President Richard J. Helldobler Click here to review presentation slides Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Spring 2024 semester! Happy Black History month, and let’s keep the applause going for our talented students under the direction of Professor Chris Herbert! I also want to thank the crew here in the Shea Center and the IRT folks for hosting and producing today’s event. I hope everyone had a wonderful winter break and is now energized and excited for the semester ahead. I know I am! I am looking forward to building—one brick at a time—an even better William Paterson. As we do so, we will build on the past success of earlier generations, and upon the foundational work we have done in recent years. Across all fields of science and technology, the scientific method tests current observations and hypotheses against previous ones to advance knowledge—what Newton called “standing on the shoulders of giants.” Across literature, theatre, and music, artists draw inspiration from past work—whether honoring it or upending it. And as today’s address progresses, I think you’ll see that we have done both—honored and upended—to build a better William Paterson. We are making our own history thanks to the great work of everyone in this room and across campus who is seizing the opportunity to create exciting new courses and majors, new programs and credentials, a new school, and new and renovated buildings—all while rising to the challenges of the day. Let’s take a look at some of the most recent highlights, and then I want to spend some time covering our most significant achievements over the first five years of my tenure as your President. We’ve had a great academic year so far, as some of the images from the introductory video demonstrated. On the eve of the fall semester, we announced the creation of our new School of Nursing, home to one of New Jersey’s largest and fastest-growing nursing programs, as well as the largest in northern New Jersey and the largest of ANY regional public institution in the state. On a related note, and before I continue with fall highlights, I want to announce some exciting news for the first time. We have signed a big new collaboration agreement with Atlantic Health, one of the largest, most innovative health care systems in New Jersey—a state which plays a leadership role in healthcare delivery, nationally. We have worked closely with Atlantic Health leadership to develop an agreement that will create new training and career pathways for our students and further cement our role as one of the state’s leading healthcare educators. What might this look like? Well, we will look for opportunities to expand our nursing program with Atlantic Health to address the critical shortage of nurses in our region. Our nursing students might gain special consideration when applying for job openings in the Atlantic Health network, including providing financial incentives for them to pursue those career opportunities. It could also include ways for us to reinforce our nursing faculty, drawing on experienced Atlantic Health nurses to serve as adjunct or full-time faculty members, which are some of the toughest positions to recruit and retain. We might expand or develop certificate programs to allow our students to work as phlebotomists, certified nursing assistants, or other in-demand professions in our region, while still enrolled here, which can build toward future nursing and healthcare careers. The agreement will also promote student participation in recruitment and learning activities, career fairs, and virtual open houses sponsored by Atlantic Health in anticipation of their graduation. And we will look at opportunities to build community- and campus-facing health and wellness services on and near our campus. With the recent $40 million dollar grant we received from the state to renovate our Recreation Center, are there opportunities for more wellness and rehabilitation services by partnering with Atlantic Health? We’ll also look at creating a joint research center focused on the allied health professions. This is a very promising agreement that will offer great new opportunities for our students and for Atlantic Health and its patients, as the demand for outstanding and innovative allied health professionals continues to accelerate in New Jersey. Jumping back to the fall semester, we kicked off our academic year in grand style with faculty and staff gathering to create a warm and welcoming sea of orange en route to and inside the Shea Center, where our first-year students were greeted with the kind of ceremony and celebration worthy of the journey they have undertaken and one they will long remember. Thanks to search committee leadership and participation from across our community, we successfully completed our Chief Diversity Officer search last fall, and I am pleased that Dr. Jeanne Arnold is with us here today, so please join me in giving her a big William Paterson welcome! And please also join us at 4 o’clock in Hobart Manor for First Thursday and say hello to Dr. Arnold in person. In the face of increasingly cynical attacks on DEI in higher education, we must commit more than ever to ensuring that William Paterson is a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and just learning, living, and working