President Richard J. Helldobler Click here to review presentation slides Please note: This address featured several live, Artificial Intelligence-based interactive elements. Because this is a copy of the prepared remarks and not a transcript, those interactions are only partly captured here and not included in their entirety. Good afternoon, William Paterson, and happy Welcome Day! It is, indeed not where you start, it’s where you finish, and we have the guts to keep climbing higher—together! We are far from finished. But as I highlighted on this occasion last spring, during my look back at five-plus years of accomplishments, as I feature in my campus communications, including the “We are Proud” moment, and as I brag to business leaders, politicians, and donors every chance I get—we have come so far—together—from where we started just six years ago. Six years! Time really does fly when you’re having fun! Speaking of fun, for the last several of these occasions, we’ve been treated to wonderful live performances from many of our talented student singers and musicians under the direction of our expert music faculty. As much as I would love to continue that new tradition today, the logistics of bringing students and faculty together to rehearse before the academic year began just didn’t work out this time. And while I thought about singing today’s theme song for you myself, I decided instead to stick with that great version from the original cast recording of the Broadway musical Seesaw until we can welcome back student performers in January for my spring address. I want to take a moment to thank the IRT team, along with Bob Verbeek from Marketing and Public Relations, and the Shea Center crew for producing and hosting today’s event. They are mostly behind the scenes, so here’s a look at them. Now, if you think their job was made easier this time without a live performance to produce, we have a fun and informative surprise coming up that will show how we’ve managed to keep them all plenty busy. So, today, I want to spend most of my time talking about what’s ahead in the coming years for William Paterson. You’ll recall that last spring, I focused on the previous five years, while giving a nod to where we’re headed. Now, I want to talk more directly and in greater detail about where we’re going and how we’ll build on our many successes to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing higher education landscape—how we will not only seize on opportunities, but also create them for ourselves and our students. So, from reviewing the past to looking toward the future—from where we started to where we’ll “finish,” even if the finish is really just another beginning. But in the spirit of “first things first,” I’d like to give you some key updates on the present state of William Paterson. And that all starts with enrollment and retention. These are the numbers that tell us how we are doing in attracting and graduating students—in other words, how well we are fulfilling our mission. They are also the numbers that drive revenue, which is fundamental to our ability to do what we do. The Class of 2028, which we welcomed to campus this morning, currently sits at 1,051, which is a 14.86 percent gain in first-time, full-time, first-year students. They represent 18 of New Jersey’s 21 counties, 13 states, and 17 countries. We saw a 10 percent increase in new main campus transfer and a more than 12 percent increase in new main campus graduate students. Taken together, it amounts to a healthy 9.9 percent increase in overall new student enrollment. We know that these big gains in new enrollment are being undermined by attrition—mostly of the main campus population—and by graduating some of the largest classes in our history, so we have more work to do. We are far from finished, but we are a long way from where we started, so congratulations to Vice President George Kacenga, AVP Steve Quinn, and the entire Enrollment Management team! Let’s give them a round of applause! In addition to encouraging enrollment news, there is also positive first-year retention data. As of yesterday, first-time, full-time retention is at 72.4 percent, and we are on track to meet our goal of 74.1 percent. We are also seeing important gains in key groups, including a 5 percent increase in Black and African American students, and a 6.5 percent increase in the retention of Hispanic students. So, congratulations to Carmen Ortiz and the Advisement Center and EOF, Linda Refsland and the Academic Success Center, Stacy-Ann Brown and Financial Aid, Johanna Torres and Student Enrollment Services, and Susan Astarita and the Registrar’s Office for leading these efforts. For the current semester, we have 9,643 students enrolled, representing a 4.94 percent increase over last year. For main campus, we are still 1,943 students shy of our enrollment goal, though this does include 1,440 dual enrollment students that we expect to register by Census 2, when we are confident the WP Online enrollment goal will also be met. Overall, undergraduate main campus continuing student headcount remains an issue. We are 5.14 percent behind last year’s enrollment and unlikely to hit goal for this population. Remember that we have a goal of increasing international students to 5 percent of the overall, main campus population in the next three years. We currently have 96 new international students registered for the fall, representing a 50 percent increase, year-over-year, so congratulations to Josh Buland and Cinzia Richardson! More on this soon. WP Online continues to grow, with current enrollment of 3,875 students. That represents 11.13 percent growth, year-over-year. So, congratulations to all of you! Effective, campus-wide