Fall 2010 Convocation Address Dr. Jonathan Gibralter Tuesday, September 28, 2010 3:30 p.m., Pealer Recital Hall Convocation Slide Presentation Download Address MP3 for the audio version (39 MB)

Good afternoon. It is an honor to have this opportunity to speak to you today about the state of Frostburg State University—where we are and where we’re going.

My plan is to begin by speaking about our university and once that’s done—I will present the Staff Awards For Excellence to several very deserving employees.

Today in many ways represents a new beginning. It is about setting the stage in order that we might face the many challenges that are before us. It’s about making a commitment to a shared future.

Frostburg has had many futures that it has believed in and realized over the years. It’s gone from being a teacher’s college to a liberal arts college to a residential, four-year university. It has gone from being State Normal School #2, to the State Teachers College at Frostburg to Frostburg State College and finally to Frostburg State University. Along the way the university has restructured, become part of a state system and experienced different leadership and initiatives that have challenged the campus community to focus on ever-changing priorities. Each of these evolutions has led to new opportunities. And of course, each has been accompanied by uncertainty and, at times, some sacrifice.

Today I’m calling upon all of us to ask ourselves: what is our future? When people look back at this time, when all of YOU look back to this time, how will Frostburg State University be remembered? What individual and collective contributions can we make that will carry Frostburg forward? What will our legacy be?  What’s going to make our university truly distinctive and distinguished? How do we put this institution on the map and give it a national reputation?

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to determine where we want to go. The answer to this question not only relates to our role within the University System of Maryland, but also puts us in the context of a larger, national conversation about the value of higher education. The purpose of a college degree in an increasingly global and interconnected world. And, the way in which education will be delivered over the next 20 years.

Where does Frostburg State stand among our fellow institutions in the University System of Maryland who compete with us for students, employment and funding? Yes, we’re known for our unique location in the mountains that serves as a place of reflection and personal development and even as an outdoor laboratory for our students. We’re also recognized throughout the state for having outstanding faculty and staff who go above and beyond the call of duty to provide student-centered learning.

Like all of you, I, too, value the emphasis on students and focus on teaching we have here. I think we’re all at Frostburg because we believe that students come first and share a love for their personal growth through education. We’re all incredibly dedicated to helping them find their way to successful careers. We not only want to educate them as students, but as thoughtful leaders who understand the value and responsibility of global citizenship.

So, herein lies the dilemma: Lots of colleges and universities say they give students individual attention. Many schools provide nice learning environments and high-quality faculty and staff. Over time, will Frostburg State still be standing if it’s a quiet place in the mountains with great faculty and staff? I have to ask about our reputation. What is our reputation within the University System of Maryland? What is our reputation in the national marketplace of higher education?

Folks—we have arrived at a crossroads, and the moment has come for us to rise to the occasion and truly become a distinctive university with national recognition. We’ve worked too hard not to do this.

Think about the progress that we’ve made over the years and the time and effort it has required. Our enrollment has grown steadily, with our largest enrollment ever this fall, a total of 5,470 students. This growth has ensured we’ve been able to weather the economic downturn that’s been felt by just about everyone across the country. Our Advancement team has raised over $13.5 million toward the $15 million goal in our Staking Our Claim campaign. And there have been other improvements that have added to our momentum. I recognize and appreciate that many of you have contributed to the transformations that are defining this campus. Developing more international education opportunities, supporting sustainability, creating new academic programs and raising Frostburg’s profile through new marketing efforts are among the many areas where each of you has made an impact.

