WVU President Michael Benson gives his first State of the University address Monday afternoon. (Ron Rittenhouse/The Dominion Post)

By BEN CONLEY

Special to The News and Sentinel

MORGANTOWN — In his first 13 weeks or so in office, WVU President Michael Benson has traveled miles of winding, country roads as he’s made stops in 28 of the state’s 55 counties (so far) as part of his yearlong “Welcome Home” tour.

On Monday, standing in Fitzsimmons Event Hall at the WVU College of Law, Benson used his first State of the University address to begin unfolding the road map that charts the future of the state’s namesake land-grant university.

Lasting about 35 minutes, the speech touched on a wide variety of topics ranging from Christmas lights – Benson intends to bring back the university’s holiday lighting party at Woodburn Hall on Dec. 2 – to the closure of University Avenue through the downtown campus, which he’s very much in support of.

It also laid out a series of short, medium and long-term goals.

Most immediate, Benson said he and his leadership team have been poring over more than 860 responses to the Strategic Compass Feedback Survey from faculty, staff, students, alumni and others as part of a visioning process that will culminate next month with a strategic plan bolstered by a new university mission statement, guiding principles and priorities.

“Our goal is to refine the feedback we’ve gotten, implement those changes, and then we’ll take it to our board of governors, our alumni board, and also our foundation board in early November for their feedback,” Benson said.

Longer term, the university is continuing to focus on enrollment. To do that, Benson said it must “Win West Virginia” in terms of in-state enrollment while strengthening its regional draw.

“Last year, the state of West Virginia graduated 18,000 high school students. That number is going to continue to decline. That’s just a fact of life. There’s nothing you can do to produce 19-year-olds overnight,” he said. “So, we are going to have to go north into a state like Pennsylvania that graduated 118,000 high school students, as did Ohio.”

In terms of in-state students, the university has launched a pilot program initially working with five school districts to begin busing students to spend time on campus. Conversely, Benson said WVU is going to have a larger presence in the state’s schools.

“It’s getting more students into that funnel, getting more applications. We’ve got to have more people apply to come to WVU. I will tell every single West Virginia high school student, there is a place for you at our university, at your university,” Benson said. “Perhaps it’s at Potomac State, where if you want an open enrollment school and you need to get your academic sea legs under you, that’s the place to go. If you want a small, intimate setting, Potomac State is perfect. Maybe you want to go do technical degrees, engineering degrees in a smaller setting in a more rural kind of part of our state. WVU Tech is for you. If you want to come to a town, which Bleacher Report called one of the top 15 college football towns in America – when we’re winning – this is the place to come.”

Thinking longterm, Benson said the university will strive to position itself for membership in the Association of American Universities.

“To give you a perspective of what AAU institutions do, last year, this is fiscal year 2024, they received 61% of all federal university R&D spending – $65.9 billion,” Benson said. “So, why can’t West Virginia University be on this list?”

Benson conceded that’s likely a years-long effort that will require focus on a number of metrics, including graduation rate, R&D spending, faculty accreditations and others.

“So, this is not something you flip a switch and it all magically just happens. It’s an inexorable path that is arduous. It’s longterm. As I said, it may take several years. It will take several years, but the process of passing through it is going to make us better.”