enrollment efforts, persistent recruitment, and engaging marketing get people’s attention, but what convinces them that William Paterson is the place for them or their student is the great work that everyone on this campus does throughout the year. So, thank you! Again, it's not over until Census 2 for Fall 2024, so let’s keep the momentum going! Of course, we always keep a close eye on what’s happening in Trenton that will impact us. Government relations is an art AND a science. Thanks to Vice President Guillermo de Veyga, we are getting results by building and maintaining important relationships and making a powerful case for the tremendous value that we provide our students and the great State of New Jersey. We are fortunate to have dedicated representatives in our state capitol who believe in public higher education. I’ve shared—and it bears repeating—that the fiscal year 2025 state budget includes restoration of the $7.5 million in supplemental funding for William Paterson. A big thanks to Senator Nellie Pou and Dr. Sue Tardi and the AFT for their efforts. It also includes restoration of the $4.5 million Outcomes-Based Allocation, which had been cut from earlier proposals. And thanks to Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly, we secured $1 million in state support for our growing nursing initiatives. We also keep close tabs on legislation that impacts us, including new rules eliminating the Praxis skills test, a longtime requirement for teacher certification in New Jersey. This is good news for our aspiring teachers, because it removes an outdated mandate and expands the pipeline to ease the teacher shortage in our state’s schools. We like good news from Trenton, but we generate much more good news of our own, so here—very quickly and roughly in chronological order—are just some of the many headlines since we gathered in January: The College of Education and State Department of Ed opened New Jersey’s fourth Learning Resource Center! We announced a major new agreement with Atlantic Health System! William Paterson now boasts the largest nursing student enrollment in northern New Jersey, as well as the largest of the state’s regional publics, and the largest on any single campus in the Garden State! We distributed more than $1.6 million in donor scholarships for the last academic year, a 50 percent increase over the amount provided just five years ago, and the most ever for the University in one year! It’s never too late to start supporting our students with a donation—see VP Pam Ferguson or a member of her team if you are interested. We opened the Cheng Library Student Relaxation Lounge! The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies celebrated its 30th anniversary with the dedication of its new home at 1600 Valley Road! We were recognized for our sustainability efforts at the Environmental Leadership Awards! NJBIZ Magazine recognized General Counsel Melissa Reardon Henry as a Leader in Law and Dr. Jill Guzman as a Healthcare Hero! Governor Murphy recognized the exceptional performance and service of several of our colleagues at the New Jersey State Employee Recognition Day Award Ceremony! We conferred nearly 1,000 doctoral and master’s degrees and some 2,000 undergraduate degrees at three Commencement ceremonies, which graduates and their families will remember forever! We honored distinguished faculty with Excellence Awards. Trustee and alum Will Pesce won an NJBIZ ICON Award, and, The School of Continuing and Professional Education became the College of Adult and Professional Studies, which is helping to make moments like these come true for more adult students! Again, those are just some of the many highlights of 2024 so far, all of which brings us to today and the start of a brand-new academic year, and they were all made possible by the faculty and staff here in Shea and across campus—so, thank you from the bottom of my heart! Now, let’s shift our focus to the next five years. How do we think higher education and the world beyond will change? And what will we do to make sure we leverage our many talents and strengths to succeed in the coming years and decades? As you know, my background is in theatre and dance, but I still appreciate a good sports metaphor. Cabinet members will tell you that I want them to play like a basketball team, with everyone making great passes and assists and sharing in the scoring. Today, I’m going to emphasize areas where different divisions will be passing the ball and assisting each other to put points on the board. Let’s start with the newest entry on our org chart, the Division of Equity and Inclusion, under the leadership of our Chief Diversity Officer Jeanne Arnold. As we do, I’d like to call on a new resource to assist me in our discussion. AI Avatar: “Hello William Paterson, I am pleased to be a part of President Helldobler’s Fall 2024 State of the University address!” So, what you see and hear is the product of AI. As we talk about the wonderful diversity of our students, you’ll be interested to know that this and other avatars that you will see were created using prompts to reflect the demographic makeup of all WP students. I’ll have more to say about AI throughout my address. For now, though, this is a timely way of asking some useful questions, and what better place for it to start than with the topic of diversity: AI Avatar: “We see constant news about states and colleges rolling back DEI efforts. What is William Paterson doing to ensure that all students, faculty, and staff feel that they belong here, and are being supported?” A lot! We know that our diversity is our greatest strength. The appointment of a new CDO, now a Cabinet position, and the creation of the new Division