President Rawlins on Tuesday Night

[Christopher Walker]

I was attending the President's Dinner tonight at the Alumni Pavilion with Dr Rawlins. It's a chance for club and organization presidents to mingle with each other and get in touch with members of Rawlins cabinet and the higher ups of Student Affairs.

During Rawlins' speaking portion of the event, he, in his usual frank and honest manner, was of course encouraging us all to get our organizations out to Tuesday's game and all the festivities with it ..... and then addressed the rumor of canceling classes at 3PM that day.

This is how it went as well as I can remember:

• Universities today for better or worst (he considers it better) get no greater coverage and recognition than in their athletic prowess, ability, and turnout. UNT admittedly gets very few opportunities to access such a wide audience in a prime, uninterrupted time slot on national TV. That's why next Tuesday is so important.
  
• He personally is for the idea of closing the academic campus and encouraging students to attend the game, BUT he recognizes that executing such a policy in the middle of a semester during lab times, etc. would not be universally beneficial to all students or faculty. Thus, he is not canceling classes in any way.
  
• He is sending out a memo to all faculty tomorrow morning explaining his position, but will include the proviso that if a teacher or professor wished to alter their schedule or academic calendar for the event, it will be up to them and they certainly would not be frowned upon or faulted for such.
  

It was entirely surprising and off the cuff to hear him address it. He went on to extol his love for our team and Coach Mac, even giving his own analysis of the last few games.

It all just completely reinforced why I love having Rawlins as our President and I really hope he doesn't consider going back into retirement any time soon.

*SIDE NOTE: got to seem some sketches on the reworking of the Master Plan today as well. Lots of cool stuff going on, but relevant to this board:

• It's an overarching goal to completely unify the identity of the campus and not have any particular section be simply a "destination point" (MGVillage).
  
• That hotel/convention center is going to have a large footprint.
  

*

[UNTcrazy727]

Is the hotel still going to ruin The Hill? From the early plans it looked like it was right on top of it

[Christopher Walker]

Is the hotel still going to ruin The Hill? From the early plans it looked like it was right on top of it

It itself no. It's parking.... really pushing it.

[sparkmank]

Man .. Native American Film is a borrrring class.. I'll just skip & tailgate no big deal

[Stan R]

It itself no. It's parking.... really pushing it.

well ok. There is plenty of space around the stadium, various areas around the other buildings over there. I don't see this being a major problem, some folks will need to shift around, but there is still plenty of open area - I believe around the pond is usually pretty unclaimed, as far as I can recall.

[Green P1]

It itself no. It's parking.... really pushing it.

What about the duck pond? They cant touch the duck pond.

[UNT90]

Also, the parking lot to the new hotel may also be used as a tailgating spot (as long as the hotel is OK with it). I mean, the major attraction for that night's hotel patrons will be the UNT game. Maybe 80% of the guests are stayiong there that night because they are attending the game?

I think we see a tie in, somehow.

[Stan R]

Here's why it is so exciting to have a guy like Rawlins as the pres. in my opinion. I think he sees UNT more like a Texas A&M class school as opposed to a let's say Memphis or Southern Miss. class school. What I mean by that is Memphis and USM are fine institutions, don't get me wrong, but we are simply in a different situation entirely. We will be close to 40-45K students in the next ten years and at that point we are a big boy. We need to do the following, some of which we are already doing and/or have plans to do:

- Increase the size, quality, and footprint of the various college's facilities (many have been ongoing and many more planned)

- Improve our outbound communications to all types of media (higher quality, better message and consistent vision for the future)

- Move into better athletic conference (done - for now... if you catch my drift)

- Improve overall academic standing (in progress, but need to focus more on this)

- Improve research funding (doing not so well here but we do have a focus on it.)

As many have stated previously, prior presidents and chancellors have not seen any of these as necessary and or worth spending time or much effort on. We have only really been pursuing some of these goals in the last maybe 10 years. I hope we're able to keep this momentum going. It does feel like we have so much steam built up behind this shift going on that it will be hard to stop.

[meangreener]

We're doing fine in funding. Once we take in the Health Center we now have the amount of restricted research $ to be Tier 1.

[Christopher Walker]

What about the duck pond? They cant touch the duck pond.

As of now, the MP does not address the pond area at all. We suggested yesterday that they strategically implement a couple of more flora types to attract more migratory birds and make an ecological study of it.

And then we got to talking about the old golf course paths. They really liked the idea of creating a comprehensive network of "ped-ways" or running paths with signage that would encompass the whole campus and further tie in the MGVillage to the main campus.

We're doing fine in funding. Once we take in the Health Center we now have the amount of restricted research $ to be Tier 1.

As i've always understood these things, the Tiered designations are per individual institutions. If university systems were wholly considered in designation, there would be a lot more Tier One universities out there.

