Dear Faculty and Staff:
As you learned last Thursday, Laura Behling has stepped down from her position as provost and Associate Dean Nick Kontogeorgopoulos is serving as interim provost while the university conducts a national search for a leader to advance and support the academic affairs division in its critical work.
During this transition, I am committed to ensuring that the vital work of the Academic, Administrative, and Auxiliary Program Review Committee continues to progress toward its goal, while benefitting from more intentional leadership and support for the processes underway. To promote both strong coordination and continuity, I have appointed Nick, Kim Kvaal (our new Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer), and Monica DeHart (Professor of Anthropology and ongoing AAARP committee member) as co-chairs of the committee. I am grateful to them for agreeing to lead the committee as it continues to model the preliminary recommendations presented to the campus on June 23. They will convene an open campus event in August to share the results of this modeling, followed by an opportunity for campus feedback before submission of the final recommendations. The committee will continue to be supported by the Office of Finance, Institutional Research, the Academic Deans’ Office, and Stevens Strategy.
At the committee’s June 23 open forum, some campus members expressed interest in knowing more about the Board of Trustees’ May feedback to the program review committee. During our Town Hall on June 13, I described some of the evolving circumstances since the start of the comprehensive program review that shaped the board’s guidance to the committee. For those who could not attend or view the recording of the Town Hall session, we discussed the following changed circumstances affecting the committee’s work: lower enrollment projections and retention rates; higher FTIC tuition discount rate; higher inflation (at least in the short term); a persisting hyper-competitive job market and labor shortages; a recently adopted Strategic Enrollment Plan and accompanying amended enrollment goal; and a comprehensive fundraising campaign to support our Leadership for a Changing World strategic plan goals.
With acknowledgment to these changed circumstances, the Board of Trustees also affirmed the committee’s efforts to date and offered the following guiding principles for completing its work:
- The Steering Committee is expected to prepare a full and complete set of written recommendations to me by September 26, 2022 for consideration and to enable me to take forward the recommendations to the board in October 2022.
- The Steering Committee must actively and meaningfully align its recommendations with and tie its recommendations to Leadership for a Changing World, the Strategic Enrollment Plan and Student Success Task Force initiatives, and our identity as a place to pursue purpose and impact in a community that challenges and supports the individual.
- Each recommendation and all recommendations need to have a clear, data-informed rationale, a timeline for implementation, and individual and cumulative financial impacts demonstrating a viable path for the university’s return to a balanced budget for fiscal year 2025.
I know you join me in offering support and appreciation for Nick, Kim, and Monica and all members of the Academic, Administrative, and Auxiliary Program Review Committee as we navigate this transition period, and partner together on the important work ahead of us.
Sincerely,
Isiaah
Isiaah Crawford, PhD | President