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A Year in Review

By Dr. James E. Cofer, President

When we look back ten years from now, we will see 2003 as the year the University of Louisiana at Monroe began a new era of growth and eminence. Like the 19^th century patent clerk who declared that, “everything that can be invented has,” we will all be astonished at how much we accomplish working together.

Last year saw the first increase in enrollment in eight years. That success happened because everyone – alumni, students, faculty, and staff – worked together. An increase in enrollment means that students see how fast ULM is moving ahead, and they want to be a part of it. It’s exciting, and whether you’re visiting campus for the first time or work here every day, you can feel it.

Even more importantly, students sense a renewed focus on them. Our entire faculty and staff labor to make our university ideal in every detail for pursuing a great education. As evidence of that, we enlarged our faculty-student mentoring program, Emerging Scholars, to include 100 students, giving them an educational opportunity unparalleled by any university in Louisiana . We also created the School of Visual and Performing Arts. As part of that, Paulo Fazioli paid us a visit from Italy for a concert featuring two of his famous Fazioli grand pianos. ULM is the only university that houses two of these master creations. We also disbursed $400,000 more in scholarships this year than last, made registration more convenient by moving it online, and bought new computers for the residence halls.

Those outside Monroe see the progress we’re making, too. SACS restored our accreditation and cleared us until 2009. The state legislature showed their confidence in ULM by investing an additional $1.5 million in the pharmacy program.

We continue to make rapid physical improvements to the campus, including the recent announcement of a $50 million investment in a new residence community for students. This year, we also opened the state-of-the-art Biedenharn Recital Hall, remodeled Sandal Hall for a new bookstore and coffee shop, and created wireless technology zones around campus. Students see so much promise in the future of the campus that they got involved by funding a project to remodel the Student Union Building . Like all of our building projects, students will have input from the very beginning through completion.

It was obvious at the Hanging of the Greens and Lighting of the Christmas Tree, which was attended by hundreds of people, that students, prospective students, and the entire northeast Louisiana community have taken notice of the renewed spirit on our campus, something they most readily see in the physical appearance.

Hope does not mean simply wishing that good things will happen. It means committing to the pursuit of those good things, and having confidence that we will attain them. Here at ULM , we continue to pursue excellence in every endeavor. That pursuit requires much hard work and many difficult choices. We are always prioritizing and being creative – trying to squeeze 25 hours into a day and 105 pennies out of a dollar. Some of our efforts are visible, such as having a cleaner, safer, and better lit campus, and achieving the highest increase in student satisfaction of any institution in Louisiana . Others are not so visible, but may be even more important, such as the change we have inspired in the way everyone feels about ULM .

This year will be even better as we reach out to more students through distance and online instruction and the possible exploration of the service learning concept. Imagine where we will be if 2004 is as productive as 2003.

Our university will not retreat to an ivory tower where we can cut ourselves off from the communities around us. We will continue our strong presence in the economic development initiatives of the region. We will also continue to engage the “Twin Cities” in ways old and new, and will be asking community groups to make their homes on our campus once again. We are an integral part of northeast Louisiana – our economy, our lives, our future. You can expect ULM ’s accomplishments to mount, our prestige to grow, and our students to pursue promising careers and lead fruitful lives.

Bright Future for ULM Recruitment

By Lisa Miller, Director of Recruitment and Admissions

The word is spreading! ULM is an awesome place to have great times, to receive a great education, and to prepare for a bright future. This year’s fall Browse on the Bayou set a new record –750 participants! Prospective students traveled from six states and all corners of Louisiana to hear first-hand about our university.

Feedback from our guests has been extremely positive. We have received comments such as the following email: “I just wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed the Browse on the Bayou. Everyone was so helpful. Because of the day that I spent at the Browse, I have decided to come to ULM in the fall. Thanks for the wonderful introduction to your university.” The most common comment we heard was “Everyone here is so friendly.” There is no better way for prospective students to know what ULM truthfully has to offer, than to allow them to experience our campus at events such as Browse.

This spring semester we will continue to visit high schools and community colleges across Louisiana and its contiguous states. In January we will call upon all of our “road warriors” to once again “board the bus” as we travel to target areas to continue our recruitment efforts. We will also partner with athletics on Saturdays during January as our coaches meet prospective athletes and their parents. Scheduled in January, our prospective move to new offices in Sandel Library adds further excitement to our program. Continuing students will be receiving phone calls as reminders for spring enrollment.

