Retiring Norton urges advancement
SLIPPERY ROCK — In her final public address to the university's council of trustees, Slippery Rock President Cheryl Norton urged the school to pursue an ambitious agenda focused on curricular improvements, student retention and infrastructure improvements during the next 12 months.
Norton's comments, which came at the council's regular meeting Friday, highlighted the university's strengths but also touched on some of the challenges facing the school.
Among those are making sure the university's curriculum — which has added 15 new degree programs during the past three years — continues to grow and incorporate more online and international experiences; doing more to help at-risk students succeed and graduate; and finding a way to incorporate more sustainable energy practices into campus infrastructure projects.
When it comes to student success, Norton said, the university faces a particular challenge with minority students. She said data on graduation rates and student retention reveal that black and Hispanic students at the school have a retention rate 8 to 10 percent below SRU's Caucasian and Asian students. She said financial pressures, personal problems and difficulty connecting with the campus community are among the most commonly cited reasons for students leaving the university.
Those are pressures Norton said are exacerbated by students entering a community that is majority-white. Only 4 percent of Butler County's population are minorities, Norton said, and in the communities around campus that makes a difference.
“In the Slippery Rock Borough or township, the only minorities are our SRU students, faculty and staff,” Norton said. “This community literally changes complexion every school year when more than 1,000 people of color move back into the area.”
Norton said the university was beginning to work with churches in the community in an effort to find ways to combat the issue.
On the topics of infrastructure and sustainability, Norton, who is retiring next month, also pressed SRU officials to continue pursuing energy and infrastructure improvements as part of a 20-year plan to reimagine the school's sustainability.
In 2013 Norton signed the President's Climate Action Plan, which sets a goal of becoming a carbon neutral campus by 2037 — a benchmark she said the school would have to work hard to achieve.
“We have academic buildings with an average age of more than 45 years and a deferred maintenance estimate of more than $130 million and growing,” Norton said Friday.
Despite those challenges, SRU has reduced its energy consumption by 11 percent since 2014, Norton said, with the biggest change coming as a 41 percent reduction in the school's use of coal.
