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| UM
President George Dennison at the State of the University Address |
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President
outlines University goals
UM President
George Dennison set several goals for the Univer- sity during his
annual State of the University Address on Aug. 27. Following is his
list of priorities for the coming year:
-- UM must meet enrollment targets. “We can succeed in doing
so if we engage the students,” Dennison said. “Failure
to engage them will undermine our effort to provide an education of
the highest quality. We all understand that the quality of an experience,
educational or otherwise, depends on the level of engagement of the
individual. In our case, the engagement begins with the recruitment
process and must continue through matriculation to graduation, and
the outcome depends upon the active involvement of student and faculty
or staff member, not just one or the other. In brief, faculty productivity
depends upon student productivity, and vice versa.”
-- The University must finalize reform of the General Education Program,
with an emphasis on goals and objectives that can be evaluated and
assessed in terms of learning outcomes. “The Faculty Senate
referred the work to a subcommittee of the Academic Standards and
Curricular Review Committee,” Dennison said. “As we proceed,
let us identify and articulate the goals we can actually access.”
-- UM must implement its campuswide outcomes assessment program. “The
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities identified this
requirement four years ago during the accreditation review,”
Dennison said. “Each department and program has the responsibility
to develop and implement outcomes assessments to demonstrate the successful
achievement of stated goals. We have made some progress on assessment
of competency in writing and mathematics, but not consistently with
regard to other outcomes. We will undergo an accreditation visit in
the next year that will focus on our success or lack of it.”
-- The University must participate in the Shared Leadership Project,
doing all it can to assist Montana’s economic and cultural development.
“While each of us brings different skills, talents, and interests
to the work, we can all contribute,” Dennison said. “It
behooves us all to think of how we can help, rather than speculating
about why the effort will fail.
-- UM must attract even more external funds to support graduate education
and research. “For (fiscal year) 2005, I challenge the faculty
to push the new grant award total above $70 million,” Dennison
said. Research funding at UM has grown from just over $7 million in
1990 to more than $65 million in 2004, he said.
-- The University must maintain its facilities and aggressively seek
funds to construct new ones. “The bond issue will allow us to
focus on critical deferred maintenance projects,” Dennison said.
“At the same time, we must identify the private funds required
for the (planned) Law Building and the Native American Center, and
make good progress on funding for the Montana Museum of Art and Culture
and the expansion of Media Arts.”
-- UM must redouble efforts to attract private support for scholarships
and fellowships. Dennison said, “We do fairly well for undergraduate
students, but not for graduate students.”
-- The University must focus on becoming more efficient and effective
with the use of available resources. “In that regard, we can
achieve savings through intercampus cooperation and collaboration
in pursuance of the restructuring that began almost a decade ago,
Dennison said. “During this current biennium, we have reallocated
nearly $5 million to protect the smaller campuses from reductions
in force and programs, allowing those campuses to position themselves
for future challenges. It behooves us to analyze how we do things
and use any savings to protect the quality of all that we do.”
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