To: Faculty, Staff and Students
From: Cady Short-Thompson, Ph.D.
President, Northern Kentucky University
Date: 11/20/25
Subject: November Board of Regents Summary
Dear Colleagues,
Below is the summary of the presentations and activities that took place at the Board of Regents meeting on November 19, 2025.
The Board heard several presentations during the session:
Later, the Board approved all recommended items, including Academic Affairs and non-academic personnel actions, major gifts acceptance and the establishment of the LaunchNKY Center for Civic Leadership.
During my regular presidential comments (provided in full below), I shared another “Mission Moment” video, this time focused on the great impact our Veterans Resource Station makes here at NKU. Please take a moment to watch by clicking the image link below.
I would like to add that university leadership, in partnership with Marketing and Communications, has identified four key messages that will guide how we communicate NKU’s purpose and impact. With that in mind, please take the opportunity to review the messages and offer feedback via online survey. The survey will be open for three weeks through Dec. 11.
Finally, just a friendly reminder to submit a Flexwork request form to your supervisors by Monday, Dec.1. I have attached the form to this email for your convenience.
The Board’s next regularly scheduled meeting will be Wednesday, March 4, 2026.
All my best,
Cady Short-Thompson, Ph.D.
President, Northern Kentucky University
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Presidential Comments
Board of Regents
November 19, 2025
Good morning. I begin this morning by recognizing three of our longtime faculty who passed away this semester.
Their collective 107 years of service to NKU positively impacted us. I am grateful for them. I ask for a moment of silence to celebrate their careers here and honor their memories.
Provost McGill and I realized early on in our leadership roles that we would say goodbye to many of our university’s founders, mentors, and friends given the age and stage of NKU. While it is sad to say goodbye to these wonderful people, we feel really blessed to have known them personally and to have firsthand knowledge to celebrate their lives. Diana and I feel fortunate to know the people of this place. It was an honor to know and work with Steve, Chrystal, and Jeff.
Since I arrived, I’ve talked about my five presidential priorities for strengthening NKU. As you all know, we’ve focused a great deal of energy on financial management and enrollment management because they’re directly related to one another and of the utmost importance.
We have placed a lot of emphasis on modernizing and streamlining our enrollment management practices so that we can best compete. In an effort to reduce redundant recruitment practices, streamline the admissions process, and centralize the front-door of the University for all prospective undergraduate students, we re-organized the Adult and Transfer Center under the Undergraduate Admissions department.
This redesign – while maintaining the Adult and Transfer Center moniker – allows NKU to centralize and maximize marketing, communication, processing, orientation, admission, direct student support, and onboarding for all new undergraduate students, regardless of first-time or transfer status. The redesign also funnels all prospective student communications and inquiries under one area, reducing the number of front doors into the University. Furthermore, the redesign also untangles the advising model for transfer students, simplifying internal processes for both students and staff.
This reorganization will also improve our processing of our transfer students’ course equivalencies – which is currently a time-consuming and manual process. We have moved these efforts from the ATC to the University Registrar, where designated staff will be trained to support timely turn-around times needed to advise and onboard transfer students. In addition, NKU will soon be implementing an AI processing tool, further maximizing efficiencies in transcript processing and turnaround time to advise students.
These changes allow NKU to focus more centrally on meeting, recruiting, and onboarding new undergraduate students, while continuing to advise transfer students within the Colleges and First-Year Student Success Hub. Our current partnerships with regional and state community colleges will continue, as will our work developing pathways and simplifying transfer processes.
In addition to financial management and enrollment management, we have also invested a lot of resources into modernizing our campus and engaging our region. We are making enormous strides in these areas. And our fifth priority is to strengthen our campus community and culture. Part of this priority requires us to live into the second pillar of our strategic plan which focuses upon our colleagues and these efforts are multifaceted. As you know, I have proactively prioritized our employees’ time and money–giving raises and bonuses as soon as our budget was balanced and offering generous holiday breaks and summer hours. Many of you have noted how much you appreciate these actions.
Our strategic plan also calls us to “develop workplace policies that effectively support institutional goals while acknowledging and accommodating the diverse responsibilities of employees.” As such, the cabinet proposed and vetted a list of policies this fall, including a Flexwork policy. During the longer-than-required feedback period and engagement with shared governance, we further revised each policy. Not surprisingly, the Flexwork policy received considerable input. We didn’t have a policy before now, we had a practice that grew out of the pandemic. The Flexwork policy is more systematic and intentional. It makes clear that caregiving while remote, which wasn’t permitted in practice, still isn’t permitted. We’ve set a common default of 5 days in person with the ability to request one to two days remote, subject to supervisors’ approval. Some roles don’t make sense to be remote at all, others may be approved to flex. Thanks to your feedback, we made numerous, substantive changes to the policy, making it clearer and better.
