The university's Courageous Strategic Transformation framework is an open document, an invitation to find ourselves within it. We, as the College of Liberal Arts, have the agency and ability to identify the ways in which our teaching, scholarship, and engagement is not only embedded within the framework but also will lead the campus in our 21st century educational vision.

We will use our own strategic planning process to not only identify but also to create the ways in which the College of Liberal Arts executes on the university's strategic transformation.

It is customary for colleges, universities, and businesses to develop 3-5 year work plans, called strategic plans, to help guide the work that they will do and why they are doing it (based on organizational/institutional goals).

A strategic plan includes the broad goals, the tactical goals, and the operational goals to fulfill the plan.

At this point in our process (spring 2021), we are in the research and discovery phase of identifying what items could be included in the strategic plan.

The College of Liberal Arts strategic plan, created in 2018 through the efforts of our departments, ends in 2021, and it's time to create a new plan. In addition, we have a pandemic to learn from and build on in order to become a leading liberal arts college at a public land-grant institution.

In spring and early summer 2021, the task forces are developing recommendations to give to the dean for review and consideration for the strategic plan. In consultation with the department chairs and program directors, the dean will identify the broad goals for the strategic plan.

The departments will be asked to identify 6-month, 18-month, and 3-year tactical and operational goals that will fit into the strategic plan's broad goals.

At the end of 2021, we will have a college-wide strategic plan that will be shared for final review and then finalized for implementation starting 2022.

The university's strategic plan is actually a framework, which means it is not prescriptive about what we do or how we do it, but rather provides an opportunity for each area of campus to identify how we engage and to develop goals and plans that further the university mission.

The college's strategic plan will be made up of large, college-wide goals as well as the tactical departmental level goals that allow us to purposefully engage in an innovative, 21st century education.

Each department will be asked to identify 6-month, 18-month, and 3-year goals that will help meet the college goals. As a member of your department, you will be asked to contribute to the creation of your department plan.

You can participate and you can provide feedback. We hope that you do!

The task forces are meeting between January and June 2021. They will be reaching out to their colleagues with updates and information as they go through the research and discovery process.

At the end of March, we held a college-wide town hall where the dean and several task force co-chairs talked about the work and efforts being done. In addition, there will be a Q&A section.

At any time, you can visit this webpage to see what is new.

In early May, a variety of stakeholder fora will be held where the College is invited to hear initial recommendations from the task forces and provide input on those.

Note: the task forces are preparing recommendations for the strategic plan, they are not making decisions about what is included in the strategic plan. This decision will be made by the dean based on the recommendations of the task forces as well as conversation with department chairs and program directors.

We will communicate with the College through a series of emails, town halls, this webpage, and other electronic updates.

Your departments will begin to have regular conversations about your departmental goals and tactics starting as soon as spring 21, and definitely in fall 21. Tune in, attend, and participate in your department meetings and conversations about the strategic plan.

While we will "push" the information to you through the above mechanisms, we ask that you also come to this site as you'd like to check on any updates.