[GL2Greatness]

We're doing fine in funding. Once we take in the Health Center we now have the amount of restricted research $ to be Tier 1.

this is incorrect

even if 100% of the north Texas HSC federal research counted as restricted research when combined with the restricted research numbers for the Denton campus it totals about 40.5 million

so even if you are trying to say that NRUF funding is "tier 1" that would still be 4.5 million short of the amounted needed for NRUF funding.....plus you would still need to meet 3 more of the 6 total other criteria since north Texas only meets one of them now

and if you are meaning the non-tier 1 that UH is claiming based on a not a ranking classification by the Carnegie Foundation for research/very high that threshold is either 100 or 150 million (I believe 150 million) and the combined Denton campus and HSC would only be at just under 67 million in total research

besides the merging of the two institutions has been shelved without even conducting a study on it most likely because The State of Texas let lee the idiot jackson know that combining institutions like that was not going to be allowed to count for NRUF funding and also I am sure they let him know they were not going to change the funding formulas for universities VS HSCs as well

[GL2Greatness]

As i've always understood these things, the Tiered designations are per individual institutions. If university systems were wholly considered in designation, there would be a lot more Tier One universities out there.

if The State of Texas was to look at it like that it would probably not change much of anything in relation to other states which is what precipitated all of this

when Texas talks about a "tier 1" university they are meaning a member of the AAU and when they count AAU members (and when the AAU admits members) they admit single universities not systems

the UC System is where all of the California AAU members reside, but they are admitted individually and not all members of the UC System are AAU members

and in New York SUNY-Buffalo and SUNY-Stoney Brook are AAU members, but the total number of SUNY universities are not and several NY private universities are members of the AAU as well even after Syracuse getting the boot

also if they counted systems then NU never would have gotten the boot because their medical school (that is separate from the university) would have allowed them to do enough total research and to meet other metrics to remain a member most likely

but really the whole "no medical school" was a specious argument at best for NU because while many AAU members have medical schools many also do not like Rice, UT Austin, and TAMU College Station, and several members of the UC System that are AAU members do not have medical schools as well and all those schools do significantly more research and meet other criteria that NU was not meeting

the AAU membership is about the experience that a student will have at a university and the research conducted by a body of faculty at a particular school and that does not translate through most systems because students will never visit the other schools in a system most likely and while many systems have things in place to facilitate research across system members that does not always mean it is possible nor does it represent what an individual university is producing and delivering in terms of research or student experience

[Stan R]

Good lord if I thought this comment on research dollars would bring in debbie downer I never would have posted it. Look we all realize we have a ways to go. My point was to show the bigger picture, positive momentum and focus on the way forward.

[GL2Greatness]

Good lord if I thought this comment on research dollars would bring in debbie downer I never would have posted it. Look we all realize we have a ways to go. My point was to show the bigger picture, positive momentum and focus on the way forward.

when dealing with higher education especially one should endeavor to deal in reality not hype or untruths

and when something is being claimed to be happening when it has already been canceled before the idea was even studied there is really no positive momentum to gain from stating that it will still be happening or overstating the results of it

Edited October 12, 2012 by GL2Greatness

[oldguystudent]

If I'm counting correctly, 34 of 59 AAU member universities field FBS football. I guess the other 25 just greased palms or something.

[Denia Park Pedro]

Good lord if I thought this comment on research dollars would bring in debbie downer I never would have posted it. Look we all realize we have a ways to go. My point was to show the bigger picture, positive momentum and focus on the way forward.

There are a few members of this forum who have, to my knowledge, never added anything constructive or even interesting. There's a really nice ignore function you can use so you only see what they say when somebody quotes them. It really keeps the useless clutter off the page, I highly recommend it.

[UNTLifer]

when dealing with higher education especially one should endeavor to deal in reality not hype or untruths

and when something is being claimed to be happening when it has already been canceled before the idea was even studied there is really no positive momentum to gain from stating that it will still be happening or overstating the results of it

What is your agenda?

[VideoEagle]

What is your agenda?

Lifer, you know better. Don't feed the troll and he will get bored and go away.

[emmitt01]

What is your agenda?

Not much different than that of NAMBLA I would suspect.

[Proud North Texan]

Here's why it is so exciting to have a guy like Rawlins as the pres. in my opinion. I think he sees UNT more like a Texas A&M class school as opposed to a let's say Memphis or Southern Miss. class school. What I mean by that is Memphis and USM are fine institutions, don't get me wrong, but we are simply in a different situation entirely. We will be close to 40-45K students in the next ten years and at that point we are a big boy. We need to do the following, some of which we are already doing and/or have plans to do:

- Increase the size, quality, and footprint of the various college's facilities (many have been ongoing and many more planned)

- Improve our outbound communications to all types of media (higher quality, better message and consistent vision for the future)

- Move into better athletic conference (done - for now... if you catch my drift)

- Improve overall academic standing (in progress, but need to focus more on this)

- Improve research funding (doing not so well here but we do have a focus on it.)

As many have stated previously, prior presidents and chancellors have not seen any of these as necessary and or worth spending time or much effort on. We have only really been pursuing some of these goals in the last maybe 10 years. I hope we're able to keep this momentum going. It does feel like we have so much steam built up behind this shift going on that it will be hard to stop.

We are a class institution!!