State of the University Address – October 10, 2024

State of the University Address – October 10, 2024

President Lori Stewart Gonzalez

Watch Recorded Livestream

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Good morning everyone, and thank you for being here today or for joining us virtually, including those of you listening in from our regional or extension campuses.

Before I begin, I want to recognize a few people. I’d like to ask our Provost and Executive Vice President Don Leo and our Vice President for Research and Creative Activity Eric Muth to stand. Vice President for Human Resources Mary Elizabeth Miles is joining us remotely today. These leaders all joined the team in the last year, and Eric and Don just joined us in July. All three have already been incredible leaders for our University, and I am so thankful to have them as part of the leadership team. You may be seated.

We will soon have another addition, Greg Simmons, who will join us on November 4th as the Vice President of Advancement.

I also want to ask our new Deans to stand and be recognized:
Dr. Lisa Harrison is not new to the University but we are so thrilled to now have her as our Dean of the Patton College of Education.

Dr. Kristina Bross, the very new Dean of our Honors Tutorial College.

And Dr. Rob Ross, Dean of University Libraries. Thank you.

We also have two new interim Deans – Dr. Jody Lamb, serving as Interim Dean of the College of Fine Arts as we begin a national search for our next Fine Arts Dean, and Dr. Martha Kline, serving as Interim Dean of Campus and Community Relations at Ohio University Lancaster.

And now, can I please have all members of my leadership team -- our President’s Cabinet – and all University Deans to stand? Thank you – you may be seated.

One last set of recognitions is in order – will all faculty and staff who have joined us since January please stand? Thank you for choosing OHIO. I hope you find your place here and that your careers thrive.

If you are in the room today and you see any faces you don’t recognize or don’t know well, I hope you‘ll introduce yourself during the reception after this morning’s event.

Let’s thank all of these individuals for their commitment to our amazing institution. 

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I want to offer my thanks for the warm welcome Randy and I received when we started our OHIO journey last year. The 2024 academic year was simply fantastic with so many noteworthy accomplishments from our students, staff and faculty. Today, I’m excited to offer my first official State of the University address as your president, and frankly, we have a lot to talk about.

Almost exactly a year ago I was speaking to you as part of my Investiture. As we have gotten to know each other over the last year, hopefully you have come to see me as a champion for students, someone who is transparent, someone deeply committed to our mission as a national, public institution situated in the Appalachian region, and someone who believes fully in the potential of our University and those we serve.

You may have also discovered, that when I see opportunity in front of us to serve our students better, to shore up a weakness, or better yet to take something we are doing well and build it into something we do better than any other university, I don’t hesitate to act, or to ask my team to act, with urgency.

I want to thank each of you for jumping in and joining me as we embraced opportunities over the last year, most notably the development of a clear and defining Dynamic Strategy that will help move our University forward.

It wasn’t until after that October Investiture celebration that our four work groups came together to begin work on our strategy, and they hustled to get that work done in six months rather than 12 or 18. More importantly, they worked without eliminating the extremely important step of gathering input from every member of our community who wanted to offer ideas.

Hundreds of you completed surveys or participated in discussions that would inform the development of goals, strategies and actions that will set the course for the next three years. At the same time, you were tackling that assignment, many of you participated in input and feedback as we recrafted our University mission, vision and values – the first full update of that language in more than 15 years.

This important work was done by April and approved by our University Board of Trustees at its June meeting. And we are not slowing down. We wrote a three-year plan with audacious goals, and today I am going to announce significant forward progress that we’ve made in just the last 90 days to move those goals forward.

But before I do that, I want to take a few minutes to recognize some of the amazing accomplishments and momentum that we continue to enjoy as a growing, thriving public institution.

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We’ve had some big news just in the last few months:
We announced continued expansion of our academic programs to meet shifting workforce demands and student interests.

That includes new or revised online degrees including a bachelor’s degree in general studies, an online Master’s of Applied Arts in Health and a hybrid nurse anesthesia program offered at our Dublin campus.

In June, our Ohio University Board of Trustees approved a resolution to begin offering our nursing associates degree on the Lancaster campus, which is one more important step in ensuring that our Regional Higher Education campuses have the right programming to meet the needs of their local communities.

I am excited that as of this fall we are the first public university in the state of Ohio to offer a Bachelor of Science degree in Artificial Intelligence through our School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the Russ College.

We also received state approval to launch a degree in Cybersecurity Engineering and are now offering a Cybersecurity operations track in Information and Telecommunication Systems as part of our Scripps College.

