ETSU President Brian Noland is launching Chapter II of the Committee for 125, which will reexamine the goals set by the original committee and put forth new goals for university to review and implement.
When former ETSU President Paul Stanton retired in 2011, he discussed with Noland about the opportunity to look forward and envision great things for the university by the campus’s 125-year anniversary.
“The university had a tradition of these 25-year block window visioning sessions because in 1986 we did this with a document called Turning Towards 2011 where the university dreamed big dreams for that 25-year window,” said Noland.
The original Committee for 125 launched in 2012 and brought together campus, regional, community and national experts to help frame goals, visions and objectives for the next decade.
Chapter II was originally supposed to launch when the pandemic hit in March 2020, but it was put aside until now.
The last chapter helped create the university council, new budget models, a unified logo, new buildings, new green spaces and put ETSU as the top performing university in Tennessee in 2020.
ETSU has also seen its highest graduation and retention rates in the last year.
However, changes to the ETSU landscape have pushed for new goals.
“In 2012, the board of trustees didn’t exist,” Noland said. “In 2012, TN Promise didn’t exist. In 2012, none of us were looking at something called the demographic cliff, which is significant decrease in high school graduates that our country is going to experience in the middle of this decade.”
Some goals Noland would like to see carried out include a new academic building, a renovation of Brown Hall, an expansion of ETSU Health and new academic and research programs.
The new committee will include six different task forces in the areas of Academics, Equity and Inclusion, ETSU Health, Student Success and Experience, Research and Scholarship and Fiscal Sustainability.
The task forces will provide their recommendations on new ideas and goals to Noland by fall.
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