For this meeting’s president’s report, I want to focus my remarks on casting a vision for our campus community, leaning into the new norm of our campus’s life in this post-Covid era, as we simultaneously work to grow our traditional, residential undergraduate population. Over the last couple of years, many of us have talked about wanting a more vibrant campus. Some have asked, what do you mean when you say vibrant? Any synonym will suffice–energetic, dynamic, spirited, alive. Allow me to talk about the campus dynamics I envision and why it matters to the university’s success.
A vibrant NKU is not just a place, it’s a living and breathing campus community. It is fueled by engaged people who show up with and for each other. College campuses are designed for people to connect and those natural dynamics come to life in ways that are hard to replicate via remote work. When faculty and staff work in person with each other and with students, the campus comes to life with shared purpose and connection. Students see mentors in action, they learn professionalism and work habits like time management from us. Staff colleagues learn from watching others’ work, colleagues grow their networks as they find one another in hallways and doorways of offices, and ideas are generated before and after meetings. We develop synergies in our work and grow our authentic, long-lasting relationships when together in person.
I argue that vibrancy often comes from what is not formally planned or scheduled. Vibrancy may hail from an impromptu student interaction that sparks something new in your thinking, maybe in a Starbucks coffee line chat or a question asked after lunch in the Union. In-person presence creates these little unanticipated moments of collision and creativity that remote work can’t fully mimic. Innovation often begins with a chance encounter or passing comment that becomes a shared project across people and units. The seeds for dreams–our students’ dreams and our own dreams–are planted here with others on our campus.
And presence with one another builds trust, belonging, and heightened positive energy – the people of NKU in relationship with one another are the heartbeat of NKU’s university life. Students learn as much from observing how employees interact and lead as from what they’re formally taught. As many leadership experts explain, “culture is caught more than taught.”
Over the summer, many members of the cabinet and I read the book, Unreasonable Hospitality, written by Will Guidara. There are many lessons to glean from it. Here are some of my favorite ideas of his that have shaped or sharpened my own thinking. He writes that “hospitality is a gift–every interaction is a chance to make people feel seen and valued.” He also writes, “Serve the person, not the task” --I believe that at NKU’s best, human-centered service wins. And finally, he says that “greatness is the accumulation of small things done well.” All of these ideas remind me of the magic of human interaction that transpires here when we are together in Highland Heights.
Some on campus talk often about trust and morale. Visibility and in-person interactions build trust and grow morale. NKU’s mission has always been relational at its core–to teach, to serve, to inspire, to mentor, and to learn together. That’s why being here matters. When we are present on campus, we don’t just do our jobs–we are what makes this campus feel like a community.
From where I sit, a campus is like a city–and a city’s vibrancy depends upon the presence of people and their activity. Physical presence keeps employees grounded in why we work–it’s easier to remember our shared purpose when we see it every day--students walking across campus, faculty and staff meeting with students, and when we see our work happening all around us. We can see it when offices, quads, Norse Commons, and hallways are full of people. Having a lot of people present communicates energy, opportunity, and belonging. Others are drawn to a place full of people and energy.
Conversely, quiet offices, dark hallways, and empty buildings quietly communicate disconnection, even if remote work continues elsewhere. NKU’s community and culture can be found in our conversations, the spaces we share, and our daily routines and rituals. As folks reflected on Steve Newman’s life last month, they talked about conversations by the always-on coffee pot and the rhythms of their department’s life together on campus. In-person work fuels that vibrancy not because remote work lacks value, but because our collective presence amplifies community, connection, and creativity–the very things NKU exists to cultivate. And I believe that, oftentimes, presence itself is a form of service–questions answered, curiosities explored, and anxieties settled. When only one person is in an office suite, he alone ends up answering all of the students’ questions, rather than sharing that workload with a team. We all need to connect and serve others on campus for NKU to be our best.
Without question, we’ve learned that zoom calls can be handy and are good back up plans–they are fine for transactional items; but the high touch, relational, transformational work we are known for is best in person. It’s the energy of having people in the room and the contagious enthusiasm in the building that you can’t simulate over the internet. Our people-centered NKU culture cannot easily be fostered or elevated via zoom screens.
And newcomers struggle to socialize into our organization and learn our culture remotely. Many organizations find that for those who already had relationships, going online was much easier with existing colleagues and students. It is tougher to build new relationships online.
Working in person also boosts employee morale by being a part of a collaborative, positive work environment. And we come across different people when we’re in person than when online. For example, we’re more likely to build relationships outside of our departments, org charts, and our typical chain of command when we meet in person. We’re likely to hear something that maybe wasn’t directed to us but we benefit from knowing it. It’s easier to brainstorm, build on others’ ideas, and regulate conversations in person. It’s easier to understand others’ communication more fully when in person and all nonverbals are available to us. Put simply, there’s less room for serendipity online.
