Gov.-elect Michelle Lujan Grisham tapped Kate O’Neill, the former head of the University of New Mexico’s Taos campus, to head her administration’s Higher Education Department.

Al Bowman, Illinois State University president emeritus, is retiring as executive director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education at the end of the month.

Angie Paccione, Department of Higher Education: Former State Representative from Ft. Collins, Angie is an accomplished author and leadership coach who served as Vice Chair on the Committee on Education and Chair of the Subcommittee on Higher Education. She received her Ph.D. in Education and Human Resource Studies from CSU.

To head the state office of higher education, Walz named Dennis Olson, the executive director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council and a former director of Indian Education at the education department. The other finalists were former state Sens. Terri Bonoff and Steve Kelley, both DFLers who represented suburban districts.

As we near legislative sessions in many of our states, higher education finance will be a frequent topic of conversation. SHEEO has informed this dialogue for 15 years with our State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report. This report seeks to broaden our understanding of the state higher education finance landscape in an effort to inform effective policy decisions at the state and federal level.

When James Page took the helm of Maine’s university system, student enrollment was declining and the state’s public universities faced sizable, long-term deficits. Seven years later, Page will step down at a time when enrollment has stabilized — and even grown on some campuses — and the system’s long-term deficits have disappeared.

One thing the election season guarantees is change. Some of us are heartened by the outcomes of any given election while others are discouraged. I was recently asked by a reporter to prognosticate what this change might mean for higher education policy. The question was asked with a particular political lens in mind, but what it led me to consider is my firm conviction that both parties ultimately want to improve and increase the educational opportunities provided to all students. It is the right thing to do and the smart thing to do.

The University of North Carolina Board of Governors announced today that UNC Health Care CEO and Dean of the UNC School of Medicine Dr. William L. Roper has been named interim president of the UNC System, effective January 1, 2019. Dr. Roper also serves as vice-chancellor for Medical Affairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Following a highly successful six-year tenure as The University of Vermont’s 26th president, Tom Sullivan today announced that, after one more year, he will step out of the presidency in the summer of 2019.

Motivated by reports of financial challenges among colleges and universities and requests from state higher education agencies for better methods of assessing and tracking the financial health of the colleges within their states, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has produced a technical white paper on monitoring and assessing the financial health and risk of colleges and universities. The white paper is aimed at state higher education governing and coordinating boards and system offices. Accelerated by the Great Recession, and later by increased oversight and regulation of the for-profit sector, states have witnessed a wave of institutional closures. These institutional closures have tended to be isolated in the private for-profit and nonprofit sectors. However, there have been a number of examples of institutional mergers and consolidations within the public sector and examples of public institutions risking financial viability via reduced revenues and suffocating debt. In each case, some level of responsibility often falls on the state’s higher education executive officer (SHEEO) agency (the state’s governing or coordinating board). Central responsibilities of a SHEEO agency include helping ensure that institutions are financially viable, that they are good stewards of their public resources, and that they have the resources they need to best serve their students. One action that can facilitate all of these responsibilities is tracking an institution’s financial viability. Often called financial risk metrics or stress tests, the financial industry has developed a number of metrics and ratios that attempt to elucidate the financial strength of a college or university. In this white paper we discuss each of them, suggest some additional data sources and metrics, and then discuss how different SHEEO agencies, depending on their purview and resources, may attempt to more effectively monitor the financial health of their institutions so agencies may better engage the institutions, plan ahead, and serve their states. This white paper is meant to assist SHEEO agencies in carrying out these responsibilities.