What I believe is that most universities in this country educate the top 10%. If you're a great student, if you're an A student, then you get catered to. You get to work with the best professors. You get opportunities to get engaged in undergraduate research. You get a chance to do sometimes international travel, attend conferences. This all appears to be catered to about 10%. I thought, and I said, what would it look like at a higher ed institution, if we treated every single student like that? If every student that came here, got those wonderful experiences that prepare them for the workforce, that prepared them for whatever is next in their life? What if every single student? So my idea of student success is that when we move the needle holistically, when a larger percentage of our students come, and they get a high quality education, when a larger percentage of our students leave and go out into the workforce to create a new workforce, to design a new workforce, to participate in whatever is next, that we do that for more than a top 10%. So when I came to Winston-Salem State University, our new strategic plan, we talked about what does a student need in order to be successful? The chancellor has led our strategic plan, we're actually in the fourth year of it. And student success has always been at the center of that. What he's done is put us in different committees, to think about the student from the time they enter the university until they leave. The faculty and the administration are hand in hand. We know that shared governance is shared. How we drive our students to success? The opportunities that all 288 plus faculty, along with our administrators, provide an opportunity for our students to not only with great curriculum and 26 departments, but we have a transformative opportunity for students to use what they're getting in the classroom and apply it. So the faculty knew it was important for high impact practices. We're providing research opportunities, internship opportunities, providing the best in mentorship, the best in advising, the best in service. And if they did not trust us with them, if they students did not trust us, then we would not be doing our jobs, and they do. So I truly believe that if it wasn't for us being hand in hand, that we would not get students where they want to be. Metrics are essential. We now, our campus, and which analytics drive almost every single thing that we do. I have a team of professionals, administrators, faculty, staff, and students who are engaged in a number of systems designed to make sure that we can pinpoint exactly where students are, exactly what they're doing, how they're being engaged in their academic experience. We need to be able to identify students and how they're performing almost on a day to day basis. We now can begin to track students in terms of how they're doing in their classroom. But it requires participation from every part of the campus. We're partnering across the institution. We find it so critically important here to keep constantly monitoring data, and observing outcomes, because we want to make sure that we're in this constant state of transformation, this constant state of improvement, ensuring that we're providing the students with the tools and the skills and resources that they need. On the front end, and we see this with a lot of programs, they may start out bumpy, and they may not yield the outcomes that you may initially think that you would think they do, because when you evolve students and people that all have different attributes and characteristics, it's never going to be one plus one equals two. However, like I said, thinking about utilizing analytics and looking at the specialized profiles of the students we're able to do more intentional work to provide success opportunities for the students. And so I think at the end of the day, it is that collaborative spirit. That the whole dynamic of being family and promoting academic success that think we find that to be a key characteristic of University College. The faculty at Winston-Salem State are some the most trained, talented individuals I've ever encountered in higher education. We bring the best to the table. We bring the best in our preparation. We meet the students exactly where they are, and we bring them up to where they want to be. Here is the flavor in the classroom. It's not just the lecture, it's information shared in love. Here is not just a matter of an exam, it's exercising your right to bring that information forward and share what you know, and to elevate your mind. Here I think the faculty are more concerned about, not just the information, but the student can use it to transform their lives or to transform another life. We have to understand that historically black colleges and university play a vital role within our society. And creating the best and the brightest is what we do here at Winston Salem State. You have individuals day in and day out that are focused on student success. They're solely focused on ensuring that students get out within four years and that they're successful. We have a motto where we're focused on "Enter to learn, depart to serve", and they entrench that within your mind as soon as you hit campus and you go to the student orientation process, you are finally a part of the ram family. And that's one thing that I felt when I entered to Salem State. You may have seen our tagline it's "Be the next", it's "Be the next." You get to fill in the blank, whatever that is, but what we hope it is is a higher quality life and that you are designers of your future. That's who we are.
