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President Corrigan's ViewPointViewPoint by President Corrigan is published in First Monday for the faculty and staff at SFSU on the first Monday of the month during the fall and spring semesters by the Public Affairs and Publications offices. EXT 8-1665. pubcom@sfsu.edu |
When the CUSP II strategic planning commission held its first meeting, on Jan. 31, we immediately recognized that our first task would be to give some shape to our broad mandate. We needed to decide how the commission saw its role, how it would engage the campus and the larger community, and how it might sort out the many issues and lines of inquiry to approach strategic planning in an organized way.
We have made significant progress in all these areas, and I want to share it with you. As I anticipated, CUSP II is going to be an exceedingly collaborative process, reaching out to the campus community and providing many opportunities for involvement. The commission even came up with a lively diagram to depict the planning structure that will serve us best (see back page for diagram). Much of the diagram is self-explanatory, but I want to call two elements to your attention. First, dotted -- not solid --lines separate the circles representing various groups. Information, ideas, and involvement will flow back and forth. "Breathing in, breathing out," as one commissioner more poetically put it.
Next, you'll notice that CUSP II places "driving questions" in the center of the diagram, as important to its work as important as "data" and "conversations." Getting at the driving questions Ð the main, organizing areas of inquiry that shape how we proceed Ð has been a lively process of brainstorming, refining, and finally, grouping the questions. The results so far are laid out below. I say "so far" because we know that this is a first pass. More questions can and probably should be asked and perhaps whole other areas of inquiry need to be considered. Once you read this, I would welcome your thoughts, suggestions, and responses. I will bring them to the commission, getting our campus conversation under way.
Planning Our Future: The Defining Questions
Defining Ourselves
What should we be to whom? How should we do it? What will stop us?
- Do we have an identity? Who are we? What is our market niche?
- What does it mean to define SFSU as a public, urban, teaching university?
- How might becoming a destination campus change our identity?
- What service and value do we provide to students and the larger community?
- How do we celebrate our diversity and ensure its proper place in our future?
- Can "cultural competence" become a focal point for our identity?
- How do we change the way we are perceived and gain more recognition for our academic quality?
- How do we balance who we want to be with what the market is telling us it wants?
Destination Campus
Do we want to become a destination campus? What will it mean for the University if we do?
- How do we define "destination campus"?
- How might becoming a destination campus change our identity?
- How do we take advantage of our location?
- What will draw students? What will keep students?
- What role can our diversity play in making us a destination campus?
Instructional Priorities/Resource Allocations
What are our academic priorities and how can we use them to guide resource decisions?
- Do we build on what's already strong or select desired areas of excellence and support them?
- What criteria do we use to decide which programs to support and at what fiscal level? Are we willing to cut off programs that don't meet those criteria?
- How can we place more emphasis on academic quality?
- How can we use our identity to guide resource decisions regarding expensive programs?
Graduate and Professional Education
What should the role of graduate and professional education be at SFSU? How should we be supporting it?
- What is the role of master's-level education? Doctoral-level education?
- What should be the balance between liberal arts and professional programs?
- What percentage of our resources should be in graduate programs? In professional programs?
- How should we use our identity to guide resource decisions regarding graduate and professional programs?
The Student Experience
What kind of University experience do we want our students to have?
- What will draw students? What will keep students? What will make alumni say they were happy to be here?
- What are the knowledge base, skills, and competencies our students need?
- What does it mean to avoid narrow, "careerist" definitions of education?
- How can we shape the educational environment to maximize student learning?
- How do we make our diversity an important and positive part of our students' academic and extracurricular experience?
- How do we make students active participants in the University? How do we provide a "college life" in addition to an education?
- Are we producing graduates who will enhance our reputation?
Faculty and Staff:
How do we attract the best faculty and staff to the University? How can we make SFSU a fulfilling place for them to work?
- How can we attract top-notch faculty and staff?
- How do we ensure that we are hiring the right faculty for our students?
- How can we provide increased research and professional support for faculty?
- How can we refresh and renew our staff?
- How can we "advantage" diversity in our faculty and staff?
Structure and Delivery
Do we have the most effective structure and delivery systems to support our educational goals?
- What are the new structures/models of universities? What do they offer us?
- What can we learn from the current revision of the state higher education master plan, especially regarding restructuring?
- Are we using the best delivery systems to meet our educational goals?
- What alternative delivery mechanisms should we employ?
External Relations
What is our proper community role? What are appropriate external partnerships to enable us to play that role better?
- What service/value do we provide to the larger community?
- How do we take advantage of our location and links to the City?
- In what ways can the University be used more effectively by the community?
- What is our competition? What are our opportunities for collaboration?
- How can we find out what our alumni are doing, so as to demonstrate our impact on the workforce?
- Do we know what is going on in the CSU system and in the state as a whole and how it may relate to us?
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Last modified March 1, 2002, by the Office of Public Affairs
