Chancellor Steven H. Kaplan will leave UVa-Wise in June to become president of the University of New Haven (UNH) in West Haven, Conn. Kaplan became chancellor of UVa-Wise on July 1, 2001. During his tenure, the College expanded its campus beautification efforts; planned for increased enrollment, improved retention, and new campus housing; instituted planning to revise the core curriculum; advanced its fund raising capacity; and launched its year-long 50th anniversary celebration. Chancellor Kaplan will become the sixth president of UNH, a private, residential coeducational university offering more than 75 undergraduate and 25 graduate degree programs to its 5,000 students. We asked Chancellor Kaplan for his remarks on his tenure. His responses follow:

Of what accomplishments at UVa-Wise are you most proud?
"We have been able to achieve many of the things we set out to accomplish upon my arrival. In this publication back then, I addressed the need to enhance our athletic facilities, and we obtained a gift from Carl and Hunter Smith to complete the football stadium. The next year, Doug Humphreys and Mike Thomas provided funds to complete the Field House. I have also expressed the need for a signature building for the arts on campus, and through our efforts with the General Obligation Bond and with additional private gifts, the College should be able to construct the kind of arts complex it needs in the next few years.

Campus beautification has been one of my priorities, and we will begin construction on a marvelous sculpture garden with fountains on the upper campus this summer, thanks to the generosity of the family of Betty Gilliam, professor emeritus of art.

The College survived the Commonwealth’s budget reduction without loss of personnel; since then we have created a number of new faculty and staff positions. We have both addressed some conspicuous needs in our academic programs and augmented those areas most affected by enrollment growth.

I am quite proud of our enormous success in fund raising and enrollment. Over the past three years we have received gifts totaling close to a half million dollars from members of the University’s Board of Visitors, including the funds to renovate the old Science lecture hall. We have also raised over $15 million and grown the enrollment by 14 percent.

Significant progress has been made in two academic areas – the core curriculum and student attendance at cultural and intellectual events at the College. A proposal for a substantial and educationally viable revision of the core curriculum is in its pilot phase. Our science and engineering initiative has led to a proposal for majors in computer science and management information systems. Moreover, the Commission on Science and Engineering, created in my second year, has developed a blueprint for future programs. The next step could be a major in software engineering.

I am quite proud that the Staff Council was established under my leadership, which has proven to be a highly effective communication and governance tool for our wonderful staff.”

Are there projects you wished you could have completed before your departure?
"We have made significant progress on all of the priorities I established for my administration. There is, however, one important challenge that must be met if the College is to eventually become the number one public liberal arts college in the nation: We need to obtain funding to put all of our faculty interested in producing scholarly and creative work on a nine-credit load and provide resources to support their efforts in this area. This step will be imperative to recruiting and retaining faculty who have an interest in generating their own as well as student research.”

What will you miss about the College?
“More than anything else I will miss the students here. Through numerous lunches and events, I have gotten to know our students quite well. They are among the kindest and most motivated students I have known anywhere.”

What excites you most about your opportunity at New Haven?
“What attracted me are the long-term challenges and opportunities of taking a complex university with about a half a dozen nationally recognized programs and leading it into the ranks of some of the best institutions of its kind in the nation. I enjoy the fund raising side of my work, and I believe I can be very effective in New Haven in obtaining the resources the University needs to realize its many goals and aspirations.”