UMD Chancellor Dr. Charles Nies presented a recap of his first hundred days on the job in a presentation to faculty and staff in Kirby Ballroom on Wednesday, Oct. 30. 

The meeting, titled Campus Conversation, brought faculty and staff together in Kirby Ballroom to listen to the Chancellor recount stories from his first three months on the job, but also outline his plan for the future of UMD. 

Chancellor Nies took the opportunity to express his gratitude to the faculty and staff for their work for the university. 

“I think the thing that I have heard is that there are so many amazing things that are happening at our institution,” said Nies. “The work that you all are doing is really incredible work that is setting a standard for what higher education should be doing across the country. And so that's been really exciting.”

Chancellor Nies spoke on several topics, including local community partnerships, relationships with the UMN system, and areas for growth. He mentioned several students he had met during his time as chancellor and the work they were doing to contribute to the university community. 

Nies, who was previously the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at the University of California-Merced, began his role as UMD’s chancellor on July 1. His appointment was the result of a two-year-long search after the retirement of former chancellor Lendley Black. Dave McMillian served as interim chancellor from 2022 to 2024. 

A large portion of the event was focused on the revision of the expressed values of the university. The UMD website states that its core values are: learning, discovery, engagement, inclusiveness, sustainability, innovation, integrity and excellence. Chancellor Nies said that it was a project of his to simplify and combine some of those values, bringing it down from eight to five. 

“When I looked at some of the research around… corporate values and identifying values, the research says that you should land somewhere between three and five,” said Nies. “The reason why you land somewhere between three and five is because people can remember them. Once you get above five, people forget six, seven and eight. And if we're really going to start to talk about our values and what's important to us and how those inform the work that we do, we have to be ready to talk about those values.”

For Nies, those five values are excellence, engaged learning, innovation, belonging, and sustainability. By combining integrity and excellence, engaged and learning, and discovery and innovation, and expanding inclusiveness to belonging, he said it would better reflect the goals of the university. 

There was pushback to the change however, especially regarding the combination of excellence and integrity. Mags David, a Social Sciences librarian at the Kathryn A. Martin Library, stated that in a group discussion with her table, they had felt that the wrong value had won out. 

“We think that we need to start with integrity,” said David. “We felt that integrity was the superior value to excellence, and that building values into the process is the important part of it.  Excellence has this feeling of asking you to do more, to strive and achieve, where integrity is asking you to pay attention to what you're doing and do it with that value of paying attention to other things and sort of being your best self. Excellence on a day to day basis in your work is not really something that's doable. It’s not as meaningful.”

Melody David-McKnight, a Sea Kayak Coordinator for the RSOP, said that her table had come to the same conclusion. 

“I think every university strives for excellence, but something that could make us unique that I’ve seen UMD striving for is integrity.”

In addition, the Chancellor also provided updates to the searches for several key positions within UMD administration. 

The university has made an offer to a candidate for Vice Chancellor for Finance and Operations. That offer has been accepted and a formal announcement is expected by the end of the week. 

Chancellor Nies also said that the university has launched a search for the Executive Director of Advancement, as well as getting ready to search for a new Associate Vice Chancellor of Human Resources and Vice Chancellor for Student Life. The position descriptions of Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost are in the process of being finalized. 

For Nies, the development of programs and work being done at the university lead him to believe the future of UMD is bright. 

“I am super excited because I know that in 2,090 days, which is [the year] 2030 from today, we will have a new strategic plan in place. We will continue to move forward in embodying our values, making a difference, being that distinctive institution of being other that we can be, and transforming lives through the powerful educational experience we provide for our undergraduate and our graduate scholars.”