President Jonathan Koppell Spring Town Hall Remarks to Faculty and Staff

Full Transcript:

Good afternoon! 

It’s great to be gathered here today and think about the year. It’s been a big year. A lot of progress. A lot of promise. A lot of partnership. The slides that we showed at the beginning are not intended to be comprehensive.

It’s a display of some of the things that your colleagues and students are doing at Montclair State University. It is a sample, a small fraction of the accolades that faculty, staff and students have won, but it gives you something of a flavor, and I think that it’s important because people don’t always know what their peers are doing on an individual basis. We just wanted to demonstrate that individuals are doing great things here every day.

I also don’t want to get started without a brief word to say that it’s also been a year of challenges. And I’ll allude to this throughout my comments, but it’s important to say from the outset, first of all, because there are a lot of people in our community who maybe it doesn’t translate into an award or a recognition, but they’re working hard every day to address those challenges.

And also, I think that it’s been an unusual year – and it was raised in some of the questions that we collected too. It’s been an unusual year and we’re all stressed by the challenges of the year. It creates a challenge on top of the challenges themselves. Not just by things at Montclair. But we live in a world that presents a great deal of challenges. And I think that takes a mental toll and I want to acknowledge that.

I view one of my principal responsibilities in this job – and these are funny jobs, and perhaps because university presidents are on TV, people are more interested (mostly getting pilloried by members of the congress) but people are more interested in this job than I can recall in, like, what actually do you do?

But one of the things that I view as my job is trying to maintain our coherence as a community.

And doing so, in the face of those challenges, is one of the most difficult parts of the job. I want to be clear, that doesn’t mean eliminating disagreement. Communities have disagreements. Families have disagreements. Right? I’m sure you all are familiar with this. And sometimes they’re not just disagreements on, you know, trivial items but on really fundamental issues.

Maintaining a community in the face of that is not always easy, but it is vital, and I’ll talk about that throughout, about why that’s vital, because we only will progress as a community. What that means is articulating what the shared values and commitments are. And it means embracing everyone’s right regardless of those disagreements, and regardless of what you think about people who might disagree with you. It means embracing everyone’s right to be a member of that community. That can’t be negotiable. That’s the point that I’ve tried to stick to, and that’s the responsibility that I’ve tried to live up to over the course of the year, and I’ll try to continue doing it.

Now, we’re not just any community. This isn’t the same as a town or a state or a city. We’re a community with a special purpose. And that’s what we’re here to really talk about because what we are as a community is partners in a mission to deliver transformational opportunities to students from all backgrounds. That’s our assignment. We accepted that assignment. Right?

We can’t complain about that assignment or we can’t say that that assignment is too hard.

I’m 100% committed to that assignment, even though it’s not easy. But I will be the first to tell you, that is not a solo assignment. I cannot do any of that by myself. I am the person at the front, but that doesn’t make it mine. Only as a community and only through working together as partners can we succeed. It’s impossible for Montclair State University to be what we want it to be without functioning as a community.

I want to talk about the things that we’ve done together. All of which I think ultimately comes to our students and what we’re trying to do for them now and in the future. I can say personally that is what motivated me to get into the university, because I believe in that power, and I’m not alone, I’m sure, in saying that my favorite thing about being on campus is interacting with our students. Right? That’s what gives me joy. That’s what gives me motivation. When I’m super frustrated, the thing that puts wind in my sails is talking to students, finding out how excited they are, and quite frankly hearing their optimism and their confidence about the future.

What is reassuring to me and, again, gives power to the work that we do every day is our students are sponges in my view. They value what we have to offer in some ways more than students at universities that might have more to offer. So, to the extent we’re all working hard and many of you may question “are the things that I do valuable?”, the answer is, yes. And even though there are sometimes frustrations and some things don’t work seamlessly at times, it’s important. 

Let’s recognize some of the things that are going on. Let’s underscore the spirit of commitment and partnership that make it possible. I’ve asked some of the students that I’m going to refer to, to be here today so we have an opportunity not to treat this as an abstraction. They’re real – live human beings right here! I’m glad they were able to join us and I’ll refer to that throughout.

Let me talk about a few things. I’ll start with a partnership that we just had a nice celebration of in Paterson last week. We launched the Charles J. Muth Museum at Hinchliffe Stadium. For those of you who are not aware of what this is, Hinchliffe Stadium is one of the only existing Negro League Stadiums in the United States, one of two.

Paterson is a community where we’ve embraced a large role trying to advance the overall city and help the city achieve its aspirations for its residents. This is an incredible opportunity thanks to Charles Muth who grew up in Paterson. We’re able to operate it as an engaged learning center for every child to learn the history of not just Hinchliffe and the Negro Leagues and its role in the civil rights movement, but they’ll also understand the role of Hinchliffe as a hub of a diverse community.

This is only part of our work in Paterson, which is one of the most diverse, vibrant, and I think, underappreciated cities in the state. We have launched what is called the One Square Mile project, wherein Eastside High School has become a community school which is a hub for a variety of services. I’ll talk a little bit more about that, but let me take a step back because whenever I talk about this, I know that some people are like, “Why is he talking about Paterson? Why is Montclair State University in Paterson? What does this have to do with us?”