I’m excited about these accomplishments, but like many of you, I see a need to sharpen our focus on how to better steer FSU toward greatness. This summer FSU’s Executive Committee and others involved in our Strategic Planning process met with Dr. Michael Middaugh, an associate provost of institutional research and faculty member at the University of Delaware and an author and leading national expert on planning and assessment in higher education. His workshop with us and the thoughtful discussions that followed helped us identify three institutional priorities. They are:

• Raising the bar on our student’s academic quality and improving our graduation rate
• Making more intentional our focus on experiential and applied learning opportunities for students both inside and outside the classroom, and
• Improving our facilities so that our students live and learn in a modern and technologically sophisticated environment

As you can see, our priorities are very much in line with that of the University System of Maryland’s overall Strategic Planning process. And Dr. Middaugh basically affirmed what we’re already saying about ourselves. In a campus-wide survey that was conducted as part of our 5-year Middle States Periodic Review, students, faculty and staff identified our top priorities as:

• Recruiting and retaining better academically prepared students
• Preparing students to live, work and lead in a global environment
• Focusing on student-centered learning, where the relationship between students and faculty members remains one of our core university values, and
• Continuing to recruit and retain high-quality faculty members

When we look beyond FSU, there’s a perception out there that really hurts us because it says we’re not what we think we are. I know people have mixed feelings about U.S. News & World Report and how they compile their rankings. But no matter how you might feel about them, we can’t deny that they’re a key player in how some parents and students decide where to go to school: This year, they told the whole country that we are 121 among 133 Tier 1 universities in the northeastern United States. Check out how this compares to other USM institutions.

Folks have you ever gone to a football game where people are cheering, “We’re 121!”? I hope not.

We’ve been carrying this reputation that we’re an inexpensive, caring and friendly institution for a long time. This won’t carry us much longer. The culture that has developed here over time has not always encouraged us to move forward with speed and decisiveness on those initiatives that truly matter and add significant value. Now we really need to push ourselves in focused ways we have not before and effectively change this institutional culture. We absolutely have to raise the bar, to move beyond comfortable and complacent if we want to become a school with national recognition.

I know we can do this. We’re already begun to find areas of national distinction that have paid us benefits ten-fold:

GetEducated.com, a consumer group that reviews online academic programs for cost, quality and credibility, has ranked FSU among its best values in AACSB-accredited online MBAs. Our online MBA is ranked at number 9 on this national list. After we received this ranking, without us even marketing the program, enrollment jumped 12 students.

This past spring, FSU was listed in “The Princeton Review’s Guide to 286 Green Colleges,” which highlights institutions that have demonstrated an above-average commitment to sustainability through their infrastructure, activities and initiatives. We’ve gotten some great feedback from parents and incoming students who want to be at a university that’s nationally recognized by the Princeton Review for sustainability. And this is just one of many ways sustainability has led to accolades for us: our Climate Action Plan, our success in Recyclemania and our upcoming Sustainable Energy Research Facility have all brought us state-wide and national acclaim.

ACADEMIC STANDARDS

If Frostburg State University is going to get into the game and truly become a university with honor and national distinction, we have to address our academic standards. Academic quality is going to set the tone for everything that we do. Behind me, you’ll see a draft of our revised mission statement, something that better emphasizes our priorities and is central to our push toward excellence.

I want to be clear about something: It’s not that we’re just now realizing academic standards are a problem—we’ve been worried about this for a long time. I know some of you feel like our enrollment growth has been too focused on numbers and not enough on bringing quality students to our campus. It’s important that everyone here understands that we HAD to stabilize enrollment. This has helped us to endure budget cuts. Keep in mind that four years ago, our enrollment was the lowest it had been in 17 years. Growing our enrollment gave us a financial cushion to respond to critical issues. Early on, we did put money back into faculty’s professional development. We began to address salary equity. And then, when the economic crisis hit us, we were able to use that money to avoid layoffs. It’s only now that we can afford to be more selective in our admissions process, something that is absolutely imperative if we are going to raise the bar and take things to the next level. We need to be making academic decisions from a position of strength and not out of fear. In my mind, as we become a more academically competitive institution, we will continue to maintain our enrollment—more students will want to come here for all the right reasons.

Building that position of strength means we all have to decide that our time and energy must go into the right places. Our faculty need and deserve the time and energy to teach. Right now they’re increasingly focused on helping those admitted students who simply aren’t ready for the academic demands of college. Check out some excerpts from people’s personal responses to the Middle States Periodic Review survey.

