{"id":516,"date":"2008-08-19T15:54:21","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T21:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/bsutoday\/2008\/08\/19\/president-welcomes-bemidji-state-faculty-and-staff-back-to-campus\/"},"modified":"2021-11-01T15:53:18","modified_gmt":"2021-11-01T20:53:18","slug":"president-welcomes-bemidji-state-faculty-and-staff-back-to-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/2008\/08\/19\/president-welcomes-bemidji-state-faculty-and-staff-back-to-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"President welcomes Bemidji State faculty and staff back to campus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BEMIDJI, Minn. &ndash; Bemidji State University President Dr. Jon E. Quistgaard today welcomed back the faculty and staff of the University for the start of the 2008-09 academic year with his traditional welcome back breakfast.<\/p>\n<p>The President stated that Bemidji State would welcome students from 34 states and 40 countries to campus this fall, a diverse student population which will help the University pursue one of its three signature themes, global and multicultural understanding.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;This makes us a far richer University,&rdquo; he said.<\/p>\n<p>The President also shared early numbers which indicated the University&rsquo;s residential life facilities would be operating at capacity this year, and that graduation rates and freshman retention rates were each up approximately four percent from last year.<\/p>\n<p>The President also made mention of the University&rsquo;s efforts to support environmental awareness and sustainability, pointing to the hiring of a sustainability coordinator and the passage of a student green fee as important milestones for the upcoming school year. He also spoke of a new boiler which was installed on campus over the summer, which will help improve the University&rsquo;s energy efficiency.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;What a wonderful commitment our students are making,&rdquo; Quistgaard said of the green fee.<\/p>\n<p>In closing, the President spelled out five goals the University would be pursuing during the upcoming year:<\/p>\n<p>&bull; a focus on increased student retention<\/p>\n<p>&bull; continued efforts to integrate the University&rsquo;s signature themes of environmental stewardship, civic engagement and global &amp; multicultural understanding into all facets of University activities<\/p>\n<p>&bull; preparation for the Higher Learning Commission&rsquo;s visit to campus in 2009, as the University pursues reaccreditation<\/p>\n<p>&bull; full implementation of the college reorganization<\/p>\n<p>&bull; final preparations for a major capital campaign, a large portion of which will be used to fund the University&rsquo;s endowment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BEMIDJI, Minn. &ndash; Bemidji State University President Dr. Jon E. Quistgaard today welcomed back the faculty and staff of the University for the start of the 2008-09 academic year with his traditional welcome back breakfast. The President stated that Bemidji State would welcome students from 34 states and 40 countries to campus this fall, a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[681],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-updates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44400,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/44400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}