environment for the benefit of every student, faculty, and staff member! We must remain proud of our work in this space on behalf of our students. Look, you have heard me say a million times and it’s part of every introduction before I speak—we are educating the students who are changing the social fabric of the state, region, and country. And as that social fabric changes, so too do long-standing social constructs of power and privilege. That’s the true source of the angst over the DEI work that we and others are engaged in, along with the reality that college-educated voters are more likely to embrace progressive politics. So, while some are doubling down on their efforts to stop it, we must triple OUR efforts and—in doing so—continue to position William Paterson as a leader and a “powerhouse” in this critical work. In recent years, we have dedicated much more time and energy to developing and building upon relationships with the Governor’s office, our representatives, and other key legislators in Trenton who are in a position to support William Paterson. Partly as a result of those efforts, we secured $7.5 million in additional funding in the current state budget, which also includes increases for outcomes-based allocations for public colleges and universities, yielding an additional $4.6 million for William Paterson. Our representatives have a lot of constituents, and there’s no shortage of competing interests at budget time, so the work we’ve been doing year-round to remain engaged and make them aware of the great things we are doing is vital. I want to thank Vice President Guillermo de Veyga for his good work in this area, and to Dr. Sue Tardi and the AFT for their advocacy on behalf of greater public funding for higher education and, most importantly, William Paterson. Additionally, the State has reached agreements with all of our collective bargaining units: AFT, CWA, IFPTE, and PBA. Thank you to all those who served on the negotiation teams. Again, a quick shout out to Dr. Sue Tardi, as well as campus police officer Liz DeSantis, and carpenter Angelo Mastriolia, and others who worked collaboratively to bring us these successful contracts. As with any bargaining process you give a little and you get a little and there are parts of it we love and others…not so much. But the important thing is we have agreements for at least another four years. Also this fall, we launched our first-ever Family Portal to strengthen communication and resources for parents and families to better support them so they are empowered to better support their students. This is an important extension of our innovative Student Success Team concept. This development came just months after we established the Office of Parent and Family Relations. The portal has grown nearly 11 percent since its launch to more than 1,300 registered users, primarily families of first-year students. Whereas the average email open rate for educational organizations is about 40 percent, newsletters and other email messages sent via the portal are seeing open rates in excess of 50 percent and—in the case of Spanish-speaking users and Spanish-language content—more than 80 percent. Thanks to Vice President Miki Cammarata and Director of Parent and Family Relations Eva Reyes for their good work on this valuable new resource. We developed, and the Board of Trustees approved, a new mission statement—one that speaks to the collective purpose that a reimagined William Paterson brings to educating today’s students and preparing them for successful careers and rewarding lives. And one of the things that I love about it is that it fits on one slide! A huge thank you to Provost Powers and Dr. Mark Ellis for leading this work. We launched Workday, thanks to the hard work of a core team with assistance from across campus. While Workday is already making key functions on campus fast and simple, implementing it has been anything but, so thank you to everyone who has contributed to this important effort under the executive leadership of CIO Gamin Bartle and Vice Presidents Allison Boucher-Jarvis and Kirsten Loewrigkeit. This was really a huge lift for the University, and we will all benefit from their great work. Folks are already commenting on how much easier it is to submit time sheets and vacation requests and report sick time through Workday. Again, please remember that we are still working through this new software, so patience is not just a virtue—it is a necessity. I’d love to thank everyone individually, but there are more than 75 people, whose names won’t fit on one slide! So, for now, would everyone on the implementation team who is with us today please stand and accept our thanks! We also broke ground on our new Athletic Fieldhouse renovation and expansion project with two special ceremonies: the first with the lead donor of an impressive quarter-of-a-million-dollar gift, alumnus and football All-American Steve Adzima, Class of ’75, followed soon after by a second ceremony at Homecoming, where our alumni could participate. The work is well underway, as are further fundraising efforts, aided by a powerful video appeal from Fox Sports announcer Kevin Burkhardt, Class of ’97. Already, our Institutional Advancement team has secured an additional $200,000 gift from the foundation established in memory