It hurts us when our faculty, staff and our more academically prepared students feel this frustrated, under-valued and behind where they want to be. This affects everything from our graduation rate to our retention. Here are some statistics that highlight some of these issues:

• Our current six-year graduation is 48 percent, meaning that of all the first-time full-time freshmen who entered FSU in the fall 2004, only 48 percent of that freshman cohort graduated from FSU by May of 2010.
• For the fall of 2010, 26 percent of our 2009 freshmen class did not return to Frostburg for a second year. We’re losing some smart students to other schools because they don’t feel challenged here. They realize their classmates are slowing down their learning and get discouraged. We’re also losing students whose financial aid has run out or who simply drop out of college altogether.
• Our retention and graduation rate is something that upsets not just our campus community, but our alumni as well. Many of them feel their degrees from Frostburg are diminished because of our school’s academic reputation. They don’t feel proud of their alma mater right now because of our academic standards and how they affect the quality of our students.

Raising the minimum SAT requirement for admission is just one way we’ll be working on becoming more selective and ensuring our academic quality improves. In fact, just last Thursday the Enrollment Management Committee struggled with making a decision that in my mind just wasn’t all that complicated. The decision is that in recruiting students for next year’s freshman class—we will not admit any student whose SAT is below 800. We also are going to better qualify the admission criteria for those students whose SAT is between 800 and 1000. These students will have to be very competitive to be admitted based upon their high school grade point average and submission of letters of recommendation, essays, perhaps even a campus interview. In other words, folks, we’re no longer going to make it easy for students whose SAT is below 1,000 to gain admission to Frostburg State University.

We realize that by raising our standards we’ll lose students from the freshman class. But when you look at the numbers, retaining successful students will accommodate the loss of those freshmen. If the 26 academic departments at this institution could retain just 2 students, we would have 52 returning students, which would probably make up for the loss of freshmen whose SAT was below 800.

I’m pleased to report that the fall 2010 freshman class does bring a higher mean grade point average and SAT score. It is very gratifying to see this increased academic quality of our incoming freshman class. This will absolutely continue.

Addressing academic standards also means pinpointing where we’re losing students and providing better resources. By now, some of you are already using MAP-Works, an early-alert system that’s based on a comprehensive survey conducted among freshmen early in the fall semester. The information serves as not only a reality check for the students themselves, but also as a way for faculty to assess their students’ potential and identify the stresses they may be facing. MAP-Works has improved retention at other schools. The system is only as good as the number of people who use it. I hope everyone is taking advantage of this resource. This is one of many areas where we’ll continue to focus on academic quality.

Our mission of academic excellence is also about setting the stage for academic accountability and connecting with our freshmen early on—something we emphasized this year by holding our first Freshman Convocation.

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

Experiential learning is another critical part of how we’ll keep evolving as an institution and put FSU on the map at the national level. The wide array of experiential learning opportunities we offer is one of our greatest strengths. As many of you are aware, we’re doing an inventory of our experiential offerings. I encourage those of you working on this effort to provide the info that has been requested. These experiences include service learning, sustainability, health and wellness, internships, performances, lab exercises and research that help students connect what they’re mastering in the classroom with real world issues. Experiential learning is also about giving both our students and our faculty the chance to experience other cultures and connect with them in life-changing ways through study abroad.

This inventory will help us define experiential learning as the hallmark of an FSU education. We know we’re good at this and we need to promote it heavily and make it more a part of how we communicate what our educational experience is.

FACILITIES

We will not be able to define ourselves with improved academic standards and experiential learning without the right facilities in place. And to make that happen, we must consider whether we’re making the case to our legislators that we’re a good investment, a university on the path to greatness.

Frostburg has always been a strong component of Western Maryland’s economy. As we look around and see long-time local companies suffering cutbacks and layoffs, it’s clear that we ARE the economic future of this area. If we want legislators to take us seriously and give us the funding we need to provide the best facilities for our campus, we have to convince them that we’re worth the investment. It’s not just about being a squeaky wheel—it’s about how we demonstrate who we are and what we’re capable of. For whatever reason, the people in Annapolis don’t seem to hear us.