The answer is: it underscores our responsibility as a public‑serving institution. How many of you have spent any time in Paterson or even driven through it? Looks pretty much the same as Montclair, right?

It’s a universe apart, and a child growing up in Paterson can’t possibly have the same vision for his or her own future that a child growing up in Montclair does, because the possibilities seem so different from where they sit, 5 miles apart. And so, if we are to sit here as a university between these two worlds and to say, well, it’s not our problem, I think that’s a failure on our part. It’s a failure not only because we could do something and we are doing something, but it’s a failure because our students have an opportunity to learn of their own agency and their own power by being engaged in that work. This is a chance to demonstrate what a public‑serving university can be.

I was thinking about William Carlos Williams’ book, “Paterson” which is a tough read but a worthwhile read. Give it a chance. There’s this line in there which I looked up. He said something to the effect of, “say it not just with ideas but with things.” Which is, I think, another version of something I said in my earliest days which is the Cicero line, “I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.” Don’t just talk about it. Do it!

Our work in Paterson, like our work in Newark and other communities, is an opportunity to do and to show what’s possible when a university embraces this. As part of the One Square Mile initiative in Paterson, Montclair students have been giving life to this idea that we can make a difference. Some of our students are here. Sofia Perez and Nerieda Delgado Garcia, stand up so we can introduce you.

Both Sofia and Nerieda are part of our Bonner Leadership Program. They’ve already shown they’re service-oriented. Sofia has been integral in connecting student organizations to service opportunities, bringing in regular weekly volunteers from our student organizations to participate in one-on-one tutoring sessions as part of bringing ESL to Eastside high school and Nerieda is involved in the Mexican American Student Association, tutored ESL students and has continued to volunteer at the classes that we offer on campus. Congratulations to both of you and thank you for your work.

And Nour Shalash is here also. Nour is also part of our service programs. She’s a member of the Next Generation Service Corps and she’s been instrumental in offering ESL to Arabic speaking folks in Paterson which is a huge part of Paterson, increasing the impact of the program.

All three of these students are showing what Montclair can add to Paterson as a community, and I appreciate what you’re doing in demonstrating the university’s commitment. Thank you to all three of you.

Just one other thing from Paterson because I could go on at some length and people get sick of me talking about Paterson, but we also just announced a partnership with Passaic County Community College. This follows on the heels of similar announcements with Bergen Community College and Union County College, all of which are designed to create smoother pathways for transfer students.

It guarantees admission at Montclair for students who have earned an associate’s degree, hopefully removing unnecessary obstacles that often deter promising students from the opportunities of a four‑year degree. This is a beginning. Our goal is to make the process of transferring from a community college absolutely smooth and to make that seamless transition part of the promise of our relationship with community colleges.

We’re trying to do the same thing across the board at Bloomfield College of Montclair State University.  We launched a partnership was launched with Donald M. Payne Senior School of Technology, whereby Essex County high school students will have the opportunity to take coursework that will count towards both their high school diploma and get them six college degree credits in the Game Design program, a program that, in case you didn’t know, is ranked among not only the best in the state but among the best in the country. People don’t often realize that.

These are the kinds of things that we’re doing. It’s to build these partnerships to advance student outcomes. And when I talk about enrollment, I’ll talk about how it’s in everybody’s self‑interest. It’s in the interests of students, and it’s in the interests of the institution which always has to be thinking about where our enrollment will come from. And I want to make an important point, because we could be a lot better at transfers. We’re going to work on this. It’s part of the Workday student project. But that’s going to require us to change. And that’s an important thing. Because all these things require us to change a little bit. We have certain things that we’ve done the Montclair way. The Montclair way is often great. The Montclair way is often slow and bureaucratic. And crazy‑making. So, we need to get rid of those other parts, right?

Transfer is one of those things where we make students run around to individual faculty members and get sign‑off on individual courses. No, no. That’s not how you do this. All of these things require adaptation and change, and means work. I recognize that, but it’s to serve a higher end. Think about what these collaborative partnerships can do.

Some of you may have seen about the Teacher Certification Apprenticeship we announced in November, the first in the state to design a program that tackles the statewide teacher shortage crisis while creating an opportunity for teachers to realize their full potential without having to give up their income, which is an important caveat. The program was created in partnership with the Wayne School District.

It has the potential to have a huge impact on the teacher pipeline in the state which is obviously one of the most critical issues facing New Jersey and beyond. I have heard from multiple school districts eager to be the next partner. This is going to be, I think, a huge way to address the teacher crisis in New Jersey and we’re setting the model.

Again, some of this collaboration is internal to the university, so to deal specifically with the shortage of music teachers, the College for Education and Engaged Learning, working with the Cali School of Music launched the nation’s first alternate route teacher certification program. It targets final-semester Music majors not enrolled in the Music Education program and fast-tracks them into teaching positions in the fall following their graduation. So, solving multiple problems. On the one hand, you’ve got a shortage of music teachers. I happen to believe in music education. I think it’s really important. I think it broadens students and prepares them to grow their mind, not just academically but in other ways. But it also gives an employment option for students from our music program that they wouldn’t necessarily have were it not for our folks collaborating to create that.

