Straight Talk from the President - April 3, 2008
Dear Colleagues,
The University of Louisiana at Monroe’s classroom may no longer require four walls or a chalkboard. In 2007, ULM successfully redesigned its freshman Mathematics and English courses by combining new technology with traditional methods, improving our students’ learning and success. These are examples of the exciting mix of evolving pedagogy and new technology that is changing the way our students process and acquire new information. I thank the faculty and staff for their diligence and expertise, as it is through your efforts that ULM continues to adapt to the needs of today’s changing student.
The Board of Regents projects that by the fall of 2011 we will have 10,000 fewer academically-prepared high school graduates than we did before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. We must continue to examine our recruiting plans so that we do not focus on that shrinking population. We need to broaden our focus to include serving adult learners, or non-traditional students. We know that approximately 600,000 Louisiana adults have earned college credits towards degrees that they have not completed.
At Envision last November, I said:
The student of the future, both those direct from high school and the new emerging adult learner population, will demand that we provide them with a postsecondary experience that fits their schedules, not ours. We at ULM must continue to change, or we will be left behind by the marketplace. The adult learners are those who choose to delay their education and later return to finish their education, they are older, they work, and they have families and the concomitant job and time constraints. We must be prepared to meet the needs of those students with anytime, anywhere, anyplace instruction. The one hour, three-times-a-week courses will be a thing of the past. We must be prepared to offer online, blended, distance, weekend or evening classes. These courses will require a change in the way we work and schedule and perceive our students. We will need to find a way to accommodate the essential faculty-student engagement for these new and often impersonal alternative delivery methods.
The changes we implemented last fall in English and Mathematics were just the beginning of a broader effort to reach an ever-changing student marketplace. This fall, as part of the Gateway to Online Degrees (GOLD) program, ULM will launch two online bachelor's degrees—General Studies and Health Studies. The Health Studies degree, which is also a part of the CALL (Continuum for All Louisiana Learners) initiative, will have a Healthcare Management/Marketing Option. Students who graduate from this program will be prepared for mid-level management positions in various healthcare organizations.
Last week in Baton Rouge, the UL System approved ULM’s two letters of intent: one for a Master of Science in Nursing Administration, an online degree, and one for a Bachelor of Science degree in Diagnostic Medical Sonography, both of which have been fast-tracked for quicker implementation. We anticipate approval of these two letters of intent from the Board of Regents next month. In the following months, ULM will request a Bachelor of Arts in Medical Physics, as well as several new online degree programs: a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, a Bachelor of Science in Instructional Design Technology and a Master of Science in Dental Hygiene. With this fall’s online BSHS degree and our proposed additional online health sciences and education programs, ULM will change the economic and educational landscape in Louisiana.
The first part of this decade we experienced what can best be labeled as a fairly stringent retrenchment. We have emerged stronger, more focused, and better prepared to face the future. I believe that we will see an unprecedented period of academic growth during the last half of this decade. The approval of the letters of intent for these two new programs and the preparation to request four more programs over the next two months is just the first step in the academic expansion of the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
Sincerely,
James E. Cofer
President