I want to thank our innovative faculty and academic leadership for developing these programs and moving through all the necessary processes to get them off the ground. Continuous innovation of our curriculum and our programs is deeply important to meeting the needs of our students and our state.

We’ve seen important progress on capital projects over the summer, including beginning construction on the newly named Roderick J. McDavis Residence Hall on South Green and continued progress on the Heritage Translational Research Center.

I want to thank Dr. Darlene Berryman for her leadership in crafting a proposal submitted to the National Institutes for Health that resulted in Ohio University being one of very few select institutions to receive a construction and modernization grant totalling eight million dollars for additional support of the Translational Research Center.

We also saw the relocation of some of our fine arts facilities into temporary spaces as we begin work on major renovation and new construction to support our Jeffery D. Chaddock and Mark A. Morrow College of Fine Arts. If you missed the news from our August board meeting, we also renamed the college in honor of a $25 million gift commitment from Jeff and Mark, who are long time supporters of our University and Jeff is a Bobcat!

I also want to mention that just a few weeks ago, we announced a clear and simple inclusive excellence goal for OHIO: to be a University where ALL Belong. This is not intended to be a three-year goal or a five-year goal – it’s really a guiding principle that endures over time. It is what we want our University to be, and it is something we know we have to strive for daily.

We shared three strategic initiatives for this academic year, aligned with this goal, and we plan to continue to bring forward initiatives every year that will continually improve sense of belonging on all campuses for all students, faculty and staff.

In addition to working to improve our programs and facilities, our culture, and our support of students, we have also continued to be a catalyst for progress in our region.

At the same time, I want to be clear that this growth is happening against a backdrop of slower growth in enrollments nationally, and the year-over-year growth that happened across higher education for decades is simply not sustainable.

I’ve been working in public higher education for a long time, and the conversation about a looming enrollment cliff and growing resource constraints is definitely not new. But this moment feels different. For years the industry was expanding. Now it is contracting. We’ve seen it right here in Ohio. There have always been internal and external pressures, but they have grown in volume and in complexity.

Over the summer I attended a meeting of higher education leaders from across the country. We talked about the variety of forces adding pressure to the fiscal viability of universities. I want to highlight just one of those factors – and I think it is one of the most important one for us to address, together:

In 2019, 8 percent of high school students who could attend college but chose not to - said they opted out because college wasn’t worth the cost. Eight percent. That was five years ago. In 2023, among high schoolers who were opting out of college, 20 percent said college wasn’t worth the cost. We’ve gone from less than one in ten to one in five students who have lost confidence in the value of a university education.

So how do we change that?
I want to suggest an answer to that question by pointing us back to our institutional mission.

When we were gathering input for the development of our new mission and vision, the first question we asked you was “What is our primary purpose.” In every one of those conversations, the first response we heard from you was simply: “to educate students.”

I can tell you that I would not have devoted my life to higher education if I didn’t believe in the power of that purpose.

So how will we combat the idea that education isn’t worth it? We’ll educate students and prepare them for a lifetime of success.

How will we confront the pressures of escalating competition? By educating students – and do it so well that our student outcomes set us apart.

How will we show our state leaders that public investment in higher education pays off? By educating students in a way that prepares them for in-demand careers that will fuel economic growth.

What we do – educate students – is an incredibly simple and incredibly powerful purpose with ripple effects far beyond the boundaries of our classrooms or our campuses, reaching across communities and carrying across generations.

I absolutely love the simplicity of our newly crafted mission: “To hold the door open to higher education so that all those eager to solve humanity’s most urgent challenges might enter to learn, connecting them with experiences and discovery that will help them think critically, care deeply, lead boldly, and ultimately, depart to serve.”

And our vision: “To deliver the most valuable university education in Ohio, and lead as one of the most valued public universities in the nation.”

I counted, and in total, that’s just 66 words. Forty-four in the mission; 22 in the vision. And in those 66 words, I believe we can find the answer to how we, uniquely, as members of the Ohio University, meet this moment.

It’s not about doing more, it’s about remembering what we do well, amplifying it and staying ahead in those areas of excellence. It’s not about chasing every opportunity, but rather identifying the few that will best deliver value to our students and our state and pouring our energy into executing those with excellence.

That’s what I asked our campus to do in the development of the Dynamic Strategy – to build on our strengths and to embrace a few select opportunities to move our institution forward in alignment with our mission and vision. And you delivered!

