Leslie Ovalle/Staff Writer
The University met and surpassed some of the goals it set during the previous academic year.
During the Board of Trustees meeting held on Wednesday, Jan. 14, which concluded the academic year, the Governance Committee discussed the past academic year’s performance goals and results.
The discussion was led by Albert Maury, chair of the Board of Trustees, with a presentation by University President, Mark B. Rosenberg.
The president began by highlighting several milestones achieved during the previous year.
Among these were the College of Law and the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine ranking first and ninth, respectively, for excellence in educating a diverse student body, according to HispanicBusiness.
The University also achieved a ranking of fifth in the country, among other high-performance universities, with their Model UN Team, ranked 24th in the “Washington Monthly” national universities rankings and maintained the title of national leader in awarding STEM bachelor’s degrees to underrepresented minorities.
“It sends the message that FIU can compete wherever it goes,” Rosenberg said.
Developing avenues for more University research was also a topic of discussion at the meeting.
The goal for research expenditures of $126 million was surpassed by $4 million, and total research doctoral degrees awarded increased by two percent.
“I want to point out that this is especially good news,” Rosenberg said. “…The federal government, as you know, is either freezing the research funding or cutting it back. And yet we continue to grow; we’ve grown 30 percent since 2009.”
The first ten goals in the “36-goal Self-Evaluation Scorecard” were performance goals, which, if achieved, would bring the University incremental state funding.
These ten goals vary from increasing academic progress rate to not increasing the average cost of undergraduate degrees.
Member of the BOT and Student Government Association President at the Modesto A. Maidique Campus, Alexis Calatayud, took a special interest in one of the ten goals: to have seventy percent or more bachelor’s graduates employed and/or continuing their education one year after graduation.
“Really that’s why people go to school,” Calatayud said. “Either to create a foundation for even more education, which leads to their dream, or to get a job that they really want.”
This goal was far exceeded with seventy-seven percent of the students employed and/or continuing their education.
According to Calatayud, it is not easy to raise those percentage points.
Five hundred students are contained within one percentage point and, according to her, a lot of strategic planning must be done for goals like this to be achieved.
Rosenberg also drew attention for receiving the votes for the University’s appropriation of the 64 acres of the fairgrounds.
According to Rosenberg, this was something that took a lot of effort and campaigning, but he is very proud and excited about the results.
Calatayud is also excited about this expansion.
“We have to sit down at the table before we can even eat, and this [expansion] is kind of us sitting down at the table,” Calatayud said. “We are not going to leave until we’ve eaten.”
Rosenberg was commended by many for this self-evaluation presentation.
According to Maury, Moteza Hosseini, the chair of the Florida Board of Governors, found the presentation to be fairly impressive.
“I had a nice lengthy discussion with the chair [of the BOG] and he is very happy with the performance of the president and the institution,” Maury said. “He was very impressed with the way we presented it to him, in fact, his words were, ‘I’m going to take this one as a sample to the governor so we can have all the presidents in the university system evaluate the same way.’”
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