are proof of our commitment to equity and inclusion. William Paterson has made so much progress in recent years, and we will continue moving forward. Over the next five years, the Division will apply for and—I am confident—will receive the “Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award” and the “National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education Inclusive Excellence Award.” More than just stocking the trophy cabinet, we’ll pursue these awards because their frameworks align well with the work that CDO Arnold will lead in building a strong foundation for the new Division. We’ll achieve these goals in part by implementing the Inclusion Partner Program for fair and inclusive recruiting and, more immediately, launching cultural competency training, which will begin this year with the Cabinet. Before I move on, let me say this: If you read the Chronicle of Higher Education, you’re familiar with the long-running feature, headlined, “Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI.” It’s unfortunate that we’ve gotten to this point and that reactionaries have so effectively swung momentum backward, just as DEI was starting to make a difference at many institutions. We, however, will not go back. You won’t see William Paterson’s name on that Chronicle list. We will push forward with this important work, because it is the right thing to do for our University and our society. It’s the right thing to do for the next generation. Equity and inclusion are important ways we support our students in all their diverse personal identities. We are also becoming more diverse in terms of growing global and adult student populations; more diverse in the types of degrees and other credentials we offer; and more diverse in how students undertake their education. So, the Division of Student Development, under the leadership of Vice President Miki Cammarata, will focus on tailoring communications, programming, and support services to this increasingly broad continuum of learners, including traditional, graduate, online, adult, international, and any combination of these identifiers. Student, faculty, and staff wellbeing will play an increasingly important role in supporting the overall health of the University. Last spring, Dr. Eileen Lubeck won an Education Advisory Board Fellowship, and her project focused on the role of a chief wellness officer, which would address these issues from a campus-wide perspective. I just received Dr. Lubeck’s final report, and it is something that the Cabinet and I will consider this fall. But here are some statistics that keep me up at night, which deal with the very difficult subject of suicide: According to the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 25 percent of adolescent girls have planned their suicide and 13 percent have attempted it. We also read how the mental wellbeing of our students is impacting faculty and staff, so it is certainly something that we should think about as a community, along with who might lead those efforts on our behalf. Student Development is playing an increasingly important role in positioning us as a “Powerhouse of Progress,” where student support services and the student experience beyond the classroom are critical to our success. We know that career outcomes for recent William Paterson graduates continue to outpace national averages—shout-out to Director Mary Alice Barrows and the Career Development Center team! And that’s especially true for Pesce Family Mentoring Institute graduates. The more opportunities we can provide for students to apply their course learning in real-world settings—through things like internships, undergraduate research, and community service—the more competitive they will be in the job market. So, let’s see if our avatar has another question. AI Avatar: “Can you give me an example of a significant recent addition to the William Paterson student experience?” I can tell you that, this year, Student Development, working closely with Academic Affairs, will implement its Experiential Learning Plan, in which every undergraduate student will participate in some form of meaningful experiential learning. This development supports student success, while boosting institutional reputation as a distinctive element of our brand. Remember, first-time, full-time retention is up 5 percent over the past five years, even with a pandemic thrown into the mix. Will. Power., career communities, and other retention efforts are making a difference. Experiential learning will further these gains through the applied learning of social mobility skills and discipline-specific content. Think about what an attractive value proposition that is for students and families alike. Think about how placing our students into businesses, educational organizations, and healthcare systems will help us build better partnerships—all further proof that we are, indeed, a “Powerhouse of Progress.” Experiential learning largely builds on a foundation of teaching and learning that takes place among faculty and students, whether in a classroom, lab, or performance space, in the physical world or virtually. Wherever it takes place, faculty-student interaction remains the lifeblood of the University. Provost Josh Powers and the Division of Academic Affairs are doing great work nurturing these relationships, while also innovating and creating new programs and credentials. The nature of these interactions and the context in which they occur are in flux. There’s perhaps no greater example right now than the kind of generative AI that created our avatars. Earlier this year, I visited the Silicon Valley headquarters of Nvidia, the chip company behind much of the AI revolution. After speaking with