Wow. It happened. I wasn’t expecting it, wasn’t counting on it, I honestly wasn’t even sure how I should feel about it at first, but it happened…

I’ve been assigned a place on President Ted Carter’s strategic transition team.

What does that mean exactly? Well, it means a lot of things. For one thing, President Carter promised to create this group to build a plan that lays out where we are as a University and charts out where we want to be by 2025. That sounds kind of far away but in the grand scheme of things, it’s actually really close. This also means developing pathways to measure and evaluate our progress. 

Oh, and he wants it done in 100 days. Not 100 days from now, but 100 days starting from when our group was formed. There’s no grass growing under his feet, that’s for sure. So, yeah, no pressure. 

The task is both exciting and daunting.

It’s something that I’m very grateful for in his leadership – he is very good at creating momentum in a thoughtful, targeted manner. We’re not just charging blindly into the future. We are asking the big questions, the hard questions, and working to develop a cohesive, inclusive shared vision that we can then work toward with actionable plans. It’s an exciting time to be a Regent here at the University of Nebraska. 

Big ideas that challenge our thinking and energize the whole state will stir even more curiosity, and in turn, yield more big ideas.

And we will be calling on all of you for help – both for your sense of what the future could hold, but also ideas that could inspire us to be a university that serves us as Nebraskans, as Americans, and as world citizens.

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