August 22, 2001

University president welcomes faculty and staff at convocation, gives status of university

The following is a reprint of University President Bernard P. Knoth's August 20 convocation remarks.

My congratulations to the faculty members whom we have just saluted for their years of dedicated service to Loyola, and a sincere welcome to you all. I hope everyone is ready for what will be most certainly an exciting year here at Loyola. There are several points I want to review with you this afternoon, mostly informational; following my remarks, we will have an open forum for questions and discussion.

I have a positive report to give on our admissions projections and activities. On the undergraduate side of the ledger, Dean Stieffel and the admissions staff have done extraordinary work in assembling the class of 2005. Our freshman application pool increased over last year by over 550 applications for a total of 3,419 undergraduate applications. As of the end of last week, we expect 880 traditional freshmen to begin the semester. While there will be some who do not show, current numbers make this the largest freshman class ever. They are certainly the most academically qualified we have seen, with an average GPA of 3.63, an average SAT combined score of 1215 which is comfortably above the average score of 1019 for the national college-bound population, and an ACT combined score of 26 compared with a national average of 21. The overall ethnic minority percentage of the new first-year class is 27.6% with African-American and Hispanic American students representing 7.5% and 12.8% respectively. The class of 2005 represents 41 states, plus Puerto Rico and 17 countries; 57.4% are from out of state, 42.6% are from Louisiana of which 32% represent metropolitan New Orleans. If you track these percentages, let me note that early analyses suggest that the 1.6% decline in ethnic minorities is connected to the 6.7% shift we experienced between in-state and out-of-state confirmed enrollments. I give my congratulations to Dean Stieffel and her staff for their superb work; I also congratulate all of you who participated in the recruitment effort in one way or another—telephone calls, letters and other outreaches—through the course of the year.

The Law School began its orientation activities last week with 312 first-year law students whose statistics parallel last year’s average LSAT of 151 and GPA of 3.02. This is an exceptionally large class for us; Dean Klebba has noted that many law schools of our size have experienced the same phenomenon, probably connected to a slowdown in the economy. I congratulate Assistant Dean Michele Allison-Davis and all those who participated in recruitment of the Law School first-year class.

With these large new student enrollments, I need to make a cautionary note about revenue expectations and budgets. With a larger than projected freshman class coming in, whatever the final official number, we need to remember that freshmen tuition is the most highly discounted tuition revenue stream, although it seems we have managed to lower the discount rate this year. The full picture of supplemental academic and residential expenses associated with the larger class will not be complete for several weeks. We also need to see what our retention rate of returning students will be and the particular blend of students who return. The revenues brought by undergraduate students will not completely clear until we have our official enrollment count in September. Law School funding is governed by an arrangement that has been in place for several years. So we need to wait until the whole picture is visible. Once we have a clear picture of our revenue and expense projections, I will review them with the Cabinet; we will decide on any appropriate budget adjustments, if any, after those discussions.

The very positive application and enrollment numbers we heard a few minutes ago speak for themselves, especially to those of us who were here in 1996 when an enrollment shortfall gave us a jolt in institutional confidence. You may not know that we received two awards this summer for our campus-wide initiative called "It Takes a Campus to Graduate a Student" and for the resulting improvements in our persistence and retention rates. I believe it is important to take a few minutes to review where we stand with our current strategic plan for enrollment and retention. Calling it a strategic plan may be somewhat overstated: it really was a series of three logical steps we have followed in a logical progression. The first logical step we took was to review and substantially change our recruitment and enrollment strategies. In this step, we purchased and implemented an information and data tracking system that helped us in managing our prospective applicant pool. We introduced predictive modeling to focus our recruitment resources on students most likely to enroll and persist. We developed a consistent and comprehensive approach to merit and need-based financial aid, which included incorporating a leverage-based approach. These changes involved a lot of education on all levels, from the Board of Trustees down. The second logical step was to focus on student success and retention. You will remember the large task force we used in this step, with 120 task force members divided into 10 working groups. I believe that, for all of us, the greatest insight of this step was that retention was not a goal but a direct outcome of the quality of student life and learning. This step is still unfolding as we continue to enhance student life and learning. I will say more about this later when we discuss new initiatives starting this year. The third logical step was the development of our new integrated marketing and communications plan which, as I will explain later, we will implement this year.

In this context, I salute you all—faculty and staff alike—for the tremendous amount of meaningful change you have devised, digested and implemented over the last five years. I cannot imagine any other campus community accomplishing what you have done. I am proud of what we have done, working together to improve the quality of our students’ learning and living experience. And I encourage you to keep pressing ahead this year.

Let me update you on the current status of initiatives we undertook last year. The Ad Hoc Faculty Salary Study Committee met with our consultants, Klemm Analytical Group, after commencement in May to review a very preliminary draft of the final report. We received the final draft of the Klemm Report late last week, and will begin discussing it within the next week. Our goal is to have recommendations for a faculty salary strategy in place in time for inclusion in the first version of the 2001-02 budget that will be presented to the Board of Trustees in November.