industry leaders, I came away convinced that technology—specifically AI—will be the center of the next great “arms race” in higher education. Under the leadership of Provost Powers and CIO Gamin Bartle, Academic Affairs, partnering with Information Technology, is preparing for this, and they will ensure that AI literacy and “prompt engineering”—which is how you get what you need from AI—are cornerstones of the William Paterson experience. And not just for computer science students, but for every student in every field. As employers figure out how AI will change their industries and how it can give them a competitive advantage, they are demanding these skills of new graduates. By the way, faculty will gather with the Deans, Provost Powers and his team in the University Commons Ballrooms immediately following my address for a deep discussion of generative AI, informed by the good work to date of the Technology Across the Curriculum Committee’s AI Task Force, led by the Provost and the CIO. Since the “how” and “what” of our offerings will be impacted by AI, let’s see if our avatar has a question about Academic Affairs. AI Avatar: “As higher education adapts to evolving student needs and a changing career landscape, what will William Paterson’s academic portfolio look like five years from now?” I can tell you that it will look very different than it did five years ago, and different even than it does today. I’ve mentioned all the good news about our nursing programs, and going forward, we’ll also broaden our career pipeline focus on related allied health fields, beyond nursing, to prepare students for a range of other industry jobs. I’ve talked in the past about my conversations with tech executives, who told me that only a fraction of their workers actually work on technology or come from technology disciplines. Likewise, many in the healthcare industry never interact with patients. They work in labs and pharmacies, in administration, communication, social services, compliance, and more. We already have a well-earned reputation as a leading educator of New Jersey nurses, and we’ll build on that excellence to become a leader in all of the allied health fields. We’ll have discussions with deans and faculty about the idea of an MBA in healthcare administration. Also consider, for example, a healthcare track in professional communication. How might this impact our social work and sociology programs? What about a history course on healthcare disparities in the U.S.? What about helping future educators better understand the impact of health and wellness on learning and our education systems? The possibilities are endless and will further define ours as a brand that aligns with critical labor force needs in our region and across New Jersey. A few data points to support what we’re doing: according to the U.S. Census, 65-plus residents are set to grow from 17 percent of New Jersey’s population in 2020 to 22 percent by 2030. These people are living longer—which is great and thanks to our strong healthcare system—but they are also living with more chronic conditions. Interestingly, many of these seniors also retired from nursing and other healthcare jobs, adding to the growing shortage of providers. Also of interest, medical and health services managers are among the job categories experiencing the fastest growth, which shows that demand for diverse industry jobs will rise along with demand for nurses and other providers. Career options within the allied health fields vary, and so will the ways in which we align ourselves to take advantage of this growth. This means looking at the College of Science and Health but also beyond it, at everything from majors and certificates to potential refinements of, and additions to, the University Core Curriculum. It means looking at new Career Center partnership and internship opportunities and connecting students with alumni of their college who are working in healthcare; as well as healthcare industry representation on all College and Department Advisory Councils. I have charged the Provost with engaging the colleges on where such opportunities may lie, both in terms of increasing external visibility of what we are already doing and identifying opportunities that may be bear fruit in coming years. Provost Powers knows the great potential in this work and is excited to continue moving it along. We are publicizing our allied health programs and our partnerships with New Jersey healthcare organizations. We’ll also use our Educational Advisory Board partnership to do academic environmental scans to see where we have opportunities, competitive advantages, and the need for improvement. Some of you may feel like the folks who thought we would turn into the University of Phoenix back when we launched WP Online. But that success did not fundamentally change who we are, and leveraging our growing expertise to take better advantage of a high-need area for the state will only make us a stronger overall University. Speaking of WP Online, as we continue moving into new fields and serving new students with an evolving set of degrees and other credentials, much growth will take place through this platform. Our partner from the start in this success is Risepoint, formerly Academic Partnerships, which looked at the value and effectiveness of the online offerings of their partner institutions, including William Paterson. Their 2023 survey found that—among other things—graduates averaged first-year, post-degree salary increases of nearly $14,000, allowing them to cover the cost of their education in just over a year. And, more than 8 in 10 graduates believe their degree was worth the investment and would recommend their program to others. Let’s check