While the violations that occurred at Nicholls were quite serious and most embarrassing, the efforts made on this campus to address the causes of those violations and to take the strongest measures possible to prevent them from ever reoccurring have been just as serious in nature. Not only did Nicholls accept the resignation of the involved coaching and advising staff, the university has also replaced them with coaches and academic advisors who are truly committed to the academic well being of our student athletes. Additionally, the director of Athletics has made it a policy to stress compliance at all staff meetings and has worked with the university’s compliance officer to issue a compliance newsletter on a monthly basis throughout the academic year. The issue of compliance should never be far from the minds of any of our coaching and athletic administrative staff.

With the retirement of our compliance officer shortly after the NCAA imposed its penalties on Nicholls State University, a new compliance officer was charged with changing the compliance model at the university. Specifically, that individual was directed to be more active in preventing violations on the front end rather than policing the Athletics Department for violations after the fact. The new compliance officer was urged to become a compliance partner with all the coaches, assisting them to do the right thing and answering their questions. As a result, the coaches have confidence that they can go to the compliance officer and find help in addressing their compliance issues.

Most importantly, Nicholls State University has taken academic advising of student athletes out of the arena of the Athletics Department and moved it entirely under the academic side of the university. The academic advisors to our student athletes are now housed in University College, serving under an academic dean who answers to the vice president for Academic Affairs. This model has already attracted the interest of our sister institutions in the state of Louisiana and of some of our Southland Conference schools as well. I am confident that this action will go a long way in helping avoid the type of violation that occurred while also addressing the Academic Progress Rate (APR) issues that institutions like Nicholls State are confronted with on a continuous basis.

In conclusion, while the violations and the resulting penalties were painful and embarrassing, Nicholls State University has handled them with maturity and determination. Our student athletes and our coaching staff are better than ever, and we continue to move forward determined to grow as an athletic program and as an academic community.

My thanks go to the faculty, staff, and coaching personnel who have worked so hard over the past four years to address the needs of the athletic program and the student athletes it serves.

A copy of the final probation report is available for review through the Office of the Director of Athletics (985-448-4795).

Members of the faculty, staff and student body will receive instructions regarding personal and/or office contact information. The range of communication mechanisms will include e-mail, cellular and office telephone, and text messaging, among others.

I am requesting the active participation of all members of the university community with this new communication initiative. In the event of the need for emergency notification, it is critically important that members of the university community are able to receive one or more of these message formats.

The FIRST CALL system will be used for emergency events occurring on the main campus as well as at off campus institutional sites including that of the Theodore Duhe Building in Houma.

In the event of a crisis situation, Nicholls State University will communicate vital information as quickly and efficiently as possible in order to provide the greatest safety for our students, faculty and staff.

The university will use a variety of communication methods to notify constituents of a crisis situation. Following an immediate crisis assessment, the appropriate means of communication will be determined and implemented. Based on the unique circumstances of the crisis, Nicholls will employ one or more of the following communication tools to notify its students, faculty and staff:

• Web site: notice posted to university home page and Blackboard
• E-mail: broadcast message to campus e-mail addresses
• Telephone: broadcast voice mail to campus extensions and posted to emergency alert hotline (985) 448-4636 and 1-866-709-8927
• Media: broadcast message on the university television and radio stations and media alert distributed to all area print and broadcast media representatives
• Call boxes: broadcast message to passers by
• Public address system: broadcast message to occupants of the university student union and cafeteria

Nicholls has an extensive Emergency Preparedness Plan in place that includes procedures to ensure rapid response to a crisis situation. All crisis communication tools are tested and evaluated on a regular basis.

Nicholls offers free counseling services to all students, faculty and staff. Private counseling is provided by licensed counselors prepared to respond during crisis situations. For more information on the counseling services available to the university community, please visit www.nicholls.edu/counseling.

The most significant success story and the real reason I am writing you involves the continued growth in the quality of the entering student body. First-time freshmen had an average ACT score of 21.20, the highest in Nicholls history. That figure exceeds the state average and is equal to the national average for the same period. While the number

of first-time African American students is down by 2, the average ACT for that cohort is up an impressive 0.82 percent, to 19.1. Over 70% of our first-time freshmen have an ACT of 20 or higher compared to 66% last year.

