Dialogue with Larry Burns

Greetings,  as we wind down this short Thanksgiving week I’m already looking forward to an event scheduled for next Friday, December 5.  The UT Guarantee is being literally bused to Cleveland.

Our enrollment team along with colleagues from individual Colleges are taking a UT bus to Cleveland to meet with approximately 400 high school seniors that currently have a 3.0 grade point or better.  During the course of the day we will highlight many of the outstanding programs at UT, hold a mini college fair and hopefully admit hundreds of future Rockets.  This is our first  “Road Trip” regarding the UT Guarantee and we are all extremely excited about the potential this program brings to our university.

Please take a few minutes to view this interview my colleague Kevin Kucera recently had during a visit to Cleveland.  I think this will give you insight of how very excited the Cleveland Public School administration is about our UT Guarantee program.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.  Regards, Larry.

Hello,  As this week before the Thanksgiving holiday ends I thought I would share a couple of thoughts.  Last week I had the opportunity to be part of the senior leadership review meeting with The Joint Commission accreditation team.  As you may know, The Joint Commission  accreditation is the most critical and important accreditation obtained by our University of Toledo Medical Center.  The preparation for this review takes thousands of hours of  planning and commitment.  Virtually every employee of our hospital — staff, administration and physicians — make up the team for this unannounced four-day survey.  As I was sitting in the meeting it struck me that I have now been through several of these evaluations and was  anxiously awaiting the overview from the reviewers.  As the discussion started, I was immediately impressed with the presence our team brought to the meeting.  As the leader of the three member accreditation team began talking it became apparent that the process went well. Mr. Robert Wright, adminstrator surveyor stated that our hospital with the finest hospital he had seen in his 15 plus years of serving as an accreditation professional.  If you think about it, this is a remarkable comment.  The finest hospital he has seen…wow! I was so proud to be sitting there as part of the UT team.  I congratulate the tremendous leadership provided by Dr. Jacobs, Dr. Gold, Dr. McGinnis and Mark Chastang along with the literally thousands of other UT family members that made this possible.  Most importantly, it says to all of us that there indeed is only one place to go for our health care and that is our very own institution. A very proud moment.

Well I’m off to the Rocket’s football game… hopefully a victory.  Have a great  weekend and I will be updating you before the Thanksgiving holiday.  Regards, Larry.

Tonight is the premier of the third edition of our show “Plugged-In”.  The show is on WGTE TV beginning at 8 p.m.  Student hosts Jennifer Mondelli and Shaun McDonald do a terrific job in this latest addition of the science and technology focused HD show. The topics highlighted on tonights show include — Today’s Bionic Man:  Using science to keep people moving; No need for needles: A better way for diabetics to check their sugar; A Sensitive Skyway: Building bridges that can troubleshoot themselves: and,  Is there life on Mars?: Using light to find life on other planets.

  So, get “Plugged-In” and let me know what you think about our show.  Regards Larry.

I had the opportunity to visit Tucson, Arizona this past week. I am assisting in the effort to raise funds for the newly established Kenneth A. Kropp Endowment.

As you may know, Dr. Kropp recently retired as the chairman of the department of urology. Dr. Kropp is the founding chairman of the department and a leading  urologist in North America.

My trip to Arizona was to ask our mutual friend Alan Booth for a significant gift to support the endowment.  Mr. Booth immediately responded that he would be happy to support the endowment with a pledge of $100,000 in honor of Dr. Kropp. On Friday, The Life Connection of Ohio organ procurement organization pledged an additional $100,000 in honor of Dr. Kropp who helped establish this organization many years ago.

It was a fruitful week… it is always enjoyable to help an effort on behalf of someone as outstanding as Dr. Kropp. 

Regards, Larry

Friday, November 7, 2008

Hello!

Well, it’s been an extremely active week at The University of Toledo with a number of key events taking place.

On Monday, our long-time Rocket Coach, Tom Amstutz, made the announcement that he will be “passing the torch” to a new football coach after this season. I’ve had the opportunity to work with Coach Amstutz a few times in my tenure at UT and truly admire his positive attitude, team spirit and love for his university. I have no doubt that Coach will have a tremendous influence on The University of Toledo as we continue our march toward improvement and continued growth. I also want to compliment Mike O’Brien and Paul Helgren for their professionalism, interpersonal communication skills and true concern for Coach Amstutz, his family, his coaches and his players.

Also on Monday we had the ceremonial signing of several of our union contracts which was held in the beautiful newly renovated Field House. Having grown up in Detroit, worked at a Chrysler plant and been a member of the UAW, I have seen a lot of management and union interaction. It was genuinely a “bipartisan” victory at the signing with the parties sincerely satisfied with the agreements reached. Health care benefits certainly are one of the most critical elements of any contract and I believe that there are no better health care benefits being offered at an employer than at The University of Toledo. We are fortunate to have tremendous access but even more important, we work at an institution that provides university-quality care which is the finest health care delivery system available. I personally used our hospital, our physicians, our therapists and I’m so grateful that I had access to these professionals.

