Dear colleagues,
As
we near the end of the semester, it is that busy and exciting time of
year. So many things have been going on it is hard to cover them all but
I want to share a few with you.
On April 10, the impressive
student award
nominees and winners were celebrated and they never fail to amaze me.
Speaking of award winners, LSBE financial markets junior Travis
Eisenbacher not only won UMD student employee of the year but he also
won Minnesota's student employee of the year. Read about his story
. Our dance team took second place at nationals. And our engineering students showcased their PyroGlove Air Force invention project
to local media. Yesterday, I saw an outstanding UMD theatre production of Spring Awakening and you can watch the
show trailer.
There are several other fine arts performances and additional campus
events over the next few weeks, and I encourage you to support them.
There
has also been a lot of activity and progress with our faculty
administrative restructuring task force. I expect to receive their
recommendation this week and will communicate more about that after I've
had a chance to review their recommendations.
Retention Update
Speaking
of students, I'd like to share an opportunity from our Strategic
Enrollment Management committee and encourage your participation. Visit
the
SEM website
to learn about their call for grant proposals to support action items
aligned with improving student success and retention. Your efforts in
this area will help us achieve our goal to increase first to second year
undergraduate student retention from the current 76% to our goal of 80%
by Fall 2018. Proposals are due May 2.
I
also want to thank everyone involved in helping to create and implement
action items as part of our retention efforts under the 4-Pros framework
.
There is a lot of impressive work being done to strengthen student
success and I look forward to continuing to watch these and other
initiatives unfold. Please take a few minutes to review the SEM retention action plan
and if you have questions, ideas, or would like further discussion please contact Mary Keenan.
Marketing Update
Along
with retention and recruitment comes messaging. As you know, we are
working on a new UMD marketing campaign to replace Those Who Can,
Duluth. The University Marketing and Public Relations office in
conjunction with Admissions has been working with an advertising agency
to develop three potential concepts for our new campaign. Efforts have
been underway all semester and some of you may have already seen the
creative concepts.
At
the moment and for the next couple weeks, the team will continue to
share and collect feedback on three different marketing concepts. Both
prospective and current students along with faculty and staff will be
involved in this process. Some of you have been in discussions about
this already and the rest of you will be provided an electronic survey
with the creative samples for your feedback. You are our brand
ambassadors and we need your input and support in this effort.
Climate Survey - Save September 13
As
well, I wanted to put a date on your calendars for the Fall. The
Campus Climate Survey Working Group has been working on plans to share
the results of our campus climate survey. We have flagged Tuesday, September 13
as the date to conduct two sessions for students, faculty, and staff to
learn and discuss the results. More information on time and location
to come.
I hope you all have a wonderful week and enjoy the nice weather.
Sincerely,
Lendley C. Black
Chancellor