The trend for more students to quality for TOPS continues with a 13.7 percent increase this year; that is, of first-time entering freshmen, 639 were eligible for TOPS compared to 562 in Fall 2006. Finally, our second-year retention rate is at a new high of 64.8% (and we are working toward our goal of 75%).

>From the above data, it is clear that Nicholls is continuing to mature as a selective admissions institution. With the designation of Nicholls as a Four-Year IV institution this winter by the Southern Association, the University will enter another phase of its development, in which we will continue to see further improvement in student quality, progress to degree and rate of graduation. Clearly, Nicholls is becoming a university of choice instead of one of convenience!

Next fall, Nicholls will celebrate its 60th birthday, and we will mark the occasion with the appropriate festivities. It will also be a good time to reflect on the highlights of this university’s brief history. Nicholls began with an open admissions policy to serve the region, and for years it was the only post secondary institution in this area. During those years we served the area well. With the maturity of both the region and the university and with the academic programs developed and strengthened by the faculty, we have become a different university.

Later this year, the Southern Region Education Board will designate Nicholls a 4-Year IV university. A 4-Year IV university is a comprehensive institution with a wide range of baccalaureate and masters programs and a real presence in scholarship and service. This constitutes a different type of university from that of our roots, and it reflects the changes occurring in our service region. For example, we now have a community college presence that allows us to move away from our earlier open admissions status. We will continue to strengthen our masters programs and hopefully, in the future, offer a doctoral degree. This university is maturing well beyond the boarders of its service region. We are reaching out to a national and international audience. We are well on our way to becoming a very seasoned university.

Helping us as we achieve our new institutional identity are our loyal friends and supporters. At this time I want to thank the Lorio Foundation and Rita Dickie for their history of strong support. This year they have been especially generous by endowing four new professorships, one in Nursing, one in Fine Arts, one in Languages and Literature, and one in Physical Sciences. Louisiana’s Commissioner of Higher Education, Dr. T. Joseph Savoie, will present the state’s match, a check for $160,000, later this morning. The university is deeply grateful for the generous investment that the Lorio Foundation has made in our future. We now have a total of 35 endowed professorships. We also currently have six endowed chairs, and are in the process of conducting national searches for the endowed chairs in Languages and Literature, Computer Science, Accounting, and Information Systems.

Turning to our students and the academic preparedness of our entering freshmen, our students’ ACT scores have been increasing over the past several years. This is a result of a strategic approach to recruitment by our admissions staff. In 2000, our entering freshmen had an ACT composite score of just over 19. This past year the entering freshmen achieved an ACT of 20, and this fall we hope to be reporting that we have reached an ACT composite of 21.

To dwell on this positive trend, twenty-eight percent of our entering students in 2000 had an ACT over 20. In 2006 this had increased to sixty-six percent, and will continue to rise this year. Thirty-three percent of entering freshmen were on TOPS in 2000, and fifty percent in 2006. That indicator will also continue to rise. With respect to retention rates, in fall of 2001, fifty-five percent of our first time freshmen returned to campus. In fall 2006, sixty-four percent returned, and we are striving to go beyond seventy-five percent in the near future.

Our graduation rates, however, clearly reflect our history of open admissions. In 1998-1999, we had a very poor graduation rate of twenty-one percent. In 2005-2006, that rate had increased to almost twenty-seven percent. Let me point out that was the national trend for a public open admissions university. While we will continue to improve our graduation rates, we have been clearly challenged by the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors and the Board of Regents to exceed national standards by 2012. Realistically, that is not possible, especially in the wake of the devastation of this region by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We must act as quickly as possible to reach the national average of our peer institutions.