Because February is Financial Aid Awareness Month, the recruiting staff will travel with Roslyn Pogue, Associate Director of Financial Aid, to our high schools within the northeastern region of the state. Our main focus during this month will be to convert prospective students from prospects to applicants.

March will be filled with four college career fairs for each of our colleges and Spring Browse on the Bayou. The college fairs will be held to promote awareness about degree programs within each of our colleges for our prospective students, as well as our current students. Spring Browse on the Bayou is scheduled for March 27^th.

On April 22, we will host a Spring Honors Day for our scholarship recipients. This day will include testing opportunities, presentations from different university representatives, campus tours, and lunch. These students will also be invited to attend the concert scheduled in conjunction with our Spring Fever Week.

During the month of May, successful school years for our seniors are rewarded with merit scholarships, foundation scholarships, departmental scholarships, and talent scholarships. These events culminate a year’s efforts to further promote the limitless possibilities one can find at the University of Louisiana at Monroe .

On behalf of the Office of Recruitment and Admissions, I would like to express deep appreciation to the concerned and supportive faculty, staff, and administration for their efforts to recruit and retain the best and brightest for our university. It is through this integrated effort that the dreams have been realized, and the horizon for our university is brighter than it has ever been before!


Planning for ULM's Future
By Jeff Galle, Chair, ULM Strategic Planning Steering Committee

Many institutions undertake a planning process for the same reasons that businesses see the need for it—to plan for the development and allocation of resources in such a way as to maximize benefits. Thus, in undertaking such a process here at ULM , President Cofer has expressed his desire to have the university speak its mind as to a vision of maximizing benefits through smart development of and allocation of resources. Of this process, President Cofer remarked, “This plan will not be put in a pretty notebook, set on a shelf, and never again used. The kind of strategic plan we need incorporates the richness of our campus, and challenges us to be bold with our future.”

The particular strategic model that has been selected for our campus involves three levels (or stages) of planning, spanning some 18 months altogether. For the past six months, we have been working in Level One. The first stage involves the collection and analysis of data and with the understanding won thereby, the production of the University Strategic Plan. Then in Level Two the primary purpose is to implement the vision and the objectives of the Plan. In Level Three, individual units on campus, including academic departments and other units of the university structure, create their own strategic plan which mirrors the University Plan.

It may be informative to offer a brief overview of what the university has done up to this point in Level One. On March 17, 2003 , President Cofer hosted a seminar on strategic planning facilitated by an outside expert who works with universities to produce these plans. Following this seminar, a steering committee was appointed by the President after consultation with the deans of the colleges and the Provost. The unusually large number of fourteen members on the steering committee reflected the President’s desire to create a high number of individual taskforces, each having as chair a steering committee member. Students were also asked to serve on the steering committee itself. We were informed early on that many universities use from six to nine committees, and some have a single central committee as the principle of organization; ULM ’s philosophy has been to include as many of the campus community as possible.

The steering committee then nominated a chair, and the ULM effort was underway. Following in rapid succession were the nomination and confirmation of 125 taskforce members for the individual committees. Then each taskforce met as a group with the facilitator to receive the parameters of their mission and some general discussion of their first tasks. Additionally, each taskforce chair met with President Cofer to refine and focus the specific charge of the taskforce. By May 10, 2003 , all of this was completed, and the work of individual taskforces began.

From the end of the spring semester through the summer months and early fall, the taskforces worked to gather data in ways that seemed appropriate for the particular area under analysis. Essentially each taskforce chair in consultation with committee members decided which methods of soliciting data would be most appropriate for that area. As strategic planning chair, I have had the privilege of watching this process take shape. It has been impressive to see our taskforces galvanize into teams, and particularly gratifying have been the creativity and persistence of our taskforce chairs as they generated studies, surveys, interviews, and other means of data collection.

To form a clear data snapshot of the university the following instruments and activities were used: 6700 alumni were individually invited to complete the Alumni Survey, 700 employees received a copy of the Staff Survey to complete, 400 faculty received the Faculty Survey, several thousand student responses from the ACT Satisfaction Survey were used, 3 separate expert panels were created for different evenings in the summer, many separate existing reports were obtained and analyzed, multiple focus groups were set up and facilitated, and many one-on-one interviews were conducted.

