While having breakfast this morning, I did a little note-taking/a little “live blogging” of Susan Martin’s visit to WEMU. I think this is a monthly thing, more or less. Not surprisingly, she didn’t really say much. Anyway, my notes on what she said below the “read more” part:
- A bit about EMU’s future: “Eastern has been here for 159 years,” EMU and U of M can work together, attract people to Washtenaw county. The idea being that businesses like to locate in in places with lots of smart people, where universities are located.
- What about rollbacks of funding from state? “We have to be nimble and quick,” starting new programs, simulation and gaming, nursing, etc. Students in “return to learn;” folks need to appreciate that college is a good investment. Yes, but if you don’t have enough money for living expenses and you can’t borrow money and you’ve got to cut costs just to survive…. It’s also interesting to me the extent to which Martin did not talk about teacher training, which I agree with: if EMU is to do more than barely survive, we need to diversify into other areas of study.
- Are we looking at big fee and tuition increases? First we want to cut costs. We’re saving money right now on energy expenses– because prices on stuff like natural gas are falling, we are saving a lot of money. Might that include reductions in staff? We will look at that last, we are lean in faculty and staff right now. Reductions in faculty and staff might occur, but that would be a last resort.
- How to bring in more alumni? EMU has 150,000 alumni, and they come from Michigan and stay in Michigan, so helping EMU helps Michigan. Alumni help us a lot, we’re fortunate to be as old as we are….
- 2009 we’re going to launch a fundraising campaign. This will be a “learning experience” kind of campaign. If we had alumni to pitch in just a little, we’d help. Of course, it is typical bad EMU timing to do something like this as we enter what is starting to look like the next great depression….
- Are we going to beat Temple? Ahh…. sure….Um…. we have a good team…. (Her response suggests she’s not a very good liar, which is probably a good thing).
