Monday, Feb. 22, 2016
President's Update

NMU Faculty and Staff,

As you know, much work is being done across campus regarding strategic planning initiatives, budget restructuring and addressing the elements of the alignment plan. We are a busy campus right now, and I appreciate all of the innovative thought and action taking place. Change is often time-consuming and sometimes uncomfortable, but it can also be empowering and inspiring. I want to thank those of you who are participating in your unit's discussions and, in particular, thank those of you taking on leadership roles in developing strategy.

One element of the alignment plan I put out in January called for the faculty, staff and administrators of the Jacobetti Complex programs to do a month-long review their programs and to provide me with a report by Feb. 11 with recommendations regarding growing, strengthening and restructuring their programs. A lot of ideas about the Jacobetti Complex programs had come forward during the core values and strategic planning discussion sessions held over the past two years, but I wanted to hear directly from the faculty and administrators of these programs as to what they believe are their strengths, priorities, challenges and opportunities.

The Jacobetti program faculty and staff did the review and came up with several recommendations now being considered by executive leadership. While some of the ideas need more discussion, research and development, we are going to immediately move forward with one of the recommendations. Effective immediately, we are going to return to the model that has the Jacobetti Complex programs structured as their own college, to be known as the College of Technology and Occupational Studies led by a dean. When this area was formerly a separate college it was known as the College of Technology and Applied Sciences. Moving from the College of Professional Studies, this unit will now reside in the Extended Learning and Community Engagement Division, under the direction of Vice President Steve VandenAvond, with a dotted reporting line to Academic Affairs as it pertains to curriculum standards and assessment.

In order to not slow down the growing momentum of the Jacobetti Complex's transformation, we will be appointing an internal interim dean. Dr. VandenAvond will report to the campus in the near future the details of what collaborative process will be used to select the interim dean. Watch future Campus Connect features for that information. When the time is right, we'll launch a full search for a permanent dean.

The interim dean of the College of Technology and Occupational Studies will be charged with expanding and enhancing the Jacobetti programs. The dean will lead the college in making the tough decisions about the future of existing programs and will guide the faculty, staff and students in developing program-specific strategic enrollment plans. These plans will include extensive market research, clear success performance measurements and exit options for programs that do not meet the established success performance measures.

I know one of the current rumors on campus and in the community is that the administration was looking to eliminate all Jacobetti Complex programs and shut the entire facility down, but this is simply not the case. Why would we eliminate the many programs there with strong growth potential? Of course, there will be changes that need to be made – status quo is not acceptable – but by allowing the programs to stand on their own as a college and to make those changes, per their recommendation, I expect to see progressive retooling of our current offerings in ways that clearly benefit students, faculty and staff, alumni, the program and the university as a whole.

I congratulate the work done by the Jacobetti Complex faculty, staff and students to this point. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I'm confident that we're moving in the right direction. This is what I'm seeing in many departments across campus – good work being done with more to do. To keep us up-to-date on several initiatives, I've asked Laura Glover to schedule some town hall forum times when we can come together to continue our strategic planning/restructuring discussion. I hope you will join us for one of those events.

Sincerely,
Fritz Erickson, President