{"id":12,"date":"2012-06-19T12:02:18","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T17:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/morningsider\/?page_id=12"},"modified":"2013-07-02T12:38:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T17:38:31","slug":"presidents-message","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/morningsider\/presidents-message\/","title":{"rendered":"President’s Message"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo by Dan Brouillette.<\/p><\/div>\n

How do we make Morningside a better place for students? That is a question we ask ourselves every day. Over the last decade, we have completely transformed the campus, adding green space, residence life options, athletic facilities and more.<\/p>\n

For the last several years, we have been focused on improving college facilities. If you think of the college as a computer, we have been updating our hardware.<\/p>\n

That is still happening, certainly. This spring we broke ground on the academic village, which will feature a new classroom building, a new advising center, and a remodeled Hickman-Johnson-Furrow Learning Center. We also began renovating Eppley Auditorium.<\/p>\n

But the next phase of transformation is about more than just physical improvements. Now we are asking how we can improve academic programs at the college. We largely have the right hardware in place, so we are able to turn our attention to the quality of the experience we offer our students – the software. It is exciting to now focus on developing the best programs.<\/p>\n

For example, this fall we will begin offering a new major in applied agricultural and food studies. Located in one of the world\u2019s most productive agriculture regions, Morningside is uniquely positioned to offer a major that prepares students for careers at a wide range of companies involved with food production in the United States and around the world. We developed this new major in consultation with companies such as Tyson Foods, Cargill, Beef Products Inc., Midwest Independent Soil Samplers LLC, Palmer Candy Company and Security National Bank. This program eventually will be housed in the new classroom building.<\/p>\n

The college also plans to change its approach to advising when it opens the new academic advising center. Full-time advising experts will help students get started on the right track before they transfer to a faculty advisor. This is important because a great start at Morningside makes it more likely that students will complete a degree.<\/p>\n

In the new classroom building, the education department plans to use technology to help students enhance their lessons and to more fully engage them as they prepare to become teachers. Likewise, the nursing department will use state-of-the-art technology and facilities in the new classroom building to greatly enhance the BSN program. And down the road, the department is looking at offering a graduate program in nursing.<\/p>\n

These are just a few examples of how faculty and staff are focused on developing the very best programs for our students. In fact, a group of faculty members is continuing to meet this summer to work on a new, distinctive curriculum that will improve the Morningside experience.<\/p>\n

In October, we launched the public phase of the Vision 2020: Transformation II campaign for facilities improvements, the endowment and the annual scholarship fund. The college has already raised more than $37 million of its $50 million goal.<\/p>\n

While it is fun to see the cranes on campus continuing the physical transformation of the college, I am even more excited by the transformation of the student experience. But we need both the hardware and the software working together to make Morningside College an even\u00a0better place. We have terrific students, and they deserve our best efforts.<\/p>\n

-John Reynders<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do we make Morningside a better place for students? That is a question we ask ourselves every day. Over the last decade, we have completely transformed the campus, adding green space, residence life options, athletic facilities and more. For the last several years, we have been focused on improving college facilities. If you think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-12","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/morningsider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/morningsider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/morningsider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/morningsider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/morningsider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/morningsider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/morningsider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12\/revisions\/232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/morningsider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}