Armacost said the university aims to launch or take substantial steps to launch four new companies based on research done at UND by the end of the school year. In the same timeframe, he said UND will become the AI university for North Dakota.
He called these goals "moonshots," after U.S. President John F. Kennedy's comments about the moon landing. Another recent "moonshot" for UND was launching satellites, a goal that came to fruition earlier this year, Armacost said.
"When you say, 'to infinity and beyond,' sometimes people listen," Armacost said.
Armacost announced the new initiatives Thursday during the annual State of the University address, along with the theme for this school year: community. The address was followed by a picnic for staff and faculty at the President's House.
Before Armacost spoke, successes of the past school year were highlighted by Jonathan Blankenship, student body president, Adam Matz, university senate chair, and Brandon Wallace, staff senate president.
Armacost has had a single-word theme for the university over the past three years, focusing on gratitude, connection and momentum. With so much uncertainty about the future of higher education and in general, he said that "now is the time to bind together as a community."
Quilts were chosen as the image to go along with the theme, as it is a form of art that focuses on patterns and built in a sense of community, Armacost said.
"You think of how a simple pattern can then create so many different designs from the same pattern," he said. "There's an important analog here, folks, that we — from the human design — we human beings have so many different patterns, each one more beautiful than the next."
The year's two moonshots also look toward community. Armacost said being the AI university for the state means being a national example of how AI can be adopted, which will involve public-private partnerships, working with people across the campus and preparing students to go into the world as AI progresses.
Launching four companies, he said, will build on the foundation of UND's Center for Innovation and the Small Business Development Center, and show the state of North Dakota that the money it puts into UND's research will be put into practice.
"The piece that is missing is being able to take our great discoveries and inventions and put them into practice," Armacost said. "We publish about them, we give papers, we give presentations. But there's a gap, and the state of North Dakota wants to see us make it happen."
Another goal for the university is digital accessibility, he said. While UND has been making efforts to make the campus more physically accessible, work needs to be done on digital accessibility. UND's websites and electronic materials need to be designed to promote accessibility, Armacost said. The university aims to be 85 percent compliant by the end of the fall semester, and 100 percent compliant by April 2026.
"We're doing it to support other human beings who deserve an education and participation here at the University of North Dakota," he said.
The university is also continuing steps to look into its pay equity to create a more comprehensive and complete architecture for career paths on campus. UND has been looking into pay equity and fixing pay gaps for the last two years, but is moving forward with identifying career progression for faculty and staff with salaries fair to the market.
A different ongoing effort for the university has been repatriation of Native American human remains found on campus several years ago. UND is continuing its work to return the remains and artifacts to their proper homes, Armacost said. All ancestors are expected to be home within the next year.
"This is not just a legal requirement under federal law. It's also a moral and ethical requirement for us to abide by," Armacost said.
The team behind the repatriation is not only looking into the past, but also forward to the future in how UND will educate campus members and the community so a similar situation doesn't happen again.
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