Blair Lord, provost and vice president for academic affairs, has gained confidence during the past year in the six big goals he set for the university in August.

“They are mostly (my ideas), so if they strike you as cockamamie, I am the one to blame,” Lord said when presenting the goals at the Faculty Luncheon in August.

Since then, the university has taken to his goals and made them visible at Eastern.

“I think they’ve been pretty well received,” Lord said. “We’re moving forward on all of these.”

Lord developed six academic-related goals that are meant to improve Eastern’s academics and make it more appealing for new students.

The goals focus on developing student research and scholarship programs, degree programs, the Honors College and the Study Abroad program. Teaching techniques and the Doudna Fine Arts Center are also on the list.

“I sort of had a sense of institutional goals within the academic realm that were consistent with Eastern, and what Eastern’s faculty wanted to pursue,” Lord said.

Lord presented his goals to the deans and departments chairs to be used as targets to help develop ideas.

Bonnie Irwin, dean of the Honors College, has helped Lord make a dent in the Honors College goal of becoming first choice among stage universities.

“By him setting that goal, that gives us something to shoot for,” Irwin said.

The college has expanded national scholarship advising, improved recognition of undergraduate research recipients, and applied to be a member of the national student exchange in the past year.

“To me, those kinds of things are what a first choice Honors College should have,” Irwin said.

The college currently has about 600 students enrolled in either departmental or university honors, Irwin said, and new applicants are up from last year by more than 20 percent.

“One of the ways we measure whether we are a first choice program is how many students are applying,” she said.

Irwin is also trying to get the Honors College more involved in the Study Abroad program, which correlates with another of Lord’s goals.

“We are really well positioned to start recruiting students for study abroad,” Lord said. His long-term goal is for Eastern to have the highest rate of student participation in Study Abroad programs of the state universities.

“We’re about five years away from that, but we have made significant strides,” said Wendy Williamson, director of Study Abroad. The department has been doing its part to expand on Lord’s goal.

They have developed a new marketing strategy and updated their Web site in hopes of drawing more students. The first edition of the departmental newsletter was also published this month.

Four programs were added to the department this spring, and three more will be added next spring.

“We’ve done a lot of things to make it easier for the students,” Williamson said. “We’re trying to find ways of implementing programs that aren’t as expensive.”

They currently offer a program to study in Costa Rica for nearly the same price it would cost to attend Eastern and live on campus.

“We’ve done a wonderful job in the last year, we’ve been able to accomplish quite a lot,” Williamson said.

Lord knows the goals he has set will take a long time to accomplish, but he’s happy with their outlook.

“I’m happy with the response of the campus,” Lord said.

He doesn’t plan to make any additions to his list of goals, at least not for a while.

“I have some others I’m thinking about, but I’m going to keep thinking about them until I’m ready to release them.”