Dear Colleagues,
What’s Next officially shutters on May 8th. It’s hard to believe it’s been five years already! Our primary task in this final year of What’s Next has been to write the “QEP Impact Report” for inclusion in the university’s Fifth-Year Interim Report to SACSCOC, and in performing that retrospective task, I am truly humbled and grateful to have had the opportunity to work with you on so many amazing initiatives. Together we have accomplished so much! I would like to share some of the highlights with you:
- Faculty and staff with funded awards implemented 95 integrative-learning projects in 31 academic departments, across 11 colleges, and in 11 co-curricular units.
- Faculty in 24 departments, across 9 colleges, earned the Integrative-Learning Experience (IE) High-Impact Course Designation for 38 courses.
- 247 unique faculty and staff, representing 65 departments and 7 co-curricular units, participated in QEP-sponsored workshops and events.
- And, to include our office in the highlights, the Knights of Distinction co-curricular program had enrolled 399 students—86 of whom had graduated with distinction—by the time the program moved to its permanent home in the Office of Experiential Learning in summer 2020.
- Altogether, we reached a total of 43,068 students over the life of the QEP!
I hope you’ll take a moment to celebrate all the innovative thinking, creativity, collaboration, and just plain hard work that these numbers represent!
At the end of the QEP, I’ll be returning to my first “home” at UCF, the English Department, and our coordinator Brooks Pingston will be joining the Office of Data and Strategic Projects in the Division of Student Learning & Academic Success. To be honest, we’re a little melancholy to be closing the chapter on What’s Next—we’ll miss Team QEP and working with you all!—but we’re also looking ahead to more opportunities to work together to support our students’ successes in the future. (Don’t forget, the next QEP will start its planning phase in just a couple of years, and I hope you’ll keep an eye open for opportunities to join in the conversations that will shape that initiative when the times comes!)
Again, my sincere thanks for all you’ve done to make What’s Next a success and to make integrative learning a foundational component of our students’ UCF experience.
All best wishes,
Dr. Anna Maria Jones — Director, What’s Next; Professor, Department of English
Brooks Pingston — Coordinator, What’s Next