In addition to the individual taskforce efforts, I would also mention several key events that brought many of the taskforces together in a shared effort. During the summer, ULM Strategic Planning hosted two separate expert panels—Education/Culture and Economics/Technology. A third panel—Legislative/Political—was hosted earlier in September. Through these panels, we have been privileged to bring to campus many people from this region and from around the state. These were people who were asked to speak about ways that ULM has connected to and served the community in many ways in the past and will connect to it in new ways in the future.

The result of data gathering culminated in the writing of 8-10 page reports by each taskforce. The Strategic Planning Steering Committee then began the time-consuming but invaluable process of analyzing each individual report in turn. This analysis has been the most incredible process I have been privileged to see unfold at this university as layers of the university microcosm have been examined and discussed for strategic possibilities. The difficulties that the university has faced, the conditions that call for remedy, the latent possibilities that lie dormant until identified and refined—all of these are elements of the process that this committee has studied since data collection ended and analysis began.

As clarification and extension of what was reported in the media about these panels, after many hours of discussion and pages of notes, what emerged from these panels was not a laundry list of patronizing ‘should’ or ‘ought’ statements. Rather a more accurate characterization of the content of these panels was a serious discussion among friends, friends with expertise who support higher education in our state and many of whom have a deep love for this institution specifically. What has emerged from each panel is a set of notes, a set of data, from which I will take a representative sampling of commentary from the panels as space here permits:

The overwhelming economic impact of ULM ’s presence here in the region alone renders its success vital to the region’s success.
ULM ’s cultural programs have been of great benefit in the enrichment of this area’s own cultural life.
Many of the leaders in this region owe their very degrees to this institution.
ULM provides a level of expertise and knowledge that the business community regularly seeks.


What is taking shape now and through the early spring will be very exciting for the University community, for we will be drafting, debating, and finalizing the very strategic plan that will guide us over the next few years. Even more exciting is that the process will remain dynamic in that changes, improvements, and modifications can be made at every step of the way. Having said that, it is still fundamentally pivotal that we will have a document that will link our very substance, our academic life, and our campus life to the budgeting process.

One thought that keeps coming back to me as I reread this summary progress report is the idea of inclusiveness, and it is underscored in several ways: in the number of taskforce committees, in our creation of three distinct expert panels, in our inclusion of students, faculty, and staff at every step of the process, in the development of multiple survey instruments, and in the inclusion of many existing reports from other sources (ACT Student Satisfaction survey, Noel-Levitz, IPED, to mention a few).

As I have watched this process develop, I have seen how this group has faced the fundamental necessity to this institution of forming a plan that is broad, visionary, and inclusive. We are not there yet, but with your help the plan that we create will speak to our strengths and our potential in clear, self-defining ways.

Please feel free to visit the ULM Strategic Planning website at www.ulm.edu/strategicplanning to see the comments of the taskforce chairs and more information on the Strategic Planning process. Thanks.


Faculty Senate Takes On Big Project
By John Rettenmayer, President of the Faculty Senate

The ULM Faculty Senate is focusing primarily on a major review and update of the Faculty Handbook for 2003-04. That is to say, we are focusing on the major policies and procedures which traditionally are faculty concerns, such as promotion and tenure, post-tenure review, program discontinuance, teaching/class evaluation, and classroom responsibilities of faculty. We are, almost incidentally, looking at the organization, accuracy, and style of the handbook, but our primary objective is to review and improve, where needed, the policies that are presented in the handbook.

This work is being done by Senate committees and their sub-committees under the leadership of Dorothy Schween, Paul Nelson, Rick Norman, Martha Wooden, and Jeff Gibson. Depending on the magnitude of its task, each committee may create smaller groups, the membership of which may reach beyond the Senate, to address specific issues.

At its April 2003 meeting, the Senate, with active participation of President Cofer and Provost Richters, discussed, debated, and ultimately adopted a new statement of purpose, as follows:

The faculty has primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status and working conditions, and those aspects of student life that relate to the educational process. The University of Louisiana at Monroe Faculty Senate shall serve as the agency for faculty participation in the government of the University. Accordingly, the Faculty Senate represents and supports the entire faculty. The Faculty Senate shall advise the administration regarding the selection of academic officers, the policies and procedures governing salary determination and other matters concerning the general welfare of the University, either on its own initiative or upon referral of proposals from others.

