Provost Claire Sterk addressed the Council in February on several major processes currently underway in the life of the university. The annual “budget season” recently began, she said, offering “an insider’s perspective on challenges and how people are looking toward solutions. More and more, we hear about ways to collaborate that were not part of the rhetoric in the past. It’s shifting the way people are approaching identity in their schools and the budget consequences.” Sterk also spoke at length about the SACSCOC reaccreditation visit on March 17-19, 2014, and the extraordinary amount of preparation and effort behind the process (for example, Emory’s QEP, “The Nature of Evidence”). “I think everybody would agree that it’s important for us to do assessment,” she said. “We just want to do it in ways that fit the institution.”