10 Questions With… Provost and Executive Vice President Roy Haggerty. This is a follow-up to our July interview when Haggerty first returned to OSU. In this update, he discusses several key initiatives he’s prioritizing.
After nearly five months of being back at Oregon State, what has surprised you the most about your return?
Two things stand out. First, the pace and momentum around Prosperity Widely Shared (PWS) —from deans, faculty, advisors, and staff who are hungry to translate the plan’s three goals into measurable progress for students and for Oregon. Second, the willingness to work across boundaries — you see faculty forming teams that cut across colleges to tackle AI, climate, health and robotics, which is exactly how PWS imagines as OSU’s next big step.
And although I knew it before, coming back has reminded me that OSU’s influence grows when we lead the Oregon way: through process, shared governance and problem‑solving, not directive. That’s how we earn trust and sustain it.
With so much going on at OSU, which key initiatives have your attention?
Four initiatives, all tied directly to PWS:
1. Advance student success and degree completion — improving retention and graduation; a signature first‑year onboarding experience and sprint effort to increase first-year retention; lots of ongoing efforts in the colleges to support students, and Finish in Four — our flagship effort that includes scholarships and other efforts to help more Oregon students graduate, such as programs to improve first-year retention, emergency grants, persistence awards and completion grants.
2. Advance the Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex and AI — underpinned by a supercomputer, AI and research computing, we are standing up the Jen-Hsun Huang and Lori Mills Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex as OSU’s hub for collaborative, AI‑accelerated solutions‑driven research.
3. Strengthening academic units – ensuring that our faculty are successful and that the academic units have the resources they need. This includes the Strategic Resource Renewal Project, which I discuss in more detail below.
4. Grow enrollment and educational access, particularly through Ecampus and at OSU Cascades.
Can you share more about your commitment to First Year Retention and Registration and why it’s so important?
We are calling it FYRR, pronounced “fire”, which is an apt name because it reflects our urgency. Our goal here is simple: every student we admit should be given every support possible to get them to graduation. PWS calls for a campaign for timely degree completion with clear targets in every unit, a signature first‑year onboarding experience and strengthened community‑college pathways. To maximize student success, I chose to start where the greatest number of students leave – during their first year at OSU. We are looking at everything, trying several interventions across campus, OSU-Cascades and Ecampus, and we’ll scale what works.
This isn’t just a metrics exercise; it’s PWS in practice: remove friction, increase belonging, and align resources and offer them where they are most needed so students finish on time.
OSU will have a site visit in April from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities as part of the process to renew the university’s accreditation. How can the OSU community be involved in this process and why does it matter?
Accreditation is one of the ways we fulfill our public promise for OSU to deliver education of the highest quality and effectiveness and that we continuously improve. Here’s how colleagues can help now:
· If you are asked to engage in any of the accreditation work, please help if you can.
· Note the dates when the accreditation visit will happen (April 7 at OSU‑Cascades; April 8–10 in Corvallis) — there will be a need for many in our community to meet with the visiting accreditation team.
· Details and timelines are live on the accreditation website.
A new federal rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act will require OSU to have digitally accessible course materials, websites, mobile apps (including documents hosted on websites and apps), online forms and social media posts starting April 24, 2026.
How is the university going to meet these new requirements and what should employees be doing to prepare?
OSU is working to implement digitally accessible materials for all OSU web and mobile content, including course materials, documents, forms and social posts, which all must meet federal standards. This is relevant to PWS: removing barriers so every student graduates. The best place to look is my campus communication on Oct. 16, which contains information and links to more detailed information.
Like many colleges and universities in Oregon and beyond, OSU is grappling with the challenge of declining state support for higher education. How is the university addressing this and planning for the future?
State support has not kept pace with university costs for 25 years, and OSU’s budget now depends far more on tuition than it once did. To plan responsibly, we’ve launched Strategic Resource Renewal (SRR), a university-wide effort I’m co-leading with OSU Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Carla Ho‘ā to identify and capture opportunities to generate revenue, streamline processes and reinvest in PWS priorities like student success, research excellence and enrollment growth.
How will the OSU community be involved in the strategic resource renewal initiative and process?
The OSU community will shape SRR, both in ideation and in providing input for decision- making. The Faculty Senate will be consulted all along the way, as will committees such as the University Budget Committee and unit leaders. SRR will also publish timelines, FAQs and updates on the SRR website, hold town halls and regularly communicate with the university community. The goal is straightforward: transparent and data-informed diagnosis, collaborative problem-solving and alignment of resources with strategic priorities.
It’s been a particularly challenging year not just in higher education, but across the spectrum. What keeps you hopeful and motivated?
The big picture keeps me going. History shows that turbulence isn’t rare and problems are inevitable; every era has its own. The advantage we have is where we live and where we work. Oregon is full of talent and possibility, and OSU — a land-grant university — exists for the purpose of helping the state thrive. Challenges aren’t new and they aren’t going away. But there’s only one reliable way to move through them: create knowledge and put it to work. That’s what research universities do. That’s what OSU does every day.
Having acclimated to Louisiana winters, how are you preparing to face the coming months of rain and gray skies now that you’re back in Oregon?
I’ll take an Oregon winter over a Louisiana summer. And now I have a gumbo recipe for the Oregon winter. Also, someone once said, “There is no bad weather, only bad gear.”
Do you have a particular winter holiday tradition that you and your family look forward to every year?
My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. There aren’t many expectations other than share a good meal with my children and grandchildren and then there is a three-day-weekend after.
Related Stories
