NMU Students, Faculty and Staff,

I hope you had a relaxing holiday weekend with family and friends, remembering your loved ones who have passed and veterans who served. As the university heads into the summer months, I wanted to provide you updates on five items: tuition being set, summer demolition, roundabout construction on campus, the HLC site visit team report and reaccreditation, and the land transfer for the forensic anthropology outdoor research station.

TUITION SET: As reported, the NMU Board of Trustees set tuition and fee rates for 2017-18 at its May meeting. Tuition for both in-state and out-of-state undergraduates increased by $237.50 per semester. Graduate tuition will increase $24 per credit. The undergraduate tuition increase is the dollar figure used as one of two tuition restraint measurements in all three higher education appropriation bills this year – Executive, House and Senate. It is the first time the State Legislature has allow a university to use either a percentage (3.8%) or a hard dollar ($475) as its tuition restraint cap. Having a dollar option is something Northern has been promoting in Lansing for several years because a hard dollar cap benefits low tuition institutions, such as Northern, while a percentage increase benefits high tuition institutions.

The appropriation differences in the three bills still need to be ironed out in a conference committee that has not yet been scheduled. The changes from conference committee to the final appropriations bill should not have any impact on our tuition decision. However, if changes are made to the dollar tuition restraint cap, the tuition rates may have to be adjusted. We don't anticipate that since all three branches used the exact same restraint cap measures, but the board took that chance into consideration when it set tuition, stating the rates are contingent upon the dollar tuition restraint cap remaining at $475 per year. By setting tuition in May, we hope to give students and families as much times as possible to plan for their 2017-18 university-related expenses.

SUMMER DEMOLITION: We began the demolition process for Halverson Hall with asbestos abatement a few weeks ago. Last Tuesday, we began physical demolition on the hall. That will be completed by July 15. The overall residence hall complex project is moving along right on schedule. From the Halverson Hall demo, we head to the Summit/Center Street apartments where one Center and two more Summit buildings will come down. The remaining four Summit/Center structures will come down next summer.

ROUNDABOUTS: Media reports have been outlining the City of Marquette's road roundabout projects for this summer. There will be three roundabouts constructed on the edges of campus: at Presque Isle and Fair (in front of Cohodas); at Tracy, Sugarloaf and Wright (the light by the steam plant); and at Lincoln and Wright (corner where the National Guard Armory is located). Construction on the roundabouts is scheduled to begin tomorrow, Tuesday, June 6, but is dependent on the weather.

These roundabouts should help ease travel during class change periods, increase safety and decrease intersection accidents, and create a safer pedestrian crossing environment. If you've ever tried to make a left turn at these intersections during a class change period or gotten behind a vehicle trying to so, you know it can be a nightmare. The roundabouts will eliminate that daily congestion.

The work on the roundabouts is scheduled to last until October, so I'm asking that faculty and staff set the example for patience in the face of whatever inconveniences the construction causes. Also, please be prepared to assist campus visitors and campus community members in figuring out alternative routes around the construction. The Engineering and Planning Office will send out email notices to keep us updated on travel information related to the construction.

It is important for students, parents and general community members to understand that these are City of Marquette projects, not university projects. As such, it means no NMU tuition dollars are being spent to build the roundabouts.

HLC REPORT: Northern has received its Higher Learning Commission site visit report. Overall, it was a good report and indicated that we met all of the critical criteria, which means the HLC will most likely grant us reaccreditation. We anticipate a formal HLC decision around early July.

Of course, an institution never receives such a report without some recommendations for improvement. The report lists three areas for us to monitor: distance learning policies and procedures to demonstrate rigor, a plan for training faculty advisors and setting goals for retention. Northern actually does have a program for training advisors. We'll have to look into how to better advertise that to faculty members, so they can take advantage of the training. The report also mentioned working advising into the faculty schedules, but that is already addressed in the faculty contract where advising is identified as part of the faculty workload. As for retention, our rate is very good – better than many schools of our size and Carnegie category - which the site visitors acknowledged. However, they still felt that the institution should have a numerical target for retention. Obviously, this will be an easy issue to fix. As for the distance learning policies and procedures, we have started working on these. We agree that, as we grow our Global Campus, these are critically important to academic rigor and delivering outstanding learning and teaching experiences.

The site team also reported on concern that some of our programs had "credit creep," meaning programs that required more than 120 for a bachelor's degree or 60 for an associate's degree, or that the general education requirements to get into certain majors took away from the self-exploration component of the general education program. This is already a discussion on campus within several departments and is something we want to address for those programs where it is an issue.

FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY PROGRAM: I also wanted to update you on the progress of the forensic anthropology program. A bill was passed in the State Legislature and signed by Governor Rick Snyder that transferred property owned by the Michigan Department of Corrections to Northern for the purpose of creating an forensic research outdoor station. This property is located along U.S. 41 near the Marquette Prison. The research station will be fenced and not seeable from the highway. Construction on the outdoor station begins in mid-July. We will also be renovating what is currently a storage facility on Wright Street to be the program's indoor storage and research laboratory. Finally, we are doing on-campus interviews of finalists for the program director's position.

Understandably, the community has some questions about this program and the facilities related to it. To help us provide accurate information to share with our neighbors and friends when they ask us questions in church, at our child's soccer game, at the grocery store and bank, and so on, Academic Affairs is creating an informational sheet and web page for NMU faculty and staff, which will be available in the near future.

ORIENTATION: Orientation begins with a session for transfer students Friday, June 9 and is followed by five weeks of sessions for first-year students (June 12-July 12) and a session for commuter students (June 23). Orientation staff have been diligently training in preparation for the hundreds of prospective students and their family members who will be attending. Welcome signs in your departmental windows and on doors, saying hello as you pass visitors crossing campus, and being ready to aid with information as needed are all things that make ours one of the friendliest campuses. I thank you in advance for welcoming and assisting these potential Wildcat students, parents and grandparents during the orientation period.

Finally, I wanted to provide you with a link to an interesting MLive.com article about the changes in rates of Michigan high school graduates attending college. It provides a lot of demographic data about who is and isn't attending college and why. As we continue to make strategic changes and investments as a university, it is important to understand some of the external driving factors.

Sincerely,
Fritz Erickson, President