Dear Colleagues,
This week we celebrate our spring and summer 2023 graduates as we gather for our university’s Commencement exercises and confer degrees and certificates to 2,832 students. Commencement represents a critical milestone in our students’ lives and provides an important opportunity for the WKU Community to recognize their remarkable achievements and, at the same time, celebrate their embarkment on a new chapter. I hope that you join us for Commencement on Thursday and College Recognition Ceremonies on Friday. A full schedule of Commencement activities is located here.
Before looking beyond Commencement to the summer ahead, let us first reflect upon another successful academic year on our Hill. In August, we dedicated The Commons at Helm Library, transforming a traditional library facility into an innovative space where the WKU Community now shares meals, discusses course content and celebrates the collaborations central to academic life. Since opening last spring, The Commons has become a hub of activity, serving as the cornerstone of a dramatic transformation underway at the top of our Hill.
We celebrated the 20th anniversary of our Glasgow campus at Hilltopper Way and announced the Early College at WKU in Glasgow program in October, bringing the WKU Experience to even more students. This creative partnership with seven high schools in that area offers high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to travel to our Glasgow campus for half days of collegiate coursework, earning up to 30 hours of WKU credit prior to high school graduation. We look forward to the first cohort of 73 students beginning this new program with us in the fall.
We continue to expand access to hands-on, applied learning and research opportunities for our students. As part of our ongoing commitment to sustainability, in October we announced our unique farm-to-campus program, a partnership between the university and the WKU Restaurant Group that enables campuswide distribution of the produce, meat and dairy products our students produce at the WKU Farm. In November, we dedicated our new Disaster Science Operations Center (DSOC), which brings together faculty, staff and students from multiple academic programs to improve emergency disaster mitigation, management and response. These two programs represent just two examples of our work to provide students with opportunities to apply what they learn in our classrooms to real-world settings.
We made significant gains in our university’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts. In August, our ONE WKU campaign, which drives our institution’s DEI efforts, received the Excellence and Innovation Award for DEI Leadership from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. The Jonesville reconciliation workgroup hosted two events, a reception in October at the Kentucky Museum to honor the history, community and legacy of Jonesville and a daylong symposium last month to continue this important conversation. Also, in October we proudly dedicated Munday Hall in honor of Margaret E. Munday, the first Black undergraduate student to enroll at WKU.
Once again, our institution celebrated historic fall-to-spring retention rates among our undergraduate students. First-time, first-year students who were enrolled at WKU in the fall returned this spring at a rate of 91.1%, representing a 4.8 percentage point increase in just more than half a decade. First-time underrepresented minority (URM) students returned this spring at a rate of 90.8%, a gain of more than 10 percentage points since the 2017-2018 academic year. Additionally, 95.7% of our first-year students who participated in a Living Learning Community (LLC) returned this spring, compared to 89.6% of non-LLC participants. These retention successes reflect the extraordinary commitment of our faculty and staff to our students’ success.
Last month, we unveiled renderings for our new Gordon Ford College of Business building. While celebrating a rich tradition of business education at our institution, this state-of-the-art facility will help us prepare the next generations of business professionals, support academic innovation among our faculty and staff, sustain GFCB’s enrollment growth trajectory, enrich our region’s business community and enhance the beauty of our campus. We will break ground on this innovative facility this summer, with plans for opening in fall 2025.
None of these accomplishments are possible without the collective efforts of our faculty and staff. Thank you for all that you do in support of our students and our beloved institution. I wish each of you a safe and restful summer, and I look forward to gathering with you at our Faculty and Staff Convocation on Tuesday, August 15, in Van Meter Hall Auditorium.
Go Tops!
Best,
Timothy C. Caboni
