Before a standing-room-only audience in the Vallejo Auditorium at Utah Valley University (UVU), President Astrid S. Tuminez delivered the annual State of the University address. During the course of her remarks, she recapitulated the university’s achievements in 2023, including record-breaking retention rates, increases in the school’s endowment, the securing of historic donations, the groundbreaking of a new campus building, and multiple university awards.
“When I think about the phrase ‘popular education,’ I think about Utah Valley University,” President Tuminez began. “We’ve issued a very powerful invitation to people [to] come as you are. UVU has a place for you. We don't care what your life professional academic experience was. If you want to better yourself, you want to improve your lot in life; come to UVU, and we will help you.”
President Tuminez demonstrated how UVU students, faculty, and staff have made an impact on the university and the community at large through research projects, grants, athletic achievements, scholarships, local and national recognitions and awards, and competitions.
“At the end of the day, we are a very competitive university,” she said. “We are the underdogs; we have a big chip on our shoulders. We go into the fields and test ourselves and show the world ‘yes, we can be as good as you, even better.’”
The university president, now entering her sixth year with UVU, commented on the challenges facing higher education, including waning interests in higher education itself.
“If you see what's being featured on television or on the internet, it is the massive devaluation of the value of higher education, very different from America in the post-Cold War period when everything was about education — now it's a loss of trust.”
President Tuminez remained optimistic and owed her optimism to UVU’s values of exceptional care, exceptional accountability, and exceptional results.
“What inspires me is that we at UVU are not in this situation,” she said. “And the reason for that is we have a very clear vision to become the university of choice for every kind of student, whatever their experience or background is, for every student to succeed here, get an education, and succeed in working life.”
Tuminez concluded her remarks by recalling her recent visit to her home in the Philippines and the experience she had speaking with the young students in the village library named after her mother.
“I looked at this, and I thought, ‘This is why I am at UVU because [of] the faces of these students.’ They're Filipino, yes, but these are also the faces of every student that walks in the hallways of UVU. We’re in the business of hope, or the business of dreams, and nothing really honestly can be more exciting than that (except perhaps dancing to Taylor Swift music.)”
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