The elected representatives of the search committee for our new Provost and Academic Vice President met with me in late May. The group elected Dian Tooley and Bill Barnett co-chairs. At this time, we have a draft version of a protocol, adapted from other searches we have had in the recent past, draft letters soliciting nominations, draft advertisements and targeted publications for advertisement in place. I am confident we will have this search up and running within a short time. I am excited to get it underway.

The Law School Dean Search Committee will restart its process in the near future. I hope that we can successfully complete that search during the current academic year. Not having a Provost and Academic Vice President in place, however, may complicate that search. Hopefully getting the Provost search underway as quickly as possible will help in the law school search.

We made a number of decisions over the summer to begin implementation of our Integrated Marketing and Communications Plan. You will remember that the plan was formulated last year after many months of research that included students, faculty and staff as well as alumni, prospective parents and students and local business and civic leaders. Approved in May by the Cabinet, the University Planning Team and the Board of Trustees, the focus of the plan is to promote Loyola’s strengths through consistent messages delivered first locally and then to larger regions. The heart of the plan is to promote our three vivid, distinguishing descriptions: "academic excellence," "ideal size" and "rich Jesuit tradition." Today you may have noticed the new banners going up on St. Charles Avenue in front of both campuses: they are the kick-off of our implementation. A second piece will begin in September, at the picnic following the Mass of the Holy Spirit. This effort, named "Proud to be Part of the Pack," is a student-driven, grassroots internal pride campaign. A student committee, headed by student Derika Legg and with direction from communications professor Teri Henley, has been meeting over the summer to plan activities and events. Having seen some of what they have planned, I am excited to get it started. You will also notice a redesign of our web page, incorporating a new look, the new vivid descriptors and easier navigation. Be sure to notice a revision to the presentation of the university calendar in which you can more easily check university events. I think it will be a help to us all.

Last Spring, we began discussions about a renovation and construction project that would renew the east-west axis of our main campus. Over the summer, the faculty of City College began discussing the physical needs of their departments. I look forward to continuing this process with an architect during the Fall semester, hopefully moving us to the discussion of a full schematic design that will support their academic curriculum and that can be constructed on top of the Monroe Science Building. I plan to begin the same process with the Monroe Science Building residents during the Fall semester.

The plans for the renovation of the old library as a Visual Arts and Performing Arts center have continued over the summer. Schematic design is complete, and design development is underway. If we are able to continue at the present rate, we should have construction documents in hand by the end of the Spring semester. I expect after Labor Day to have perspective renderings in hand: I will share them with you when they arrive. This has been an exciting project, and I thank the members of the Visual Arts and Performing Arts Departments for their hours of long review and suggestions over the summer months.

We will return to the question of the design of the Peace Quad, Academic Quad and Horseshoe area again this year. The Buildings and Grounds Committee has requested that we have a competition among three nationally known large-project landscape architects. The architect selection committee will include faculty, staff and student members.

Some other initiatives begun last Spring were also completed over the summer months. The reorganization of our purchasing and accounts payable systems will provide the university community with a "one stop shopping" approach in that check requests, budget transfers and invoices are now all handled in one office. The changes in purchasing procedures will provide more information and better service to the university community and improve the timeliness of payments.

Dr. Voigt and the UPT steering committee have also made changes to the UPT calendar, reducing the number of meetings to two each semester. In the end, I hope this change will move us away from the amount of time given to hearing long reports and focus us on meaningful and significant conversation during the meeting sessions.

We also welcomed Dr. Carol Jeandron and Mr. Matthew Kwasiborski aboard this month, Dr. Jeandron as our new director of Service-Learning and Matt Kwasiborski as coordinator of a pilot collaboration with Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the local public schools. I am sure that both of them will be providing information in the next few weeks about these important additions to our campus and the opportunities they will provide.

With these comments on initiatives, let me update you on current campus projects. The installation of the new boiler is almost complete. When it goes on line in the near future, replacing our 35 and 45 year-old boilers, we will have state-of-the-art efficiency in the use of natural resources and the capacity to accommodate our prospective new buildings and renovation projects.

Our Informational Technology group has introduced a number of improvements over the summer months. There is a wireless LAN (local area network) in the Business School, a refreshed Computer Science Lab in Monroe, and there will be two new electronic classrooms coming on line soon. You can dial '3600' for on-campus telephone numbers and let your computer pal dial for you. In addition to LORA, the Web for students, we now have eCommerce so students can conduct all of their student finance business via the WEB.

In another area, you will remember that we opened the ACE Center (Center for Academic Excellence) more than a year ago in response to the recommendation of the Task Force on Student Success and Retention. I encourage those of you working with undergraduates to familiarize yourself with the tutoring and different services the Center offers. Please help your students succeed by facilitating their use of this important resource on campus.