Faculty, staff, students, and alumni who want to keep up with the Faculty Senate’s activities can find minutes of past meetings, the agenda of the next meeting, the roster of faculty representing the various colleges, and links to related web sites at http://www.ulm.edu/~senate/

Cofer's Second Year Brings Full Executive Team and Outlook for Further Success

In the fall 2003 semester, President Cofer completed his executive team who will steer the University’s vision. The team includes Dr. Nick Bruno, Vice President for Business Affairs; Dr. Stephen Richters, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs; Dr. Wayne Brumfield, Vice President for Student Affairs; Dr. Don Skelton, Vice President for University Advancement; Dr. Richard Hood, Executive Assistant to the President; Bruce Hanks, Athletics Director; and Keith Brown, Director of Governmental Relations. The team meets weekly to discuss issues related to their areas.

During President Cofer’s first year ULM began many new initiatives and experienced great success, the most important of which was establishing open, honest and direct communication among the faculty, staff, students and community. ULM received an unqualified opinion on the most recent audit, SACS removed the accreditation warning, and a renewed emphasis was placed on recruiting and retaining students. Recruitment days like Browse on the Bayou had record crowds in attendance. With experienced leadership in place, the ULM community has even greater expectations . “I look forward to even greater success for ULM and even more pride among our students, alumni, faculty, and staff,” Dr. Cofer said. “We have great leaders at every level at ULM .”

Dr. Stephen Richters had been a member of the ULM faculty since 1994 as an associate professor and head of the Department of Mathematics and Physics. Richters earned his Ph.D. in mathematics at Brown University . Before coming to ULM , Richters was chairman of the Department of Mathematics at St. Bonaventure University in New York .

Dr. Nick Bruno came to ULM in August 2002. Dr. Bruno received his Ph.D. in educational leadership from the University of Mississippi . His previous position was assistant vice president for special initiatives at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond .

Dr. Don Skelton joined ULM ’s administration in August 2003. Skelton received his Doctorate of Education in professional studies at Delta State University in Cleveland , Mississippi in 1994. His previous position was vice president for university advancement at Delta State University . Skelton’s responsibilities include overseeing the Office of University Relations, Alumni Relations, and University Advancement and Development.

Dr. Wayne Brumfield has over 12 years experience in admissions, records, registration, recruitment, and freshman orientation. Brumfield worked as registrar and director of admissions at Louisiana State University at Eunice and director of admissions and recruitment at Southern University at Baton Rouge . Dr. Brumfield's degrees include a Ph.D. in educational leadership and research from Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge , an M.A. in history from Southeastern Louisiana University at Hammond , and a B.A. in history from the University of Southwestern Louisiana at Lafayette .

Dr. Hood has been the executive to the President of ULM for six years. He holds a Master’s degree from Southern Mississippi , and a doctorate from ULM . As the executive assistant Hood oversees day to day operation in the president’s office. Previous to this position at ULM , Hood worked for the LA State Department of Education.

Bruce Hanks became Louisiana-Monroe’s Director of Athletics 2 1/2 years ago. A graduate of ULM , Hanks earned his B.B.A. in Accounting in 1976 with a perfect 4.0 grade-point average, becoming one of only 64 graduates ever to attain that honor. He earned his M.B.A. from ULM in 1977. Before coming to ULM, Hanks helped build the Fortune 500 company, CenturyTel, Inc., into Ouachita Parish's -- and one of the nation's --most successful companies. He served as CenturyTel's Vice President for Strategic Issues from May 1999 until coming on board at ULM . As athletics director Hanks oversees the entire athletics operation at ULM including personell and financial decisions.

Keith Brown has been the Director of Federal, State and Government Relations at ULM since 2002. In this position he manages governmental relations for President Cofer and ULM at the federal, state and local levels and monitors all appropriations, grant, and funding requests for ULM in Washington and Baton Rouge . Brown received his Bachelor’s degree from Belhaven College and previously was the Assistant Men’s Basketball Coach at ULM .