the traditional students here in Bristol but then non-traditional students in in in Providence to the university college I only have one slide from the school of law because there weren't any questions or problems with the school of law so so thank you thank you thank you thank you for all the amazing things you have done for the school just a couple of things the first second year retention is 94.4 percent at the law school so addition is just 5.6 percent which is amazing and well there is half a million dollar endowment for the pro bono collaborative this is the program where our law students help folks in in Providence on legal issues and he built an amazing faculty women make up 63.3 percent of the faculty at the law school so the diversity of the student by the end of faculty is just terrific and we are beginning the search for a for a new dean and we identified the search firm and I'll talk about more a little bit more about that so we're ready to roll there are many more questions about Jerry Williams by the way so now we have many slides so I have many slides about Jerry so actually there are questions about Jerry but about finance and budget so so we started last year with a significant projected gap between revenue and expenditures and we ended the year with a actually a modest surplus and and that's because of all the good work you did in reducing expenses and the problem we had was this the frozen tuition issue where we had frozen tuition for many years and expenses keep going up and up and up so it was a not sustainable model again if you have four enrolled class classes with no incremental revenue this puts pressure on on the headcount puts pressure and to reduce expenses and however we managed to go through it and we expect that every year from now is going to be better and better because of the changes we made this year the good news also is the university has reduced its debt from 140 million to 2011 to under 100 million and Jerry has been very creative in refinancing our debt and has saved the university millions and millions of dollars for doing so we just went through a process recently for that so we are changing the the pricing model still keeping affordability as a priority for us and also we are looking to increase diversity of our revenue because I think we are we have cut as much as we could cut so now we have to look at additional revenue for new new money also because of the financial situation of the university the budgeting process was upside down if you first do the budget that you plan and now we're going to change that to first plan and then figure out the budget so we're going to have a plan in place hopefully in May and then we'll from now on we'll start planning the budget accordingly so there would be a number of fiscal update meetings I know you've had enough of transition years but this again has to be a transition year because we don't have the the the strategic action plan in place ready but nonetheless we have to have a budget for next year and so there will be between now and January divisional meetings faculty senate meetings and meetings with other entities and we will present the fiscal update and then we'll talk about the different budget elements at the smaller meetings so try to attend as many of these meetings as you can so another comment from the survey what is the general financial health of the university after two years of austerity when will the budgets be restored to normal so we can provide to our students what we owe them and as I said we are trying to diversify and expand the revenue and and we want to offer the students what they deserve and again thank you for reducing expenses so far and we need all your creative thoughts for for increasing revenue now this is our campus currently we are in the process of finalizing our campus master plan and the plan is still evolving I went to one meeting on let's say I would go on a Tuesday to a meeting look at the master plan and thinking that this is how it's gonna look and then I go to a next meeting on the master plan the next day and the buildings would have been moved around so it's still it's still in progress I can give you a quick preview of the thinking because I think it's very exciting so this is what what it is now this is the current plan and in orange are new or in or significantly renovated dormitory spaces and the lower part of the campus will focus on on first year students and then as you move up you'll be more upperclassmen the dormitories will include spaces for academic components also so we want to bring closer academics with residential life and as you see the dark blue buildings are planned expansions or new buildings for academics and we see an expansion expanded science building and where the administration building now you see another blue building that could house could be a new building for the business school or when this is not determined yet then the other long funky building close to the dormitories on the closer to the bottom of the bottom of the screen there could be visual arts building and moving some of the athletics further on the upper side of the campus and allowing for more parking at that place so these are some of the elements of the master plan but it's not ready for for full disclosure yet because still they're going through many iterations but that should give you a view of how things like a lot less cars driving around campus a lot more walking and much more pleasant areas for students and faculty and staff to walk and enjoy the beautiful setting we have here and Bill Seymour has been championing this process from our end. Enrollment management new first year enrollment is up seven percent from the fall and new graduate enrollment is six point five percent above goal so we're doing pretty well and I know this has been an all all staff and faculty effort let me have the ones of you that have participated at an open house or accept the student day or made calls or attended off campus events or other things related to attracting student here's can you please stand well you see it's a lot people are involved involved with us so thank you okay on target demographics what type of student are we hoping to attract Roger William students from rigorous academy backgrounds students who need remediation in multiple areas the wonderful thing about this place is that it can be a place for all kinds of students we have the parent advisory group I don't know if that's the exact title is that Lisa is the parent advisory group this is much more complicated than parent advisory group so so nonetheless we have a parent advisory group with a longer name and and I met with them and what surprised me is that more than half of these parents were parents actually of alams not parents of students that they enjoyed so much and the appraisal is so much the experience the students had on this campus that they continued being involved and contributing to the school and half of these parents had