There are three major new initiatives planned for this year—a new academic affairs strategic planning initiative, a President's Task Force on Multicultural and Intercultural Education, and a series of benefit focus groups—that I want to introduce this afternoon. I am enthused to get them underway, and I think you will be too.

As we discussed earlier in this report, over the past five years, Loyola has been transformed, both structurally and organizationally. As an institution, we have proven that we can join forces, meet our challenges and aspire to greater heights. We have established a firm foundation on which to build for the next decade.

We are currently in an enviable position with a stable enrollment, a revitalized campus, a talented, faculty and staff and an outstanding student body. More than ever, we are being recognized nationally for many of our accomplishments, which has been our overarching strategic goal from the beginning. Having a national reputation of pre-eminence is more than a desirable goal: it is a necessity in order for us to survive in the increasingly competitive arena of higher education. The environmental challenges, varying demographics, economic uncertainty and the changing nature of higher education itself, do not permit us to be complacent. We have come far, and we must continue to be proactive in our planning for the future. Our predictive modeling and leverage-based approach to financial aid have enabled us to capture impressive undergraduate classes during a time when the college age cohort has been increasing. The age cohort begins to decline in 2007: by then, we have to have achieved firm national recognition to maintain the growth numbers and caliber of students we have experienced in recent years.

To continue to move us proactively toward that goal, the Division of Academic Affairs, under Dr. Voigt’s leadership, is embarking on an exciting strategic planning initiative. It will represent an integrated approach, building on the strategic planning done by each college as well as other key offices in the Division. In addition, specific goals in the areas of faculty and student development, curricular initiatives, advising, student recruitment, fund raising, institutional advancement, and a variety of other areas will be incorporated.

Although planning occurs in all areas of our institution, this plan suggests a change to a more collaborative and focused approach. Recognizing the rising expectations of students, and the increased demand on faculty, we need to develop a university wide infrastructure to support faculty teaching, scholarship and service to best serve our students. This initiative represents a paradigm shift toward an innovative learner-centered model of excellence, which is appropriate for a comprehensive institution of our character and mission.

I invite all of you to be involved in this planning process. Over the next year, there will be many exciting opportunities for you to participate in planning discussions, focus groups, workshops and town meetings. Pursuing this bold initiative at this particular time says something very positive about our Loyola community. Together we can make a difference to firmly establish Loyola as a national, pre-eminent, comprehensive, university into the next century. Dr. Voigt and the deans will be disseminating more information on this initiative in the very near future.

The second initiative is the appointment of a President’s Task Force on Multicultural and Intercultural Education. This is an area that the Division of Student Affairs Race Relations Task Force discussed at length last year; it is an area we have visited from several different angles over the last three years, twice regrettably in relation to insensitive incidents that occurred on campus; it is an area that I have discussed with many individual faculty, staff and students. In a proactive and focused manner, we need to take on the question of what we need to do in this area as a campus community. I will be providing more information on this task force in the coming weeks.

The third initiative that will begin in approximately two weeks is to take a fresh look at our fringe benefits and to develop a longer-term strategy. To this end, our new benefits consultant, Buck Associates, will conduct focus groups—three for randomly selected faculty members, and three for randomly selected staff members—invited to discuss our benefit plans and how they are communicated. I hope this initiative will enable you and the university to realize best value from the sizeable investment you and the university make in this area every year.

The final area I want to touch on is Institutional Advancement. I am pleased to report that Institutional Advancement raised over $8 million for the third consecutive year, which is a record. (Actually, if you include government relations, the total is over $9.6 million.) The Annual Fund hit a new high of 6,326 donors and raised a total of $1,151,830. The 2001 Faculty/Staff campaign raised $61,329 with 444 gifts. This is a 16% increase in number of faculty/staff donors and a 26% increase in dollars raised. We also received matching funds totaling $920,000 from the Board of Regents to match funds we have raised for two endowed chairs (Gaston Chair in the College of Business and Mullahy Chair in the College of Arts and Sciences) and three professorships.

In pursuit of our integrated marketing and communications plan, a marketing committee has been set up in the School of Law and has been meeting in recent months to address specific law school student concerns and to develop ways to enhance the school's national reputation.

The Office of Public Affairs is planning media workshops for faculty to assist in placing them as media spokespersons. The staff will also continue work to increase national media exposure. We are investigating possible image advertising displays at the New Orleans airport to run next January through June. These ads would target almost 800,000 travelers monthly coming here for Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, and bowl games, as well as Loyola events such as commencement, parents weekend, and the President's Open House.

In conclusion, I believe we had an excellent year last year and am looking ahead to another excellent academic year. It will be a busy year as we continue to press forward in a proactive manner. We have shown that we can work well together, and closely at that, to bring Loyola nearer to its tremendous potential as a Jesuit, Catholic University. I am proud of what we have accomplished working together and pray that we will continue with strong resolve. If we do, I am confident we will achieve the vision of greatness to which we all aspire.

Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is open for questions and discussion.