We have to got to break the cycle of only being able to erect a new academic building every 10 years.

Think about the Center for Communication and Information Technology building. FSU has been wrangling with the state forever on getting CCIT going, and it’s only just recently that we were finally given the green light—and the capital funding—to move forward. Given how fast technology evolves, I worry that delays like this undermine our ability to provide the most up-to-date learning experiences so our students are ready for the job market.

The renovated Lane Center, which is slated to open in spring 2011, is another much-needed upgrade for our campus. I think you will all be impressed with this new building. But as we consider how we can make a more compelling case to the state, remember that it was paid for with student fees, not capital funds.

Our upcoming Sustainable Energy Research Facility gives us an opportunity to position ourselves as a national center for renewable energy and research. To make it possible, FSU has to come up with $2.2 million. We are investing $900,000 into this facility; however, the rest will be cobbled together through grants and in-kind donations. We expect a groundbreaking on SERF within the next month. FSU’s Education Professions and Health Sciences Center is another building on the horizon. Its proposal is in front of Department of Budget and Management right now and it’s in the state budget for 2015/2016.

We are also working hard with USM and the Chancellor to make the case for renovating or building new academic facilities so we can realize our strategic planning objectives.

TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

It’s incredibly important to me that my administration be transparent and that we be held accountable for our decisions and processes. Your feedback and involvement will remain significant in how we shape our most fundamental decisions about improving as an institution. To support this effort, FSU is taking some significant steps this year, including:

• The creation of the President’s Advisory Council for Planning and Institutional Effectiveness. Consisting of campus-wide representatives, this new group is responsible for evaluating the important connection between our planning and allocation of resources. This is the feedback loop that’s been missing from our Strategic Planning efforts.
• We’re also launching a budget website for the entire campus community, where you can monitor how funds are being spent and put back into our campus. It’s part of our focus on being more transparent in our planning and budgeting. If you go to this website, you’ll find budget allocations, cost-saving measures, legislative and enrollment updates and communications from myself and the Chancellor about the budget. We’re also developing a feature where you can ask questions, so we know what people are thinking about with our budget process. We will be looking to modify that website as needed as we seek additional information. These are all tools at your disposal to become more informed of how FSU makes decisions about its growth. Many thanks to the Budget Office, Academic Computing and the Communications and Media Relations division for their efforts in putting together this new resource. I would also like to thank Kendall Luy, a grad student who worked on this website this summer.
• I want to reassure all of you that the Faculty Senate’s Institutional Priorities and Resources Committee remains an important resource for faculty input into institution-wide planning and budgeting. We will continue to work with IPR throughout the year.

THE BIG PICTURE

So you’ve heard about some of the specific actions we’re taking. Where does this leave us? If we want Frostburg State University to reach a new level of excellence, we are going to have to take on some big-picture issues—Dealing with financial stress, using our time and energy wisely and making some tough decisions about what’s no longer serving us.

Though it will be difficult, refining our academic programs so that they uphold our mission is something that will have to happen if we’re going to become distinctive and distinguished. FSU’s mission statement is basically going to provide a template against which our student and academic programs will be measured. This assessment is going to be an important part of how we allocate our resources. We have to make our mission statement real through our programs. We are an institution devoted to quality teaching and everything we accomplish should support retaining our students, raising the bar on academics and giving our students the best educational experience possible.

We are all challenged by doing more with less—or frankly, even doing less with less—and I know this is a huge burden for everyone. Many of you are probably listening to this address, thinking, “I just want to know why for the third year in a row I’m not getting a raise or a cost-of-living adjustment in my salary. Why my pay has been continually reduced.” Like all of you, I’m deeply frustrated about this. All I can say is that I sincerely regret that we’ve been forced to face these challenges together. It is saving jobs, something we can all appreciate and value as we watch our friends and loved ones face unemployment. I can tell you that at this point, if it’s any consolation at all, the FY2012 budget of Maryland is being developed without any furloughs or salary reductions. It also includes merit money.

