Question #9 -The goal of the next strategic plan is to help guide YSU on a path to its best possible future.
Is there any additional feedback related to strategic planning that you would like to provide?
Individual Responses -
- We need better leadership who are ethical, professional, are not self-serving, and who support those of us on the front lines working with students everyday.
- Valuing the employees who make a significant impact in the lives of students, your life force of this institution. Administration thanks us for our service and yet we are not fairly compensated, especially when things like healthcare premiums have gone up (which negates any cost of living raise IF we get one). Administration gets continuous raises while many of the employees, with advanced degrees, struggle to make ends meet. How do we communicate to our students that a college education is a necessity when many of us with the same (and higher) education cannot get ahead because it's employer will invest in everything else, including themselves at the top of the ladder, and not in its own highly educated and qualified personnel who directly work with our students?
- Research should be a priority to reinvigorate the regional economy.
- From past experience, it will be important to incorporate a Master Facility Plan and an IT Strategic Plan that are based off of the Strategic Plan.
- Just as it's important to pursue new academic programs that that will help sustain YSU's future, it is likewise important to detach ourselves from antiquated, under-enrolled and/or low-demand programs.
- Address shared governance and improved communication among administration, faculty, staff, and students. When presenting the strategic plan, write more simply than you have been doing, especially in your use of slidedecks. Improve our website--it is difficult to search it, especially the faculty/staff/departments section. Put cyberlearning infrastructure enhancement as a top priority.
- YSU ought to merge with The Ohio State University becoming OSU North for the best possible future here!
- Let's make sure the goals are specific to YSU's actual situation, not fashionable, broad statements that could be copied and pasted to any university. Let's make sure the goals are actionable, quantifiable, have due dates, and specify individuals that will be responsible for their implementation. Let's make sure there are review and control processes built to monitor goal progress and to insure the goals are still current and being focused on for implementation.
- The administration's stealing of student course fees from colleges, departments, faculty, and students is yet another example of the lack of shared governance and the administration's utter disregard of student and faculty needs. It is demoralizing and damaging to teaching and learning.
- If a priority of the university is for students to success, i.e. graduation and finding a career in their field of study, what resources are being provided? We still must seriously review if we are providing sufficient funding and staff to directly address the challenges of our most vulnerable students.
- I have confidence in the leadership team at YSU. The team has contacts with the Mahoning-Shenango Valleys' public and private sector; management, ownership, and labor in various work places; and the diverse strata of our people: poor, wealthy, urban, suburban, and rural. If the team is ignoring any of these elements, I have never heard any complaint, rumor, or gossip.