In just a few short weeks, we will welcome students and faculty for the start of the Fall 2024-25 academic year. I find the beginning of the fall semester to be one of the most energizing and active times on a college campus, and I look forward to the bustle and excitement on the horizon. However, this summer has been an eventful period as well, with faculty and staff working hard to advance major university initiatives under the institution’s strategic plan. In this short video, I offer an update on the progress that has occurred during the break and give a forward look toward the upcoming academic year.

I would like to offer my deepest appreciation and gratitude to the many individuals who have been hard at work this summer and to the entire campus community for the ongoing and outstanding work in progress at this university. Over the past few years, East Tennessee State University has celebrated numerous historic milestones ranging from welcoming the largest first-year class ever to providing the largest pay raises in the institution’s modern history, from launching new and cutting-edge programs to expanding our research portfolio. Thank you — truly, thank you. I look forward to continuing this momentum in the semesters to come.




Video Transcript

Dr. Brian Noland:

Greetings from the campus of East Tennessee State University. I'm Brian Noland, and I have the honor to serve as president of the institution and it's my distinct privilege today to provide updates on a number of major initiatives that are underway across the campus this summer as we prepare for the start of the fall semester. At our spring meeting of the Board of Trustees, I provided an update to the board on the impact of changes at the federal level to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, a form otherwise known as the FAFSA. As many of you are aware, this past year the federal government made changes to that form and as a result, hundreds of thousands of fewer students across the nation completed the FAFSA than in the year prior. The impact of that on institutions has been significant. In fact, over the summer a number of universities closed, closed their doors because of declines in enrollment. Some of that enrollment was predicated on the decline seen through the FAFSA, but that's not the case here at ETSU. I want to thank Dr. Heather Levesque and her team in the Office of Admissions for the work that they've done to outreach to students and families across the state in a direct and purposeful manner, and as we look at our enrollment projections for the fall, we're on track to have a freshman class of approximately 2,100 students.

Our overall enrollment will be north of 14,000 students. We'll have the largest number of students in the history of the university living in residence halls with more than 3,400 students in residence halls from Luntsford to Buc Ridge, and as we prepare for Preview, this will be one of the largest Preview classes in the history of the institution as the number of students who have registered for Preview is up 300 over our three-year average. But I want to drill in on strategic initiatives which I referenced in my opening comments. We spent a lot of time as a campus over the course of the past 18 months looking at the structural orientation of our academic programs, and our board at the May meeting approved the final recommendations that were brought forward by the shared governance team that examined structure during that time period. And over the summer we've been working with teams of faculty and staff as we've moved academic programs, changed the names of colleges, and built the organizations that will purposefully lead the institution in the years to come. Organizations such as the new College of Health Sciences, organizations such as the schools that will be embedded in colleges like Arts and Sciences and the STEM school, and there's a lot of work that has been led by a shared governance committee chaired by Dr. Rob Pack. And if you want to learn more about this Work, please visit the website for the academic structure initiative.

The next item that I would like to provide an update on is our transition from our Banner ERP to a new Oracle-based ERP system. This is our Voyager initiative, an initiative led by Dr. Karen King, Lori Erickson, and Christy Graham. For the better part of two Years, teams across those three divisions have worked tirelessly to move the institution into a new cloud-based ERP system. I'm excited about the work that is underway here and the future that it holds for the institution, but we wanted to make sure that the system was built properly. So prior to going live, which was originally scheduled for July 1, we brought in a third-party consultant to give us a go-live readiness assessment. If you have a loved one who's going in for Surgery, you're quite often going to get a second opinion before you undergo that operation, and we wanted to do likewise here to make sure that we were ready from a systems integration perspective, from a structural integrity perspective, to go live because the system that we're building is not only going to serve the needs of the campus today, it's going to serve the needs of the campus for the next 20 years. I anticipate having the results of that assessment in July. We'll take those results, take the information gained as a result therein, potentially make adjustments to the system, and then move forward. But we have paused the implementation to ensure that we get it right rather than getting it fast. One of the items that is integrated within Voyager is changes to our class and comp structure, changes to our class and comp structure that have been impacted by changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

At the board meeting in May, we mentioned the number of individuals who could be impacted by potential changes that were being prescribed by the federal government in this space. Over the course of the summer, more than 40 employees received critical salary enhancements as a result of our efforts to ensure that we remained in compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act. And as we look towards the second round of changes that may occur in January of ’25, we're preparing this in a way that is holistically embedded with adjustments to our classification and compensation structure. Class and comp are major items of concern at this institution, but they're also major opportunities. A chance for us to recognize staff excellence, a chance for us to recognize innovation that's occurring across the campus, and a chance for us to modernize the system that defines job families, that defines classification, and that defines compensation. Just like our Banner ERP system is several decades old, our class and compensation system is several decades old. But the operations of the university have changed significantly from the time that we were in the board system to now with the Board of Trustees. So as we move through the fall, Lori Erickson and her team will work in a coordinated manner to ensure that we transition from our current system to a new system and that those changes are built into Voyager. We'd pause some of this work to ensure that we were ready with the Voyager implementation, but now that we know that that's going to be delayed, we can no longer delay this work. So please pay attention as we move through the fall to updates that will come from Lori and her team as we move to build a new classification and compensation system for the university. 

