I’ve talked a lot about the direct impact of the University of Nebraska presidential search as well as my own impressions. Today I’d like to take a bit of a side road. Something that has been on my mind that relates to the search in a sort of roundabout way but isn’t about the process itself. What I’d like to talk about is change.

In the process of meeting a lot of really outstanding candidates for the university’s next president, there has been one major recurring theme.

Higher education is being forced to change in many different ways.

Now don’t get me wrong, that’s not inherently bad. In fact I see change as an inevitable (it really is the only constant in the universe) but also as an opportunity to learn from where we’ve been and conscientiously, intentionally shape where we’re going.

Speaking with these outstanding higher education candidates reinforced how we have to make the next big step up as a university and look at how the structures serve students and how they don’t. 

Let’s face the changes that are coming head-on. For example, I recall hearing about a company that desperately needed engineers on the west coast and how the regional engineers they were getting straight out of school were not trained in what they needed to be trained in. Engineering, like so many other tech-related fields, was developing faster than the syllabus. So one of the local schools made a decision to adapt.

They had a couple people from the engineering field sit down with the university and analyze the engineering curriculum.

Then, they adapted those changes to meet the urgent growing need for qualified engineers. Funny how something as simple as a conversation can feel so revolutionary at times. I often think about the 13,000 jobs in the greater Omaha area that aren’t being filled, and how there are lots of institutions that can help fill them, but we need to work in sync with each other.

Everything from IT to welding to med center technology changes so quickly that to keep up and really serve students and the broader community we need to be looking forward, not in the rearview mirror.

When money is hard to get it’s tempting to keep doing what you’re doing but it’s not okay now and as a state we can’t afford to be doing that if we want a really solid future.

We have an opportunity to create centers of excellence that would fill some of the gaps and yield serious results for students and state. And as I listened to the brilliant presidential candidates we had the good fortune of interviewing, amidst the fascinating perspectives and stimulating ideas, I felt like I needed to speak up.

*Barbara’s thoughts as written by Kate based on weekly (fascinating) conversations.