students that had learned disabilities that had had trouble in high school but Roger Williams was a place that made them flourish and now they have either and terrific graduate programs or they have terrific jobs and so Roger Williams does a wonderful job on students that have learning challenges also Roger Williams offers great opportunities for students that that are very well prepared for college and at the higher end of the spectrum of of potential accomplishment here can we do a better job yes and I think we should talk about serving better or although do have a great honors program serving even better the students so we can retain them here and there are many areas that that we could we could invest in like faculty especially faculty to to boost undergraduate research and programs as such next question competition how Roger Williams continued to attract students as the projected college student population decreases how are we doing compared to our competitors so our competitors are not standing still some of them are competing with money some of them compete with the programs some of them with prestige with name again we have all the ingredients to make this place special I do not think we take advantage of everything we have to difference ourselves when I was at commencement last year I was looking at the program and I noticed that there are only very few students that either had completed the thesis or were close of completing a thesis I think that could be a program for example we should boost because one of the advantages of coming to a school like Roger Williams that doesn't have a big graduate program is the opportunity that students have with the faculty to work one-on-one on on creating new knowledge on new art or depending on the on the discipline and I think we should be doing a lot more more of that because students could pick Roger Williams versus a more research oriented institution simply because of this faculty contact that they have student life the care of our students is remarkable here I have been very impressed and it's a safe environment and a great community and we have great we don't have great dormitory facilities I think this should be one of the biggest priorities for under the master plan but we have great food actually we ranked the one of the 20 20th best dining in country and it's all about good food and well well being and I whenever I have a chance I go and I eat with the students in the commons and the food is incredible and I always say it's going to be the freshman 15 of the president 60 diversity and inclusion under Ames leadership wonderful things are happening we have programs to support students oops I'm sorry am I going yes students to improve retention and also to improve enrollment and as you can see the numbers are going up in a positive way also we have employee support programs the women's affinity groups and I had the opportunity to participate in some of the listening sessions in the beginning and actually the children's the new children policy was a result from this listening session that we just launched we have the intercultural university for staff and the leadership academy that we launch we're launching I believe next week so lots of efforts and a lot of emphasis that have started producing results so this is supposed to be a secret because it's going to be announced today tomorrow the providence business news is giving us one of the awards for diversity and inclusion and congratulations to a man and all her effort and to all the faculty and staff that have participated so not only we are doing great things in this area for our students our faculty and staff but also now the community starts noticing it which is wonderful because by being out there as one of the leaders in this area will attract more diversity to the campus it's exactly what we want advancement Lisa for many years has been doing a fantastic job with very very little in bringing resources to the university she decided to leave us much too much in green and just to go to a new venture and some of you have talked to her so you know what it's all about um she's a Bristolian so I'm trying every single way to keep her involved with the university and I think I'm gonna be successful and uh and also in recognition of all the amazing work she did for the sailing program as one of many things they named it they named the boat Lelisa Joy in honor of her unfortunately it wasn't a cruise ship but it's it's a start so advancement raised over three and a half million dollars in new gifts and pledge payments last year and the fiscal 19 represented the best fundraiser year also for the law law school with Lisa's departure we we want to boost the already great staff that is in place there so we're bringing a new leader Amy Berkeley to to work with Lisa together in the beginning and then take over the division and I know I've known Amy for years as a fantastic fundraiser and she will work with our team there to to do great great things this division as many other divisions has been hit a lot budgetarily just to give you an idea the travel budget for the whole division of advancement is 4500 if you go to two trips it's gone so how on earth can these people fundraise for alums in california and in texas or qualify people so the whole budget for stewardship stewardship is taking care of donors to make sure they stay engaged with the university 2500 at the museum I used to spend that much for a dinner with donors not a single donor but you know bring donors you know a few donors and have the food and have the people to help with this is so and people expect that because our donors are donors to a lot of other places and people people give to success people believe it don't look at harvard does harvard need another 20 billion dollars in its endowment the biggest gifts go to harvard because people want to to give to a place that successful raise a lot of money and so we have to invest in this area and and we'll do so another question recognizing that roger williams university's endowment is not as large as it needs to be and given president yawlis's experience with institutional development what does he think is a realistic goal for the endowment and over what period of time could the goal be achieved we need to have a campaign who are far from a campaign you have to have enough people in place that would contribute significantly so a campaign could not become an embarrassment and we have some alums and some donors that are very philanthropic but we really have to build the culture of philanthropy they will have an alumni council with dedicated alums the average ones from the alumni council the leaders group group gives 70 dollars a year we have a lot of work to do to change this so we are going to have a campaign we're going to raise money for the university for capital projects and for endowment we need that and it's going to take time and it's going to take each one of us working together it's not going to be just my