In closed session at the June Board of Governors meeting, I presented my self-assessment to the board. As part of that presentation, I submitted the university’s end-of-year report to the board. I also used a series of slides to highlight some of the university’s accomplishments outlined in the report.

I would encourage you to review the report and slides at your convenience. Highlights include:

• We hit yet another enrollment record
• Legislation was signed into law that eliminates MSU’s statutory degree limitations and replaces them with a statewide program approval framework
• We reduced our graduation requirement from 125 to 120 hours and rolled out four other critical affordability initiatives for our students
• We awarded over 5,000 degrees and certificates (the long-range plan goal was 4,900)
• We eliminated geographic restrictions on our collaborative engineering programs, priming those programs for growth
• We increased our percentage of faculty and staff on the Springfield campus who are international or underrepresented to 14.1 (the long range plan goal was 14 percent)
• We enrolled more than 3,100 underrepresented students on the Springfield campus
• We received the MVC All-Sports Trophy, had seven conference championships, and had exceptional student athlete academic marks, all while cutting over $1 million from the athletics budget

We accomplished a lot in really difficult circumstances this year. While I had the privilege of reporting our many accomplishments to the board, these are not only mine. They are the result of all of our hard work. Please join me in celebrating a successful past year as we prepare for what next year holds.

Thanks for all you do for Missouri State!