BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — We’re continuing our series looking at some of the fastest-growing communities in our state.

During this In Focus Kentucky segment, Western Kentucky University president Dr. Tim Caboni discusses the importance of city/county-university partnerships and their impact on the region.

The WKU strategic plan, Climbing to Greater Heights, calls officials at the south-central Kentucky based university to develop a new campus master plan to guide the next decade of capital construction, land use, transportation, sustainability, and much more. 

“You know, in the decade before I arrived, there was already a transformation physically on campus. And we really leaned into that and accelerated it. Since I’ve arrived, we’ve done almost $390 million in construction. Part of that through fundraising, part of that through debt, and in large part is going to be because of state reinvestment in higher education. So I’m thankful for the legislature, but we’ve taken down seven buildings. We’ve opened up our new freshman village which I talked about, we transformed our library to something called the Commons...We’re going to transform and completely renovate Cherry Hall and we have a new College of Business, building a $75 million facility that will open on right off of South Lawn by Guthrie tower, and it will be a facility that creates the best place to do applied learning and business in the Commonwealth. We know that young people want to come, but they don’t want to just sit in the classroom. They want to do, to learn and so applied learning is something that we’re really known for at WKU. You see it on our farm, you see it in our Journalism and Broadcasting programs and you see it in everything that we do and there’s gonna be a tremendous facility that really changes the way in which we do business education on the hill,” explains Dr. Caboni.

You can watch the full In Focus segment in the player above.