I would like to see us eventually offer a research opportunity to every student as well, perhaps even make it a graduation requirement. And we should expand the Honors progam as far as possible. Plus, we need to review the way we advise our students. All this educational apparatus is useless if the students are not taking the right courses and interacting with the right faculty. I have asked Terri Mathews to convene a group to review the entire advising program.
Distance learning is here to stay.
Whether we prefer this method of instruction or not, more and more of our students are going to come to us from untraditional backgrounds and through electronic means. They will continue to be vocation oriented and arrive not realizing the more esoteric value of true education. And, many will not have the mathematics preparation to succeed in science. Whether we like it or not, these are the students we will have in the foreseeable future. If we do not find a way to serve them and educate them at the same time, others will do it.