Quote:
Originally Posted by atlanta68
I hope each of you has the chance to meet Dr. Mohler and hear him speak. He is very approachable and has a very clear vision of what UA should do and become to serve not just Alabama, but the nation. He asked us for help in implementing his vision.
Here are the main points of his brief talk:
1) UA is moving away from emphasizing enrollment size. I will come back to this as his answer to my question about selectivity was good to hear.
2) He asked for help in attracting more of Atlanta's top students. He said we need to get them back, implying UA has dropped the ball in recent years in recruitment of Atlanta area students. Too many he said are going to GA schools.
3) He wants UA to be a leader in how to use AI in an ethical manner. Before his talk I asked if UA would be working on making AI less of an imposition on communities in terms of resource consumption and he said yes, and that the university will develop IP to address such issues.
4) He wants to increase enrollment in Nursing and wants UA to graduate more teachers for K-12.
5) He wants students experiencing their field of study in the workplace before graduating.
6) He wants students across many disciplines to be able to learn to be effective leaders via the new Leadership and Policy College.
7) in the Q and A I said I assumed that UA was going to become more selective in admissions given his first statement about enrollment no longer being what alumni hear most about going forward. I suggested UA work with junior colleges and directional schools to encourage students who have proven themselves, to transfer to UA. He agreed that is a good strategy, but more importantly, that UA wants to dramatically increase graduation rates and that standardized tests help predict success and that they will be used largely to determine who needs help the most.
He said UA is now offerng FREE test prep for any applicant to UA, which indicates to me he wants to help less advantaged high school students AND he wants UA to be able to be more selective.
Later in a one on one brief discussion, I told him that I thought UA was too easy to get into and he shook his head, seemingly in agreement and reiterated what I said in the Q and A about students needing to prove themselves to transfer to UA. He brought that phrase up back up without me saying it again.
I told him that he is the transformational leader UA has needed, for which he expressed humble gratitude. Dude is legit. Please support him.
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Nice recap Atlanta. Thanks for sharing. He is coming to Huntsville/Decatur on Wednesday and I wasn't originally planning to go since I have PTO for the kids that day, but I may just make the wife go to it and me go see him. That was interesting about the Atlanta kids. Looking at the OIRA data it actually looks like we are doing well with Georgia kids and increasing every year, but maybe that was more throughout the state than the actual Atlanta area.
I would like to question him next week if I make it about the Huntsville recruitment and the larger metro areas of the state focus. We seem to be doing well in the rural areas of the state, but are getting killed in the metro areas. For example the new Alabama Cyber Science and Engineering school here in Huntsville brings the best of the best from the entire state. There is about 60 kids graduating this year. UA got 6 of them, AU got 30. Atlanta area is important, but it's not more important than the in-state recruitment in my opinion. We have to do better in that regard, and I think we are but we still need to focus more on the higher achievers in the metro areas. We are losing ground rapidly.
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