There’s so many ways in which we collaborate with the community. I’m going to rapid‑fire, throw out a bunch to go with the pictures that have been neatly created.  The School of Nursing’s Simulation Center has forged a strategic partnership with the maternity unit at Mountainside Hospital, and our partnership with the Liberty Family Success Center in Kearny – a predominantly Spanish serving center – continues to flourish. We are hopeful to expand our services to other centers located in Hudson County.

In the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the newly introduced challenge‑based impact lab will allow students to identify real‑world problems and engage with community partners and other stakeholders. What’s cool about this is that it infuses into multiple classes, and that can continue to grow. So, already, 19 classes have been started across every college and school and the university is looking to have a scaled‑up CBI Lab be part of the broader suite of projects that we do in terms of community-engaged learning. This includes international experiences and we’ve engaged with the universities in Europe and Mexico to develop that program.

In the College for Community Health, they launched the Collabolutions podcast where guests and people from across the college team up to explore why people experience health challenges and other threats to their well‑being in some communities more than others.

In the College of Science and Mathematics, the STELLA project has been developed with the NASA space flight center, and their work is being described in a scholarly write‑up.

They’ve also been actively educating about the solar eclipse through events on campus and once again in Paterson preparing educational information in both English and Spanish.

This is a small sample. I think some people are like, how come they talk about the same things and they don’t talk about my thing? I’m sure nobody’s saying that. And the answer is because we don’t know. That’s one of the great things – but one of the frustrating things about a university like this – there’s amazing things happening but we need to know.

So I want to tell you about Collaboratory if you haven’t heard about it already. The Collaboratory tool is a mechanism to catch all the work going on. It’s to keep track of partnerships. It’s a database of collaboration and communication across the university. it gives us a way to measure that impact, so, yes, when we apply for grants and development opportunities, we can point to the kinds of things that we do. And it also gives people ideas of the kinds of things they could do with the university.

I know it seems like an extra task but please look up the website. It’s not a big deal. You’ve already done the actual work. You did the project. We just want to capture it.

Sometimes people wonder about these community‑engaged projects, and they’re like, why should we be so focused on this? Are we going to solve the world’s problems from Montclair State University? No. No, we’re not going to solve the world’s problems. We’ll make a difference. Each one of these projects makes a difference, and it makes a difference to the individuals who are touched by these programs. And some of those differences can be profound in terms of the trajectory of an individual or their family.

But are we going to make the problems go away? No. But we’re showing that the problems can be solved. That’s a really important contribution. Think about the pessimism and the negativity in the world today and the idea that it’s hopeless and we’re all doomed and we should crawl under a rock and hope that the armageddon doesn’t reach us.

By showing that these problems can be solved, I think we light a path for others to say, look, if you work at it, they can be solved. It’s not easy but the possibility of progress is still there. That’s why these things are so critical. I don’t think I can say that enough, because I think sometimes people feel like you’re emptying the ocean with a teacup or whatever. Choose your sad metaphor.

But I do think that it makes a profound difference, and I hear that from the community partners who appreciate all the things that you and our colleagues are doing every day. I can’t really underscore that enough.

In order to make all this good stuff happen, we have to work as an organization. I’ll talk a little bit about some really exciting stuff like budget and things like that, but I also want to talk about people in this section. First of all, partnership isn’t just about academic things. It’s not just about being in the community. It’s about making the most of our resources.

Some of you may know that we just spiffed up in a big way Yogi Berra Stadium. Let me be clear about this. This is a really interesting thing. This was a $5 million project that we couldn’t have done ourselves. That’s a lot of money to spend on a baseball stadium, even though my goal is that we use this for much more than baseball. We see this as a facility that has all kinds of possibilities, something that can be used 365 days a year, no exaggeration. Great space. There’s dining facilities there, there’s rooms that we can use as classrooms. The Yogi Berra Museum is an underutilized partner in itself. By the way, astroturf lets us use it for many more things, much more regularly than a grass field. We couldn’t have done it without the partnership of NJIT. This shows something really special about what happens when universities get together. Now two institutions get access to a top‑notch facility that neither of us would have had access to alone. I think that’s an impressive thing.

Does it make life a little more complicated? Yes, thanks to our facilities team for working closely with our partners at NJIT and satisfying their needs and our athletics program for being flexible in how we negotiate practice time and game times. It requires more flexibility. It requires more work but you get something that you otherwise wouldn’t have had.

The same thing I would argue is true of our Bloomfield cCollege endeavor. Now we have moved past the initial stage of our merger. Legally we’re entwined but now we have the hard work of integrating the Bloomfield students into the Montclair community and defining the programs. Great progress has been made thanks to so many efforts. The finances are largely integrated. The hard work of integrating the academic portion – I’m looking at you, Junius, and many of you who work in academic affairs – who think about curriculum and accreditation and, oh, my god, it doesn’t end. Literally, it doesn’t end. All of that’s happening.

The libraries are integrated: Montclair State University libraries.