And what is that driven toward? Salary and investments in our people. As we look to the start of the fall semester, I'm proud of the fact that our budgets are balanced, our enrollment strong, and the financial position of the institution is solid. As a result, we're going to make sustained and pronounced investments in salary for our faculty and staff. And we're going to do so in a two-phased approach. We'll implement a 3% across-the-board salary enhancement with appropriate floors and ceilings for all employees, but we'll also create a supplemental pool of salary resources that will be used to implement the new classification and compensation system, as well as support changes that are required by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The details around this will be worked through in the fall, but the takeaway for our faculty and staff is that the university is going to invest in you and those investments have the potential to be the largest investments in faculty and staff salaries in the history of the university. 

But we're not only investing in our people, we're investing in our facilities. I took this picture the other day. It's a picture of the center of campus where the humanities building is rising from what was the Campus Center Building. And we're not only making investments in the humanities building, we're preparing a new space in downtown Johnson City for biology faculty, students, and others as we begin the renovations of Brown Hall. The Burleson Hall renovations are well underway and that building will reopen in the spring. The university common space is moving towards completion and we anticipate being able to cut the ribbon on that space in the fall semester. But what makes all of this possible is the institution's budget. Our budget's balanced, our budget’s sound, we have resources in reserve. And much of that's because of the work of a series of shared governance committees that have guided the budgetary implementation of our budget model for the better part of the past decade.

Our budget model at the institution has made change possible. A decade ago, we had less than 10 million dollars in reserves. Now we have an ample “rainy day” fund. A decade ago, we were as an institution in some respects stale in the facilities infrastructure and now we have new buildings across campus. Our campus is very different now than it was when the original budget model was constructed. So a team of faculty and staff have been working throughout the summer to make changes to that budget model, recognizing that the structure of the institution has changed. Those enhancements fall into three key areas. First, ensuring that as we move through academic structure and the implementation of that report, that budgets are aligned properly within colleges and departments. The second is close out the fiscal year and to ensure that fallout flows within the existing structures of the budget model. But the third is to look for opportunities across the institution for we as a campus to invest in salaries. So in the months to come as we move through the fall Semester, you're going to hear a lot about changes to the budget model. But these are changes directed towards creating resources to invest in our people.

Because as we move through the years to come our first and foremost priority is to make resources available to run through the model that enhance faculty and staff salaries at the institution. And why? Because that's who we are. We're an institution where people come first and are treated with dignity and respect. We're an institution that serves first-generation students. We're an institution that serves the people of this region. I've had the distinct honor to serve as president of this institution for more than a decade. But I can tell you I've never been more excited for the start of a fall semester than I am for this fall. Why? Because look at what we've accomplished as a university. We're an institution where budgets are balanced, our enrollment is strong, our housing is at full capacity, we're investing in people. We're doing all the right things, all the right ways. Why? Because of you.

Look what we did over the past year. New gen ed curricula, new academic structure. We move things that at other institutions would be points of controversy. But what were they here? Points of bringing the university together with a focus. A focus on our mission to improve the quality of life for the people of this region. This is a special place, but it's special because of the people who call it home. I'm excited as we move into the year to make investments in faculty and staff salaries. I'm excited as we move into the year to focus on student success. But I'm excited most of all by the energy, the life, and the vitality that defines this institution in this community every August when we welcome people back to campus. I can't wait for that moment to get here and I thank you, I thank you, I thank you for all that you're going to do for this institution in the fall. Godspeed to each of you and go Bucs. 

 

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East Tennessee State University was founded in 1911 with a singular mission: to improve the quality of life for people in the region and beyond. Through its world-class health sciences programs and interprofessional approach to health care education, ETSU is a highly respected leader in rural health research and practices. The university also boasts nationally ranked programs in the arts, technology, computing, and media studies. ETSU serves approximately 14,000 students each year and is ranked among the top 10 percent of colleges in the nation for students graduating with the least amount of debt.

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