Despite it being his last year as president of the university, Dr. Keith McFarland issued four challenges to the faculty and staff, reiterating his promise to be “sprinting to the finish line.”
McFarland said the areas of concern were undergraduate retention, recruitment, student behavior and search procedures for faculty and staff.
The issue that drew the largest response from those attending was student behavior.
“Just a few years ago I would not have ever believed that I would standing here in front of the faculty talking about the lack of civility and the uncivil behavior that has taken place by some of our students here on this campus,” he said.
He then referenced letters and columns in the campus newspaper last spring that discussed the lack of courtesy among students and how it affected learning in the classrooms.
“That is not acceptable behavior in a college classroom, and the faculty is going to have to deal with that. You owe it to the students in your class that come here and pay their hard-earned money to have a class that’s orderly for learning to take place,” McFarland said.
He continued by saying students who disrupt classes would not be tolerated and teachers had the “obligation to throw them out.”
When he added that it was up to the teachers if disruptive students were allowed to return, the audience gathered in social sciences building auditorium responded with a thunderous applause.
He began his address by speaking about freshman retention, noting its use by the state legislature as an indicator of a university’s success.
Referring to a large projection of a PowerPoint slide on the screen behind him, McFarland said that in 2004 the school retained 65.2 percent of freshmen as returning sophomores. By 2006, the figure had dropped to 61.2 percent.
“Think of it this way: later today, we’re going to have the Pride Walk. We’re going to have all the first-time, full-time freshman coming through. If we stay at the rate where we have been for the last year, that means for every 100 of those students that go walking by you, 39 will not be back next year,” he said.
After noting the non-returning students included good academic performers and not just those with poor grades, he told faculty members to get to know their students and know what they – and the university – could do to help the students return.
McFarland also spoke about recruiting students for the university, pointing out freshman enrollment had risen by three students from 2004 to 2006. He said he was anxious to see how funding initiatives for certain departments had affected enrollment numbers, which would be finalized in about a month.
The final topic dealt with a new centralized system of keeping records involved in searches for new university faculty.
“These have been challenges in the past. They are challenges now, and they will continue to be, I think, in the future,” McFarland said.