We think that, at the end, we’ll be able to do something that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible, that we’re stronger by virtue of this combination. Is it work? Is it effort? Is it something nobody has ever done before? Yes. And I’m stopping myself from lapsing into my JFK voice, but there’s something true to that line that gets spoken all the time that you do these things not because they’re easy but because they’re hard. There’s something to that. We’re doing this because it’s a difficult thing to do. How do you define the role of a Predominantly Black Institution and build it up within the context of Montclair State University?

We saw a nice little illustration of what’s possible where we had Montclair and Bloomfield alumni working together to create Space Hounds Records to help up‑and‑coming artists navigate the music industry. But obviously, that’s a tip of the iceberg in the truest sense. There’s a huge opportunity to do more and I’m excited about it.

Of course, I’m a little sad that one of our colleagues won’t be here to provide guidance on that project. I’m looking at Marcheta Evans who’s taking on the role of President at St. Catherine’s University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Marcheta, stand so we can recognize you.

I’m deeply appreciative for what she has done and the courage that it took to lead this effort to keep Bloomfield from floundering and to give it a chance as part of Montclair State University. Her vision for this partnership will always inform what we do. I’m also excited to let you know that Tammy Castro, professor at Bloomfield, will be serving as Interim Dean for Bloomfield College.

The changes in personnel don’t alter our commitment to Bloomfield and our idea that we can define something new for the future of higher education. We’ll be looking at the overall structure of the leadership as part of that ongoing design work and there will be more on that with respect to Bloomfield College and the Bloomfield campus in the coming months ahead.

Other big changes are in progress. A significant one is the end of the 14‑year tenure as AFT local president of Rich Wolfson. Where’s Rich? 42 years on the faculty. Rich, thank you for everything that you have done. I’m excited to work with Laura Fields, right there. Laura has very big white sneakers to fill. Actually, get new white sneakers now that I think about it.

There are also hellos, right? That’s the nature of enterprise. We will be welcoming David Chun as our new Chief Information Officer, who will start on May 1st. I’m also really excited to recognize Benjamin Kalscheur, who’s joined us as the university’s first Director of Sustainability, something that I’ve wanted to do since I got here. Again, if we as a university are going to say we are offering solutions to the world’s problems, I don’t think you can do that without acknowledging that the planet has been treated badly by all of us human beings.

People say, save the planet. Somebody said to me years ago, you don’t need to save the planet. The planet’s going to be here. The question is whether it’s going to be fit for us to live on it. And so, we need to do our part as a university, and I’m excited that Ben is here to lead a top to bottom look at what we do as a university. He’s been the first to say there’s a ton of good stuff going on already, so it’s not if starting from scratch. It’s about capturing what we do and looking for areas where there’s opportunities for improvement. I’m very excited about that.

We also expect to name a new Vice President for Finance in the coming months as that search is ongoing and proceeding well. There are lots of other organizational changes that have been implemented by Ben Durrant, our Chief Operating Officer, focused on day‑to‑day operations. We’re always looking for efficiencies and opportunities for collaboration across divisions and units.  That is the name of the game. I know Ben feels strongly in flattening the organization, a way to empower people who have good ideas and to unleash the talent across the university that can lead to innovation and improvement.

Now, let me turn to enrollment, one of the biggest issues always for this university and all universities facing the future today. As people know, this fall, we welcomed the largest first‑year class in our history, the largest number of new students in our history. That’s a good thing.

It creates challenges, right? I want to be clear. That creates challenges for us to accommodate students, to respond to what many people have pointed out, the very different levels of preparation that our students bring to the university than maybe in years past, and that creates different needs and different programs.

But to be honest, having a large class is a rich man’s problem in the current world. I would be remiss – if you thought of this as a state of the university speech – I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that we are looking at one of the most unusual and challenging enrollment situations probably in the history of higher education for a couple of different reasons.

One you’ve heard a lot about, which is the demographic cliff, which even though it’s less true in New Jersey than other states has a huge impact on us because what’s happening is every university in the country and particularly in our region – where up and down the east coast and in New England in particular, the demographic cliff is a very real thing. The number of students graduating from high school is going down.

And so, they look at New Jersey as a hunting ground for students. You may already know New Jersey is the no. 1 exporter of students in the country. That’s not something you want to lead in. And what universities are doing is discounting their own tuition. Most universities in the country now will match our in‑state tuition. Sometimes they’ll match their own in‑state tuition because they’d rather have some students than no students. We’re in this incredibly competitive environment where universities are, in some cases, willing to lose money in order to fill their seats. That’s one significant challenge.

Then you’re in a cultural environment where, for reasons legitimate and political, social, cultural, people are hammering away at the idea of college education being worth it to students. And I think it’s misguided. Many of you have heard me say I think we need to own some of the pathologies of higher education and get better, but it clearly is the case that students are better off with a college degree than without one, and that in every measure of outcomes, a college degree pays off. But the reluctance of students to take on debt, which is a part of going to college for most people these days, to get a degree that they’re being told isn’t worth anything is a real challenge to overcome.