As a national public University serving nearly 30,000 students, our University will always be brimming with activity including new initiatives, the continuous improvement of various services, the maturation of administrative functions, the launch of new programs – the work that ensures that we continue to educate students and do it well. We didn’t intend to or attempt to fit all of that into the Dynamic Strategy.

I would add that there is always work we know we must do to remain strong in the context of an evolving higher education landscape. For example, we must and we will develop a clear budget model that everyone on our campus understands and that helps inform our financial decisions and makes room for innovation.

We must and we will develop strategic enrollment plans and strategies that ensure we can proactively deliver on our mission.

We must and we will continue progress on major capital investments including our Housing Master Plan, the reimagining of our Chaddock + Morrow College of Fine Arts, the modernization of some of our lab facilities, and more as we work to keep pace with student expectations and faculty needs.

We must and we will modernize the systems we rely on for our business operations and our management of data. This multi-year project kicked off this summer.

These are all things that are necessary for us to continue to thrive, even if they are not specifically called out in the Dynamic Strategy.

The Dynamic Strategy is not focused on the work that we must do to be effective. Rather, it defines goals that will help us work across divisions and units to do something extraordinary.

So let’s move to an update on our progress since our Board of Trustees approved our strategy in June.

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As you know, as soon as Provost Leo had settled in his office in July, I welcomed him with a gift in the form of an assignment. I want to thank you, Don, for not just willingly but really enthusiastically accepting the charge to lead the implementation phase of the Dynamic Strategy.

I also gave him a partner in Vice President Oliver, who was highly involved in the planning phase. I asked Robin to work closely with Don to ensure progress is on track and that the University community is fully informed of our progress.

Over the last several weeks, Don and Robin have worked closely with our President’s Cabinet and our Dean’s Council to develop a framework for implementation that will ensure decisions are made, accountability is clear, and diverse voices are heard so that we can move the plan forward with urgency.

That framework includes an Executive Leadership Team for each pillar, consisting of members of the Cabinet and our Academic Deans, who will ultimately be responsible for the success of the pillar. This team will gather input as needed and design activities to fulfill the strategies and actions outlined in the plan.

They will solidify the list of outcomes and metrics that we’ll use to measure our progress and set three-year goals for each of those metrics. They’ll assign ad hoc work groups as needed to move those activities forward and bring forward any associated budget requests for consideration.

Provost Leo will lead the Executive Leadership Team for LEARN, Vice President Muth will lead the team for DISCOVER, Vice President Oliver will lead the team for ENGAGE, and Vice President Miles will lead the team for WORK.

The full list of members serving on each of these groups can be found on our Dynamic Strategy website at ohio-dot-edu forward-slash strategy. You’ll also find information on that site about how you can raise your hand to get involved in the next phase of the plan.

In addition to the Executive Leadership Team, Don and Robin will be assembling an Implementation Advisory Committee that will meet regularly to hear updates on progress and provide feedback.

We had a high level of engagement through the planning process, and we want that to continue. With that in mind, beginning today through next Friday, October 18, we’ll be accepting nominations for individuals interested in serving on the Advisory Committee or being involved in other ways such as offering input to the pillar Leadership teams or serving on activity work groups. You can nominate yourself or a colleague. But please note that Deans and Cabinet members who are already serving on one of our Executive Leadership Teams are not eligible.

This framework for moving forward and ensuring accountability is important, but I also want to assure you that we have done more in the last 90 days than plan the implementation of the plan. While we have been developing this framework, we have also leaned into key actions defined in the plan to move them quickly from vision to reality.

In our LEARN pillar, our planning group set the goal of achieving and maintaining the industry’s highest standard in both teaching and research. We have achieved R1 status and we know we not only need to protect it but also continue to grow our leadership in research. We also have long been a University focused on excellence in teaching. But, higher education offers less universal clarity on how we measure success in teaching.

Our Dynamic Strategy calls for us to partner with higher education leaders and experts to define key outcomes and metrics that demonstrate excellence in teaching, and I am excited to share today that we have identified the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education as a partner in that work. Together with leaders at the Gardner Institute, we will convene a meeting of like-minded institutions in 2025 to develop a new system of measurement for our industry - focused on teaching excellence.

We know what defines an R1 institution, but what defines a T1 institution? That is the question we will answer together. And as a lead partner and convener, we will solidify Ohio University as a thought leader in teaching excellence.

