Friday Focus: Change brings new opportunities

Jan. 21, 2022 

— Owen Guthrie, vice chancellor of student affairs and enrollment management

Almost exactly 9 years ago I began work at UAF eCampus (then called the Center for Distance Education). I had returned to UAF after some years away (again). I was so excited to join the team. The online revolution was bringing big changes to higher education and in my mind, eCampus was at the center of that change. The program was growing, and the work they were doing with faculty to support the development of online courses and programs was innovative and inspiring. The people of eCampus were so cool.

They were passionate about growth. Growth in the number of courses and in the number of programs offered, but mostly growth in the number of students served — growth in enrollment. Growth meant we were opening new opportunities for students to seek their goals and students were seeking. These are often students with jobs and families and for whom the time and space constraints of traditional class offerings were barriers. 

When I started, the number of online programs could be counted on one hand and the number of online courses numbered around a hundred. Student numbers grew by double-digit percentages every semester and there was such demand for fully online courses that you could feel the energy and excitement when we opened a new section or subject. Students were desperate for access to educational opportunities and we were helping faculty to build pathways and reduce barriers. 

UAF eCampus has continued to change and adapt to new challenges and opportunities. Over the past nine years eCampus has barely grown from a staffing perspective. However, we increased the number of faculty and students we served by an order of magnitude. We went from supporting a handful of programs to supporting nearly 50. We supported hundreds of students and now support thousands with proportional increases in the number of faculty served. In order to grow like this we had to change most everything about how we did business more than once. It wasn’t always or maybe ever easy, but it was and is important and satisfying work. 

And yet, it was announced yesterday that I have accepted the new position of vice chancellor of student affairs and enrollment management. 

And higher education keeps changing, and the people of eCampus are still so cool. 

I had the pleasure of working with the enrollment management team on strategic enrollment planning starting in the fall of 2018. Later, during the initial phases of the COVID crisis in early 2020, I was lucky enough to attend the Student Affairs leadership team briefings as part of our institutional response. At every turn, I was so impressed. There was no better team in the nation. This is the stuff that is hard if not impossible to train for; these folks are just amazing. As a student-parent or as a would-be student, the level of commitment and caring and innovation from our staff was everything one might hope for from a university. Our team is excellent. I am so excited to work with and for this great group of people in their important efforts. 

As Madara Mason at eCampus said on hearing the news of my new role, “Change is the only constant.” This is true in our times and in our work. Revolutionary new tools and capacities bring opportunities to modernize and improve our services and systems. I am looking forward to working with the good people of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management to explore and implement new solutions and to making the most of the opportunities before us. I am also looking forward to working with our teams to pursue growth in our enrollments. There are many opportunities, and our competitors are also working to modernize and improve. This is a great time for our students. Our job is cut out for us. 

Working with and for the eCampus team has been amazing; they are such a great team and they care so much about serving our students and faculty. I am grateful. I am also thankful and excited to begin work with the excellent staff of the Student Affairs and Enrollment Management teams. It is a pleasure and an honor. 

We have such good and important work to do in the years to come. 

Friday Focus is a column written by a different member of UAF's leadership team every week.