Dear Colleagues,
One week from today, we will gather to confer degrees on our spring and summer 2022 graduates as well as to recognize our fall 2021 graduates whose college recognition ceremonies were disrupted by the December tornadoes. Commencement represents one of the largest annual gatherings of visitors to our campus. I hope you plan to join us as we celebrate the successes of our students. Please find the full schedule of Commencement activities and additional details about the week here.
Before we look beyond Commencement and ahead to summer, let’s reflect on another remarkable academic year at WKU – a year of accomplishments of which we should all be proud.
In August, we began the semester by gathering in person for our annual Faculty and Staff Convocation. There, I announced we surpassed our initial $50 million goal for the WKU Opportunity Fund in less than four years. I also set an even more ambitious goal of $100 million. Today, I am pleased to share that since then, we have raised an additional $9.4 million, eclipsing $62 million raised in total and supporting Hilltoppers through 182 endowed scholarships.
Also this fall, we opened Regents and Normal Halls, our two newest residential facilities. These halls house many of our Living Learning Community residents and serve as the cornerstone of the First Year Village. We offer LLCs across all five academic colleges and also have interest-based options for students. These communities provide the opportunity for students with similar academic and social interests to live together in an environment that encourages social connection, academic success and increased engagement with WKU faculty, staff and administrators.
Our LLCs played a critical role in our first-time, first-year student fall-to-spring retention success. Overall, 90.9% of our first-time, first-year students who enrolled at WKU in the fall 2021 semester returned this spring, representing an increase of two percentage points compared to last fall. Among those participating in an LLC in the fall, 95.2% returned this spring. Retention among underrepresented minority students rose from 85.7% for the fall 2020 class to 90.3% for the fall 2021 class. This represents a nearly 10 percentage point increase during the last four years.
Additionally, last week we opened The Commons at Helm Library. The Commons allows us to shift from thinking of our libraries as book repositories to innovative spaces in which learning continues beyond the classroom and where students, faculty and staff gather to share a meal, discuss course content and celebrate the collaborations central to academic life. If you haven’t yet, I hope that you will make time to meet with friends and colleagues in The Commons and celebrate this historic achievement in our institution’s history.
Summer affords us a time to refresh and recharge, to spend time with family and friends and to prepare for the academic year ahead. As you plan for the fall semester, please mark your calendars now for Faculty and Staff Convocation on August 15 at 10am in Van Meter Hall Auditorium. Look for more information this summer.
Thank you for all that you do to ensure the success of our students and institution. I wish each of you a safe and restful summer.
Go Tops!
Best,
Timothy C. Caboni
