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WORLAND — Despite facing significant budget concerns, new University of Wyoming President Laurie Nichols is still making getting to know Wyoming a priority.

On day two of her job as the 26th president of the University of Wyoming, Nichols stopped by Worland Tuesday for a visit to the Northern Wyoming Daily News and an Alumni Association reception at the Washakie Museum and Cultural Center.

Nichols said the position as president of UW was “to some extent the right time in my career.” She added, “It just seemed like a really good time. I felt like I had done the positions needed to build up to a presidency. From a personal standpoint it was a good time for my husband Tim and I to start looking for something else.”

Why UW? “Wyoming is a land-grant university. My whole experience has been land-grant universities. Wyoming is an adjacent state to South Dakota, it’s in the broader region of where I’ve grown up and spent most of my life. I love living in rural states,” Nichols said.

As for traveling the state, Nichols said, “When I first took the job, really my plan was to come in, spend the summer, learn the university, learn the state. I really wanted to soak in everything I could so I become much more familiar with the state and the university and all that it has to offer and really all that it needs from a land-grant university.”

She said her plans were then to hit the ground running in the fall in developing some strong planning documents to help chart a course for UW over the next five years.

“A lot has changed since then, what has changed in particular is the economy in Wyoming and now the university faces a significant budget cut ($35 million in the biennium),” Nichols said.

She said she plans this summer to work on the budget, as well as travel, visiting two to three communities around the state each week. This week is Worland and Powell, with a visit to Powell Rotary and Northwest College planned today. Next week is Casper and Gillette.

As for the budget, Nichols said they are looking at three phases, an immediate plan, a plan for fiscal year 2018 and a plan for moving forward.

She said ideally she wants to keep the university accessible and affordable, while still holding on to top-notch faculty.

“A budget cut the size we are facing has a lot of challenges associated with it. First and foremost that’s most challenging is the timeline is so short,” Nichols said.

She does anticipate programs will be eliminated, but said at this time she doesn’t know how many or which programs. She said there is an academic review process that has started and that includes looking at programs that might not be producing the number of graduates they should be, based on the amount of resources they require from UW.

Priorities

She said there are three initiatives underway that will not be impacted by the budget cuts —bringing the College of Engineering up to a top tier college; science initiative which just got funding for a new science building “that, of course, to a heavy science STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) campus is critical”; and the education initiative working with the College of Education and helping them revamp and strengthen their teacher-education program.

“That doesn’t mean other programs are not valued but those are priorities going forward,” Nichols said.

“The other piece that’s near and dear to my heart and that I’ll continue to focus on is just that whole area of enrollment and student success because that undergirds everybody who comes to the university and applies to all students. That is just making sure we are recruiting students to the university, either as incoming freshmen or transfer students. So making sure we have really great outreach to the high schools across the state and then making sure our articulation with the community colleges is really tight and strong. And obviously once those students come to campus at Laramie that we are doing everything we can to keep them there and get them through college and get a degree in four years.

“I spent my life working on student success and I’m not going to back off now.”

In regard to athletics, Nichols said, “a big focus there is going to be an exciting facility project that they have in front of them, the Susie and Mick McMurry High Altitude Performance Center. That is really an exciting project that will provide both academic support to the student athletes and also other kinds of support, nutritional, training and many of the things student athletes need to be competitive.”

She added that the other part of athletics is being competitive and making sure UW offers students a top notch athletic experience. She said it’s also important to offer competitive teams to the state “because we are the only four-year university and I know the people of Wyoming are passionate about the Cowboys and Cowgirls. So we want to make sure we can do as well as possible on the field, or the court, or in the pool or wherever we’re competing.”

Nichols said she’s heard a lot about the university since her hiring. She said she welcomes thoughts about the university, strengths and areas to improve on.

She said things she’s heard include:

—People are passionate about the university.

—There’s a lot of graduates throughout the state and the alumni are committed to the university.

—UW needs to work on forging stronger relationships with the community colleges.

—Recruitment of students, some things the university is doing well, but also questions on whether they are doing enough.

She concluded, “I’m thrilled to be here. It’s exciting for me to have this opportunity to come to Wyoming to serve as the president and I really look forward to digging in and ultimately doing the best job I possibly can in providing leadership to the university.”