of the late Alan J. Anderson, a 1981 alumnus and outstanding Pioneer baseball player. In recognition of this generous gift, the Baseball Locker Room will be named in Alan’s memory. Thanks to Director of Development Andres Cladera for securing this support. We also held ribbon-cutting ceremonies to celebrate the moves of two important campus operations. The Pioneer Pantry moved to bigger, more convenient space in Speert Hall from which to serve students experiencing food insecurity. We also welcomed our Alumni Relations team back to campus from the Allan and Michele Gorab Alumni House to the new Gorab Center, located in the Student Center. We are now exploring a possible sale of the former alumni house. Thanks to AVP Kevin Garvey and his crew for working hard to create these great new spaces for our students and alumni. I also want to give a shout out to Coach Kevin Rogers and the women of our amazing Pioneer volleyball team, who made it to the semifinals of the NJAC Tournament and the finals of the ECAC Tournament—and as this picture makes clear, they had fun doing it. It’s obvious that, in addition to talent, this young team’s success was due to its “Will. Power.” and its belief that anything is possible. And that—of course—is what William Paterson is all about, whether in the classroom or on the court. Finally, for current updates, let’s take a look at the brick-and-mortar data for William Paterson—also known as enrollment numbers. Thanks to the good work of everyone on campus, led by Vice President George Kacenga and his Enrollment Management team, we saw an 8.5 percent gain in enrollment of first-time, full-time first-year students for the Class of 2027. These students represent all of New Jersey’s 21 counties, as well as 21 states and 20 countries. We also saw a nearly 17 percent increase in new transfer students and a more than 16 percent increase in new graduate students. Taken together, it amounts to a healthy 3.3 percent increase in overall enrollment. We know that these big gains in new enrollment are being diluted by attrition and by graduating some of the largest classes in our history, so we have more work to do. But when all of the enrollment numbers are positive, it allows us to add more bricks for a stronger foundation, and we should celebrate. So, congratulations to Vice President Kacenga and his team! In addition to good enrollment news, we have positive retention data to report. We met our retention goal of 72.7 percent for Fall 2022 to Fall 2023 first-time, full-time students. Fall-to-spring retention is currently 87.4 percent, which is roughly 1 percent higher than the previous year. We have also seen important gains in key groups, with a 3.5 percent increase in Black or African American students and a 3.3 percent increase in Hispanic students. So, congratulations to the Advisement Center, Financial Aid, Student Enrollment Services, Carmen Ortiz, Linda Refsland, Stacy-Ann Brown, and Johanna Torres for leading these efforts. So, let’s look at this semester. We currently have 9,338 students enrolled, which represents a 5.4 percent increase over last year. We have already met the main campus enrollment goal for spring, and with Census 2 still to come, we are confident the WP Online enrollment goal will also be met. We beat our goal by exceeding the main campus continuing student goal by 2.6 percent; a 1.9 percentage point increase in fall-to-spring retention of first-time, main campus students; and by a 4 percent increase in new student enrollment. We can take further encouragement in the record-breaking Open House and dual enrollment events that were held throughout the fall, which are promising signs for future enrollment growth. Beyond our campus, there is also encouraging news in statewide enrollment data for the fall semester. Those numbers show that the community college sector, a critical partner and source of transfer students for us, is reversing recent declines, overall. The statewide data also show that William Paterson had the highest growth rate in graduate enrollment of any New Jersey four-year institution—public or private. Within the public four-year sector, William Paterson alone was responsible for fully one-third of the statewide growth. These are truly impressive numbers, and we should all be proud of the good work they represent! Of course, as Vice President Kacenga always wants me to say, it’s still very early in the process for next semester. With that in mind and looking ahead to Fall 2024, we can see that first-time student applications are up 11.6 percent over this time last year, and first-time student acceptances are up 19.2 percent. Again, it’s early, but deposits are also trending ahead of this time last year. Overall—undergrad, grad, transfer, etc.