On Monday, Feb. 17, President Hanbury hosted one of the 34 town hall meetings for 2020. These town hall meetings allow President Hanbury to inform students, faculty and staff about upcoming events and plans for NSU, as well as providing members of the NSU community an opportunity to voice their opinions, beliefs and personal grievances or experiences that they believe can be improved upon.
Many significant topics were raised such as new residence halls, the growth of the university and what to do with both the University Park Plaza (UPP) and the Dolphins training facility when the team leaves.
“On May 31, bulldozers will be coming in, which means I have to move people out of University Park Plaza and we will be building a road through there so it will be a complete circular road.
When the UPP is torn down, the plan is to turn the canal in the plaza into a riverwalk that will stretch from the medical office being built behind the new hospital and go all the way around to the Dolphins training facility. When the Dolphins leave, the training facility will be remodeled as a NSU health facility.
While NSU has a predominantly graduate population, Hanbury wants to increase the undergraduate population.
“I want to increase our undergraduate program to at least 6,000 students… If I do that, I’m going to need at least one more residence hall, and in that residence hall, I want to build a cafeteria and those are plans I’d like to see by 2022 or 2023,” said Hanbury.
The increase in additional students would create a 70/30 split between the graduate and undergraduate populations, respectively.
According to Hanbury, the goal is to “expand the health professions division and the dental college. I want to see the undergraduate programs attract the best and brightest undergraduates, leveraging the graduate and professional programs.”
Hanbury had hope and promise for the future of NSU, noting that NSU was unranked 10 years ago, now ranking in the top 200 schools in the U.S., with hopes to make it into the top 130 in the near future.
“It really depends on our undergrads that are going to create the reputation of this university,” said Hanbury.
Photo: M. Luiz
