A Letter from Dr. Jake Bucher

“The Strides of March”

While March signals a homestretch for many of our students nearing the end of their studies, it also serves notice of the pending end to the academic and fiscal years. There has been much accomplished and navigated this year, with more work to come, and I would like to highlight and update a few particular efforts.

To address the integration of Student and Academic Affairs, this is the result of recognizing the importance in providing a holistic experience for students during their journey, to include ensuring effective cura personalis. The research shows strong support for fusing student affairs throughout the university community, and many institutions in the AJCU and elsewhere have achieved that fusion through a deliberate de-siloing of our work. Such intentional organizing is a step/stride towards recognizing that we cannot separate aspects of students’ experiences, and consequently we can better maximize our accompaniment with students with strategic structuring. Please know that the work and particularly the expertise across the areas will continue – and will continue with synergy and collaboration with all areas of the student journey. I am committed to, and accountable for, ensuring that this is not a mere change to an organizational chart, but a full and intentional collaborative approach with the talented experts from across the student journey being aligned and partnering together.

Thanks to the work of the University Budget Committee and the Senior Leadership Team, we will soon have a proposed budget for Fiscal Year 25 to present to the Board of Trustees in May. While budget allocation will not be actualized until the Board vote, we will have a picture to begin some initial planning, thus allowing for necessary allocations/commitments for the beginning of the fiscal year. It is important to remember that the University still needs to close a ~$10M gap to achieve a balanced budget (recall the $20M to $10M to $0 operating budget deficit spending allowed by our Board-approved financial plan). I am confident that with wonderful gains in enrollment and revenue, and with better structural operations/spending, we will get there – but I don’t want to suggest we are there yet. There is work to do and likely changes to come, but we are striding towards a balanced budget where resources are allocated in alignment with our mission and strategic initiatives. Related, I am working with the Deans to ensure that contracts are approved and shared in the next couple of weeks.

Finally, we are making great strides with the Academic Plan. Progress has been made in some impactful restructuring as well as efforts in programming. We are continuing work on the data integrity for the program optimization data, and will have continued discussions once it is ready. I am happy to share that we have a majority approval for a University Faculty Senate, and there has been progress on the development of some university policies and excitement for the establishing of some university cultural traditions (e.g. Convocation). I will be providing a quarterly report regarding the Academic Plan that will have more detail on performance/progress, but I wanted to share here that work has begun, and progress is being achieved across multiple parts of the plan – and I am grateful for the collaborative and engaging processes that have pursued these priorities. As important as the priorities are, borrowing from the spirit of a conversation I had with our colleague Jason Taylor (Regis College), building patterns of collaboration to frame future processes is a necessary reinforcement of consensus building, shared responsibility, and shared accountability.