in with our avatar: AI Avatar: “I’m hearing about something called the “demographic cliff”—sounds scary! Can you explain what it is and how William Paterson is responding to it?” It does sound scary, but it doesn’t have to be. The “demographic cliff” is the acceleration of the longtime decline in the population of high school graduates across the Northeast. In simplest terms, we are adjusting to a decline in this traditional market by moving into untapped and growing markets, launching new programs and credentials. In an interview last fall, the head of Risepoint said something that I think can inform our work. While many universities are convinced there is a demand problem, if you look at it from another vantage point, it can be viewed as a supply problem. In other words, yes, there is a shrinking population of high school graduates. But there are large populations of adult students with some college credit but no degree; of prospective graduate students who are looking for the skills to advance their careers by staying current with things like AI; and there are large populations of international students who want to study in the U.S. and close to New York City. So, our task is designing new programs to meet their needs. The accelerating pace of change across every field is driving more professionals to pursue continuous learning just to keep up and, more importantly, to advance. So, we will expand the continuum of student enrollment and engagement with things like 4+1s and building a pipeline to encourage and support more William Paterson undergraduates to move into online graduate programs. This will require efforts across the institution to remove barriers and increase incentives for students to pursue in-demand graduate degrees and become double William Paterson alums. We’re seeing an increasing number of new students coming with transfer or dual credits, and we are also seeing a slight increase in time to degree. Now, key to all of these efforts is the good work that the Division of Enrollment Management is doing to match student interest with our rich program offerings, while being mindful of regional and statewide labor forecasts. Under the leadership of VP Kacenga, Enrollment Management is bringing new ideas, fresh energy, and a renewed sense of purpose to this critical work. We’ve talked over the years about the importance of the growth mindset, and there are few better examples on our campus than Enrollment Management. They are looking at the demographic reality of our region, and—instead of resigning themselves to a declining traditional student population—they are taking it as a challenge to grow in new areas. It’s a great example of that “supply problem versus demand problem” thinking. One important example: the Division is leading the effort, working closely with Academic Affairs and Marketing and Public Relations, to diversify our approach to recruiting more on-campus students from around the world. We are segmenting our recruitment and marketing more than ever—including internationally—and leveraging Enrollment Management’s existing international admissions expertise. We’re launching strategic partnerships with a limited number of recruitment agents globally, which allows us to ensure quality, targeted outreach. We have a strategic partnership with EAG in India and Nepal—two of the top markets sending students to the U.S., representing 60 percent of international applications. This collaboration helps streamline our efforts in these countries as we grow the international presence in our on-ground, main-campus population. Meanwhile, Academic Affairs—in collaboration with our faculty—is introducing the kinds of in-person degree programs that are most attractive to international students, including an MS in computer science and an applied business analytics MBA track. This work is beginning to pay off. For Fall 2024, we received applications from 101 countries across six continents. We are working toward that goal of having international students represent 5 percent of the total on-campus undergraduate and graduate student body, and we are on our way, with international enrollment up 40.3 percent this fall. Supporting these efforts is Marketing and Public Relations, which, together with other divisions has produced a strong new brand and identity that is resonating effectively with prospects and their influencers. Now, we will continue strengthening the brand, capitalizing on new opportunities to support enrollment growth. In collaboration with colleagues University-wide, Marketing and Public Relations will work to achieve further institutional distinctiveness and reputational growth. This will be the major focus for Vice President Stuart Goldstein and his team over the next five years, as they leverage the impact of our Student Success Teams and Faculty-as-Mentor; hone our identity as a statewide leader in allied health education; highlight positive career outcomes; and promote our dynamic variety of programs for diverse student populations—undergraduate, graduate, and adult learners. And we will do so without succumbing to the danger that all brands inevitably confront of seeming to try and be all things to all people, which is what our “how” strategy avoids so effectively. I talked earlier about providing support services that are tailored to our increasingly diverse student populations, which ultimately become more diverse alumni populations. AI Avatar: “Given the tremendous growth of WP Online, how is the University adapting to better serve a population of graduates who may never set foot on the William Paterson campus?” You’re right! Thanks to the success of WP Online, we are educating and graduating thousands of students who may only