[Orgvpdue] Welcome to the 2023-2024 academic year!

[Mona C Nelson]

Please see the message below from Louie...
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Dear UE Colleagues,

Welcome to the 2023-2024 academic year!

This is officially week 1 of the quarter.  The energy and student presence are palpable on campus. I have already attended several student-facing events in-person and there is a high level of student engagement that I haven't seen in a while. Not only are students asking questions, but they are engaged, curious, excited, and ready to go. I thank all of you who have been at the forefront and behind the scenes to help welcome our students to campus.

I am rebounding with excitement from our UE retreat. It was great to connect with everyone in person, have some good food, listen to music, build community, and share our individual and collective ideas to move UE towards its strategic goals.  We were also entertained by the talents of Justin in XCITE and the UCR resident-magician.  I would like to thank XCITE Studios for their contributions around photography, video and the org group photo - made possible by drone!

The retreat feedback was overwhelmingly positive and many people specifically appreciated the opportunity to learn from Dr. Cano-Matute's work on servingness within the UCR HSI context, discuss our purpose in UE, my session on metaphors such as the mochila (backpack) and mirror in education, and opportunities to discuss, within specific areas, the data overview session, and the goals and metrics activity to help demonstrate that we met or are striving towards our goals. As a result of the retreat, I observed that many people can benefit from some concrete training and development around goal setting, identifying metrics, and getting to specific outcomes. I have since met with Omar Safie on campus, who leads many of the accreditation efforts for the campus and he has agreed to offer a couple of workshops for UE on these topics.  More to follow on this topic and again, I thank you for engaging with colleagues at the retreat.

In addition, I am excited about a few initiatives that will get off the ground this quarter. This list is not comprehensive but will give you a sense of what is happening across UE:

  *   UE, through the hard work and dedication of our UWP colleagues, will be launching a series of opportunities for all UCR undergraduates to get assistance with non-course based writing support, such as writing applications for graduate school;
  *   UE has also invested in more intentional efforts to expand our first-generation student programming. Ebony Miles will be championing this work for UE;
  *   In October, you will hear from Macy Ring, who leads the capital internships for UCR and UE through the UE Student Success Series;
  *   UE will also launch a UE Innovation Grant opportunity where UE staff can apply for small mini-grants to engage in innovation and cross-area collaboration to help meet one of UE's strategic goals;
  *   In September, Nelly Cruz and I led an effort, along with UE colleagues, to write a $4 million grant to boost student retention for all UCR undergraduates who may be struggling to get from year 1 to year 2. We will find out the result of our application in December;

In addition, our UE colleagues remain engaged on many levels which include the following (again, not a comprehensive list):

  *   Honor's continues to expand its programming and met some of its important enrollment milestones for the 23-24 academic year;
  *   XCITE continues to be an amazing partner to many campus entities and they are actively sought out because of their high-quality work;
  *   The Black Student Success programming continues to provide a critical service to scholars across the campus and via collaboration with Student Affairs;
  *   HPAC is taking a group of students to the Bay Area this week to explore health professions opportunities, among many other engagement opportunities as we launch the quarter;
  *   ROTC continues to grow their reach and I recently learned that UCR ROTC has the most engaged number of students across the entire region;
  *   The Kessler Scholars Program has officially welcomed its first cohort of scholars in the Fall 2023;
  *   The Chancellor's Research Fellowship program and CUREL have revived the student ambassador program, and the students are already engaged in programming across campus;
  *   The ARC continues to provide essential services to 23,000+ students ensuring their academic success.

Again, this is not a comprehensive list, but it shows UE remains hard at work to boost graduation rates, reduce equity gaps, increase student engagement with high-impact practices, increase belonging, and promote student satisfaction.

I wish you a great start to the quarter and I look forward to connecting with you soon.

Best,
Louie

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Louie F. Rodriguez
Vice Provost and Dean
Division of Undergraduate Education
Professor of Education
University of California, Riverside
Louie.rodriguez at ucr.edu<mailto:Louie.rodriguez at ucr.edu>
ue.ucr.edu<https://ue.ucr.edu/>

Executive Assistant: Mona Nelson
mona.nelson at ucr.edu<mailto:mona.nelson at ucr.edu> (951) 827-7750

[Image]

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