By Ashley Miller

President Richard Freeland spoke to the Faculty Senate at their second meeting of the academic year Wednesday about what he hopes to work towards in the upcoming year.

He said three key issues he will be looking into are the quality of freshman admissions, retention and graduation rates and academic reputation and resources.

“I believe it is time … for a heightened and continuous focus on [academics],” Freeland said. “The big thing we need to do is convince the world that we’ve taken this institution to another level, academically.”

Freeland said he plans to make targeted investments in areas that would lead the school to a top 100 ranking in US News and World Report’s list of best colleges.

“We are so close to achieving our goals here [of reaching top 100] … I can taste it, I hope you can taste it.”

Freeland also said that the university may need to restructure as a result of different needs represented by a higher quality student population.

He plans to unite two of the school’s strong points, science and engineering, in a biotechnology initiative.

“Northeastern’s current educational model is based on the assumption that students know what they want to do after graduation,” Freeland said.

He noted that higher caliber students may be more indecisive about their future plans, so Northeastern should improve in all academic areas.

Freeland looked to Provost Ahmed Abdelal to shape the academic investment plan for the next five years.

“My goal is that by early in the new year, we will have an agreement on an academic investment plan,” Freeland said.

Abdelal said he plans to focus on increasing tenure track faculty resources and enriching and enlarging graduate programs. He said he would strive to achieve a balance among all the needs of the university.

“You want to have the tenure-track faculty and you want to have the high caliber students, but then you want to provide sufficient resources so that all these people can do what they need to do,” Abdelal said.

Freeland also praised the work on semester conversion as being both successful and efficient.

“We didn’t spend a lot of extra money on semester conversion, but we did it. A lot of people stepped up,” he said.

He said that he was very proud of the entire process.

“We said we were going to do it, we did it and we did it well,” he said.