come to campus when it’s time to collect their degree, if ever. Approximately one-third of our students are now fully online. So, how can Alumni Relations and Development leverage this growth by engaging with them throughout their time as students and long after they graduate? That will be one area of focus that Vice President Ferguson and her Institutional Advancement team will tackle in the coming years, and they are already hosting virtual sessions to gather feedback from this population on how they want to engage with their alma mater. It is also something our Career Services team will work on. In addition, IA and Alumni Relations will be developing strategies to effectively connect with graduates from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Given their age and life status, they are the pool from which the next major gift donors will come. We will also be more intentional in engaging our alumni of color, so look for programming and events that will begin to celebrate this critical population. Once a minority at William Paterson, through their Pioneering efforts, they are now in the majority, with more than half of our entering class identifying as students of color. Institutional Advancement is built on relationships and, as I’ve mentioned, so is Strategic Initiatives and Government Relations. In addition to strengthening existing relationships with elected officials and others in positions of influence, VP De Veyga will develop new ones, which will be especially important as the Murphy era draws to a close and New Jersey looks toward a new governor in 2026. At the state level, the next five years are projected to see significant revenue shortfalls, so we will anticipate the implications for William Paterson, as we continue the hard but necessary work of getting our own finances on a more sustainable footing. Locally, we will continue to build strong industry and community partnerships, like the one at Atlantic Health, through discussions with St. Joe’s, Hackensack Meridian, and others. And we will continue to grow our impact on the City of Paterson and Passaic County through the Small Business Development Center and by addressing other critical need areas. Back to the budget, the engine that powers William Paterson. We will continue refining processes to become even more prudent with all our resources, using tools like Workday. Being responsible stewards of our resources is a hallmark of institutional operations. I want to recognize Vice President Kirsten Loewrigkeit and her entire Finance and Administration team for their good work in bringing a new level of financial oversight and budgetary insights to help us make the most efficient use of every single dollar. The division will further these critical efforts in the coming years. If you’re at all familiar with the London Underground, you know the phrase, “mind the gap.” There, it means don’t fall into the space between the platform and the train. For VP Loewrigkeit and her team, it means helping us reduce the budget deficit through continuously improved data reporting and forecasting, scenario planning, assessment of resources and vacant positions, planning for capital equipment replacement cycles, while looking for potential new revenue sources. They will also look for ways to leverage AI in their work, which is particularly promising in terms of financial forecasting and scenario planning. To learn more about our enrollment and financial position, please come to the Enrollment and Budget Forum on October 3 in the Cheng Library Auditorium, during common hour. So, WP Online, Workday, and now AI: all of these technologies are powerful because of what they allow our people to do. I want to recognize the good work that Vice President Allison Boucher-Jarvis and her Human Resources team are doing to help us do our best. In the coming years, HR will look at new ways to advance professional development and attract new talent, when needed. The Division will continue identifying new ways to build employee culture, as they have successfully done with the Summer Professional Development series and other initiatives. In the near term, they will be rolling out “One HR,” a customer-service model that will improve employee interactions by creating one central point of contact for inquiries, whether its hiring, payroll, benefits, or compliance. The modern university is a highly complex institution, and complexity usually means you better have a good lawyer. We are fortunate to have as general counsel Melissa Reardon Henry, who brings decades of expertise to the role. In the coming year, General Counsel Reardon Henry will clarify policies and procedures that protect the University from risk. Her office will provide departments a template to enable them to track contracts they have submitted for legal review, so that departments may anticipate when they can expect approval. Contracts are what allow us to hire people, purchase goods, and engage services, so this system will help the whole campus work more smoothly and efficiently. Now, I’ve saved IT for last because its major five-year goal is to drive, coordinate, and support generative AI for William Paterson—both academically and operationally. This subject is tailor-made for our avatar. AI Avatar: “Many William Paterson students have ChatGPT or other AI apps on our phones but are still trying to figure out what it will all mean for our educations as well as our future careers. What is the University doing about AI?” Well, in addition to using it to generate this avatar to help us think about that very question, we are looking at the potential benefits of AI to everyone at William Paterson, including preparing our students for career success, while also