Here we are again friends. An SFA search thread. In the past 12 months we've seen great change in our athletic department. Our longtime AD retired and has been replaced by the superb Ryan Ivey. A new football coach has been named to lead us back to the promised land(more like to the mountaintop, the promised Land lies in March.)
On the university side, we took a big step forward with our new STEM Building and hit our long awaited 13k enrollment marker. Now, arguably the most important leader of our University, President Patillo has announced his retirement.
I feel like we're at a critical juncture for SFA. We've made good progress under Patillo's tenure. We've captured some national name recognition and we've built quite a few new buildings on campus. He's set us up to hire our Brad Underwood so to speak. Someone who can come in and build on the foundation to soaring heights.
We have the unique opportunity to become the de facto university of East Texas. It's something that UT Tyler continually mentions as their goal. We must beat them to it. We can get on a sustainable path to 15-17k students over the next 12 years. We can continue to improve our methods to be one of the leading undergraduate institutions in Texas as more and more of our in state peers pour their money into graduate programs.
We have the ability to put SFA on the same level of perceived public prestige as UH, UTSA, UNT, etc. Some of our programs, like Finance, Speech Therapy, and nursing already churn out graduates with experience levels that are on par with UT and A&M.
We have an opportunity over the next 5 years to meet and exceed our proposed $100 million for 100 years fundraising goal.
All in all, our future looks bright if we can seize it. I'll add some ideal candidates to this thread later on, but tell me, what do you hope to see in the next university president?
On the university side, we took a big step forward with our new STEM Building and hit our long awaited 13k enrollment marker. Now, arguably the most important leader of our University, President Patillo has announced his retirement.
I feel like we're at a critical juncture for SFA. We've made good progress under Patillo's tenure. We've captured some national name recognition and we've built quite a few new buildings on campus. He's set us up to hire our Brad Underwood so to speak. Someone who can come in and build on the foundation to soaring heights.
We have the unique opportunity to become the de facto university of East Texas. It's something that UT Tyler continually mentions as their goal. We must beat them to it. We can get on a sustainable path to 15-17k students over the next 12 years. We can continue to improve our methods to be one of the leading undergraduate institutions in Texas as more and more of our in state peers pour their money into graduate programs.
We have the ability to put SFA on the same level of perceived public prestige as UH, UTSA, UNT, etc. Some of our programs, like Finance, Speech Therapy, and nursing already churn out graduates with experience levels that are on par with UT and A&M.
We have an opportunity over the next 5 years to meet and exceed our proposed $100 million for 100 years fundraising goal.
All in all, our future looks bright if we can seize it. I'll add some ideal candidates to this thread later on, but tell me, what do you hope to see in the next university president?