And then layer on top of that a unique challenge of this year, which is – how many of you have seen about FAFSA? I know this is something that people say, well, I don’t know – FAFSA, what is that? This is federal financial aid form, and the result of the federal bungling of the changes to the FAFSA process, which were not a bad idea, just badly executed, is that students to this day don’t know what their financial aid eligibility is, and it’s very hard for institutions like Montclair to make affirmative statements, what will you get if you come here and what will your net tuition be?

The expectation is that there will be hundreds of thousands of people who will not go to college as a result. That is a personal tragedy for those individuals because once they forgo that, they probably won’t get back on track. 

It also happens to be potentially tragic for many institutions. Because that means hundreds of thousands of people won’t be attending college, and everybody who was counting on those students being enrolled and paying tuition. Now, we are in a stronger position than many because we are an attractive destination and I don’t think we are going to be as devastated as some other institutions.

But we are doubling and quadrupling our efforts to reach students and I would urge everyone to think of this as part of our job because it’s what keeps us in business. I’ve actually seen the emails saying, hey, faculty, you want to be part of recruiting? Hey, we have an admitting students day this weekend. That’s true. Be part of that. Come talk to families. Talk to students.

Tell them why you should come to Montclair, because this is existential for the university, and I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t tell you that I’m concerned about it.

It also means – and this is an important part – that your ability to retain the students that you have and to give them what they need to be successful is way more important. People always think about growth as being about new students. It’s also about keeping the students that you have. So, I’m very excited that the things that have been done in terms of retention have resulted in an increase, again, in the fall to spring retention rate, 92%. We need to get that ever higher. We’re experimenting with things like summer bridge and other interventions that will get us there.

Obviously, the work on student belonging and things looking at student life are intended to add to that, seemingly small things. For example, we’ve made progress in converting undecided students. That is to say, the number of university college students to declare their major in the first year has increased by 40%, which actually helps with retention.

Our fall graduate enrollment has increased 11% year over year, and we’re seeing an increase in spring graduate enrollment. We’re doing things and they are working. But nothing is fixed. That is to say, it’s all very volatile.

We’re excited that we had our winter commencement – our first winter commencement in years – in January, and we expect to have over 3,500 graduates next month, but we don’t take for granted that those things will continue to happen in the future. Moreover, we recognize that the enrollment mix has to change in order for us to achieve financial stability.

I see a huge area for potential growth and for potential enhancement of our university community in international enrollment. Vice President Wendy Lin‑Cook and I were in India in February looking to create collaborative partnerships that would encourage more Indian students to consider Montclair. India is now at a minimum the second largest descender of students to the United States. It’s probably the first from what we heard there. We think this is an amazing opportunity for Montclair State University.

Just to tell you how quickly this is changing, our international enrollment since fall of ’21 is up 250%. Now, math people might say, what was the starting number? Yeah, that’s worth applause. Thank you. But I think that’s going to increase in the future.

By the way, that’s not just economically good. It increases the diversity. It makes college more interesting. You’re surrounded by people from different backgrounds, and we benefit from the talent and experience those international students will bring. It also means we have new challenges. I’m coming back to that. We have to adapt, because now, all of a sudden, things like housing and orientation and dietary requirements, we have to be more attentive to a more diverse population and adapt in return.

I always feel like research gets short shrift in this conversation. As we’re doing all these things and focusing on enrollment, we can’t abandon our research aspirations, and we haven’t. We’re continuing to grow there. We’re three‑quarters of the way into the fiscal year. We have 76 new awards representing $18.5 million in new funding. That’s 85% of the way to our annual goal with three months remaining. We’ll probably get there.

Another metric is our research and development dollars reported on the NSF HERD report.

Our research expenditures for FY ’22 were $32 million and $38 million for FY ’23. So, you see that growing.  Now, why do I say that that’s important? Sometimes people say why do we even care about these numbers?

We are one of a very small number of majority‑minority R2 institutions. The reality is many people are happy to say that higher education should be accessible to everybody. But they’re not willing to say that everybody should have access to the same opportunities of higher education.

Some people can be fine at those institutions, which don’t do research, which don’t offer hands-on learning opportunities, which don’t have STEM, and so on. I reject that entirely. We are one of the most important producers of minority STEM graduates in New Jersey; we have one of the best success rates of underrepresented students from a retention and graduation perspective.

If we, as one of a handful of minority and HSI/R2 institutions, don’t embrace that responsibility, then we are consigning a significant portion of the population to an education that is less than. That’s just not okay. And that’s what Montclair State University stands for – that we reject that idea. And I think we should be enormously proud of it. That’s not easy.

And when we get into the budget part of the conversation, which I’m going to do now, you understand the challenge. But the stakes, if we were to say, well, we throw up our hands, we’re going to exclude those people, we’re going to lower our aspirations, we’re going to be a humble, obedient serf, then we’re failing. That’s not the assignment we accepted.

So, let’s talk a little bit about the economics.

I’m not going to go too deep into it because many of you may have seen the scintillating, riveting Budget 101 presentation I did a couple weeks ago. That was ironic there, sarcastic, whatever.