This is also a critical moment when I know we are all exhausted by our overwhelming To Do lists. Maybe it’s time for a To Stop Doing list. When you look at what you do every day and what your departments and divisions are focusing on, take a moment to ask yourself if the majority of your time and energy is being devoted to our top priorities. Look at your job and say, “Am I doing the right thing to uphold the mission of the university?” If you’re working 60 hours a week, you owe it to yourself to spend your time doing the right things. If you’re not sure what those right things are, ask your supervisor. Each of you has a part in how we’ll demonstrate our excellence and determine our future through your day-to-day contributions.

Achieving new levels of greatness is also about putting aside petty differences and working across disciplines and generations. Our younger professionals need to be heard and encouraged, not scared away to other jobs because of cynicism, departmental politics and complacency. And in turn, FSU is counting on its senior faculty and staff to infuse every area with valuable history and knowledge. Provide leadership to your newer colleagues and be open to change. We will all need to be patient, open-minded and flexible with one another. We will all have to call upon our individual leadership abilities. Leadership is not about making the greatest number of people happy. It’s about serving the greater good. Our greater good is focusing on our students and making them responsible, successful people who can go out and fix the world’s problems. That’s the bottom line.

We are running to stand still, but we don’t know what we stand for. Higher education and campuses across the country are changing. Sometimes history is just history and you reach a point where you have to take the pieces that make sense and move forward. It’s time for envisioning our future and asking ourselves what will our legacy be? The coal miners created our institution. Lillian Compton saved it. Nelson Guild grew it. Our legacy will be to bring this university national prominence.

Thank you.

FSU STAFF AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE

I now have the honor of recognizing several individuals who without a doubt work incredibly hard to serve our students and raise the bar of excellence for Frostburg State University. It’s time to present the 2010 FSU Staff Awards for Excellence. The FSU Staff Awards for Excellence are sponsored by the Alumni and Friends of  Frostburg State University through the 2010 Annual Fund Campaign.

Each winner receives a plaque and certificate at Convocation, plus $500 funded by the FSU Foundation.

Exempt Employee:

Ann Townsell

Employed by FSU for the past 14 years, Ann is currently Assistant Director of Publications. One can easily locate examples of her professional excellence by browsing through fliers, walking past posters or handing out graduate recruitment materials on campus. In line with FSU’s mission to provide “real world situations” Ann has tutored countless interns in graphic design and has been an active member of the Learning Green Living Green committee since its inception. Her service doesn’t stop when she leaves her work day behind. She has provided years of dedication and service to the art community, which has grown because of her involvement. In fact, she was recently recognized by The Allegany Arts Council with a Lifetime Membership Award.

Nonexempt Employee:

Karen Frink

Karen began her employment at FSU 5 years ago. She is currently an Administrative Assistant in the Department of Recreation and Parks Management. Not only has Karen performed her normal job duties and responsibilities with dedication and professionalism – her contribution to the Department’s students has been exemplary. When the Recreation Society needed an advisor she volunteered. When an international student trip needed coordination, she stepped in. In fact, Karen’s contribution to the Department was recognized in the Report to the Council on Accreditation. Karen also volunteers her time serving in various capacities for Frankfort High School.

Nonexempt Employee/Facilities/Maintenance:

Dean Bolden

Dean has been employed at FSU for 11 years. As a carpenter, examples of his work can be found throughout the campus. Whether it’s installing acoustical ceiling grids or building scaffolding, Dean can be found hard at work. His supervisors and fellow employees know that he takes pride in his work and always pays attention to detail. In addition to his work duties Dean serves on the University’s Health and Safety Committee. He genuinely cares about the safety and wellbeing of his co-workers, students and the campus community. Dean’s service to the community includes 26 years of service to the Eastern Garrett County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department.