In the Enrollment arena, there has been a lot of national discussion regarding the economy and how this may impact higher education. Take a few moments and listen to my first, hopefully of many, interview imbedded within my Journal. Kevin Kucera, Associate Vice President for Enrollment Services at UT talks about several things that impact UT and takes a quick look at the national scene regarding higher ed.

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Lastly, I had the opportunity to meet one of our alumni who plays an important role in the national media scene, Ms. Christi Paul. Christi is a graduate of UT and is currently an anchor on CNN. She was kind enough to help us film a UT Matters spot this morning as well as stop by and say hello to many of her friends at her alma mater. What a delightful member of the Rocket Family and great Ambassador of our university.

Thanks for taking the time to visit. I look forward to my next update.

Regards,

Lawrence J. Burns

Monday, November 3, 2008

 Greetings!

I hope that many of you have had the opportunity to read the several UT Journals that are part of our new myUT Home Page.  As you may know, this new version of our Intranet is a little over a week old and we have already added additional authors and we will continue to do so in the weeks ahead.

Since my last update, I have had the opportunity to participate in the International Public Relations Society of America Conference held in Detroit last week.  Our university was a sponsor and it was nice to see the UT logo among some of the world’s most well-known companies and brands.  Going into the conference, I was most interested in attending sessions regarding “social media.”  We are extremely interested in being a leader in social media within the university community and this was an opportunity to see what other corporations and institutions are doing in this emerging creative and dynamic form of communication. 

A couple of key points that struck me were:

1.     “Everyone can create content and now we can hear back from our audiences instantaneously.”

2.     “We must have a strategy – not just get involved.”

These two points hit home since we are keenly interested in not only communicating with students, faculty and staff, but also want to hear back from you on all of our topics.  Also, it’s not good enough just to get involved, we must have a well-thought- out strategy that is flexible enough to adjust as technology and communication vehicles change.  Overall, I was extremely pleased with our progress to date, but also am reminded that we have many things to learn and most importantly exciting vehicles to try such as incorporating audio and video in Journals like the one you are now reading. 

The last item I would like to mention regarding the PRSA conference is that I was extremely encouraged by the number of public relations and communications students attending and participating.  The conference had a youthful and spirited feel about it and the future of public relations and communications is extremely bright within our own community and in the country. 

Also since my last entry, I want to mention a story that ran in the Detroit Free Press.  Our neighbor to the north, Wayne State University, has reported several years of declining enrollment at their institution.  I mention this not because I like to see institutions struggling, but within the Free Press article it indicated that The University of Toledo has entered the southeastern Michigan market and is making inroads and is now a real competitive force for Wayne State and other Michigan institutions.  This is the third year we have been advertising, marketing and visiting the Detroit market with two years of success behind us.  I believe that we are only in the early stages of developing a real legacy and footprint within southeastern Michigan and over the next three-to-five years we’ll become a “top of mind” institution within that area.  It’s rewarding and fun to visit my friends in Detroit and constantly hear about UT and the impact we’re making…the UT victory over U of M certainly complements our marketing efforts. 

Lastly, I want to mention a few things about the events that occurred on our Scott Park Campus last Friday.  We are all terribly concerned that such an unfortunate incident occurred involving the stabbing of two of our UT students.  Our first concern was for the students’ safety and also for the safety of everyone else within the building and on the campus of Scott Park.  You should all be pleased with the flawless response from The University of Toledo Police Department who arrived at the scene within two minutes after being notified of the incident.  There has been some discussion within the media and on campus regarding the response of the UT Alert System.  Once our Police Officers were on the site and took care of the two injured students and secured the building, judgment was made after interviewing several eye witnesses that the assailants had fled the building and had left the campus and area in a vehicle.  As a precautionary measure, it was decided to activate the UT Alert System and the newly installed emergency speaker system.  The UT Alert System requires a message to be developed that is factual and then technology comes into play.  Once the message is accurately developed and the message is sent, we are then relying on the cell phone systems that the over 10,000 subscribers use for their cell phones.  The UT Alert System, in the best case scenario, will take at least 30 minutes or more to be developed, sent and received by the UT Family.  The original message on the UT speaker system was not understandable due to a microphone malfunction, so a second message was sent immediately that was understandable and very clear.  Again, these two systems were activated primarily as a precautionary vehicle to communicate to our students, faculty and staff on the Scott Park Campus.  It’s also important to know that senior administration, led by Dr. Jacobs, will use this event as a way to evaluate and look retrospectively to analyze our response to this event.  We are determined and committed to improve our response each time we have the necessity to use these important tools.  Lastly, it’s important to remember that our first line of safety and defense for our UT Family members is our Police Department and their response to this event was extremely timely and professional.

Thanks for taking the time to read my entry.  I will keep you posted on what’s going on in External Affairs at your University of Toledo.

Regards,

Lawrence J. Burns