Kansas University Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little unveiled new initiatives designed to help recruit and retain students in her State of the University speech Thursday.

One such initiative would change the way KU allocates its scholarships and would aim to create more four-year scholarships designed to recruit talented students.

“Scholarships are one of our best tools for recruiting outstanding students,” Gray-Little said. “But for too long many scholarships have been reserved for students who are already at KU.”

After the speech, she acknowledged that a shift in the way KU would allocate its scholarship funds would be “a huge change,” and that many other universities have been able to compete successfully with KU for students because the university didn’t have as many scholarships for new students.

She, like other KU leaders in recent months, also mentioned that KU is lagging behind its peers in the prestigious Association of American Universities.

“I do not believe that these deficiencies reflect a decline in quality at KU, but rather the more rapid pace of advancement at comparable universities,” Gray-Little said.

Still, regardless of the reason, she said that KU had work to do, and that change was under way.

She mentioned other ongoing initiatives, including efforts to update KU’s general education requirements, to create a new system to measure faculty research output and to raise funds for KU’s ongoing capital campaign.

The university’s ongoing strategic planning, she said, will continue to generate new initiatives for KU’s future as the process unfolds.

Perhaps in a nod to a Republican-dominated state government, she detailed how many KU academic programs — including those in the liberal arts — contributed to the state’s economy.

Graduates entering an ever-changing world will need to lean on the knowledge of history, culture and knowledge of human thought and behavior to succeed, she said.

She briefly referenced the challenges faced by the athletics department in the past year and said that they were felt throughout the university.

“Over the past few months, we have put those difficulties behind us,” she said, adding that she was pleased to welcome new Athletic Director Sheahon Zenger to KU and praised his dedication to integrity.

Gray-Little was interrupted by applause only once in her speech, when she referenced a budget proposal unveiled by the Kansas Senate Ways and Means Committee that differed from a House committee proposal that would have cut state employees’ salaries by 7.5 percent for the last six periods of the fiscal year.

Still, she said, faculty and staff faced the prospect of a third consecutive year without merit pay increases.

She said the university understands that Kansas continues to face a budget crisis but stressed that higher education has public benefits and that the future of the state is tied to the future of its universities.

“The educated workers of tomorrow are KU students today,” she said.