{"id":47135,"date":"2017-08-13T21:02:09","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T01:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=47135"},"modified":"2017-08-13T21:02:09","modified_gmt":"2017-08-14T01:02:09","slug":"journal-news-qa-new-wright-state-president-looks-toward-the-future-new-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2017\/08\/13\/journal-news-qa-new-wright-state-president-looks-toward-the-future-new-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Journal-News Q&A: New Wright State president looks toward the future, new era"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Wright State University president Cheryl B. Schrader at her desk in her office in University Hall.<\/p><\/div>\n

Q: What\u2019s your first month on the job been like?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Schrader:<\/strong>\u00a0The first month brought some amazing facts every day \u2013 on how integral Wright State is to this community, on the educational opportunities and access it provides, and on the tremendous research being done in partnership with many other institutions \u2013 academic, business and military. It\u2019s been wonderful to get up to go to work every day and figure out how to move the university forward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Q: Wright State was recently named one of the best schools in the Midwest in a survey \u2013 thoughts?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A:<\/strong>\u00a0I think sometimes Wright State might be a well-kept secret, so having that opportunity to be recognized nationally and across the state is important. Sometimes, we don\u2019t understand the gem we have in our own back yard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Q: Regarding the university\u2019s budget problems, what have you heard from faculty, students and staff about their concerns?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019ve been in meetings with faculty, staff, students, alumni, business and academic leaders from across the region, and finances of course have been part of the conversation. Great care has been taken not to impact the educational experience \u2013 tenure-track faculty were not involved in any of the layoff situations. And that\u2019s our priority, to educate and improve the lives of our students.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Q: Can you gives us a snapshot on the finances?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019re finalizing FY 2017, and things are looking very positive, with a much stronger FY 2018 than we anticipated. It\u2019s good to know the measures we\u2019ve taken had a great impact, and that helps people feel better about some of the decisions that had to be made. We\u2019re looking at what we can continue to improve, and at where we can be more efficient and effective with the resources we have. We\u2019re well on our way, due to a lot of good and hard work the last few months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Q: Did you get the feeling when you got here that a lot of people expected you to pull a rabbit out of your hat and start working magic?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A:<\/strong>\u00a0It surprised me, the intensity I was greeted with \u2013 \u201cWe\u2019re really so glad you\u2019re here!\u201d It felt more intense than the typical new leader coming in. But the best part about it was finding how eager people are to work with you to make this institution all that it can be. So I hear: Yes, we want leadership we can rally around and work together with, and there\u2019s an openness but also a willingness to work together as a team. And not just at the university, but around the community, as well. That takes off some pressure, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Q: At the very least, it\u2019s better than people saying, \u201cHey, good luck with that.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A:<\/strong>\u00a0Correct \u2026 and as I mentioned, there\u2019s already been a lot of good work from spring on to get us ready to move forward and find out what the university\u2019s next 50 years will be like.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Q: Your learning curve has probably been pretty steep, especially regarding the relationship between Wright State and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A:<\/strong>\u00a0That relationship is a big part of what attracted me to the Dayton area. It taps into the founding of the university, the core of innovation with the Wright brothers, and also the research needs of the institution \u2013 it\u2019s in the fabric of the university. I\u2019ve had great opportunities to work with the military in past jobs, and had the chance to innovate and work with some national models, so we\u2019re taking steps to build on that here \u2013 it\u2019s tremendously important, with the work already occurring at Wright State Research Institute. The connections with the military and the Department of Defense are very active here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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RELATED:\u00a0Wright State named one of \u2018Best Midwestern\u2019 colleges by review<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Q: Back to finances, if we could \u2013 you mentioned things are looking better than expected; is it accurate to say that the worst is over?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A:<\/strong>\u00a0I would say we\u2019ve turned the corner, but there are still a lot of very important decisions to make, and you can imagine it will take more than 90 days to strategically put the right culture in place as we move forward. What I\u2019m inheriting, though, is a financial situation better than what people would have expected out of FY 2017. The thing now will be to sit down and decide how to be very strategic about our resources and how to use them. How should we invest in those priorities and areas of excellence? This year we\u2019ll complete our strategic planning and identify what Ohio needs Wright State to be for the next 50 years. We\u2019ve had a short-term solution which now needs to become a sustainable business model. We\u2019re much leaner now but it\u2019s also time for us to lean in \u2013 we need to really embrace this business mindset to be able to deliver what the region needs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Q: Along those lines, what would you like the community to look to Wright State for? The trend has seemed to be that many things were asked of the university and some went well, and others did not.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A:<\/strong>\u00a0I think that\u2019s a very good observation. Wright State has been very responsive to the needs of the region over the years, but perhaps we need to take a step back and determine what are the right areas of excellence, and focus on them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Q: You seem to be suggesting that the university can\u2019t really be all things to all people, so there will be a lot of interest in the things you choose to focus on.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A:<\/strong>\u00a0I won\u2019t be doing it in a vacuum \u2014 we\u2019ll be planning with thousands of people, and not just on campus. It would be presumptuous of me at this point to state these areas when the team is still working on it. But you\u2019re right that the university has been pretty good at adding things, but not so good at trimming things, so it\u2019s hard to figure out what not to do. It can be freeing, though, when you have a shared strategic plan because it can help you say no to things and keep you from chasing shiny objects or things that are important but you\u2019re not able to do well all at the same time. So it will be interesting to see \u2014 I have some sense of what those conversations may be, but I don\u2019t want to say first what I think. There will be some tremendous ideas out there, and I don\u2019t want to squash them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the entire post at journal-news.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpt Q: What\u2019s your first month on the job been like? Schrader:\u00a0The first month brought some amazing facts every day \u2013 on how integral Wright State is to this community, on the educational opportunities and access it provides, and on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":46575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[730],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wright-state-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47137,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47135\/revisions\/47137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}