President’s Message: A Pathway to a Flourishing Future

The president’s comments in the Ambassador typically accord with a theme or emphasis. In this issue, I want to report and our executive leadership’s vision to fulfill our mission in the days ahead.

Stanley McChrystal, former U.S. Army General and Senior Fellow at Yale, makes the distinction between “complicated environments” that can be planned, managed, and optimized through routine and efficiency, and “complex environments” that are highly interdependent, non-linear, and characterized by short bursts of explosive change with multiple moving parts. Planning that worked in the former environment, he says, is unlikely to work in the latter. In his book “Team of Teams,” he writes:

“The models of organizational success that dominated the twentieth century have their roots in the industrial revolution and, simply put, the world has changed. The pursuit of ‘efficiency’—getting the most with the least investment of energy, time, or money—was once a laudable goal, but being effective in today’s world is less a question of optimizing for a known (and relatively stable) set of variables than responsiveness to a constantly shifting environment. Adaptability, not efficiency, must become our central competency.”

Former Asbury President Dave Gyertson describes this as the shift from Aircraft Carriers to PT Boats — the latter being adaptable to changing “sea conditions.” The higher education environment is shifting. Labor trends, artificial intelligence, demographic changes, and a decline in institutional Christianity all play a role in considering Asbury’s strategic fulfillment of “academic excellence and spiritual vitality” in future years.

There are dozens of important outcomes we measure at Asbury University — different metrics that map back to the timeless nature of our mission. But for our next strategic focus, we are giving specific attention to three key areas that, if successful, facilitate a “culture of readiness” to fulfill our mission in today’s dynamic environment and provide a roadmap for a prosperous future.

The key areas are as follows.

SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

For Asbury to flourish in the future as a robust Christian liberal arts university, we will need consistent and sustainable revenue generation from academic offerings and programs, auxiliary services and endowed assets. This will require a thoughtful appraisal of our core competencies and how they can be leveraged, our current suite of academic offerings and their relevance to student and employer demand, and a business model structure that fosters innovation and growth among campus leaders.

FAITHFUL STEWARDSHIP

We have a fiduciary responsibility to faithfully and prudentially steward every dollar that is earned, gifted and expensed as an institution. This requires internal covenants to maintain responsible budget measures, accountability to budget management, institutional transparency, effective communication, prioritization and continuously bringing budget decisions to bear against missional effectiveness. Not only are we responsible for resource stewardship. As followers of Christ we have a relational obligation to our community, our students, our alumni, our donors, and our stakeholders to faithfully manage our resources.

CULTURAL CLIMATE

Asbury University provides programs to prospective students. Our processes exist to originate, sustain, service, evaluate and effectively deliver our programs. Our messaging is the strategic and deliberate communication of value to prospective students, alumni, stakeholders and the broader community. The effectiveness of each of these independent yet overlapping functions will rise and fall proportionate to the cultural climate they exist within. For a robust and flourishing campus culture, we must advance value-added activity, reinforce healthy accountability, build and sustain trust and psychological safety across persons and departments, and emphasize practices positively correlated with missional buy- in and employee satisfaction.

We believe that strategic attention to growth, stewardship and culture can create “a pathway to a flourishing future.”

Asbury’s history is marked with greatness — and that is due to committed and talented staff, faculty and alumni who have left a Godly thumbprint on our beloved institution and continue to provide prayer and support, today. Thank you.

As I have said many times, the methods and modalities to fulfill our mission have changed and will continue to change. But our mission of formative, student-centric academic excellence and spiritual vitality does not change. The successful completion of Asbury’s next strategic focus assures that we are adaptable to the timeliness of today’s complexities to continue fulfilling our timeless mission.

