Thank you, Strategic Planning Task Force

I would like to thank the members of the Strategic Planning Task Force who, for the past 2½ years, have worked diligently to launch our current round of strategic planning.

Strategic planning is the primary way that we have attempted to implement our mission, to accomplish our vision, and to meet distinct challenges facing higher education generally and our own university in coming years. In my 2006 convocation address I highlighted three themes that I thought would be crucial for our future: access, excellence and Catholic identity. These themes have directed our planning.

During the 2006-07 academic year the Strategic Planning Task Force held a series of hearings both within departments and also universitywide to identify major priorities that could best address these themes. The resulting nine priorities and the document “Strategic Priorities: Planning for the Future” were subsequently endorsed by the Board of Trustees on May 4, 2006, and have served as the basis for our planning since then.

These nine priorities have directed four universitywide planning initiatives and component planning in each of our academic and administrative units.

Universitywide initiatives have included: “Opening Doors” Capital Campaign, Undergraduate Enrollment Initiatives, Strategic Diversity Action Plan, and Information Resources and Technologies Plan. (The latter two will be brought to the board for approval during the coming year.) These priorities also are addressed in our component planning by each academic and administrative unit of the university in a “living document,” which adds new goals and strategies as previous ones are accomplished. See Report to the Board (cf. especially pp. 8ff).

I am deeply grateful to the following individuals for their dedicated service to our planning effort. They represent students, faculty, staff and administrators who were nominated by their respective groups and councils (as indicated below) and appointed by my office.