Our LEARN strategies also call for us to expand the availability of and access to learning opportunities outside of the traditional classroom that prepare students for post-graduation success. Actually, the plan calls for us to do this “immediately.”

With that in mind, Provost Leo charged a group of our Academic Deans, led by Dean Scott Titsworth, to make recommendations for immediate action and investment, and following their recommendations, today we are announcing a $500,000 investment of one-time funds over the next three years to fund multiple related activities.

First, we’ll immediately expand the dollars available to students to support their pursuit of experiential learning opportunities, including internships and career shadowing. We’ve also worked to identify the multitude of funding opportunities already available to students to support experiences, research, creative activity and study abroad and away, and you can now find details and instructions on applying for our expanded funding opportunities at ohio-dot-edu-forward- slash-experience.

Second, our Center for Teaching, Learning and Assessment will build on the success of its recent GenAI Certification program for faculty with the launch of a Certification in Teaching Experiential Learning. That program will be planned for the Summer of 2025 with faculty participants receiving a $1,000 stipend to complete the program.

In addition, we have started the process of building an inventory of our experiential learning opportunities. We want to continue to build on those existing strengths and in the coming months, we will explore ways to reduce student costs associated with our signature experiences and to further augment the availability of planning grants for new, innovative experiential learning initiatives.

And finally, our Academic Deans will organize a faculty work group to explore ways that we can offer course credit for more of the internships that our students pursue and design and launch credit-bearing reflection courses for learning activities such as leadership positions with student organizations to translate experience into learning.

We have also made real progress in our work to fulfill the two goals outlined by our DISCOVER work group. Our plan calls for us to increase distinction in research around healthy aging, energy and the environment as well as accelerate emerging or, as Vice President Muth has said, re- emerging areas of excellence. Appropriately, one of the actions included in the plan is to strengthen our intellectual capital by recruiting and retaining research faculty.

Today, I can share that I have approved a plan jointly presented by Provost Leo and Vice President Muth to invest in up to 15 new tenure-track faculty positions to fulfill this goal. Provost Leo has shared this plan with the Academic Deans, who will bring forward proposals for faculty lines that will advance our strengths as defined in the Dynamic Strategy.

I want to emphasize that this investment in up to 15 new tenure-track faculty lines to support our research enterprise is a bold decision, and it is not one that we’ve made lightly. It is a decision that represents a more than $1.5 million dollar recurring investment. But Don, Eric and I very much understand that the success of our research enterprise is fueled by our faculty. We know an investment in our faculty – including those already here doing great work – is essential to our long-term success.

In addition to adding new capacity, our Dynamic Strategy calls for improving support of our current faculty members as they pursue research. As Vice President Muth has reviewed the organizational structure for the Research Division, he has defined two key leadership positions that are designed to provide important administrative support to research faculty:

an Associate Vice President of Research Partnerships, which is currently being filled in an interim capacity by Dr. Jason Jolley, that will focus on enhancing technology transfer and commercialization, which is called out in the plan;

and an Associate Vice President of Research Administration, which is currently posted and will help us build the research development infrastructure to bolster support for grant acquisition.

There’s still much more to do in DISCOVER, but these investments will lay an important foundation for more work to come.

For our ENGAGE pillar, we committed in the plan to creating a Center for Community Impact or similar organizational structure to serve as an enhanced “front door” to the University, and our plan recognizes that we need to evaluate our current engagement efforts and community partnerships to lay the groundwork for that structure.

Later this month, we will convene staff and faculty across the institution working in engagement- focused roles to engage them in this discovery process.

We have extensive community partnerships and amazing people across our campuses who steward those partnerships. It will be important that any new infrastructure we add is complementary to existing work and not unnecessarily disruptive to the work already happening.

I’ve asked Vice President Oliver, who is leading our ENGAGE leadership team, to work with stakeholders to provide me with a clear plan for our front door no later than February.

The plan also calls for us to expand alumni engagement, including involving alumni in mentorship of our students to inform their professional success. Ultimately, we want every student who is interested in connecting with a Bobcat alumnus in their field to have that opportunity. I personally believe if we do this well it can set us apart as a University.

Over the past several months, leaders in our academic colleges have been hard at work in partnership with Alumni Relations on pilot programs that will help inform a larger University-wide initiative. For example, our College of Business will soon launch an alumni coaching program specifically for first generation students and our College of Arts and Sciences plans to launch a program targeting pre-law students this spring.

There are also multiple existing alumni mentoring programs across the university targeting specific student populations, and students can connect informally with alumni through the Bobcat Network online community.

