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September 6, 2022
Dear William Paterson Faculty and Staff,
I hope you all enjoyed your Labor Day weekend and had the opportunity to relax and spend time with family and friends.
I want to thank everyone who joined me last Thursday in Shea or on Zoom for my Fall State of the University address. Whether you weren’t able to make it or would just like to take a closer look at my remarks or the accompanying slides, both are available on my website. There, you can also find the draft Strategic Planning and Branding & Identity documents that I referred to in my address. If, after taking a closer look at these documents, you would like to provide feedback, please send it to strategicplanning@wpunj.edu.
If you have questions about the issues I discussed in my address or just want to talk about how your semester is going so far, please join me for my first Office Hours for faculty and staff tomorrow, Wednesday, September 7, at 1:00 p.m. in the Green Room at Hobart Manor.
Provost Josh Powers will be joined by the Deans of the four colleges for Building the Academic Affairs Future, a further discussion of some of the key issues I raised in my address last week as they specifically relate to Academic Affairs. Everyone is invited to join them on Zoom on Friday, September 9, from 12:30-1:15 p.m. to learn more about how the division will be executing the new Strategic Plan in the framework of the divisional goals of enrollment, student success, resource generation, resource stewardship, and people investment.
I do want you to know that the Presidents of all of New Jersey’s senior public universities recently wrote to Governor Murphy expressing our deep concerns over recent reports of a potential and significant (up to 24%) increase in health benefits costs being considered by the State Health Benefits Commission. Given the scope and unanticipated nature of this potential increase, we are respectfully requesting the one-time use of state surplus funds to help mitigate the substantial financial and research impacts on public institutions of higher education. The AFT has been doing good work to lobby against an increase as well. On Tuesday, September 13, at 12 noon, there will be a rally at the Statehouse Annex in Trenton, and I encourage you to attend if your schedule allows.
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