—new student applications for Fall 2024 are up 13.9 percent and acceptances are up 20.3 percent. But it's not over until census of Fall 2024, so let’s keep our foot on the pedal, and keep up the good work! So, that brings us to where we are today, highlighting just some of the key building blocks—the metaphorical and actual bricks—that are contributing to a stronger, more powerful William Paterson University. Having taken a brief look over the past several months, I now want to spend a bit more time looking back at many significant accomplishments of the past several years. You know, one of the questions I was asked when I interviewed here was how long I might stay, and I indicated as long as the work was meaningful and interesting, but I typically think in five-year blocks. As many of you know, this past summer marked my fifth anniversary as your President, so the beginning of a new five-year block is a good time to take stock so we can celebrate our collective success and draw inspiration from it for the work ahead. Day-to-day, we are so busy building this institution, that it pays to step back once in a while to check our work, celebrate our progress, and make sure things are plumb and level, ready for the next story we build. Together over the past five-and-a-half years, we have built a broad and strong foundation for both current and future success. At my 2018 Investiture Ceremony, I spoke about the tremendous opportunity that lay in better defining, embracing, and strengthening our own true identity as a University. As we know from recent events, the national higher education discourse is driven largely by what happens at the likes of Harvard, MIT, and others. But they represent American higher education only in the way that Fifth Avenue represents American real estate—in other words, not really at all. It’s good to have aspirations, but not if they distract you from your true purpose. Too many institutions are trying to become some version of an Ivy, or their state’s flagship, or someone else that they are not, rather than becoming the best version of themselves. I spoke in my interview about William Paterson’s lack of a strong brand. In my investiture speech, I spoke further about letting “Montclair be Montclair” but that we were going to be William Paterson. That’s the task we set for ourselves just over five years ago: to become the best four-year, public institution in the state that is focused, first and foremost, on empowering diverse students who will power New Jersey; be intentional in providing needed support; and capitalize on our strong social justice focus. I am pleased to say that we are making great progress as New Jersey’s “Powerhouse of Progress.” And we’ve done it “one brick at a time.” “One brick at a time” really is an appropriate analogy for William Paterson and the work we are doing. After all, Paterson, the city of our birth, came to prominence in large part through the hard work of immigrants in massive brick mills built along the Passaic River as part of the nation’s first planned industrial city. The great productivity of the people who worked these mills won Paterson international renown as the “Silk City.” It’s also worth noting that this area was the site of one of the biggest demonstrations of collective power, when 25,000 workers of various backgrounds unified to strike for better, fairer working conditions. We are seeing a resurgence of unionization, and the salting and other efforts in some of the largest organizations is being done by college graduates. Our work matters, and it’s working! Keep organizing, keep pushing, lean on the moral arc to make it bend further toward justice. It’s working…one brick at a time. Bricks are durable, versatile, and attractive and they create great spaces for reinvention and reimagining, like the historic Paterson mill buildings that are now meeting contemporary needs as apartments and offices, artists’ studios, and music hubs. Here on our own campus, they are the material through which alumni, faculty, or staff can leave their mark with the “Commemorative Brick Program”—if you haven’t gotten yours already, there’s still time! Historically, they created Hunziker Hall, the first new building on William Paterson’s Wayne campus, which has been updated over its 75 years to serve today’s students as well as it did earlier generations. The four-and-a-half-year-old brick Skyline Hall is just one of the newer examples of how we are keeping our beautiful campus up-to-date to meet changing student needs. In recent years, we dedicated Barbara Moll Grant Hall to recognize the longtime philanthropic support and dedication of Professor Emerita Dr. Barbara Moll Grant. In thanks and recognition of a generous and transformative gift from Dr. Dorothy Grant Hennings and her late husband, Dr. George Hennings, we also dedicated the former Science Hall East as Hennings Hall. A huge thanks to Vice President Pam Ferguson and the Institutional Advancement team for their excellent work. I gave Institutional Advancement a big increase in their fundraising goal to raise $5.5 million this year, and they are on track to hit it, so keep up the good work! The past five years have also seen us grow and improve our campus using state funding and our own resources, including not only the renovated Hunziker and Skyline Halls, which I mentioned, but also the acquisition of 1800 Valley Road, the refresh and branding update of Morrison Hall, as well as the work underway to transform our Sports and Recreation Center. Earlier, I mentioned the Athletic Fieldhouse project. I have been asked recently about some of the strategic funding for Athletics, the Fieldhouse, the Recreation Center, and why I’m choosing to invest in these areas. I continue to believe that athletics provides great team-building skills for our students from across disciplines. The field of