The Plan
In May 1997, over 200 faculty, administrators, and community members met in a campus-wide discussion to identify the major goals which would shape the University's new strategic plan - "Vision for the 21st Century: A Plan for Excellence."
Our excellence and our capability to meet the challenges of the next few years will be defined and determined by what we actually decide to do about our future and how we go about doing it. The members of the University community have been working hard together over the past two years to accomplish the major goals identified, which include:
- create an honors program.
- create a stronger, first-class general education program.
- fortify and invigorate our academic core by strengthening the support for faculty research and creative professional activity.
- increase student involvement and work toward integrating a significant service-learning component into the educational experience of each student
- work toward integrating a significant service-learning component into the educational experience of each student.
- forge more cohesive working relationships among faculty, staff, students and administration by a concerted effort to make communication and consultation central to our enterprise.
- establish new orientation and communication programs designed to speed and strengthen the integration of new students into our university.
- focus available technology to support and facilitate learning and instruction in those areas immediately in need of its benefits and ready to maximize its use.
- aggressively pursue expanding both public and private resources available to the University.
- create a strong marketing and communication program with both our internal and external constituencies.
- establish an ongoing process to evaluate the excellence of our performance in four major areas - - academic programs, pre- and post-tenure faculty, student performance, and general systems and operations.
- strengthen our productive working ties with the other educational institutions in our region.
- strengthen our productive working ties with the region, including local government and community-based organizations.
- begin major enhancements to the academic support equipment and physical plant.
- systematically reduce the deferred maintenance of campus facilities.
- assure that the Library meets the challenging needs of both campus and region
- upgrade management and personnel practices to strengthen the enterprise
These changes are central to our continued and future success. Typically, concerns related to them arose in more than one task force. They represent the major challenges to ourselves in pursuit of our expanded vision and goals.
This Plan is really a plan for change. However, change invariably requires resources, and these come only through the development of new resources and/or the reallocation of existing resources. If adequate new resources are not available, we are faced with either scaling down our plan or reducing our allocation to other programs so that the changes called for in the Plan can be made.
The success of this plan, the future of the University and, in many ways, the future of the Central Valley depends upon the strong support of our entire community for improved resources. This includes our students, faculty, staff, and administration, as well as business leaders, community organizations, political leaders, and the people of the Valley.
We pledge to do everything in our power to earn that support and to build a regional coalition to enhance our capacity to serve the region at the very highest level.
