By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
President Mary Ellen Mazey used her State of the University event to recap the success of the past year, and focus the university’s sights on what she sees as “a very strong” future.
That included some bold goals.
She told a full house at the Donnell Theatre that she would like to see the university head count, which includes all students whether full-time or taking a single course, to 25,000. That’s a 29-percent increase from the 19,352 from the current student body headcount. She added “we envision a retention rate of 80-85 percent.” That’s up from the current 76-percent rate. A year from now, she said, she’d like that to be 80 percent.
How many students the university keeps from enrollment though graduation is a key factor in how much money it gets from the state.
After her talk Mazey said that given current trends, this level of enrollment could be reached by 2020.
Mazey spelled out the most recent data points in her address.
President Mary Ellen Mazey, center, chats with Emily Monago, interim administrator in charge for access, diversity, and inclusion, and Steven Krakoff, vice president for capital planning and design, after her State of the University address.
The university for the third year in a row is enrolling its best academically prepared class ever with an average GPA of 3.42 and an average ACT score of 22.8. Better prepared students are more likely to stay on campus through graduation.
The headcount also benefited from the new College Credit Plus program that allows high school students, and some even in middle school, to take college courses. The program, Mazey said, “has exceeded expectations.”
Last spring the university had 1,286 students enrolled in College Credit Plus programs. Mazey said enrollment this fall, the program’s third semester, could exceed 2,000. The university also received $800,000 from the state to train high school teachers to teach those courses.
Graduate enrollment is up 11 percent to 2,708, thanks, she said, to a variety of new graduate programs. More are on the way including a master’s in forensic science and a master’s in social work with an emphasis on gerontology. These are two areas of particular focus for BGSU.
She called for the creation of “new master’s degree programs that are responsive the workforce needs of the future.” And said those programs should be offered in a flexible way to meet the needs of prospective graduate students.
As BGSU enters the third year of “the silent phase” of its capital campaign, Mazey said: “…we need to work toward a goal of a $300-400 million endowment.”
To do that, she said: “We need to have our annual alumni giving at 15-20-percent participation, and the faculty and staff campaign at 70-percent participation.”
After her address, Mazey said, she’d like to see the current campaign to a successful conclusion even if it takes four years. She has three more years on her contract, and at the time the trustees extended her contract, she said she would retire at the end of it. Whether she does or not, she said, will be up to the trustees.
She also challenged the university community to increase external funding, money that comes in to support project, initiatives and research from outside sources, to $30 million a year. This year BGSU took in $2 million more in external funding, for a total of $14.5 million.
The new faculty labor contract – also cited as a major achievement – includes incentives for faculty to seek outside grants.
These grants show some of the ways that the notion of higher education being an ivory tower has toppled.
The university and its faculty are involved in a number of hot button issues – police-community relationships, water quality, campus sexual assault, criminal investigation, racism and discrimination, renewable energy, and the promotion of science, technology, engineering and math education.
While Mazey held center stage at the theater, she shared the spotlight throughout with a large supporting cast. That included student government leader Amanda Dortch, who wasn’t there to receive her plaudits because she was in class, to state politicians including State Sen. Randy Gardner, of Bowling Green, who chairs the State Senate’s Higher Education Finance Committee.
Almost every paragraph of the speech singled out some member of the university community for contributing to its success.
In introducing Mazey, David Levey, who chairs the Board of Trustees, set the tone when he thanked the professors who taught him at BGSU almost 50 years ago. “They helped me in ways they’ll never know,” he said. The faculty now on campus are having the same impact on today’s students.
The pathway to that bright future is mapped out in the strategic plan.
Mazey concluded with a set of challenges based on that plan.
They included:
- Increasing the number of students who participate in internships and co-ops, study abroad, research and community projects and learning communities.
- Ensuring all students have career plans when they graduate.
- Increasing national recognition of the university.
- Collaborating more with the public, private and nonprofit sector.
- Hosting more programs, conferences and seminars on global engagement.
- Improving collaboration with the nationally recognized Not In Our Town initiative and It’s on Us, an initiative that addresses sexual assault on campus.
- Increasing endowed colleges, programs and professorships.
- Having each unit on campus create its own strategic plan to achieve the goals of the University Strategic Plan. “Then, each day ask yourself and others what you are doing to implement your unit’s plan?”
Then Mazey brought some of that supporting cast on stage for a curtain call. She was joined by Levey, Megan Newlove, the trustees vice chair, and the student vocal group Ten40 to sing the university’s alma mater with the rest of the cast adding their voices from the auditorium.
