My tenure as the 10th President of UNLV began January 5, 2015. As I near the completion of my first year - now in my twelfth month in the position - I felt it would be useful to summarize the progress the university has made during this period and highlight my focus for the second year. This progress report is especially important since the first six months of my tenure were consumed by the 2015 Nevada State Legislature and my onboarding into the presidency.
Through the interviewing process during the fall of 2014 and throughout my first semester in the job during the spring of 2015, it became clear that UNLV is a complex organization with challenging issues and that I would need to work with everyone to help lift UNLV to top tier status. Our goal is to ultimately position UNLV as a high performing university in both research and teaching, serving as an exemplar for community partnerships and leading to much deeper and more meaningful positive impact on southern Nevada and the entire state of Nevada. The key components to this vision are that we aim to be high performing in all aspects (including athletics), very highly community engaged, and all of it aimed at us having an even greater, positive impact in our region and beyond.
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That would have helped UNLV to improve on the research dimension, but would have only impacted a select group of the faculty on campus, would have done nothing to improve the student experience, and would have ultimately by itself not been the right answer for UNLV. During my onboarding in December of 2014, and consistent with my interviews during the search process, I determined that the planning process needed to be expanded to include all aspects of the university, which we then did when I arrived in January of