Conversely, there’s more room for the “life of the mind” on campus, where hearing a lecture or attending a game or play leads us to meet someone new. These are the places where we learn that we have common interests and end up working on a project together.
Campus is where we encounter folks who are different from us in meaningful ways. For example, many of us are likely to worship with similar folks and send our kids to similar schools; but, on campus, we find folks with different specialties and talents and who live different lives. When we are with different people full-time, they influence our thinking. And I worry that the more isolated we become as professionals working from home, the less connected to one another and our students we will be. And it’s possible that we will then be less committed to one another and to our students. And quite possibly, without regular interactions with different folks, the more set in our ways of thinking we can become and the less we will innovate.
Our university’s culture was built on more than five decades of face-to-face interactions. Big ideas, big dreams were born here. We often use the words campus and university interchangeably when talking about NKU.
However, the post-Covid reality is that NKU is somewhat hybrid, as are most institutions. To be clear, there are tasks that are well-suited for individual work from home. That’s why we’ve built in the options for one or two flexwork days each week, dependent on roles and approvals. We see this policy as a sound compromise, one that offers flexibility and meets institutional needs. It gives deference to the supervisor and units’ needs. And this policy is consistent with other higher education institutions in the region and state.
We’ve written this policy as we have because we think it’s important to have some flexibility but also to reinvest in our campus community. So, with this policy and our new collective norm, how can we become more intentional in rebuilding our campus community? I believe that each of us will need to be intentional in redefining our new norms of in-person and remote work. Will you walk down the hall or downstairs rather than email or teams someone? Will you stop holding your standing meetings online to encourage in-person interaction and the development of better relationships? Will you attend games, concerts, and events to encourage one another more often? It’s clear to me that some of you disagree but I believe that if we aren’t intentional about our presence and community, we stand to lose important aspects of our identity. So, by embracing a greater in-person presence with some flexibility, we can lean into our unique culture and community. We understand that it won’t be for everyone.
As campus read in Grant’s email last Friday, the next step in the implementation of this policy is for interested staff to complete and submit a Flexwork request form by December 1 to be considered for the January 1 start date of this new policy. Requests will be reviewed by supervisors and up through vice presidents, seeking reasonable and equitable decisions across the university. For those who do not submit Flexwork request forms, the default will be five days per week in person.
And as one set of policy revisions ends, another begins. With over 200 policies that are dated, Grant will lead the cabinet through the next tranche of policies in the spring semester and we’ll continue reviewing, revising, and vetting with you until all of our policies are current and modernized.
And now I want to turn to NKU’s brand and identity work that’s currently underway. Through various strategic planning conversations, cabinet retreat, and MarComm website processes, we’ve been working to hone our messaging about NKU’s distinctive pillars. We want to return to you to gather your feedback about our brand and identity work to date. Please see the survey link in my post-BOR meeting email tomorrow and complete it to share your thoughts.
Before I close, I offer my thanks to our colleagues who are working really hard to usher in needed institutional change. We have so many people doing magnificent work here. Workday champions, website builders, admissions recruiters and leaders, student success champions, search committee members, Slate coders, student engagement staff, and so on–all leading change that pushes us to strengthen and modernize NKU.
Among those folks, we sometimes receive external validation of our work. Here’s an example–did you know that our MarComm team’s social media rankings jumped up this past year? An organization called Quid/Rival IQ publishes a report on higher education social media engagement each year. In 2024 we ranked 338th, this year we jumped up 75 spots to 263rd place. NKU rose across every platform in 2025–Instagram, Facebook, X, and most of all–TikTok (82 spots there). NKU is now in the top 100 nationally in TikTok. Folks, we have the best team of talent in MarComm I’ve seen in my career–please work with them to promote your programs and work in new and different ways with your audiences. They are talented!
Another example of excellence in our midst is Women’s Volleyball Coach Liz Hart. 18-1 season, she’s hosting the Horizon League tournament in Truist Arena this weekend—they play on Saturday at 3 pm. Liz is an alumna and she was a star volleyball player here—freshman player of the year, player of the year, then assistant coach and now head coach for 16 years. What a story! I hope that all of you will join Steve and me in Truist to cheer her amazing team and her on!
So many of our NKU team are really good at doing the routine well–teaching, conducting research, serving students, meeting their needs, making sure they feel welcome and supported here. No one is better at meeting students’ needs than Dr. Rusty Mardis, our Executive Director of the Veterans Resource Station. In celebration of Veteran’s Day and Rusty’s exceptionally great work, this month’s mission moment focuses on his work and our Veteran and Military students. I thank you all for your service to NKU and this country.