As we work to scale existing programs to reach more students, we’ve tapped two faculty members with expertise and experience in effective mentorship. Dr. Amy Taylor Bianco from the College of Business and Dr. Dwan Robinson from the Patton College of Education will lead the charge to design a clear framework for leveraging alumni talent to improve student outcomes. Staff in Alumni Relations, the Center for Career Services, and various career centers and offices will be important partners as we move those efforts forward.

Our final pillar is WORK, and I love our goal of becoming a destination employer for those passionate about the mission of public higher education.

Importantly, our first action described in the WORK pillar is to make meaningful investments in our total rewards program for both faculty and staff.

Today, I am announcing our commitment to hold all employee benefits premiums flat for the next two years. The University will absorb any increase in costs rather than passing those along to our faculty and staff as we did this fiscal year. The impact of that freeze this year and the next two will help to bring us in line with benchmarks in the State of Ohio, and more importantly, it will ensure annual raises result in more money in the pockets of our faculty and staff.

I know you want more in terms of real change to compensation, including higher annual raises, more opportunities for promotion or professional growth, and recognition for exemplary performance.

The question really isn’t if we will make those changes, but how we will and when we can, recognizing budget constraints. Finding answers to the how and when will be one of the challenges I put in front of our new Vice President of Finance and Administration, the WORK pillar leadership, and members of our President’s Cabinet over the next year.

WORK also calls for us to develop a plan for measuring and responding to employee sentiment, and this Spring we’ll conduct a ModernThink faculty and staff survey specifically designed to help us improve organizational culture and employee engagement.

The plan asks us to ensure the integration and success of our new hires by improving onboarding, and I’m excited to share that in August we launched an improved onboarding program for administrative employees and we are working to design a full year of community- building and culture-building activities for both staff and faculty.

Our new onboarding program is the first step toward building our Center for Employee Excellence called for in our Dynamic Strategy. That center will also include programs for professional development and staff and faculty recognition, and I’ve committed an investment of $250,000 thousand dollars of non-recurring funds over the next three years to support these programs as they are developed.

What I hope you have heard, clearly and loudly, is that we’re moving forward. We’re taking the hard work you put into this plan seriously, and we’re making investments. This isn’t a document that will sit on the shelf. We’re going to get it out every day, dog ear the pages, write in the margins, circle and highlight, and most importantly, act on its direction.

Over the next few weeks, our Executive Leadership Teams will be meeting and finalizing the outcomes and metrics that we’ll use to evaluate our progress, and you can expect another update – this time from Provost Leo – before the end of the semester as those metrics are finalized. As a preview, know that I have asked that we consider a smaller set of more meaningful metrics rather than a complex dashboard that includes dozens of data points.

Those teams will also be discussing and considering activities that we haven’t talked about today. Our Dynamic Strategy is focused but ambitious. There are a number of actions outlined in the plan for which we’ve yet to define next steps. That will be a big part of the work of our Leadership Teams, but remember your input is also invited. If you’re ready to volunteer to play a role in the next phase of the plan or you know someone who should be included, please go to ohio-dot-edu forward-slash strategy and make your nomination by October 15.

I want to thank you for investing your time listening today, and I hope that you walk away encouraged and ready to get to work. Maybe that work is on some part of the Dynamic Strategy, but whether it fits squarely in the plan or not, know that your work is part of ensuring we deliver on our mission.

Maybe you are a development officer finalizing a scholarship agreement so that we can hold the door open for one more student. Maybe you are a faculty member headed to a meeting with a student researcher that will solve challenges in our community or in the world.

Maybe later today you’ll be teaching one of our BRICKS general education courses and helping students think critically. Maybe you’re a member of our financial aid team and you’ll coach a parent through the financial aid process this afternoon. Or you’re a residential advisor serving as a sounding board to students eager to find their place at OHIO.

Or a member of our facilities team ensuring our University provides the warm and welcoming environment our students expect. Or a coach inspiring student athletes on and off the field. Or a career advisor helping a small group of students with their resumes.

All of these seemingly small moments of our day can be incredibly big in the lives of the students we serve. Every day, every hour is an opportunity to inform their success and to demonstrate the power and the value of an Ohio University education.

And I know, when you bring your energy and passion and commitment and innovation to your work, we can and we will provide unmatched value to our students, to the communities we serve, to our state, and ultimately to the world.

Thank you for all you have done and continue to do to make this University great. Now, let’s go make it extraordinary.