KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little

Kansas University Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little recently sat down with the Journal-World to talk about KU’s progress last year and goals for the upcoming academic year. Here’s what we asked her.

What were KU’s biggest achievements over the past year?

There were many, the chancellor said. Here are five:

• Enrollment: Many of KU’s achievements were milestones tied to longer-term initiatives. Enrollment is one. Last year marked the third year in a row enrollment went up after several previous years of decline, Gray-Little said.
• Student awards: 2014-2015 was a “banner year” for students getting national and international awards, Gray-Little said. One of the more unique notifications involved the chancellor calling Kyrgyzstan via Skype to personally tell junior Ashlie Koehn, who was studying there, that she’d been named a 2015 Harry S. Truman Scholar and could receive up to $30,000 for graduate study.
• Salina medical school: The KU Medical School campus in Salina graduated its first class of students — eight. The smallest four-year medical education site in the country, it’s aimed at students looking to practice in rural areas. Gray-Little said the next five or six years will reveal whether the initiative is working and graduates are indeed staying in rural areas.
• Foundation professors: As of this summer KU had hired nine of a goal of 12 Foundation Distinguished Professors.
• APLU designation: In June, KU was named to the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities 2015 class of Innovation and Economic Prosperity Universities, an honor for universities deemed to be making an economic impact.

How important is private funding becoming to KU?

KU Endowment meeting the $1.2 billion fundraising goal for its Far Above campaign, which will continue into 2016, was another key achievement of the 2014-2015 school year, Gray-Little said.

State funding has not been “as strong as it has in the past,” she said. Although she does not want to see private giving become a substitute for state funding, she said, donations are important to KU.

Among other things, they’re helping construct new buildings and fund scholarships.

“Donors allow us to do things we couldn’t do otherwise, or allow students to come here who otherwise couldn’t,” Gray-Little said.

Inclusion became an emotional issue for students and faculty on campus last year, following events in Ferguson, Mo. What’s going on at the administrative level to support underrepresented groups at KU?

This fall KU will conduct a comprehensive climate survey — the first in many years, if not ever — to gauge student, faculty and staff concerns on campus. Answers will advise potential efforts at the administrative level, Gray-Little said.

“I don’t want us to do anything for the sake of show,” she said. “I want us to do things that actually make a difference.”

Regarding faculty, KU has changed its hiring process to bring in a larger candidate pool and thus, more diverse finalists and hires. The initiative is called Hiring for Excellence.

Campus sexual assault also spurred student protests and action last year, at KU and nationwide. What is KU doing to address it?

Gray-Little said her staff plans to respond this fall to recommendations put forth in May by the KU Sexual Assault Task Force, which she formed in fall 2014.

Over the summer, Sara Rosen, senior vice provost for academic affairs, and Tammara Durham, vice provost for student affairs, are taking the lead in evaluating the task force’s recommendations.

Gray-Little said KU already has taken some actions including updating its student code, creating an advocate position, adding staff in the Office of Institutional Opportunity and Access to help investigate cases and signing memorandums of understanding with the Lawrence Police Department and local victim advocacy groups.

What are your top goals for the coming school year?

Improve retention and graduation rates, with help from “predictive analytics,” which involves identifying students’ backgrounds and accomplishments before they even get to campus in order to help them succeed.

KU also will continue to redesign more courses. That includes increasing “flipped” classes — where students review lecture material at home, then discuss and take on related problems in class — and “blended” classes — where some coursework is completed online and some in-person.

Another key goal is preparing KU Medical Center for a Comprehensive Cancer Center designation from the National Institutes of Health, the application for which is hoped to be filed in 2016. The designation is a step higher than the National Cancer Institute designation KU received in 2012.

What do you see as KU’s biggest challenge this year?

Understanding public opinion about higher education, regionally and across the country, and better advocating for it.

Study after study shows economic benefits to individuals, regions and the whole country, Gray-Little said, yet funding higher education at the level it has been in the past has been a challenge, including student and faculty research.

“To think that it’s too costly is short-term thinking,” the chancellor said.