The Ohio University Board of Trustees welcomed new faces to the meetings on Thursday and Friday last week, including OU's 20th president, Roderick McDavis.
On Friday administrators proposed programs to increase diversity and freshman retention, decreasing the university's party image, health of the surrounding Athens area and research, involving both undergraduate and graduate students. Trustees discussed review dates for programs and discontinued the Center for Information Technology Education and the Center for Innovation in Technology for Learning.
Newly appointed Provost Kathy Krendl stressed focusing on freshman retention and the quality of life during the first year of college.
We need to do a better job setting expectations in both academics and socially
Krendl said.
During the update of enrollment at the start of the meeting, administrators discussed how enrollment was down by 229 students this year. Fall Quarter 2003, there were 19, 246 students on campus compared to 19,017 this year.
By emphasizing programs like the Welcome Weekend and Residential Learning Communities, Krendl said she hopes to downplay the party school image ingrained in OU's history and focus on taking academics outside of the classroom.
Krendl said she knows student behaviors do not change overnight, but she hopes educational tools like AlcoholEdu, which is required for freshman in order to register for Winter Quarter, can help change their attitudes. Ninety percent of freshman completed the survey before Labor Day.
The trustees also approved the addition of the Diabetes/Endocrine Center to the Appalachian Rural Health Institute, which will improve both students' research opportunities and extend health services to the rural community. Trustee Larry Schey said there has been a 28 percent rise in diabetes in Appalachia in recent years.
The center is the first of four health research centers the university hopes to establish. The others include mental health, pulmonary and cancer centers.
The Department of Physics and Astronomy proposed a new Astrophysical Institute including a new observatory, which will add to already increasing research opportunities for students and boost OU's prestige in the international level.
Besides these new institutes, OU plans to improve research with new and more faculty, partnerships with other universities and businesses, and larger grants.
The board also reviewed eight of the 50 OU centers and institutes, giving five of them extensions on their review period, including the 5-year-old Appalachian Rural Health Institute, and approving the continuation of the Academic Advancement Center.
Provost Krendl is researching other colleges in the nation to determine OU's peer universities and how the programs compare, instead of relying on only state universities. This will allow OU to understand how it is ranked in research, academics and faculty with universities that have a similar budget. 17
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