being mindful of its risks. Much work is already underway, as innovative faculty and staff experiment and apply AI in their classrooms and offices. CIO Bartle and her IT team will guide much of this work going forward, but it is incumbent upon all of us to familiarize ourselves with the technology and consider how it will impact our work and, ideally, how it will make us more effective on the job. There are broader questions to consider, too, especially as an academic community, so one of the first steps the Provost and CIO are already leading through the AI Task Force is to engage key stakeholders on campus in the development of a policy for the responsible and ethical use of AI across the University. It’s been less than two years since the release of ChatGPT, which really took AI mainstream. The head of OpenAI himself has said that “ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness.” The technology is rapidly improving, but part of educating our students and ourselves on its ethical and effective use is being aware of its limitations, biases, and other potential dangers. That said, I am bullish on the potential of generative AI and confident that we will be thoughtful in its use. Let me give you a few examples of some of the ways it will likely help us recruit, educate, and support students in the very near future. First, though, I want to thank New Media Supervisor Greg Mattison, who has done a lot of great work developing this demonstration with help from Neil Liggett, as well as CIO Bartle and Patrick Ryan in IT, who have been wonderful guides in thinking about AI and its potential. So, from an AI-generated avatar representing our students and asking pre-programmed questions, we are now going to flip the script and switch to a stock avatar, which will use AI to respond live in generating answers in response to my questions. But, first, some disclaimers: while the ChatGPT and Gemini on your phone draw on massive and timely data sets, the free avatar tool we are using here for demonstration purposes draws only on William Paterson-specific data, and only up to 2023. Which really demonstrates my point that while the technology is rapidly advancing, it still has its limits. OK, here we go: What are some examples of reasons that students choose to attend William Paterson University? What kinds of concerns do William Paterson University students have about college and their future careers? What kinds of academic and in-person support services are most important to William Paterson University students? What kinds of classes and activities are William Paterson University students most excited about for the fall semester? Pretty cool, don’t you think? Thank you, avatar, you can go take a Starbuck’s break! So, as we engage with AI and with each other and our students around this important topic, let’s imagine how it will help us better educate our students; let’s imagine how it will better prepare them for the future of work; and let’s imagine how it will allow us to do our own work better. This is all just a glimpse of where we’re going. Now, when we talk about where we—across higher education—have come from, I often speak of my belief that it is a system that was created to educate elite white men. Many of our practices still support those systems, archaic as they may be. But if you really think back and look ahead, we are changing those systems to better meet the needs of today’s students and the labor market of our region and state. We are taking strategic action, including placing thoughtful bets, taking bold, yet calculated, risks—like AI—and backing it all up with hard work and a firm commitment to our students. We are measuring our successes against our own previous performance and national peers to make our case. And people are noticing. Prospective students and parents, current students, alumni, donors, elected representatives—people from across the University, around the region, and throughout New Jersey know that there is something special happening here. They knew when we were having difficulties, and while we are not fully out of the woods yet, they can see that we’ve been taking decisive measures to correct our course. They see that we worked collaboratively through difficult times, and they know how far we’ve come. They see where we started, and—while we are nowhere near finished—they know we’re growing stronger. You hear it in the way they speak about William Paterson. We’re becoming known as the place that has diversified its enrollment markets to become a leader in online and adult education; a leader in nursing and business; a leader in building support systems for today’s students; a leader in positive career outcomes; a leader in creating programs to increase affordability for low- and middle-income families, and more. They know that we’re not shying away from the histories not taught, the stories not told, and the inequities that still exist. All these things create a brand, and they weren’t here just five years ago. So, imagine where we can go in the next five years! And, you know what? Montclair is beginning to follow us around at conferences to figure out “how we did it.” Most importantly, though, you hear it in the way we speak about William Paterson—our William Paterson. You saw it on display at this morning’s Convocation, as our new students made their way through the gauntlet of faculty and staff. And you see it in the rush to take selfies in front of the new WP spirit rock. It adds up to a brand—a name—that instills pride, and an energy that will take us ever higher. As the song says, “It's not where you start, it's where you finish, And William Paterson, you're gonna finish on top!” Thank you, and have a great semester!