We do believe that with the fall class of 2006 through the fall class of 2012 that the university will see a significant change in retention. To help meet our goals, we will kick off the Quality Enhancement Plan this year. The Plan contains a component that is a two year process of assessment to improve critical thinking through writing. Many of the faculty will be actively engaged to ensure that this component is successful. This represents still another part of the transition from open to selective admissions to strengthen Nicholls as a comprehensive university. We will also be undertaking a Math 101 pilot program this year. We are challenged in this area as are other institutions in this country. The national average shows that fifty percent of this nation’s entering freshmen fail or drop math the first time. It is a statistic that should embarrass this country, but for us it is also a barrier to transitioning the university. We have to ensure that these students are successful. The Mathematics Department has designed an extraordinary initiative and Scott Beslin has sent out an email with an informative video on the plan. As a 4-Year IV university, we cannot simply say that students coming to this institution lack preparation. Yes, we do have problems with students coming from the K-12 schools. But high school redesign will take years to accomplish any real change. The reality is that every coin has two sides. Preparation is one side, but the other side is the teaching and learning environment within a university. I believe that the initiative the Mathematics Department has developed is a major step forward in addressing our own weaknesses and in ensuring greater success of our students. The students will have to step up and commit to some hard work. That, too, will be challenging.

Let me make a few observations about an improved budget for this university. We are grateful to Governor Kathleen Blanco and her administration and to the Louisiana Legislature for increasing funding for higher education in this year’s budget. We also deeply appreciate the work of Commissioner T. Joseph Savoie and President Sally Clausen for the aggressive budget that they developed last year. Normally, increased money for education does not go to higher education; it goes to pre-K-12. However, thanks to those I have mentioned, we have received additional monies that will allow salary increases that average five percent raises for faculty. Of that, one half of the funding will be across the board, as mandated, for a fixed amount. The other half follows the recommendation of the Faculty Compensation Committee: two percent for merit and a half percent for equity, to be distributed by department heads. The legislature also funded a $1500 across-the-board increase for professional staff.

With one hundred percent funding of the formula by the Legislature, we were able to do many things to help this university move forward. We have spent a decade of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" as we addressed personnel, facility, program and equipment needs. This year we will go beyond the five percent faculty pay raise to a total average of 7.85%. This was accomplished several ways. The minimum pay increase was brought to six percent, five percent, or four percent, depending on the faculty member’s merit rating. Faculty were also brought to a minimum 88%, 84%, or 80% of the SREB target, depending on their rank and discipline, again based on merit. As requested by our system office, we made adjustments to associate professors and instructors, again based on merit, in an attempt to bring the overall salaries by rank as close as possible to 100%. The ranks of professor and assistant professors are already over 100% by rank target.

With formula funding at one hundred percent, we have also increased student scholarship support by $583,000; the university added need based scholarships in that amount, even though the state has its own need-based scholarship program. We have made major contributions to scholarships to recruit and retain the best students. Additionally, we have funded seven previously non-funded faculty positions and nine new faculty positions. We have also funded positions for our endowed chairs. We increased adjunct/overload pay to a range of $1500 to $2,250, a modest increase, but one which we regard as a first step. We are also working to increase the graduate assistant stipend. These actions must occur if this university is to mature fully as a comprehensive institution; we must recruit the best prepared graduate students and graduate assistants.

One of the major accomplishments of this new fiscal year involves the distribution of indirect costs. In the past, the university took indirect costs from grants and used these dollars to cover basic institutional costs. As we all recognized that was not an effective way to encourage faculty to pursue contracts and grants in their research fields. This is a first step for us, and I am delighted that we were able to accomplish it through the involvement of the faculty, the administration and the faculty senate. It has been a major undertaking, one that will change the face of research at this university.

Now I will turn to the initiatives that we have undertaken to improve the campus:

• Newly-resurfaced streets and parking lots, new street signs and other upgrades, at a cost of over 3.2 million dollars
• A 5.5 million dollar renovation of the Vernon F. Galliano Cafeteria, transforming the original building into a state-of-the-art dining facility that is second to none in the entire South.
• The near completion of a 4.5 million dollar land acquisition, accomplished between the State of Louisiana and Acadia Agricultural Holdings, L.L.C. I truly appreciate the patience and support of Division of Administration Commissioner, Jerry Luke LeBlanc, and his staff for staying the course with Nicholls throughout that purchase. The project represents the first-ever state mediation of land acquisition by the State of Louisiana in an expropriation case. Nicholls will gain ownership of 59 acres of land, and the landholders will donate another 17 acres for a total of 76 additional campus acres.
• We are now on track to have a recreation center and to build the culinary arts building. In the future, we plan to have an events center on the remaining land.
• Beauregard Hall finally will be renovated at a cost of 14.7 million dollars. This project has been on the state’s capital outlay request list since 1983.
• We are scheduled to build three new residence halls, remodel two buildings, and demolish 4 through a $50 million dollar bond transaction. The project also includes the acquisition of La Maison du Bayou.
• Finally, we have received 3.7 million dollars for a campus-wide electrical upgrade. Through this project and in the event of a future electrical interruption, the university will be brought back online at the same time as Thibodaux Regional Hospital.

All of these improvements are intended to enhance the quality of student life and learning on this campus. As a result, if we continue to work together, we are certain to become more successful in recruiting and educating greater and greater numbers of qualified students.

Finally, let me conclude my comments with an announcement regarding the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the re-certification of the intercollegiate athletics program. On September 24, the peer review team will arrive on campus to assess our athletic programs. Our university-prepared self-study indicates that Nicholls athletics has come a long distance in the past ten years. After reviewing that document, the NCAA had only one observation, and we have already addressed the matter. This is a major accomplishment, and I thank Dr. Laynie Barrilleaux, Dr. Glenn Antizzo, Mr. Rob Bernardi, Ms. "Do" Bonin and the faculty and staff on the recertification team for the excellent report they compiled.

Thank you, and have a great year educating our students!

The university will use a variety of communication methods to notify constituents of a crisis situation. Following an immediate crisis assessment, the appropriate means of communication will be determined and implemented. Based on the unique circumstances of the crisis, Nicholls will employ one or more of the following communication tools to notify its students, faculty and staff:

• Web site: Notice posted to university home page and Blackboard
• E-mail: Broadcast message to campus e-mail addresses
• Telephone: Broadcast voice mail to campus extensions and posted to emergency alert hotline (985) 448-4636 and 1-866-709-8927
• Media: Broadcast message on the university television and radio stations and media alert distributed to all area print and broadcast media representatives
• Call boxes: Broadcast message to passersby
• Public Address System: Broadcast message to occupants of the university student union and cafeteria

Nicholls has an extensive Emergency Preparedness Plan in place that includes procedures to ensure a rapid response to a crisis situation. All crisis communication tools are tested and evaluated on a regular basis.

Nicholls offers free counseling services to all students, faculty and staff. Private counseling is provided by licensed counselors prepared to respond during crisis situations. For more information on the counseling services available to the university community, please visit www.nicholls.edu/counseling

After a day of negotiations with a mediator and representatives of the state, Acadia and the university, the parties agreed to a purchase price of $4.5 million for the 57 acres being purchased. "I am delighted by what this means for the future of Nicholls, both for the long-term and for the immediate future," Dr. Stephen Hulbert, university president, said. "This land allows us the space we need to expand, develop and modernize our university."

The first parcel, bordering Highway 1 and Bowie Road, is the planned site of a 39,000-square-foot building for the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute. The second parcel, bordering Bowie Road and Ardoyne Drive, will be used in part for a planned student recreation center and recreation fields. The donated third parcel of 17 acres is located to the south of Ardoyne Drive.

"I deeply appreciate the generosity Jake Giardina and Ronald Adams displayed in donating the additional parcel of land," Hulbert said. "The Nicholls campus is in the midst of numerous expansion and renovation projects, and this land will help to meet the future needs of our students, faculty and staff."

Hulbert added, "I want to also express my appreciation to Gov. Kathleen Blanco, Jerry Luke LeBlanc, the commissioner of administration, and Rep. Warren Triche for their unwavering support throughout the acquisition process."

Hulbert said the agreement allows the university to move forward with the construction of the recreation center, which has already been designed, and with a capital campaign to fund the culinary building. Nicholls students have been paying a fee of $74.25 per semester since 2003 to finance the 63,000-square-foot recreation center.