Educational Programs Teaching and learning will continue as the first priority of the University of Central Oklahoma. As a metropolitan university, opportunities will be provided for learning at all levels in a wide range of fields and for a diverse student population. Instructional strengths are based upon an array of undergraduate and graduate programming which reflects institutional history and evolution, competent faculty in a variety of specializations, and a unique geographic location. It is this comprehensiveness, coupled with the interrelationship of all its educational programs, that will continue to provide the breadth and depth of learning available to the UCO students. Balancing increasing enrollments, a competent faculty, a strong teaching tradition and new research demands create challenges and tensions throughout the institution.
Solutions vary among the colleges according to mission and resources.
Defining and designing new courses and programs, incorporating new technologies, improving faculty resources through new faculty and implementing aggressive national faculty recruitment are examples of strategies the university is using to enhance the quality and effectiveness of its academic offerings. The faculty has strong academic credentials and a growing reputation in a diversity of fields. An aggressive and timely national recruitment program coupled with active attention to affirmative action will assure the university of faculty appropriately prepared, and of sufficient size and diversity. Faculty morale and involvement in university governance is higher than perceived during the 1985 NCA visit. Procedures are in place which assure this involvement will not only continue but expand.