job or amy's job or christine's job it's going to be all of us have to work on it i'm not saying you have to go and ask you individually people for money but the experience students have the experience alums have parents have all this is significant of how people give to the university and we moved the marketing and communication to the president's office so we're going to do institutional branding as well as still focusing on attracting new students here and we're going to boost the advancement division but we're going to rebuild the board of trustees and and and all work together to make this whole thing happen goals for the year ahead so we're going to develop a strategic action plan one of the best moves i made this year is to move brian to the chief of staff position he has done an amazing job not only helping with everything else during my first 66 days and a lot has happened to the 66 days a lot of the credit goes to brian but also brian is going to help as man as the whole strategic action plan it's not going to be brian's plan or my plan is going to be our plan that we're going to all build together and and brian is going to tell you more about it in a few minutes we have to build the culture of philanthropy we're starting by enhancing the and funding the advancement division but also i'm working on the other side with the board of trustees and express what my expectations would be for them that's another goal start eliminating silos we start with the open house at the at the bristol at the university college campus and there are more work we're going to do internally any new facility that opens up space opens up i would like to see more of a collaborative space and a space that is shared by different schools versus this is my my fort nobody else is allowed to get in and and even faculty new faculty requests i would like to see more interdisciplinary appointments maybe appointments from two schools or more and also we're going to begin implementing the equity action plan that a man has put in her group has put together and and in building the team we were going to hire a new provost for the university we're going to have a national search and i'll talk more about it we're almost done on on load finishing the search for an associate pros for for a civic engagement programs and and dean of the law school so the provost search we talked with a number of search firms we yesterday we decided on on hiring a store break pimentel i've known them from the other side because they're trying to recruit me in the past for positions and they are terrific also they specialize with they do a lot of work with prestigious small schools so they have a good rolodex with with folks that are looking or they want they want them to look at other jobs and and also we pick the same firm for the law school and search and the provost search because they have experience with both because there are economies of scale on then coming on campus and meeting with different groups for for both both searches also they'll get to know the university well and we won't have to to bring up to speed two different two different search firms uh we're beginning the process for faculty elected positions so we're in conversation with the senate and there will be very strong faculty representation in the search committee i would like to have a small committee to make decisions and and keep the process as open as possible and that we have to look listen to the advice of the search firm to see what's possible because at the very end we do not want to lose candidates that they want to keep confident confidential the candidacy so we'll push as much as possible to have it as open of a process and and we'll depend on who the finalists are and how how it works i think the process that was used to hire me was was great because at the end it was a fairly open process um and i didn't say it's great because you hired me at least from my from mine was great there was a difference though because i had decided to leave the museum by the time uh and i had announced my departure the museum by the time i started looking and so i did not care if people knew that i'm a candidate but there are other people that if they're sitting provosts or sitting deans in other schools they may not want their candidacy to be exposed so we'll see how we'll see how that goes um strategic planning process so uh we uh we are not going to do a strategic plan we're going to do a strategic action plan and brian is going to tell you how we came to this decision and how this whole this whole thing uh is going to to pan out good afternoon so the spirit of how yannis is talking so far about strategic planning and being more innovative and nimble in our processes is something that he asked me to think about when we think about strategic planning at the institution and in the spirit of how we think about where we've been as an institution and where we're going the first place i started when asked to think about planning is to look back at the history of planning at roger williams and the information that that we have available to us um and what strikes you when you start to look at it and talk to people who've been here and been involved in planning is the first thing is that no plan at the institution has ever outlasted the president that initiated the process um they've been projects that are more individual projects that were specific to that president and then in the movement to the next president you either had a reset or a new plan and didn't look back to honor the work that was done before them and that history goes back at least to the nineties and the history that um we've been able to to look at and understand the documents in the path the path that we've taken so honoring that and sharing that here a little bit the plan for the nineties um was how we started in nineties and the plan for the nineties lasted from 1990 to 1994 because that's sort of the span of the transition of the presidency at the time a lot of great work a lot of sort of core values that came out in initiatives that were that were identified some of them may look familiar we call them different things now but community partnerships um and thinking about global um thinking about academic excellence and what makes us distinctive we're there in those plans it ended up and it was a nice view book i have it in my office um 96 goals 354 objectives for the university to follow you transition from that to president centoro who as far as we know worked without a plan um the focus was creating a law school the focus was fundraising and philanthropy but in terms of a written plan there wasn't a plan plan for the nineties plan for his tenure and then that transitioned to president nercial and the plan for 2020 which is just months away for us um so there was a thin document that was the 20 objectives to achieve by 2020 we've actually achieved a lot of them in the tactics of the institution but this is a nine inch binder um so there