President Cantwell Holds Listening Sessions at USU Brigham City

BRIGHAM CITY, Utah — As part of her promise to hold listening sessions for different segments of the Utah State University community, USU President Elizabeth Cantwell traveled to USU Brigham City to host listening sessions and roundtable discussions with various campus and community members on January 19.

President Cantwell spent the afternoon hosting various sessions, each for different audiences and stakeholders. As part of these listening sessions and roundtable discussions, President Cantwell focused on the three questions she posed to the USU community when she initially announced her listening tour in August:

1. What’s the greatest untapped opportunity that you think we have?
2. What are the greatest risks that you worry will put us off course?
3. What is the one thing you worry no one has had the confidence to tell me as your new president that you think I need to know?

Cantwell first held a listening session for USU Brigham City faculty and staff. In this session, participants discussed various topics such as getting more involved in high schools and creating relationships with students and teachers, providing more community services, opportunities for student learning, community research collaborations, different modalities for class delivery, and campus safety concerns.

“The goal is for me to learn about ourselves as an institution and to help us discern at least one or two top-level things that everybody is thinking about,” Cantwell told faculty and staff prior to the listening session. “And then we should also be able to distinguish between students and faculty and staff, and between specific locations about what people think USU needs as a whole, and in specific locations.”

After this session, the president then met with USU Brigham City students to gain further insights and impressions. During the session, students discussed several topics with the president, including scholarship opportunities and hurdles, creating the college experience on a non-residential campus, balancing course offerings between online and in-person options, and the effectiveness of course evaluations.

Cantwell then spent time having a discussion about how the university in Brigham City could prepare to meet the needs of students for the next decade and how the campus could project what types of students they should prepare to serve in the coming decade. Cantwell spoke on her affinity for not looking just at problems, but designing the future based on how you navigate the present.

“I’m a huge fan of future casting,” Cantwell said. “I think it’s really interesting and it changes the nature of the game from problems to, ‘where do we want to go and how do we want to get there?’ It provides a vehicle of how to design our own future.”

Cantwell also highlighted that those who were not in attendance, or who did not ask their questions publicly, could still submit their answers and concerns online. This can be done by visiting www.usu.edu/president/transition.

Cantwell finished the day hosting a listening session with the local legislature, followed by a session with community leaders from the Brigham City community.

With two locations in Box Elder County, Utah State University Brigham City and Tremonton offer students the personalized attention and small class sizes of a small-town college with the resources of a large university. With more than 100 degree options ranging from associate to doctorate degrees, plus technical education offerings, USU offers programs that help fuel local economies and empower individuals and their communities. Learn more at brighamcity.usu.edu.