It’s hard to believe that this is the third fall that I have been at UNL. The time has flown by and a lot has changed. The CBA leadership team and I have been reflecting on how much of our strategic plan, developed in fall of 2010, has been implemented in the last year. We also know how much further we have to go. Everyone is working hard to move the college forward, and we are beginning to see signs that our hard work is paying off. 
 
We have set some aggressive growth goals as part of the campus’s plans for delivering on Chancellor Perlman’s goal to grow campus enrollments to 30,000 by 2017. If this fall’s enrollments are any indication of what will come, we are on track to grow our college. This fall our freshmen enrollments exploded with a 24.5% increase over last year and our first-time transfer students increased by 15.8% from last year. At a time when the overall enrollments for the campus are slightly down, our overall enrollments at CBA are up. Word is getting out that CBA offers a big time business education, provides a sense of community that students want to join, and commits to helping students get internships and jobs. I recently participated in a photo shoot for a first-ever CBA Freshmen Class photo with 500+ students posing for the camera. It was crazy seeing all those students in one place – many wearing their red CBA sunglasses.
 
Here are a few other achievements we are celebrating this fall:

• Approval by the Board of Regents of our proposal for a new CBA building.

• We are excited to have 11 new faculty join us this fall. We are recruiting for 6-8 more new faculty for next fall.

• We rolled out the new Minor in Business and there seems to be enthusiastic response from the campus. We look forward to growing that program.

• Our new major in Supply Chain Management went into effect this fall, as well as a revised major in Management with a track in Entrepreneurship.

• We are adding two new advisory boards to the college – one for Supply Chain Management and one for the Management Department and all 12 advisory boards meet at the end of the month at CBA.

• Our enrollments in CBA’s Nebraska at Oxford program were as high as they have ever been – 71 students studying for 4 weeks at Oxford, taught by Oxford faculty.

It is a great time to be dean here at CBA. Thanks to all of you for your support and interest in our college. You will be hearing much more from us on the progress of the new building. We look forward to seeing many of you at various events this fall.

Published: September 20, 2012