But the idea was to say how we think about funding. I’ll talk a little bit more at the Board of Trustees this week, and we’ll know more where we stand in June when the state budget comes out because that’s about 23% of our budget. The lion’s share of our budget, 75% is enrollment driven, tuition. But we do know that the budget is likely to be flat. I don’t think it’s going to go down, so that’s the good news. But it’s not going to go up. Notwithstanding the fact that our labor costs go up. Our operating costs go up. But our state appropriation will not go up, which means that we have to figure out how to make ends meet.

That is largely through tuition and you don’t really have any choice but to raise tuition when your costs go up over $30 million a year and your appropriation does not. I’m a smart guy, but I don’t know how to solve that problem in any other way. What we try to do when we make adjustments in tuition is take a huge portion of that and put it into financial aid so we don’t stop anybody from attending. This year, we offered about $92 million in financial aid to students. The goal being to ensure that financial constraints don’t keep anybody from attending and graduating, and then we try to supplement that by doing things like launching Scholarship Universe, which is a service that makes it easier for students to access external scholarships. And we look for opportunistic ways to grow the university, as I say, in terms of the enrollment mix and get funding for things that are critical to our future.

So, for example, I mentioned in the fall our work on the interdisciplinary science building and the wireless project that are going to be funded by a state bond initiative. That’s the – I hope it’s going to be prettier than that. Like, that does not inspire. I boldly tell you we will do better than that when we build that actual building. 

But it’s really important to understand, so the reason why you build that building is because that’s a sign of our commitment. If we didn’t add capacity, we would max out for the lab space needed to teach students in STEM fields and not just in CSAM, nursing and a variety of other fields, and it would max out our ability to do research. So, you have to do that if you’re going to maintain your aspirations and your commitment to excellence.

And on that point, let me just mention a couple of other things. I’m excited about some of these initiatives and again I’m going to rapid‑fire mention some things.

The Office of Faculty Excellence has launched a Strong Student campaign to help students be more successful through their work habits and other behaviors. CSAM and the School of Business worked with OFE and the Center for Academic Success and Tutoring to figure out ways to improve student performance, including ways to reduce the number of DFWs and those rates have come down in Feliciano 4.6 percentage points and in CSAM down 5.9 percentage points.

In CSAM student success was improved by developing networks for students including recitation sections and foundational courses, replacing lecture only approaches with active learning strategies – something I think we need to be doing across the university – and a supplemental instructional program was introduced, particularly building on the example in chemistry into other courses. That only is possible because faculty buy into it. We’re excited that another set of faculty and CSAM are participating in the teaching innovations program that will allow us to increase those programs for multi‑section first‑year major courses.

So, there’s good things happening.

Another example, and we actually have a guest to show off again: Feliciano has redesigned INFO173, which shifted to a mastery approach where students are required to complete assignments each week prior to advancing to the next model led by an IMBA faculty member who I think is here with us.

Thank you, Rreze. Rreze was brought on to teach this and over 800 students just in the last year have been impacted. The course includes a credentialing opportunity for students which is the goal in the Feliciano strategic plan. By the way, something that is going to be, I think, a big part of higher education is credentialing as students go along so that they get value as they progress through their education. That way you don’t view interruptions in pursuit of the bachelor’s degree as a total disaster because you’re getting credentialed.

In this case, Microsoft’s Excel Certification Program. Emily Perri was in the first group of students to take the course. She had the highest score on the exam in the state, and was invited to participate in the National Championships in June. We had 7 of the 10 highest scores in the state. Emily’s not here, but she is an example of what that looks like.

Also, in terms of excellence, I’m particularly excited about the revamping of our honors program, now dubbed Honors EDGE, which is representative of an innovative experience‑based program. Students will be immersed in transdisciplinary course work, and it will provide tools students need to become transformative leaders, opportunities for funded study abroad, internships, research and a pedagogical framework that emphasizes creativity.

I think creativity is the secret sauce that human beings will retain even when the robots take over, because they won’t be able to make things up out of thin air the way people can, at least for the time being. Helping students develop their creativity tools is important.

Jameson is here. Jameson is one of the students who proposed a student‑driven peer mentoring program to support incoming Honors EDGE students, which I think sounds awesome. According to Laura, who is his professor, Jameson works through the lens of collaboration, accountability and trustworthiness. He is self‑reflective and action oriented and driven by his desire to help create an honors program that is grounded in community and belonging. What a cool thing, contributing to the design of the program for other students that will follow in your footsteps.

The School of Communications and Media has developed an innovative partnership with Telemundo, which offers students opportunities, also helping them on their career pathway.

The good news is – remember I said before the biggest frustration is people hear about things and they said, Montclair, I had no idea? People are starting to get an idea. Thanks to our communications team, we are getting out there in a way that we haven’t seen before. Some of you saw the Blind Injustice production that took place on this stage. It got great coverage. We’ve had hundreds of mentions of Montclair that we weren’t getting before. 

And even praise for the way in which we are communicating – our social media team is really hitting it out of the park. For those of you who are not on Instagram and doing this, this is one of the things that we’re doing at Montclair that’s really become a model for national benchmarks. People are looking at what we’re doing. You can see a recent production of our “Red Hawt” – how do I say it, Ashley? Stand up so I can introduce you. Ashley Petrosine. We recently did an episode – we ate hot wings together, we talked about the university. We’re going to go at it again because I think they were condescending and gave me baby hot wings. I have a high tolerance for spice, but I think I can do more. I think we can do better, but it was a lot of fun. It passed the test. My kids said it wasn’t lame. My daughter actually said, “I was laughing out loud watching it.” So, that is high praise.