play is one of the few remaining places where students from different colleges and backgrounds with different interests come together to work toward a common goal. And whether we like it or not—athletics is a public relations driver. Winning teams matter. Good facilities matter to recruitment. Athletics adds to the value of our brand, and our student-athletes perform well in the classroom. It also provides some great out-of-state enrollment opportunities for us as part of our diversified enrollment management strategy. So, I will be making some modest strategic investments in athletics—with key performance indicators attached—in the next budget cycle. One of our first and most consistent undertakings over the past five-and-a-half years has been building a strong foundation of student support—one that addresses the full range of our students’ diverse needs. This starts even before their first semester—including financial aid counseling—and continues beyond graduation with ongoing career development assistance. Most importantly, we have improved every phase of their college experience while they are with us. We reinvented the first-year experience with Will. Power. 101 and 102 to better meet the needs of students who are—for the most part—just several weeks removed from high school. More than just a generalized orientation, we are teaching our students how to succeed in college, accounting for their unique work and family circumstances and improving retention, as a result. We have implemented Student Success Teams and shifted to professional staff advisors while beginning to provide critical, discipline-specific support to students through our Faculty-as-Mentor model. All undergrad main campus students now have a Success Team behind them consisting of at least a professional staff advisor, financial aid counselor, and career coach, with some sophomores having the faculty mentors I mentioned, as well. We only have the one semester to go on, but so far, the data is encouraging. Based on the fall, we know that 93 percent of students who met with their financial aid counselor avoided balances due that would have interfered with registration for the spring. And 94 percent of students who met with their faculty mentor in the fall persisted to the spring semester. Furthermore, 78 percent of students who attended four or more tutoring or academic support sessions persisted to the spring, and 86.5 percent of students who participated in the Advisement Center’s re-registration campaign persisted from the fall to spring semester. Now the question is, how do we get more students to engage in these activities? Through all this intensive coordinated work, we have increased first-year retention from 69.3 percent in 2018 to 72.7 percent for Fall 2023—and that’s with a pandemic in the middle. A key part of our approach has been to get students thinking early and often about their career aspirations through career communities. Every new first-year student is assigned a career coach based on their particular career community. To date, more than 500 career coach appointments have been scheduled, and the Career Development Center is further supporting this work. In the fall semester alone, for example, it hosted 62 career fairs, workshops, and other events geared toward the particular interests and needs of our career communities. We continue to excel in career outcomes, which is what matters most to our students and families. The latest data from NACE—the National Association of Colleges and Employers—shows that 86 percent of the WP Class of 2022 had positive career outcomes six months after graduation—a rate 4 percentage points higher than public institutions, nationally. The rate for our Pesce Family Mentoring Institute grads, by the way, is an amazing 97 percent! Overall, members of the Class of 2022 also enjoy an average salary of over $59,000—8 percent higher than the previous year and nearly double the national increase. Congratulations to Director Mary Alice Barrows and everyone in the Career Development Center for these results. And there is so much more that we are doing to bolster student success in and out of the classroom by removing barriers and expanding resources. We created Pledge 4 Success to cover unmet need for qualifying students with the most significant financial need and to cap tuition and fee costs for many more families. Last semester, nearly 400 students took advantage of the Pledge 4 Success program. Our idea was so good that the State of New Jersey itself used it as the model for its own Garden State Guarantee program, which Governor Murphy announced right here on our campus. In the past five years, we have really energized our fundraising efforts to benefit of our students. We closed a major student scholarship campaign, beating our $10 million goal by 60 percent, raising $16 million to increase and expand scholarship support for more students. At our 25th Annual Scholarship Dinner in November, I shared the scope of our success. For the current academic year, we anticipate awarding 750 scholarships totaling approximately $1.6 million. That’s 25 percent more scholarships delivering approximately 50 percent more dollar support than was available to our students five years ago—my first year as President. Thanks again to our amazing Institutional