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It's a collaborative effort among all people on campus, especially the faculty, to help
improve a variety of ways that particularly affect faculty: increased technology and instruction
and research, advising to help students progress efficiently through the program, improving
research opportunities and beefing up the graduate program. I think one of the exciting
things is, as we go through the process, the realization that we're going to do this. We
can be better and this plan helps to lay out specific areas where we can improve and serve
the region and serve the students better. I think it'll be better for all of us when
we do that. In our focus area, improving undergraduate experience, we sort of looked at three different
high priorities. Just imagine the creation of a campus culture in which missing class
is unthinkable. If you surround good faculty with good support and good students, you end
up with an outstanding environment. And it will happen. If you leave any one of the three
out, it won't. I think we've got the first two, the faculty and the students, we just
need to make sure that we've got good support. A one-size fits all doesn't work. The needs
of a nursing professor might be very different from the needs of an engineering professor,
very different from the needs of a business professor. If we want the students to engage,
we have to build that culture every fall. Every fall we have to rebuild that culture
in the new incoming class and support it in the classes that come back and how can you
do that if we're not all working together as a team, if we're not all engaged in building
the learning community amongst ourselves. Distinctiveness does not mean research. It
doesn't mean undergraduate research, it's a whole lot more than that. So we have looked
at things like study abroad programs, externships, internships, co-ops. Could it be interdisciplinary
collaborations between music and math, nursing and art? I do really think that there's something
in this plan for everybody. I think if the faculty take the time to really look it over,
they will find elements of Flight Plan that appeal to their interests as faculty members.
After so many years of tight budgets, to be able to look at issues and plan and take action,
it's uplifting.