Hello, I´m Sam Rushforth I am the Dean of the School of Health and Science at Utah Valley State College. It is a pleasure to speak with you for a few minutes and tell you something about our programs here. I am a long term research scientist and teacher. It has been a shorter period of time that I have been a Dean. I have been here at Utah Valley State, as Dean, for six years. I came here because I felt it was my turn to be involved in trying to lift my colleagues and trying to increase the academic rigor here at our institution and altogether to help to make our programs stellar. I am pretty proud of what has happened here in six years. I have been able to hire half of the faculty of our school and just let me tell you, that has been a fine achievement and I am very proud of it. Any of the faculty that I have hired could be on the faculty at almost any institution in the country. All of them have terminal degrees, all of them are student friendly, and all of them are doing research with their students. It´s a true marvel to see the leaps that this institution has taken, especially in our school.

I want you to know that I am a hands on Dean. I have continued with my teaching and my research work. My door is open and I am talking with students and faculty, everyday. We are always turning over ideas and notions about how to make our school better. It´s a pretty fun place to be right now. It´s exciting and student friendly, and we are on the move. Our goal is to become the very best undergraduate education in the western United States and I don´t think we are far from that now. We have special needs for equipment and for space. We are working on closing those needs but as we accomplish those things, just watch us. Our special gifts here are wonderful faculty our area to do research is really splendid and we are going to make enormous strides. The information on the CD that you have, deals with the individual departments and department chairs and their goals and some of their specific needs. It also deals with our students and the research some of our students have been doing and with other students on the campus and some other incidental material. We hope you will watch this with interest and please provide us with any feedback you can that might help us to make this tape better or to include other things that are of interest to you. Thanks again, I´m Sam Rushforth. You can get me on email at sam.rushforth@uvsc.edu 801-863-8980. I am available any time, please feel free to email or call, if there is anything I can do to help. Thanks a million!