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Chancellor discusses goals for her last year at KU
CHANDLER BOESE @Chandler. Boese
Baxter Schanze/KANSAN Chancellor Bernadette Grav-Little discussed her plans for the University as she enters her final year.
With just under 10 months left to serve in the University's highest position, Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little sat down with the Kansan to discuss what she wants to accomplish in her final year.
"There are very important things... that need to be worked on everyday," she said. "And I'm committed to doing that for the full amount of the time that I'm here."
Retention
Baxter Schanze/KANSAN
Gray-Little said her biggest focus for her remaining time as chancellor is a renewed effort to increase retention across the University.
"We're looking at what are the things we need to do to ensure a larger percentage of students are successful on going from first to second year, then onto get a degree," she said. "We want to increase the percentage of our students over the traditional rate that we've had."
The recently-released enrollment numbers for fall 2016 show this semester's freshman class is one of the most diverse and academically advanced classes in University history.
Gray-Little said she hopes the makeup of
the class will help retention efforts, and said they have the potential to be more successful academically. Helping all students realize their academic potential should be a priority for any university, she said.
"I think when we admit students, there's some implicit communication that we think you can be successful here," she said. "And so, it's our responsibility to do all the things that are reasonable for them to be successful."
However, the chancellor did say the University has been struggling to provide some of the retention-focused services and programs in the last couple years, due to cuts in state funding.
State funding issues
"Whether it is trying to have programs for students to be more successful,trying to hire an adequate number of outstanding faculty to teach the students and do research all of those things are challenged more," she said.
While this is a serious issue for the University, Gray-Little said she's not very hopeful that it will get better, as Kansas has seen its actual revenue fail to meet revenue estimates for the past few months.
"There's something fundamentally or structurally wrong with the way we are looking at revenue and the rule that we attribute to taxes and that needs to be adjusted," she said. "That's not something that I can do, but it's certainly something that I can advocate with members of the legislature and I will continue to do that into the spring session."
Campus conversations on race and sexual assault
In the past few years of Gray-Little's tenure as chancellor, conversations of race have become more noteworthy, due to a number of protests and the efforts of student groups such as Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk.
discussed in the past several years, the chancellor said she plans to continue with the educational and preventative measures implemented last school year.
"I think that it is easily said, not easily done, with regard to multicultural issues, all of issues that have to do with the way that we respect each other and interact with one
Gray-Little said she hopes to continue implementing the recommendations of the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, using the results of the ongoing KU Climate Survey.
"It's important, but it's something that concerns the community on a daily basis, so it's certainly something that's important in itself," she said. "But it's also important because it has practical consequences for how comfortable people feel here."
In regards to sexual assault, another issue that has been frequently
another," she said. "A lot of these have to do with continuing action and dialogue and it's not something that we're going to complete at one time."
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