Draft Plan for Strategic Actions to Take Charge of Our Future & Feedback

The Strategic Plan Organizing Team (SPOT) has developed a DRAFT Plan for Strategic Actions to Take Charge of Our Future. Please take this opportunity to review the Draft Plan and provide your feedback on the goals and the strategies associated with each goal, using the form below.

SPOT will use this input and finalize a recommended Plan for Strategic Action to Take Charge of our Future that Provost Smith will present to President Tressel for endorsement to the Board of Trustees in June 2020.

Foundational Principles

(Click each to expand)

  • STUDENT FUTURES & LIFELONG LEARNING

    STUDENT FUTURES & LIFELONG LEARNING...create environments that empower students to acquire intellectual and social capital to realize individual aspirations.

    We will:

    • Adopt a student-centered approach to all University operations and policies that values and includes all students.
    • Ensure curricula, systems and practices increase persistence and steady progress to graduation.
    • Promote a unified approach to admissions, matriculation, persistence, completion and the career success of our students.
  • ACADEMIC DISTINCTION AND DISCOVERY OF KNOWLEDGE

    ACADEMIC DISTINCTION AND DISCOVERY OF KNOWLEDGE…fosters the development of a community that will grow intellectually, socially, and ethically in which individuals put knowledge into practice.

    We will:

    • Implement a continuous, purposeful strategy to improve teaching and learning as well as selective national research distinction.
    • Adopt university-wide learning outcomes that are integrated throughout the curriculum.
    • Promote internships and projects with local businesses and organizations; service, experiential and applied learning projects; and opportunities for students to apply their knowledge in scholarly activity.
    • Implement continuous and regular assessment of student learning outcomes and best teaching practices.
    • Improve student, faculty, and staff access to advanced technologies, equipment, and facilities.
  • COLLECTIVE IMPACT WITH THE REGION

    COLLECTIVE IMPACT WITH THE REGION…creates deliberate, mutually-beneficial, educational, civic, industry, and philanthropic partnerships that achieve equitable and innovative regional development.

    We will:

    • Listen to the needs of the community.
    • Promote activities that demonstrate impact and purpose in accordance with the university’s mission, understanding that the impact may not be immediate.
    • Communicate the impact and value of community engagement activities.
    • Align activities with attributes of institutional learning outcomes.
    • Ensure that partnerships are inclusive, equitable, and grounded in accessible systems, practices, and goals.

DRAFT Academic Actions

GOAL: Implement best practices that address student needs throughout the student life cycle to increase persistence, completion and postgraduate success

  • Strategy: Ensure academic program plans are up to date, easily understood, and aligned with a highly functional degree audit system.
  • Strategy: Ensure all students benefit from holistic, relational and developmental integrated advising (academic, career, student services and counseling).
  • Strategy: Develop and deploy comprehensive, integrated and proactive data-informed intervention strategies supported by appropriate technologies that address achievement gaps.
  • Strategy: Enhance experiences to engage students in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities.
  • Strategy: Improve support and resources for students facing non-academic challenges.
  • Strategy: Focus on post-graduation planning across the student life cycle to reinforce the value of completion and enhance career success.

GOAL: DEVELOP A RECRUITMENT AND ENROLLMENT STRATEGY THAT ALIGNS WITH A COMPLETION STRATEGY

  • Strategy: Develop an integrated and comprehensive market and brand communication strategy to distinguish the value of the YSU degree.
  • Strategy: Develop a cultivation strategy linked to the value proposition of earning a YSU degree for each program of study.
  • Strategy: Expand and enhance outreach and engagement with students prior to enrollment.
  • Strategy: Develop innovative approaches to increase the enrollment and completion of under-represented international and students from other areas of the state and nation.

GOAL: CREATE FRAMEWORKS TO OPTIMIZE STUDENT AND POSTGRADUATE SUCCESS

  • Strategy: Create a working group to help guide student success objectives and strategies.
  • Strategy: Design consultation and reporting expectations to inform the campus community about institutional progress related to student success.
  • Strategy: Create and regularly update reports and dashboards related to student progress.
  • Strategy: Create a structure of feedback to assess the impact and influence of student success objectives and strategies.

GOAL: Bring innovative, student-centered teaching to scale in order to promote learning and increase retention

  • Strategy: Update University policies and guidelines, including promotion and tenure documents, to reflect the importance for all faculty members to engage in innovative teaching strategies.
  • Strategy: Define expectations and provide additional opportunities for faculty to learn and apply best pedagogical practices.
  • Strategy: Enhance the quality, capacity and use of technologies that promotes learning.
  • Strategy: Develop tools and adopt practices to improve, evaluate and assess teaching and learning.
  • Strategy: Implement a faculty development and mentoring plan.

GOAL: Develop a culture of assessment and continuous improvement that ensures the quality of academic program majors, minors, and other credentials

  • Strategy: Complete program effectiveness and enhancement review including rubrics for recommendations regarding actionable outcomes.
  • Strategy: Identify emerging markets for innovative academic programs, badges, credentials, coursework integration, competency-based education and on-line opportunities.

GOAL: Establish universal learning outcomes to enhance the value of a ysu degree

  • Strategy: Develop a plan to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into the curriculum.
  • Strategy: Revise General Education Requirements to reflect transformative learning outcomes.

GOAL: Invest in research and optimized infrastructure in strategic ways

  • Strategy: Identify areas of research and scholarship, in addition to the Mahoning Valley Innovation and Commercialization Consortium, that focus on teaching and learning and mutually beneficial community engagement.
  • Strategy: Periodically evaluate all campus Centers, Institutes and research initiatives.
  • Strategy: Update University policies and guidelines, including promotion and tenure documents, to reflect the importance of the scholarship of teaching and learning and community-based research.
  • Strategy: Use systems of reliable data to create insights for well-informed decision-making relating to organizational structures, financial management, and performance management.

GOAL: We will be recognized as a community-engaged campus by the carnegie foundation around the following areas of focus: education; health; prosperity and equity; and arts and culture

  • Strategy: Secure regional, state, national, and foundation funding.
  • Strategy: Inventory, regularly update and communicate all current community engagement activities.
  • Strategy: Develop a framework to optimize and manage the areas of focus within the community engagement priority.
  • Strategy: Develop a framework to integrate experiential education, service learning and community involvement into the curriculum.
  • Strategy: Improve the planning and coordination of current and new student experience and community engagement initiatives with a focus on employer needs and an informed citizenry.
  • Strategy: Update University policies and guidelines for tenure, advancement, and promotion across departments and divisions to reflect the importance of equity, inclusion, and community engagement initiatives and activities.
Please list any additional items that you think should be considered as goals.
Response Privacy
Most input will be summarized however, SPOT may share relevant responses with the campus community to further the conversation. Please indicate if you would like you response to remain private.