Union's Strategic Plan officially rolled out this week with a series of campus meetings seeking comment from students, faculty and staff.
Nearly a year in the making, the plan articulates a bold vision for a Union education and proposes a series of critical strategies for supporting that vision.
“I believe this is the kind of thing that will catapult us to a different level in every way, shape and form,” President Stephen Ainlay told a group of students this week at Reamer Campus Center Auditorium.
The process began last spring with the creation of a planning committee co-chaired by Trustee John E. Kelly III '76 and Therese McCarty, interim dean of faculty and vice president for academic affairs.
As part of the planning effort, the committee engaged students, faculty and staff across the campus in a variety of discussions about issues confronting the College. In the fall, the planning group began to identify possible strategies to address the issues and collected additional feedback, and by winter, a vision statement and draft report were completed.
The Board of Trustees endorsed the plan at its February meeting.
Key to the plan are three “differentiators” that separate Union from other liberal arts schools and that will be used to guide the College as it moves into its third century:
“We seek to be small, yet global and diverse.”
“We seek to further integrate engineering with the liberal arts.”
“We seek to inspire innovation, using our past as a source of inspiration.”
The next step in the process is to begin refining priorities for change and creating blueprints for implementation.
In campus meetings, Ainlay pledged his commitment to the vision and strategies spelled out in the plan. When a student wondered if the plan would simply “die in committee,” Ainlay assured her that wouldn't be the case.
“I'm staking my presidency on this,” he said.
Union's Strategic Plan is now posted on the College's Web site at: http://www.union.edu/strategic.