In his ninth year of serving as president of UNI, Mark Nook sat down on Iowa Press with Erin Murphy of the Gazette and Amanda Rooker of KCCI to discuss different UNI initiatives and how UNI has navigated recent Iowa state legislation that affect regent universities. Topics included diversity, equity and inclusion legislation, Iowa workforce initiatives and changes on UNI’s campus.
“We completely reorganized our Student Life section,” said Nook, in response to a question from Rooker on how UNI continues to handle the Iowa legislation that repealed DEI initiatives across regent universities. “It was a huge change for us, short on the heels of our general education restructuring … we went back to the first principle of, why are we doing this in the first place?” Nook continued to refer to UNI’s commitment to students and faculty, not just while they’re on campus, but after they eventually leave UNI as well. Iowa Press host Dave Price, filling in for Kay Henderson, brought up that the recent legislation signed into law by Governor Kim Reynolds strips civil protections for transgender Iowans, and posits how this could affect UNI students. According to Nook, it’s too early to tell how this legislation could affect Ppanthers. “We certainly do have students with an array of gender identities … And we of course have people on campus that identify and we’ll be supportive of individuals without necessarily having a structure in place, a defined structure in place. So, there are always ways that we can continue to support students because of the people we have on our campus without putting structures in place.” Nook also noted that non-university related organizations exist within the Cedar Falls community to support LGBTQ+ students affected by the legislation.
Nook also discussed one of the Board of Regents’ newer initiatives, which includes forming a legislative committee to monitor higher education bills introduced to the Iowa state legislature regarding the regent universities. “This committee will be able to get together and meet a little bit more frequently than trying to get the whole board together, be able to discuss those issues, reach out to presidents, reach out to provosts, other people on our campus, get the information they need and get it back and hopefully be able to build a stronger relationship with the legislature so they feel a lot more comfortable with where things are going and the information flow,” said Nook.
A bill introduced to the Iowa House, House File 420 (HF420), otherwise known as the Workforce First Act, would require the Board of Regents to review academic programs at each university and draft reports over to what extent programs are serving the workforce needs in Iowa. According to Nook, regardless of the Workforce First Act, UNI has historically been proactive in searching for workforce needs and developing programs and resources to fill those needs. He cites the most recent addition of the UNI nursing program as just one instance of UNI’s proactivity. “Recently, Iowa Workforce Development put out a list of the 10ten jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree that are going to have the most openings over the next 10ten years. Number one is registered nurses. So, a year ago we added a nursing program,” said Nook. “After that, the next nine are all either in education, elementary education, middle school education, high school education, coaching or they’re in things like accounting and business. It looks like UNI’s curriculum.” While Nook cited how UNI’s programs can potentially fill workforce gaps, he also noted that building the Iowan workforce through population is also a need that universities can fill. Nook noted that 40-50% of out of state UNI students take their first full-time offer within Iowa. Through UNI’s recent reciprocity program proposal, Nook says that he hopes UNI can contribute to help building Iowa’s workforce population. The reciprocity program, pending approval by the Iowa legislature, would allow out-of-state students from Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Illinois and Missouri to receive in-state tuition pricing. In exchange, the university is asking the state to invest $3 million into UNI every year to help cover current tuition differences. “[Out-of-state students] … they see the job opportunities, they see the jobs that are available, they tend to stay. So, with what we’re proposing it’s pretty clear, looking at the data that we expect at least a three-fold increase in the number of people who will take jobs coming out of UNI who come from out of state,” said Nook. The president of UNI said that it’s a reciprocal investment for both the state and the university, where the state will receive nearly 300 extra workers into the Iowan workforce every year, and UNI will be able to cover tuition differences with the state’s investment into UNI.
“This is not about building UNI’s enrollment, this is about solving an economic problem in this state and that’s our population and not having the workers for the jobs that are here, especially those that require a baccalaureate or higher,” Nook said.
