Administrative insight from UND President Mark Kennedy

The rapid spread of digital technologies simultaneously eliminates, creates, alters, and moves jobs. Those designing and optimizing websites are replacing the jobs of those who sorted and delivered mail; built, sold, and fed fax machines; and sold, designed, and published advertising in traditional media outlets. This digitally driven creative destruction has hurled economic tsunamis at one industry after another. It is now washing over academia.

Students throughout rural North Dakota seeking to prepare for this ever-changing career landscape have the opportunity to gain their degrees not just from the University of North Dakota, but also online from Ivy League schools and other premier universities without leaving home.

The strategic planning process recently launched by UND is an opportunity for the university to confront the changes required to ride this digitization wave rather than get washed up by it.

Seven actions are required to ride the surf instead of being submersed by it.

Expanding the liberal arts core. The undergraduate liberal arts curriculum must continue to ensure the skills needed for not just the next job, but a lifetime of different challenges as individuals adapt to the ebb and flows of demand for specific roles. In addition to being able to think critically, work in teams, communicate fluently, and be prepared to be lifetime learners, UND graduates must also know how to use the core digital tools pervasive in every career and those specific to their chosen field of study.

Delivering results. The explosion of digital information available at the fingertips of prospective students heightens the need to compare favorably with other universities in terms of key metrics like graduation rates, future employment, and incorporating experiential learning opportunities. The planning process must identify the factors we believe are most important to attracting students and ensuring their success.

Anchoring to areas of national excellence. In order to prevail against heightened virtual competition, each academic unit must either be amongst the best in the nation or seek every opportunity to anchor its programs to areas where UND excels nationally. UND excellence in energy, especially carbon management and enhanced oil recovery, biomedical, especially rural health, and aerospace, especially unmanned systems, offers opportunities for creative leaders in every field of study to tap in. Perhaps the strategic planning process will uncover other fields of study where UND excels nationally.

Bolstering research. Each area of study where UND enjoys national prominence entails psychological, sociological, economic, governance, legal, and engineering concerns, among others, offering opportunities for both study and research. Redoubling our research, scholarship and creative works in every area of study will both ensure our instruction is current and our credentials are respected.

Embracing emerging fields of high demand. Technological advances are generating expectations for new skills in nearly every profession and birthing new professions. There is an increasing demand in almost every field and profession in knowing how to apply advanced analytics and cyber protection. Excellence in these fields offers ample opportunities to graduates. The investment required in starting up such programs and the urgency  to do so confirms the wisdom of the North Dakota University System’s Chancellor encouraging UND to collaborate with other North Dakota schools in this effort.

Providing global perspective. The digital explosion has shrunk the world, making us ever more interdependent. It will be increasingly difficult to credibly claim a liberal arts education without gaining a global perspective.

Delivering interactive experiences. Just as consumers demand the flexibility to buy either in a store or online, students will increasingly expect the flexibility to achieve their education experience either face to face, online, or a mixture of both. With the rapid advancements in the ability to deliver interactive experiences digitally, every discipline and faculty must aggressively explore how to adapt digital capabilities into the delivery of instruction. Catching up with digital marketing. UND trails leading universities in adapting platform aware websites (adjusting screen content depending on whether accessed by a computer, tablet or smartphone), digital advertising, and sticky online landing pages designed to entice prospective students to complete their application. Rapidly progressing towards developing these important capabilities is essential for UND in that students today are more likely to research universities, apply and enroll on their smartphones and value schools that exhibit the currency of their services by making it easy to do so.

Our strategic planning effort must embrace each to put UND on top of the wave of change underway in academia.