State of the U: How UND’s mission and vision are becoming realities

In his State of the University address, UND’s president points to real progress and describes exciting developments to come

Editor’s note: In the UND LEADS Strategic Plan, the “Affinity” core value includes calls to “acknowledge the valuable contributions of UND team members” and “enhance programs for all faculty and staff that will cultivate a sense of belonging at the University of North Dakota.”

Through his State of the University address, UND President Andy Armacost proudly acknowledges those contributions and strives to cultivate that sense of belonging, in keeping with the goals of the Strategic Plan. 

A video of the president’s remarks can be found at the bottom of this article.

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“To inspire a sense of wonder, a love of discovery and a commitment to serve.”

That’s what President Andrew Armacost asked the overflow crowd at the 2024 State of the University address to keep in mind, as he led them through his presentation.

To help them do just that, he reached back to 1961 for an anecdote of President John F. Kennedy, when the president made a visit to Cape Canaveral. While watching people working to prepare for an upcoming rocket launch, Kennedy came upon a custodian.

“And what do you do here?” the president asked.

“My job is to put a man on the moon,” the worker answered.

In a similar way, people all across campus play a role in driving UND forward — and, in fact, that they should see themselves as important to the University, Armacost said.

“That anecdote,” Armacost said, “rings true every time I think about it — about the contributions of everyone across UND, about doing the mission of the University, about supporting our students, about supporting one another, and making the mission and vision a reality.”

More than 350 faculty and staff members attended the event, which was held again in the Barry Auditorium of the Nistler College of Business & Public Administration on Thursday, Aug. 22, and streamed via Zoom. Attendance was such that the crowd overflowed into the nearby common room of Nistler Hall.

Armacost bookended his speech with a pair of data points, the first of which showed UND’s retention rate of first-year students. From the fall of 2022 to the fall of 2023, UND retained 83% of its first-year students. As Armacost noted, that’s the highest figure ever recorded for retention in the North Dakota University System — or at least, since 1990, which is when the system started recording those numbers, Armacost said.

He credited everyone at UND for this accomplishment. “That’s the support, that’s the environment that we all create,” he said. “It’s not just in the classroom; it’s across the campus. It’s everything we do.”

Armacost also made sure to note UND’s steady increase in enrollment, a climb that is bucking national trends in higher education. In particular, he mentioned the soon-to-be incoming class of freshmen has increased by about 400 students, or 23%.

The second data point, which came toward the end of the address, involved research, and the dramatic increase in research funding UND has experienced. Four years ago, research expenditures totaled about $110 million, but since then have climbed to $182 million in expenditures in 2023.

Armacost said that trend is expected to continue, and that funded research — coming largely from federal and state grants — shows a commitment at the institutional level to instilling a “love of discovery” and nurturing “a sense of wonder,” sentiments captured by the vision statement at the top of this article.

Between those two data points were stories from across campus — stories that heralded the efforts of staff and faculty members over the year.

For example, Ed Martin, assistant director of dining, and campus horticulturist Melissa Grafenauer were recognized for their work to feed and mentor student employees and keep the campus beautiful.

Armacost also gave a shout-out to Troy Noeldner, director of Housing, and Art Malloy, vice president of Student Affairs, for their dedication to making sure UND is able to provide safe housing for its growing number of students.

The list of individual and collective accomplishments continues:

• Pablo de León, chair of UND’s Department of Space Studies, was given a shout-out for winning a patent for his NASA-funded research to 3D-print spacesuits.
• The number of people receiving doctorates in Indigenous Health, the world’s first such program, doubled to eight people in just its second year.
• Tiffany Ford, director of the Center for Business Engagement & Development, was recognized for the financial impact the Small Business Development Centers’ programs had on the state. Hint: It’s more than $1 billion. Billion with a ‘B.’
• Armacost spoke of the continuing work on UND’s campus buildings, including efforts to modernize Merrifield Hall, as well as recently completed work on dormitories and the Chester Fritz Performing Arts Center. Ongoing efforts to fund a new Flight Operations Building at the Grand Forks airport and Health Professions addition to the School of Medicine & Health Sciences also were described.
• After speaking with Soojung Kim, chair of the Communication Department, about her role in the UND Connect grant program (which funds local or state quality-of-life programs), Armacost recognized the eight other faculty members who received the program’s initial grants.
• And speaking of Soojung Kim, Armacost recognized her, Joonghwa Lee, associate professor of Communication, and Robert Stupnisky, associate dean for Research and Faculty Development, for their recent achievement in becoming naturalized U.S. citizens.

The stories continued, and included efforts to boost UND’s national security profile through its National Security Corridor (set to open in October), plus cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence research efforts. Those stories and more reached a crescendo when Armacost introduced his Word of the Year: Momentum.

Armacost conveyed this idea through the Harold Eugene Edgerton photo, “Milk Drop Coronet,” which shows a single droplet of milk falling into a pool of the same. The famous photo captures the momentum of that single droplet, which creates something entirely unexpected and beautiful, Armacost said.

As Physics majors know, the two components of momentum are mass and velocity, Armacost noted. In the case of UND, the University’s mass is the collective efforts of every person on campus, all of whom work together to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. And velocity is imparted by legislative support and other elements that accelerate the University’s progress.

If we work together, Armacost said, we can use these components to build more momentum, thus more rapidly approaching UND’s collective and individual goals.

“Let’s keep working hard to launch new programs and think about support to our students and make that happen,” he said.

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>> QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS about the UND LEADS Strategic Plan? Your thoughts are welcome! Please contact Mike Wozniak, coordinator of Leadership & Programming, and/or Ryan Zerr, associate vice president for Strategy & Implementation, the co-chairs of the UND LEADS Implementation Committee.

You also may offer your thoughts by visiting the UND LEADS Strategic Plan home page and clicking on the “Provide your feedback” link that you’ll find there.

Thank you for your support of the UND LEADS Strategic Plan!

A video of the president’s remarks is below.