were 24 task forces 312 participants um and working really from the starting of this planning process in the early 2000s but the heavy work 2004 to 2007 and many people working in different committees for context just again and we're sitting a long time just raise your hand if you were on one of these 24 task forces in the room and for all the work for three years of work in committee meetings and writing documents to then have president nercials transition and that work not move forward um that strikes me um as what we want to do different in the planning process that we put in place now um and so yes i've read the nine inch binder um if anyone's looking for good night reading i recommend um that full document but we've taken that work i've had help to pull all of these objectives into a spreadsheet so that we can inventory which things are still present which things still matter to the institution to follow that we didn't follow up on well and many of the things in there are still urgent still important um and we need to act on them in a different way so truly yon is talking about a strategic action plan is to not come up with another plan but to move from strategy to action in as timely way as we can so that was the challenge then of the transition from nercial to um president ferrish and the vision project gave us um some really strong goals um of strong statements about the university the world needs now and a direction for the institution and a lot of great work across the institution and our commitment to affordability um cpc coming out through this time in these efforts but we didn't bring them into the divisional work explicitly um and it was really a project of a vision without the tactics and the measures and the objectives tied to them in a in a traditional planning structure so summarizing 30 years of planning a number of presidents plans that didn't transition some plans that were very heavy on objectives but not giving a vision and a guide and some things that were heavy on a guiding vision without the details tied to them so thanks for asking me to do this first of all and how do we do it differently um so at a high level um what i wanted to share is that we don't need to reinvent the past part of that campus survey um i wanted to just highlight here and you can see 70 to 80 percent or more campus consensus that these are still relevant um from you think these six goals of the vision project about we want to provide transformative educational experiences and that received the highest number of support from the campus but we want to have vision groups that look at the at the plan for 2020 understand the work that's important understand the work that advances these goals that the campus still feels important and bring that work forward into our awareness for everyone to map to our planning that we do across the campus um so as sort of the spirit of sort of a year of planning at a high level i'll share and then we can answer questions at the end in in the open q and a what we're trying to do is move from vision to action in as quick a way as possible and versus one committee that meets for three years we're trying to create some small groups that have sort of sprints of work six to eight weeks of a concentrated effort on a given topic with given tasks where you can go deep into the work and then build to the next step um so what we're mapping out is really phase one of really honoring the past and vision working groups and faculty elections just happened recently for this and we'll be populating these groups to look at this past work to question the wording of the vision working goals to think of how the tactics of the past can help advance them and bring them forward for us and that work will help us answer this question what really does the world need from a university now you know do we still commit to transformative and diversity and local and global communities and solving problems and thinking about affordability in different ways um so we'll spend that work that will then really need to feed to all the divisions of the institution the spring work will focus on the business and operational plans of the institution which everyone in the room needs to be a part of and be connected and how all of our plans integrate together so how we take a vision plan and say how does this affect our work in marketing how does it affect athletics and student life we have good momentum on different plans across the institution that we can feed and connect the work of the institution to the vision project very explicitly then that piece that yonis talked about before comes in linking planning to budgeting this is where we need to go this is the role that this unit can play and we need resources to realize this vision um and moving very quickly through that process and then measuring are we doing it well um so at a high level from vision to action to operations to then measuring our work year over year is a sprint that we're trying to get to to get to may and this is what we've identified at the cabinet level and across the campus as the important plans that not everyone on campus has seen or been involved with some of these efforts are um done some are near completion some you can look at and know they've been very um inclusive of the campus community and others have been done within their integrated within their own divisional area so the challenge of yonis asking us to break down silos is to understand how all of these plans are connected to each other um our asem and our strategic enrollment process this last year underscores that we can't move with an enrollment plan without knowing the majors in the way that our schools are moving and we need to be in dialogue with each other but you can draw lines between all of these plans and the work that we need to do moving forward and a really a sense of integrated planning is where we hope to move through the course of the year ahead and from the survey um this is the challenge um the challenge of acting more nimbly of not having one committee take three years to build a plan but to move and ensure that planning is very action based and happening across the institution and guiding our decisions guiding our budget work and and the time that we have together um so with that is just a high level i'm i'm glad to turn it back over to yonis there's a handful more q and a's that didn't fit the divisions that will go through um and then turn it to full question and answers and i'm glad to answer questions about planning at that time so a few more of questions or statements from the survey about the university's identity what is the identity of roger Williams university who are we as an institution what is our competitive advantage over other schools or what is the plan to figure out the answer to these questions um we we're doing many things greatly great um i think it would be a good move to consider moving closer to a teacher scholar model um we are always going to be a teaching