Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the end of another busy week!

At a national press conference this morning, President Schmidt announced that the JMU Guarantees – a priority initiative of the strategic plan – would begin earlier than originally anticipated. The undergraduate Class of 2027 will now be eligible to benefit from the guarantees, and the students attending today’s announcement appreciated JMU’s promise to stand behind them after they graduate. The JMU Guarantees help distinguish JMU for our confidence in the education we provide.

As we begin to further refine elements of the Madison Promise, I’ve understandably received questions from faculty and staff in Academic Affairs about how we arrived at the plan; if and how we plan to implement specific recommendations; and how to get involved in the ongoing work to modify, test and pursue proposed goals. In response, I asked the Office of Planning, Analytics, and Institutional Research to provide more context about the development and recommended implementation of the university’s strategic plan. Please see this site for more details on the planning process that led us to where we are now. I welcome your continued questions and will share responses as we work together to strengthen JMU’s position in a contracting, and more competitive, higher education landscape.

Let’s take a look at some of your highlights, all of which are moving us forward.

• Dr. Ken Rutherford, professor in the Department of Political Science, was recently inducted into the Missouri Public Affairs Hall of Fame. He joins such prestigious members as Maya Angelou, George Washington Carver and President Harry S. Truman.
  
  
• Professors in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics Dr. Steve Lucas, Dr. Paul Warne and Dr. Roger Thelwell received Triton Systems/NASA STTR funding for their submission “Non-Earth Orbit Conjunction Analysis.” The $150,000+ award will advance the development of advanced analytical methods to assess potential collisions (conjunctions) between objects in non-Earth orbits.
  
  
• The second edition of Strategic Management for Organizations, authored by management professor Dr. Fariss-Terry Mousa, is helping students bridge the gap between learning individual business disciplines and thinking strategically about organizations as a whole. Rather than focusing primarily on theory, the textbook emphasizes decision-making, strategic thinking and real-world application. The book has been adopted for use by students at the University of Arizona Global Campus, extending its impact to learners across a broad and diverse educational network.
  
  
• School of Music assistant professor Dr. Jingyi Zhang published the edited volume New Dramaturgies of Contemporary Opera: The Practitioners’ Perspectives with Routledge. New Dramaturgies of Contemporary Opera is the first and only book that approaches the dramaturgy of contemporary opera from the unique perspectives of living practitioners who provide valuable first-hand insight into the coming into being of an opera today.
  
  
• A research collaboration involving James Madison University, Emory University, the University of Southern California and local partners in Zanzibar, Tanzania, led to the paper “Blending Generative AI and Traditional Pedagogy in Geography Education: Evidence From a Pilot Study in Tanzania,” published in Transactions in GIS. Dr. Xuebin Wei, associate professor in the College of Integrated Science and Engineering, was part of a summer 2025 fieldwork experience involving 133 educators who examined how generative AI can support teaching in an African educational context. The researchers compared traditional classroom instruction with a localized GenAI-assisted approach incorporating interactive maps, customized educational videos and an English–Swahili chatbot.

Please keep sending your highlights! You can email provost@jmu.edu anytime with your accomplishments, or with those of a colleague.

Sincerely,

Fletcher

Academic Affairs faculty and staff can email to contact the provost directly.

This is an open line of communication allowing faculty and staff to ask questions, but it is not a substitute from the crucial interactions they have with their academic unit head, department head and dean.

Students should contact AcademicQuestions@jmu.edu with questions.