Before I close – and I’m apologizing that I’m going to do this quickly because it makes it seem like it’s not important. It is. I don’t want to gloss over the tough times. This has been an extraordinary year. We’ve been at the forefront of a national crisis, which is the mental health crisis that’s particularly affecting our students. I think many of you know – and it was in the questions – many of you know that we’ve had an unprecedented level of tragic consequences to the mental health crisis, students taking their own life and other attempts to do so. And we are very concerned. We’re very concerned about the well‑being of our students. Obviously, every one of those situations has individual contours to it. But we’re very concerned about the general challenge our students are facing, and very concerned about the challenges for those of us on campus who have to be on call and responding to those challenges.

There’s layers to it. I want to recognize Vice President Dawn Soufleris and the SDCL staff in particular who have really been focused on this, and the counseling team. It’s not just being responsive, we want to be ahead of it. We want to deal with the mental well‑being of our community members, not just respond to crises. Of course, responding to crises is critical.

I don’t know if Kieran is here, but our Chief and the whole UPD team has been amazing not just in response to what I’m talking about but also in managing protests and demonstrations and that’s been a real test of our university, something that we’ve, I think, met admirably. This is a team that has really worked extremely hard under difficult circumstances.

Several of you asked questions about what we’re doing. I will jump to that and say, you’re going to get an email in the next couple days where we will lay out in some detail the steps that we’re taking. So, I don’t want to butcher that right now. You’ll get that in a day or two. But know that we take it very seriously.

Over 1,000 students are using the UWILL telehealth services we offer. We have gotten grants from OSHE to offer some additional resources, and we’re always looking to be creative. It may sound goofy that we talk about our puppy – I guess Pebbles isn’t a puppy anymore – but it actually seems to have an effect. We are always going to embrace things that work whether they seem silly or hokey or not. Just know that this is something that we’re concerned about.

And not just for students, because as I say, we know that faculty and staff are also affected by this.

On the screen it says I’ve got 60 seconds left. So, let me say this. And I can stick around for a few minutes if people can, but if people have to get up and leave, I understand. I won’t take it personally. Let me say this. All these things are happening. The goal – somebody said, what’s my goal or what do I want my legacy to be? Which I thought was maybe an invitation to wrap things up.

But our goal is to be a university prepared for the future. Partially, that’s about reshaping what we do, how we do things, and re‑envisioning what this university looks like. I just came from a conference that was basically about AI and education. And we are at the protozoan stage of understanding what AI will do for higher education. But it will be transformative in all kinds of ways. People say, oh, it’s about cheating. It’s much more than that. By the way, all kinds of good things, right? I think it’s an incredible tool to enhance student success. It’s an incredible tool to amplify our effectiveness in dealing with all kinds of issues that stop students from being successful on their pathway to graduation. I think it will change how we teach and how we learn. But it’s going to require a rethinking of everything that we do, and that much is obvious. And it’s going to require a critical examination of all these people who will sell you the next magic elixir that will fix all your problems. So, it represents something significant.

My goal is to have a university that’s nimble, that’s not self‑satisfied, that isn’t committed to doing things the way we’ve always done things but rather the way they need to be done to be successful in the future, and that embraces our assignment, going back to where I started, as being non‑negotiable. We will not fix the university by saying, well, we just have to have fewer of those people who are so high maintenance and needy. That’s not a possible solution. And it can’t be that we retreat from our social mission and our social purpose. That’s not a possibility.

So, the question is, how do we get better at doing that and no possibility is off the table ever, and rethink everything that we do. Including seemingly obscure, functional things like looking at the university calendar and saying, how do we prepare to operate 12 months a year? That’s critical. One of the sessions, somebody said, “why do we have this ridiculous calendar? We take the summer off. Is everybody going to plant crops?” No! Obviously. But we still operate that way. That’s bananas.

Why do we still measure credit hours in this artificial thing? Credit hours were invented as a way to measure faculty performance. That’s where they come from. It was this artificial imposition of credit hours as a way to measure learning as opposed to stuff people learn. Just like, take a step back and think about that. How much did you learn? Well, I sat in class for 120 hours. It wasn’t what I asked you. Right?

So, we need to be part of the process of revisiting everything that we do and that’s what I want our university to stand for. Sometimes that means doing new things and sometimes that means doing things that other people have been doing for years. I’m super excited about our pre-college summer programs which are up to probably over 250 students, Junius, for this summer? Not yet? Well, that’s what it’s going to be.

I’m excited about more programs coming that will be mixed modality where we have low residency programs that meet students where they want to be. That shows that we’re a university capable of adaptation and change and that’s the university I want to be.

The last thing I’ll say in terms of what I want to be is to recognize that I want to be part of the protection of American democracy. We’re headed, obviously, to a significant election in the fall. By the way, not just a presidential election. Everybody focuses on that, but there are elections up and down the ballot, and they matter a great deal too.

