RETREAT AGENDA
September 17, 2007
Boca Raton Campus – Live Oak Pavilion
3 -5 pm President’s Vision
Took some notes today at the meeting. These notes are from Brogan's long "President's Vision" speech, entitled "FAU 2017: Crest of The Wave". I may paraphrase a little bit since I don't write in shorthand.
Brogan started out by reiterating that he was simply putting ideas out there not for voting (he said this several times) but simply as suggestions to guide strategic planning for the future. "In 2017 we as administrators may not be here," he said, "But we'll still need to lay the groundwork so the people who are here in 2017 can carry on and push FAU forward."
He launched out of the gate giving a comparison of FAU to UCF. He picked UCF because they too went from being "almost exclusively a commuter school" to being "a school that people are flooding into." He said that since they started their "traditional campus" initiative almost 10 years before us, they are ahead of us in some terms (entering GPA, football stadium) but it's advantageous for us because now we can see what works for them and how they paid for it.
Let's start off with Athletics since that's the main focus of this board. In 2017, Brogan would like to see some of the stuff we already know about: Convocation Center (he quoted 7k to 10k seat capacity, for not only basketball but concerts, graduation etc), Basbeball stadium ("new or renovated"), the 30k seat football stadium (more on that later), a "tennis complex" (whatever that entails) and a marching band that is 250 members strong. He added, "USF will be bringing their entire, 250-person band here to Lockhart on October 6th so everyone on the Board can get a taste of what it will be like at FAU in 2017 ...and hopefully sooner."
He wants to see that every single one of our 18 collegiate sports have competed at least once in post-season conference play.
He also wants to see not only the Phase 2 of the upcoming Rec Center be completed, but also the completion of Rec Centers and Student Unions in Jupiter and the Treasure Coast.
I'm a little fuzzy on why we committed to making Boca the traditional campus and then are talking about building traditional campus fixtures on the non-traditional, "strictly commuter by BOT designation" campuses like Treasure Coast. I mean, it's great for them but that's money that could be spent to make Boca a bigger, better place and THAT is what they decided to do. Sorry, tangent.
I got a glimpse of what I thought was a conceptual drawing for the FAU stadium. It looked like this
foundation.ucf.edu/Assets/Images/stadium%20rengering.jpgbut obviously without the UCF stuff. In fact, I think it WAS just a conceptual shot from UCF because I was told later that the stadium will indeed by 30k seats and be in a horseshoe shape. This is not surprising, I think, to anyone on this board. I was told there would be some sort of big owl on it. Not sure how that will be integrated just yet but there may be something that allows students to walk into the stadium under a giant owl (probably the one with its wings spread).
Getting ahead of myself, but at the end Brogan showed a small clip of people talking about why they chose FAU in 2017. A futuristic survey, as it were. Several of the voice actors talked about the stadium, living in the dorms near the stadium, shopping near the stadium, etc. So it was selling the image of the stadium as a wise move from 7 years ago.
Other tidbits:
- FAU doesn't want to be a 45k student school ala UCF/UF/FSU but prefers to be a 30k student school with high standards... like a liberal arts college (for lack of a better comparison)
- However, FAU will still be dedicated to "ensuring access to higher education" and how that conflicts with a rise in quality is yet to play out.
- They want to have 1300-1400 Faculty; faculty will be in the top quartile of nationwide salaries; faculty will hopefully have housing; eventually have 36 eminent scholars (we have 18), "over a dozen" national academy members (we currently have 2), and 1000 graduate faculty members in our upcoming "Graduate College" (which will have its own faculty and is, from what it sounds like, close to being a reality)
- 175,000 alumni ("we have 103k now")
Incoming GPA now: 3.0 - 3.6
Incoming GPA in 2017: 3.4 - 3.6
Incoming SAT now: 980-1130
Incoming SAT in 2017: 1150-1250
Incoming ACT now: 19-23
Incoming ACT in 2017: 23-27
- "We're not talking about jumping up in two years... this is ten years. And it may be higher than this. The main point is that over time, we increase our enrollment standard." Again pointed to UCF and showed how amenities like the stadium drive up GPA's and SAT's of applicants.
- Brogan also talked about increasing our rankings, although he did start by saying that the U.S. News and World Report rankings were "rather controversial in many circles of academia" but "interestingly, we find that fourth tier schools are the ones most likely to decry the usefulness of the rankings while tier 1 schools consider the rankings to be the next best thing to oxygen." However, "people do hold these up and wave them in the air so we need to consider them."
That being said, by 2017 FAU wants to be
- a "Tier 1" school by U.S. News standard
- a "Top American Research University" by Center for Measuring University Performance
- National Leader in age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, etc
- Top 50 Life Science college
- Top 25 Public Affairs college
- Even better Architecture school... it's already very selective and they want to expand it (adding a M.S. in Architecture as well)
- a leader in Everglades Restoration
- Top 5 in country, 1st in Florida for: Marine Science, Engineering
He also wants to get to $200 million in research dollars (they're at $91.8 million), have 25+ business spin-offs, increase Honors societies on-campus by 50%, and increase the Honors Summer Institute Porgram in Jupiter. It's a program that brings in talented high schoolers to live for multiple weeks in the Jupiter dorms and do Honors college work and work with professors there.
Apparently it's been enormously successful at attracting top students: our average incoming GPA for this year's Honors college class was 3.95 with an SAT of 1285.
I think that's about it. Stadium stuff tomorrow if I get to go.