university but i really believe that will attract a lot better students if they think they're going to come here and partner with faculty in the generation of new of new knowledge and so that's an area that we could we could build upon um civic scholarship is a signature program here as you know we elevated the director position for the civic scholars program to an associate provost position um i would love to see that become a requirement for all our students and differentiate us from other schools northeastern is known for its co-op program roger williams could be known for his civic engagement program as well um so there are many more areas identifying scholarship and teaching areas such as cost of sustainability and investing in these areas and distinguish us from other universities that's another way we could distinguish ourselves on the moral area for any institution to function cohesively you need a positive vibe from all members of the university community unfortunately many staff workers feel undervalued way underpaid and generally understaffed make your staff happy and they will in turn feel good about what they do they are your best marketing tool so moral is is not just the job of the president or the administrations everybody should work together to improve moral um and when different entities of the university different groups are advocating for their particular group they should take into consideration what effect that that advocacy results will have for other groups as well so that's an area that that is going to take time to to all of us but to work together but but it's going to be a joint a joint effort improving the budget situation of course will help moral but there are a lot of other things that don't cost much money that that affect moral and some of them may be driven from administration some of them may be driven from faculty staff one department to another department and that's an area that we could we could all work together and there are certainly some things that that we I can do to improve moral and two small things where the children policy the doggie policy and there'll be more coming through but the big moral issues I think that all of our responsibilities to improve and I think we know what we should be doing here uh transparency communication that's another thing that came will there be and when will there be more transparency between the upper leadership and the rest of the campus community communication in the last year has been terrible um well those of you that have spent time with me you know that you know what you see is what I am and what you get um I say the same story to all the different constituencies and even the way we decided on this year hires was very open I brought all the deans in one room today they made their case we made some quick decisions we'll go back but then every dean heard the case from the other dean so there's no nothing behind closed doors no deals it's all out in the open and I'm committed to continue working like this with all the constituencies and and make sure that all my cabinet members all my team does the same thing as well silos and collaboration I would like to know how he intends this is he intends on bringing this university together after it has been fractured apart uh that is no department wanting to work together for the common good instead of only worrying and seeing the small part in this university I think communication better communication among divisions and programs can help a lot as a small example we're going to have this open house uh in in Providence for the university college it's up to the Bristol folks to attend if they don't attend then it's not going to work so I think that everybody should should make an effort to learn more about what the other entities do and there are the suspicions and and all this will eventually go go away and this does not refer only to Bristol versus Providence it's even within Bristol a lot more has happened so we'll try to have a lot more uh collaborative efforts on the sustainability area can we elevate sustainability to a higher profile venue so it's on par with diversity inclusiveness by establishing sustainability office or center with a staff person to coordinate and advance sustainability initiatives one of the uh planning groups is going to focus on sustainability so that could be somewhere we move however assist sustainability as a broader issue ecological sustainability human economic health sustainability well-being sustainability so it's a broader it's a broader term and we cannot have an officer for every one of these elements so we have to figure out first what we do in the traditional sustainability the environmental sustainability area and how we're going to make progress in that but also think of the other sustainability areas as as well so these are some of the questions uh that uh that we pulled off of the survey and just to frame today's conversation it's the beginning of a conversation there are a lot more great comments on the survey that that will uh my team and I will start working on and work with the deans and the faculty senate and the different different staff constituencies to to make things good overall I was very pleased to see the engagement of of the staff and the faculty through this survey and people are really committed to making this place even better and it's I'm very optimistic I think it's we're in a great path and it will move forward so let me take a few questions now if you have any oops I'll talk about that later so I'll tell you now anyway so this is the question one question is what about having the week of Christmas and new years off to spend time with family and save on course of the university being closed and this question was asked by at least seven different people so let's do it so we're going to have we're going to have the week between Christmas and new years off now there are some details that will follow from HR and Union reps because there are some people that will have to be here but they will take the equivalent time off uh you know different times so everybody will have the total days off if somebody has to be here and you know who these people are uh then they will take the three days off subsequently so that's another small move so any questions now everybody's happy that there'll be no questions any questions anybody because you can move on okay if there are no questions so when we collaborate great things are happening and look what happened with retention and enrollment and amazing things happened just in one year that everybody worked together now there are things we should work together in changing the culture and we talked about morale planning budgeting and philanthropy and we're going to do this together and I want to thank you and we have this fabulous publication over there that you can take home and enjoy and thank you for coming and listening and if you have any comments you know how to find me just email me thank you