I was happy to join the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge and also a few other initiatives that are about universities committing to democracy. I didn’t feel like that was a controversial thing to do because this campus already had a set of programs that were aligned with this objective. I think it’s incredibly important that we embrace this as a community. And we do so, for two reasons.

First of all, because we have to be guardians at the gate of democracy and communicate to our students and every member of our community that participation in American democracy is a responsibility and vital for the future of the country. It’s also vital for the future of Montclair State University.

So I want to mention before we leave that on May 2nd, we will have a Trenton Lobbying Day for the university. As I’ve mentioned before, Montclair is not appropriately recognized in the budget. Our students are funded at a level lower than students at basically every other university in the state, when you put it all in. And I don’t think it’s right, not just because you guys are watching. No, I just think it’s appalling. And most people don’t believe me when I say that. They’re like, no, no, there must be a formula where it’s a certain number of dollars per state. I’m like, are you new here? That’s not how New Jersey works.

So, this university, for reasons that – it’s not about one person – it’s over decades on a per‑student basis, we get less than pretty much anybody. Just in terms of the core appropriation, a student who goes to the other research universities is funded at a level twice as high as a student who goes to Montclair State University.

I don’t know. These guys seem like they’re worth the same amount of funding as anybody else. So, we need everybody to be part of that effort. Food and transportation will be provided. It’s a great opportunity to have our voices heard. If you can make it, join with your students. There will be a sign‑up sheet in “In The Know” and I hope people can be part of it.

Let me wrap it up. I’m at five minutes past 4:00. I will give people a chance to flee if you need to, and then I’ll try to answer a couple of the questions that I didn’t touch on, although I think I hit most of them in here. So, stopping, pausing. Yes, thank you and I will just give it 30 seconds and then I’ll answer a couple of these questions.

All right. I hit upon most of the things in here. As I said, there were several questions about mental health and I hope to have that email to you within the next few days. There were a couple questions about summer hours. You should have seen an email on that ‑‑ it says last Friday, according to Keith, so – yes? You know that one.

Feedback – oh, yes about the dining. Will there be an opportunity for feedback on dining? Yes. This is a work in progress. This was the first year with a new company. There were a lot of things that went well. But there’s opportunities for enhancement. Let’s put it that way. So, we are eager for feedback.

This one was maybe put in for my amusement. What plans do you have to improve student access to parking? I feel like people aren’t paying attention if I don’t get a parking and transportation question. I will say I think the long‑term question is, how do you get fewer people here in cars? I mean, it’s just that. I’ve had some conversations about, could we have shuttle services to downtown Montclair that would go to Bay Street? I think that’s the only way that we really solve for that. Part of the changes in schedule are actually about parking, too. So, I say this to students, particularly this mostly comes from students who observe all the parking for faculty and staff, by the way, so yes. I can tell you how to get a parking space. Just come on Wednesday or Friday.

And then the challenge then is if you do what we’re planning to do which is to change the schedule so that classes are spread out, then people are just going to say, you dumb idiot. I liked it when I could make it so I could come twice a week. I’m like, yeah, I understand that. That’s why there’s no parking those days. So, there are trade‑offs on all these things, and there really is no magic. There’s no way to really deal with traffic ultimately. There’s two ways off campus. There’s going to be traffic. But believe it or not, food was part of our answer to traffic, which is if you have better food on campus, you can stay here and have a meal or whatever, and then you don’t have to leave at the exact same time that everybody else is leaving. We are trying to think broadly about these things. But I don’t think ultimately you can solve that without changing the way people get to campus.

There were a couple questions actually which were about the structure of the university and do we see the structure of the university changing to be divided up into more autonomous units? The short answer to that is no. And I just wanted to talk about the thinking. When I think about structural change, structural change is not driven by some formula that says a unit should be “x,” you know, people or whatever. It doesn’t serve a purpose. So, when we were looking at the colleges ‑‑ and this is what the faculty committee that Junius pulled together that looked at the colleges for health and education, that there was a substantive reason to disentangle those two units because we could perform better as a university with a differentiated College for Education and Engaged Learning and a differentiated College for Community Health. And that that focus would enhance their performance. It wasn’t about numbers. It wasn’t that we felt that college was too big. It wasn’t our biggest college. It was about a mission.

And so any changes that we make in structure are not going to be arbitrarily driven by size. They’ll be about achieving a certain mission or purpose as a university. What we are looking at from an organizational point of view is: are there ways in which we become duplicative where we have the same function being performed by different people in different units? We do not want that. So, if the question was implying, do we want to create little hives? No. Exact opposite. We’re trying to coordinate more. That doesn’t necessarily mean you create one large throbbing central brain that controls everything. It does mean you don’t create semi-autonomous thiefdoms because that results in some of the pathologies where we have people doing the same tasks using different systems, different software, different approaches within this university. And we’re not that big. There’s no reason why that should be, and it is inefficient and kind of goofy. So, that’s what we’re looking for moving forward, not to subdivide further.

Other than that, I think I covered the things that are in here. So, I thank you for your time. I’m looking forward to working together in the months ahead and will let you go. I appreciate your forbearance in going a few minutes over. Thank you, all.