Now that the semester has drawn to a close, and nearly all the academic department meetings have been held, the effort undertaken by Chancellor Joe Steinmetz to create an overarching campus plan is entering Phase II.

Over the summer, three committees will convene, with the assignment of reviewing documents submitted by the academic departments and many centers highlighting strengths, challenges, opportunities and future goals. The committees will then identify and prioritize common threads. This will help shape overarching campus priorities and goal-setting for the years ahead. The deans will also undertake a similar process, reviewing the reports and making recommendations based on their  priorities.

By mid-fall, this comprehensive document will articulate our institutional priorities and needs, from which the colleges and units can then begin to map out their goals.

The three committees are focused on:

1. Teaching and learning
2. Research and discovery
3. Outreach and engagement.

The objective is that a set of goals will emerge and circulate for campus feedback in the early fall.

The following section summarizes Chancellor Steinmetz' observations from his first semester on campus:

I've spent the semester learning about the campus' strengths, challenges and desires for the future.

In terms of our strengths, I've learned that we excel in our teaching mission — our students receive a great education. All in all, this is the hardest working faculty and staff I have ever seen. There is also a great desire to do more interdisciplinary research and create signature areas of research.

There are some universal challenges faced by our colleges and faculty — notably the growth of the undergraduate student body and the lack of growth of tenure-track faculty as well as space. I would like to see more research expenditures, given our status as a Carnegie Research I institution.

Like so many colleges and universities, I would say our biggest challenge is funding — almost every problem we have stems from that.

State support for higher education has been trending downward for more than twenty years — and the recent recession has only accelerated that trend.

And, costs are rising for everything from utilities to library subscriptions, software and licensing fees, healthcare, research equipment, you name it.

Things aren't anywhere near as bad here as they are at many other state institutions across the country, but I think it can feel that way to faculty and staff, so it's absolutely critical that they be partners in determining how we're going to distribute limited resources in the face of no new funding from the state.

Thus far, the solution has been to generate revenue through enrollment growth — which generates more tuition dollars. Essentially, by growing we can reduce costs through operating on economies of scale. This solution, however, has resulted in undergraduate enrollment skewing our ratio of undergraduate to graduate students. Graduate students are important for a research university. They assist faculty in teaching and research, and are critical to our research missions.

So one of our challenges is to increase our graduate numbers.

This would be part of a much larger and much needed enrollment plan to determine how big we can get before there are no additional cost benefits to growth.

As you grow, you also increase the need for residence halls, staff, police, dining facilities, tenure-track faculty, and all the other infrastructural things you need to support your student population.

Right now, we don't know at what point the benefits of increasing the enrollment are offset by increased costs — and we need to find out, hopefully before we begin building our next freshmen class for fall 2017.

And, very importantly, we need to support better the great faculty and staff we have recruited here. This means better salaries and support for professional development.

The affordability of a U of A experience also concerns me and creating more need-based scholarships will help our overall cause to get qualified students on campus. I personally think the most important thing we can do during our current capital campaign, Campaign Arkansas, is create more need-based scholarships.

There are lots of capable, hard-working kids good enough to attend this university, but unable to afford it. I think we can get them some more help. I don't want to lose these students to our neighboring states because of better support there.

Related to this is ensuring that the University of Arkansas remain accessible, particularly to underrepresented populations and communities across the state. Not only do want to have a more diverse student population, we need to do a better job of diversifying our faculty and staff. There's much, much more I could say, but I'll stop here.

I would like to thank everyone who has participated in this process and helped educate me about the strengths, challenges, opportunities and priorities of your respective area. I greatly appreciate your hard work and insight. It will prove valuable moving forward. Have a great summer.

The committees and their members are:

Teaching and Learning

• Molly Rapert, Sam M. Walton College of Business
• Frank Jacobus, Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design
• Michael Hevel, College of Education and Health Professions
• Richard Cassady, College of Engineering
• Donna L. Graham, Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences
• Tim Zou, University Libraries
• Tim Tarvin, School of Law
• Lori Holyfield, J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences
• Valerie Hunt, Fulbright College and Graduate School and International Education 
• Luis Fernando Restrepo, Fulbright College
• Susan Slinkard, Office of Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration
• Marsha Norvell, Division of Student Affairs

Research and Discovery

• Scot Burton, Walton College
• Jennifer Webb, Fay Jones School
• Conra Gist, College of Education and Health Professions
• Paul Millet, College of Engineering
• Dan Rainey, Bumpers College
• Melody Herr, University Libraries
• Sara Gosman, School of Law
• Lynn Jacobs, Fulbright College
• Doug Rhoads, Fulbright College and Graduate School and International Education
• Julie Stenken, Fulbright College
• Chris Frala, Office of Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration
• Amy Schlesing, Division of Advancement

Outreach and Engagement

• Mark Arnold, Fulbright College and Graduate School and International Education
• David Joliffe, Fulbright College
• Patricia Herzog, Fulbright College
• Carl Smith, Fay Jones School
• Tom Kippenbrock, College of Education and Health Professions
• Scott Osborne, College of Engineering
• John Kent, Walton College
• Kalli Vimr, University Libraries
• Jeremy Powell, Bumpers College
• Cyndi Nance, School of  Law
• Terrance Boyd, Honors College
• Angela Oxford, Center for Community Engagement