Advancement team and the many donors, some of whom are with us in this room today. Thank you, thank you, thank you! These programs—along with our success in keeping William Paterson one of New Jersey’s most affordable public universities—have allowed more students to enroll and stay enrolled through graduation and earn the ultimate return on their investment—a William Paterson degree. Elsewhere, we are supporting the diverse needs of our students. In addition to the Pioneer Pantry, we are assisting with personal and family issues through a dedicated social worker who connects them with available resources. We have expanded physical and mental health resources through things like telehealth appointments and UWill, a free mental health teletherapy and wellness platform. We are giving students the assistance they need to stay enrolled and stay on track to earn their degree. Our work building and nurturing a culture of student support and success is making a difference. Just one piece of evidence is NSSE—the National Survey of Student Engagement—which asks first-year and senior students at hundreds of schools nationally about their participation in high-impact learning and personal development programming. This year, we outperformed our peers in 8 of 10 engagement indicators. We also saw gains in the number of students who reported their WP experience as either excellent or good. Many of our students also reported having at least one person on campus who is making a difference in their lives—the kind of personal connections that are the essence of the William Paterson experience. Some of our achievements have been evolutionary, bringing new ideas and marshalling new resources to improve upon existing programs. Others have been truly transformational. What better example than WP Online? In less than four years since its launch, WP Online has grown from zero to more than 3,600 students. If WP Online was its own entity, it would have a larger enrollment than more than half of the colleges and universities in New Jersey. Of course, it’s not that. It is an integral part of today’s William Paterson University. And its success is the result of the work our great faculty and staff are doing and the well-earned reputation for quality and value of our degree programs. It is a platform for growth and innovation that has dramatically expanded our offerings of degrees and credentials along with our student population. At a time of major demographic shifts, we are seizing the opportunity to reach new markets through both what we offer and how we offer it. Consider this example: In 2018, before the launch of WP Online, we enrolled 245 students in our excellent, AACSB-accredited MBA program. Last fall, that number had nearly tripled, to 719 students! We’re now the third largest producer of MBAs in the state. Those students come for the quality program and the flexibility that WP Online provides. You know, I recall concerns when we first launched WP Online and some of our perceptions around online education at the time, but they haven’t borne out based on the data. WP Online hasn’t changed William Paterson so much as William Paterson has changed the promise and potential of online education for our students who would otherwise be denied access. In Fall 2023, for example, WP Online undergraduate adult learners were retained at rates 29 percent higher than similar programs, nationally. William Paterson's third-term reenrollment rate for these students was 89 percent, thanks to the hard work of the WP Online Student Success Team, led by Amanda Vasquez and the innovative program delivery of faculty across the colleges to support their success. So, let’s give them and Associate Provost Kara Rabbitt a round of applause for their good work. We will continue to seek out strategic new ways to grow WP Online and diversify our offerings. Thanks to our foresight, we are ahead of the curve in online education, but our success has not gone unnoticed by our peers and other national online providers. We must continue improving and expanding WP Online in an increasingly competitive market. The lesson here is that we can’t put all our “bricks” on one enrollment pallet—to keep the metaphor consistent. We cannot simply say, “Well let’s just grow online because that seems to be working,” or, “Let’s just increase international students or adult students.” Part of building a strong enrollment foundation is our stratified approach: strategically growing our traditional main campus enrollment, while increasing retention; strategically growing WP Online; increasing international enrollment over a three-year period; providing flexible, transfer-friendly options for adult learners to begin or complete their undergraduate careers; and building critical partnerships with our county colleges and high schools through dual enrollment. We have also broadened and strengthened our institutional footprint on campus and beyond. We have forged new local, regional, and global partnerships that are creating opportunities for students and faculty at William Paterson and at partner institutions, as well as for prospective students, and others. To give just a few examples, these include international agreements in South Korea, China, and elsewhere. And, we have more than doubled the number of