December 13, 2002
Dear Colleagues,
By now I hope all of you have heard or read about the action taken by SACS and their Commission on Colleges at the annual meeting. If not, I enjoy saying it as much as possible; SACS/COC removed the warning on our accreditation. Full accreditation assures everyone that we have met the same standards as schools like LSU, or Mississippi State, Georgia Tech, Clemson, or SMU. Tuesday was a good day for ULM. We have had a number of good days here at ULM lately, and those good days are stretching into good weeks, and those weeks into good months. Soon we can say this has been a good year for ULM.
But what does this really mean to us as a university community? It means our students are assured that they are getting a quality education. Secondly, it should make it easier for our academic departments to recruit and retain quality faculty, which translates into a better education experience for our students. It also means that it will be easier to recruit and retain top-notch administrative talent at all levels, which translates into a more stable environment and therefore a better education experience for our students.
Much of this good news is because we have seen a lot of changes here during these last eight and one-half months. SACS removed the warning; we received an unqualified opinion on our audit, we balanced the budget in not only the general fund, but in intercollegiate athletics and auxiliary enterprises as well, all using conservative revenue estimates. We saw enrollment drop, but not as much as we budgeted, therefore giving us a little breathing room. We have seen a surge in student applications, student morale, student quality, and student involvement. The campus clearly looks better, because many of you worked together and put in a lot of "sweat equity." There is now an air on campus and in the community of hope, not impending doom. None of this occurred because we wished it so, all of this has happened because of the hard work and long hours of many of this institution's fine students, faculty, and staff.
With all of this good news and the holidays approaching there could be a tendency to relax and say, "Well everything is okay now and we can relax." While we should feel good about how far we have come, we should not forget that we still have major issues that need to be addressed. The budget situation is not fixed. SACS, while commending us for getting our financial house in order, also required us to develop a plan and show substantial progress in addressing the nearly $4 million deficit in our auxiliary funds, and while the budget is balanced for this year, to avoid program elimination next year we will need substantial additional state funding during this next legislative session. As part of this search for additional funding, your colleagues in the College of Health Sciences, our legislative delegation, Dr. Richters, Dr. Bruno, Dr. Clausen, and I have expended an enormous amount of time the last four months making our case for additional funding to hundreds of the state's decision-makers. We will continue this process for many months to come.
In addition, we must pay even more attention to the issue of student retention than we are to student recruitment. Noel-Levitz will continue to help us develop a definite and refined student retention plan. The literature gives us a very clear direction on how to increase student retention, and therefore increase graduation rates, and that is the amount of student and faculty interaction inside and outside the classroom. The retention plan will be useless unless we have a commitment from our entire faculty in this area. There are clearly pockets of this dedication on our campus now, but we need everyone involved in the engagement of students in the learning process. My contribution to the faculty promotion and tenure policy, that you the faculty will help refine and develop, is the insistence that substantive student engagement be a requirement for promotion or tenure.
I have grown to know and love our students, and I am unashamed to say this privately and publicly, and I say it a lot. Many of you share the same feelings about our students as I do, and you have worked for years underappreciated and without support. I was touched today by the dedication of one of our faculty who sent me an email. I hope she does not mind me sharing her sentiments with you because she captures what many of us believe is the essence of our work. She said:
"I began teaching last spring and I wanted you to know just how much I have come to love ULM and the students. I am a full-time nursing instructor at ULM and I try my best to show the students I encounter that I care for them and their education.
Yesterday I walked down the hall on the 3rd floor of the Nursing Building and saw all the students diligently pouring over their notes for exams. It felt good to know that I was a part of their preparation for the future.
On behalf of the nursing faculty, I would like for you to know how much we care for our students, who they are and what they will become. It is as if we are surrogate parents: teaching, guiding, motivating, correcting and we do this with their best interest at heart."
We are trying to reinvent an institution that incorporates these thoughts into our institutional fabric. I wish the timeframe were longer for us to do the many things that are before us, but we must act now, and we must continue to act in a positive and proactive manner for several years to come. Every year there are new budget challenges, even when the budget is balanced and we have a surplus the prior year. Every class of high school seniors is new and deserves the same amount of recruiting attention we gave the prior class. Every year we have new students that must be engaged anew in the process of learning. Every member of this faculty and staff in some way and at certain times touch the lives of our students, the simplest act of kindness or care by just one of us could make the difference in a student's decision to stay with us or not.
In my letter to you on August 15, 2002, about the budget I wrote;
But like Robert Frost, we have "miles to go before we sleep, and miles to go before we sleep." After reviewing the last five months and working on this budget, I estimate that we have three to five years of hard work ahead of us, and believe that the only way to solidify our financial position is to recruit and retain a substantially larger number of students. There are no simple solutions to our multi-faceted problems. However, I firmly believe that by working together we can turn this institution around.
While many things have changed, many remain the same. The decisions that we face are neither easy, nor clear, nor will they be unanimous, but will always be in the best interest of the institution. I ask you to join me as we continue the work to assure we have more good days at ULM.
Finally, I wish for you all a joyous and restful holiday.
James E. Cofer, Sr.
ULM President