Aden Hizkias
  Staff Writer

Last Monday, Chancellor Franklin Gilliam Jr. and the planning committee held a two hour faculty forum for the new strategic plan, calling it a “meta-narrative” and providing an emphasis on the need for UNC-Greensboro to have a story.

“This is a working plan; it is not etched in stone. We will continue to take the input of the constituency as we go,” Chancellor Gilliam said.

The model portrays a meta-narrative that contains four elements: opportunity for all, research intensive, student-oriented and place.

Each element was explained with examples of how the university has achieved it.

“Opportunity for all” exists through UNCG’s history of a Women’s College and that legacy, the online student presence and the new recognition it has received with returning military veterans to the university.

Chancellor Gilliam mentioned that this showed that UNCG is contributing to the broader society.

“We’re still about opportunity. We have the most diverse student body in the system,” Chancellor Gilliam said.

“Research intensive” has been a strong part of the university in both the undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Aspects of the university in this section are the Center for New Carolinians, which focuses on building bridges between refugees and communities; the UNCG Center for Translational Biomedical Research, which looks at molecular mechanisms of disease pathogenesis among other things; and the Serve Center, an educational research program.

“Student-oriented” highlights the importance of putting students and education first through strong teaching from the faculty.

“Place” refers to the Crescent, the area that encompass cities in which most UNCG students are native to as well as where the majority of alumni reside. Chancellor Gilliam mentioned that UNCG has carved out a place and made a presence in the state.

Three sections have been chosen through forums in the past year: healthy lives, vibrant communities, and global connections.

Although vibrant communities and global connections were welcomed quite easily, there was a concern for the healthy lives from the Humanities Department.

“I think that people in the Department of Humanities felt that they were not being represented. They couldn’t see themselves in the plan itself,” Dr. Gregory Grieve, head of the religious studies department, said.

Although Grieve mentioned his appreciation for the plan and the process that it has taken for the past year, he hopes that adding another theme of “Meaningful Lives” may be beneficial.

David Sprinkle, who currently serves on the University Advancement Committee and chairs the Nominating Committee, mentioned the idea of “Meaningful Lives.”

Most of the focus Monday night was on the theme of “Healthy Lives.” This theme encompasses the idea of a health in terms of physical, mental, public and environmental.

Provost Dana Dunn stated that this also specified UNCG in terms of the new Recreation Center and the importance of overall health.

However, those who were present from the Humanities could not see where they fit in.

Many professors including Anthony Cuda of the English Department, Lisa Levenstein who is the Head of the Humanities Department, Mark Rifkin of the Women and Genders Studies and many others spoke up about the humanities as being a core strengths of the university.

They believed the lack of a clear theme that portrayed this section of the university was a disfavor to the students. Although students need to have jobs, employers are looking for skills that students learn from courses in the humanities.

Dr. Grieve mentioned that it is understandable to have the “Healthy Lives” as part of the strategic plan because of the professional schools such as Nursing and Health and Human Sciences, but the addition of a fourth category, “Meaningful Lives,” would allow the humanities to see themselves more in this new plan.

Through a discussion of what is defined as a meaningful life, many believed that this encompassed a better description on UNCG’s mission.

Dr. Grieve brought up the UNC-System constitution, specifically Article IX Section 1 which reads, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools, libraries, and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

“Whenever I think about what our mission is, I always come back to this,” Dr. Grieve said. “The core mission of the university, I see, as being teaching this to as many people as possible.”

Although a change may not occur as Healthy Lives was chosen from past forums from the majority constituency, Dr. Grieve hopes that there was enough of a voice from the faculty that there could potentially be an addition of “Meaningful Lives’ to the strategic plan.