dual-enrollment programs to 56, with an 11-fold increase in students to more than 1,200 this year. In that time, we have also created 38 new 2+2 agreements and 20 new 3+1 agreements. We are also taking steps to encourage these growing numbers of high school dual-enrollment students to pursue their bachelor’s degree here. For example, a new program last fall offered students who successfully completed 6 or more dual enrollment credits with a C or higher a one-time, $1,000 first-year scholarship— effectively covering the costs of their dual-enrollment credits. The results were astounding! There were 21 qualifying recipients, and ALL 21 have persisted into the spring semester—a third of them with GPAs above 3.5. Thanks to Provost Powers, Vice President Kacenga, Associate Provost Jonathan Lincoln, Director Patrick Noonan and his Office of Transfer Programs and Special Sessions, and everyone else who has contributed to this success. Here on campus, the Child Development Center is serving a real need for children and families who are our neighbors, and of course the creation of our new School of Nursing positions us to build stronger relationships with the state’s healthcare systems. I also want to mention our new University Core Curriculum. The new UCC is a great example of our progress taking the fundamental excellence of our educational offerings and focusing them through a contemporary framework. In doing so, we are helping first-generation students and their parents better understand the critical importance of a solid core curriculum that better meets student needs. Thanks to a great spirit of cooperation and the good work of the Faculty Senate and everyone in the Provost’s Office, we have adopted a UCC that will provide students with a series of learning experiences unified by a social justice lens and the teaching of social mobility skills through disciplines critical to that effort. This new UCC is a real advancement for our students. It will enhance their William Paterson experience and increase the value of their degree and their employability, so I want to thank everyone who worked hard to make it happen, particularly UCC Director Dr. Murli Natrajan, Faculty Senate Chair Dr. Wendy Christensen, and Provost Josh Powers! When I arrived on campus in 2018, William Paterson University was ranked 102 of 187 institutions in U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of Regional Universities-North, which put us in the 55th percentile. In the five-plus years since then, we have steadily climbed those rankings to the point where we now stand at number 69 of 166 institutions, which puts us in the 42nd percentile. As the song lyrics stated at the beginning, a “splendid edifice can climb”—in this case, from 102 in the rankings all the way up to 69. That is a very significant statistical advancement in a short period of time. The U.S. News Social Mobility ranking, which was introduced the following year, shows an even more dramatic ascent for William Paterson. From ranking in the 37th percentile on the inaugural list, we have risen today to the 13th percentile! We have also improved our standing in a variety of other important categories and rankings, including the U.S. News Best Colleges for Veterans—where we rank 32nd. We achieved national recognition for our nursing and undergraduate business and psychology programs; and we are in the top 4-and-a-quarter percent among 1,200 institutions, nationally, on CollegeNet’s 2023 Social Mobility Index. And we again earned a 4.5 out of 5 on the Campus Pride Index as an LGBTQ-friendly campus. There are also many other well-earned accolades at the program and department level. But of course, the greatest validation of our work comes from our students and alumni. Being able to hand them their degree at the Prudential Center or our Recreation Center and to hear about their successes post-graduation—these are some of the most rewarding experiences in higher education. For all the debate about the value of various rankings, the bottom line is that they matter to prospective and current students and families, they matter to alumni, and they matter to employers. So we should celebrate what these increases mean for our reputation in the higher education marketplace and the employment marketplace. They all reflect the great work you are doing, so thank you! I had the pleasure earlier of introducing Dr. Jeanne Arnold. In addition to holding the relatively new role on our campus of Chief Diversity Officer, she has also joined the President’s Cabinet of senior administrators, which is a new development. It is just the latest example of the importance of this role and the work that Dr. Arnold will lead on our campus. In addition to creating this post and now elevating it to a Cabinet position, we have greatly expanded our DEI and social justice work through the Center for Diversity and Inclusion, the Black Cultural Center, and the Center for Latinidad and the President’s Diversity Lecture series, to name a few. And we are going deeper through our campus-wide work on decolonization, a pillar of our Strategic Plan. Let me reiterate that we will continue forging ahead with this important work. To do otherwise would be irresponsible for any university, especially a designated minority- and Hispanic-serving one that enrolls