The past year has proven to be the most arduous that I can recall in my career. COVID-19 turned our collective lives upside down in a matter of days, and it has forced us to evolve how we work and live on a daily basis for the past 11 months.
Even with these most difficult circumstances, it is with great pride and appreciation that I share with you the university’s success in meeting its enrollment targets for this winter semester. Overall, the university exceeded last year’s winter semester enrollment by almost two percent and undergraduate enrollment increased by almost 11 percent. Additionally, I just completed Fiscal Year 2022 budget meetings with our deans and vice presidents, and in April I will be presenting our Board of Trustees with a budget that will support our continued efforts to increase student enrollment and retention, advance our academic and research programs, and ensure the economy and efficiency of our administrative support services.
These accomplishments are even more remarkable considering that the current pandemic required us all to change the way we teach, engage with our students, provide support services, and manage our resources. In the spirit of One NSU, we worked together to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing environment and continue our progress toward preeminence.
While we continue to face financial stress related to the costs of maintaining safe classrooms, student housing, and workplaces, we have proven that we can “blend and flex” our resources, personnel, and expenses as needed. Based upon my confidence in your commitment to excellence, I have authorized a merit increase pool for eligible faculty and staff. Merit increases will be retroactive to the start of the first payroll period in January for faculty and staff with a date of hire on or before January 1, 2020 and will appear in the March 26, 2021 payroll distribution. The Office of Human Resources will be advising your Dean or Vice President of the merit award process and eligibility criteria.
I am sincerely grateful for the contributions that each of you make toward achieving our goals, living our core values, and ensuring NSU’s continued success.
Fins Up and Go Sharks!
This fall, HCAS Chemistry faculty member Maria Ballester, Ph.D. was lead author of an article entitled, “Protonation of Planar and Nonplanar Porphyrins: A Calorimetric and Computational Study”. Published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A, this article reported the first calorimetric study of the diprotonation of a series of planar and nonplanar free-base porphyrins, coupled with a DFT investigation of the enthalpies of diprotonation.