Kevin J. Brown, Ph.D.
President

Record Breaking Class Stats

• Largest traditional undergraduate (TUG) incoming class in 25 years.
• Each incoming class for programs as a whole (TUG, Online Undergraduate, Graduate, and Academy) grew by at least 20% year over year.
• This is our 2nd highest group of incoming TUG freshmen ever (1997 was the highest).
• This is our 6th highest group of incoming TUG + TUG Transfer students ever. (We had extraordinary transfer activity in the late ’60s to mid-’80s.)
• We have the second-highest percentage of freshmen to sophomore retention in 30 years.
• This is the largest year-over-year change in total students in Asbury’s history. (Approximately 300 new student headcount.)
• Finally, if we combine all students starting/restarting our traditional undergraduate program together (freshmen, transfers, readmitted students, non-degree seeking students, and Academy), 2023 is by far the highest incoming headcount in Asbury’s history.

For stats on this year’s Freshman Beloved class, visit Campus Corner.

Enrollment

ENROLLMENT CELEBRATIONS — FALL 2023

• Enrollment for incoming TUG students
  • Goal: 409
  • Actual: 423
• 20% Growth goal achieved for non-traditional
• Revenue for incoming TUG students
  • Goal: $4.6 M
  • Actual: $5.6 M
• $20.7M out of $20.9M goal achieved working on balance with non-traditional for Spring and Summer starts

Strategic Communications

• $5.25M earned media value since February 
• 1.4M website users so far. 2020 – 2.3 million page views 
• 4.6M page views asbury.edu. 2022 – 2.3 million page views 

Graduate Programs

FALL 2023

• 51 Growth of Graduate Students Year Over Year
• 182 Graduate Full Time Equivalency (FTE) largest ever for graduate programs
• 295 Graduate Headcount

Recent Dedications

Through the generosity of donors, more than $7.5 million in facilities and property have been dedicated since
July 1, 2022.

• Henry and Elsie Bayless Arena
• Paul A. and Kay F. Rader Student Center
• John DeCuir Production Design Study Center
• Lybass Garden Plaza
• BJ ’56 and Flora ’55 Andrus Equine Tractor

Top 10 Traditional Undergraduate Majors

• Media Communications: 159
• Business Administration: 80
• Equine Studies: 73
• Exercise Science: 56
• Psychology: 56
• Undecided: 52
• Biology: 42
• Elementary School Grades P-5: 34
• Equine Assisted Services: 34
• Marketing: 31

Academic News

NEW PARTNERSHIPS

• AU and UK College of Pharmacy Agreement (5 seats/guaranteed admission)
• AU and UK ABSN Agreement (Accelerated BS in Nursing program/online – 10 seats/guaranteed admission) for AU Biology and pre-nursing students
• AU and EKU Nursing Program Agreement (10 seats/ guaranteed admission with option for more seats) for AU Biology and pre-nursing students

NEW PROGRAMS

• MSAC – Master of Science in Accounting
• IDM – Instructional Design & Media (APS)
• Media Communications major added two new concentrations for TUG students: Screenwriting and Instructional Design
• Screenwriting Minor (TUG)

NEW SCHOOL

• The Department of Christian Studies and Philosophy will transition from a department to a “School” effective 7/1/2024.

NEW FACULTY

Spring 2023

• Lauren Laumas, MLIS, Distance Services & Research Librarian Instructor
• Rob Lim, MDiv, Business Assistant Professor

Fall 2023

• Dr. Rebecca Briley, English Visiting Professor
• Dr. Laura Dryjanska, Psychology Professor
• Caleigh Lien ’16 Smith, MA, Youth Ministry Senior Lecturer
• Dr. Jong Hyun Kim, Associate Professor of Physics
• Dr. Sydney Penner, Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Spring 2024

• Andrea Dunlap ’18 Keller, PhD Candidate, Assistant Professor, Cell & Molecular Biology & Biochemistry

FACULTY OUTPOURING GRANTS

• Keith Barker ’91 and Dr. Linda Stratford – Sacred Spaces in Central Kentucky
• Dr. David Swartz – Geography, Theological Discourse, and Memory: The 2023 Asbury Revival Historical Perspective
• Dr. Suzanne Nicholson – Cooperating with the Holy Spirit. A Theological and Practical Reflection on the Asbury Outpouring
• Dr. Lisa Weaver Swartz – “Like a Forcefield over Wilmore” The 2023 Asbury University revival in sociological perspective