the diverse students that we do. When you’ve built—brick by brick—as much as we have together in recent years, you deserve to shout about it. So, check this out! Pretty spectacular! We’ve talked a lot about our new branding and identity, and that’s just the latest example of the great work Vice President Stuart Goldstein and his Marketing and Public Relations team are doing with our agency, Ologie, to communicate our value proposition to prospective students and their families. More broadly, we have created new elements, like Pio and our new spirit song, to help tell the William Paterson story and communicate the Pioneer experience, while also building excitement on campus. Earlier, I mentioned my interview experience here, when I was asked things like, “Will you bring us ‘better’ students,” and what I thought of the University’s brand. I was blunt. We already had great students, yet the brand was not a particularly strong one. I knew, however, that it could be so much more, because the fundamentals of what this place is and who we educate were so powerful. Now, more than five years later, we have a strong brand—one that resonates in the market. And, just as importantly, one that means something here on campus. We all know the William Paterson brand is grounded in strong student support in and out of the classroom. It is grounded in positive career outcomes that lead to greater social mobility. And it is grounded in an understanding of social justice issues among our graduates that will help put the organizations and communities where they work and live on paths toward greater equity. Now, if this was meant only to be a look back, we would hold the State of the University address in December. Instead, we gather at the start of a new year and a new semester because this is an opportunity to celebrate and take stock of what we’ve achieved as a way of recommitting ourselves to our collective mission and fueling our drive to accomplish all the important work that lies ahead. And as we head into a new semester, I am truly inspired by how far we’ve come. There have been plenty of times when it would have been easy to throw up our hands in despair or put down our heads and just stay on our prior path. But we didn’t do that. Instead, we took a good hard look at the challenges and opportunities facing William Paterson, as well as the students we serve. Most of this work did not happen in the President’s Office. Instead, it happened in the Colleges, divisions, classrooms, and offices. It happened in the Advisement Center and the Career Development Center, the Faculty Senate, and in union meetings, student government and club meetings, and other spaces and forums where members of our community come together to advance our mission. I am grateful for all the good leadership that is occurring at every level of the University. Have we always agreed? No. But we have stayed at the table until we found an acceptable path forward, motivated by the commitment we all share to our students. Thank you to all the faculty, staff, students; to the union and Senate leadership; the Cabinet leadership; the academic and staff leadership; the trustees, Foundation Board, and Alumni Executive Council—you did this! You were willing to take risks and be bold, which I know can be scary. But I hope that you are able to see today how it has paid off for William Paterson and how it will continue paying off as we move forward. Are we out of the woods? No, but one of the most heartening things about all these impressive accomplishments is that they are all proof of the growth mindset, which we first talked about in this forum four years ago and reenforced through the Summer Learning and Development program. I hope today’s address provided some examples of how we have changed the way we think about and approach our work. We are changing systems in higher education to meet the needs of our students, and it is this growth mindset that best positions us for future success. We will need it, because there is a lot of good, hard, meaningful work left to do, and I look forward to sharing with you in the fall some big new plans for the years to come. By focusing relentlessly on the needs of our students, how to best educate them and support their success, we have made tremendous progress toward building a stronger, more resilient William Paterson that is better positioned to serve our students and our state. A “powerhouse” university that leverages its leadership in nursing education to become an even stronger force in the allied health sciences. A leading provider of new forms of online learning and new credentials to reach populations that have been overlooked for too long. And a continued Pioneer—stronger than ever—in serving the students who are changing the social fabric of New Jersey. Those students—our students—are counting on us. The people of New Jersey are counting on us. I know that we won’t let them—or ourselves—down as we continue working together to build a better, stronger, more just, William Paterson—one brick at a time. We are, indeed, changing the social fabric of the region. We are, indeed, changing the long-held social constructs of oppression and wealth. We are a “Powerhouse of Progress.” And most importantly, we are William Paterson! Thank you, and have a great semester!
