By Ellen Chaffee 

It always happens, no matter what you do. After a president announces plans to leave, her pronouncements sound a little quacky to others due to the lame duck effect. Then a new president arrives, often with very little knowledge of the institution, community, or state. No North Dakota presidential search in the last two years has attracted any applicants with presidential experience – at UND only one even had vice-presidential experience. So new presidents have a learning curve both locally and functionally. The minimum time lapse for these two processes to lead to full presidential leadership is two years. To help the university continue its progress through those two years and beyond, VCSU has adopted a grassroots Growth Plan for 2008-2010. University personnel developed this plan through countless strategy sessions during fall semester and we reviewed it together at a town hall meeting. Each goal has a leadership group, a timeline, and an expected result. The multi-constituency University Council will receive monthly progress reports, and periodic re-evaluations will lead to any needed changes. The six goal areas are academic growth; marketing, promotion, and recruiting; athletic growth; scholarships; technology; and other possible options. The plan should generate a minimum of 65 more students in fall 2008, a minimum of 72 more in fall 2009, and a minimum of 280 more by fall 2012. Achieving these enrollment goals will dramatically impact not only the university’s financial condition but also the university’s impact on the community and region. The two areas projected to have the greatest growth are the graduate program and the athletic program. The graduate program is 100% online, so those students will seldom be in Valley City. Currently we have 96 graduate students, mostly from North Dakota but some from as far away as Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. The athletic program has tremendous growth potential, but achieving it requires unprecedented commitment from a wide range of supporters. The university’s athletic facilities are fully utilized now. We do not have space to add participants to current sports, let alone to add new sports. The proposed remedy is the emerging university-community 8th Avenue Project for significant improvements in the athletic complex. In addition, we need to fund more scholarships and coaching positions. If all of this proceeds at the most rapid possible pace, the athletic initiative will add five new men’s and women’s sports and over 280 new on-campus students. To give a touch of reality to that projection, consider this: the state of Florida expects to turn away over 60,000 new college students next year because they have too many young people and not enough capacity. We have been very successful in attracting student athletes from Florida and we have many enthusiastic alumni coaching there. It is entirely reasonable to expect great growth from the athletic expansion plan, and doing so is critical to maintaining the traditional on-campus enrollments we all value. As they say on TV, “But wait! There’s more!” Tune in again next time.