Strategic Planning Campus Forum

The belowing recording is from the Virtual Campus Forum on Tuesday, December 8, 2020.

Transcript: 

Andy Feinstein (00:00:00):
Well, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Rowing, Not Drifting 2030 strategic planning forum. I appreciate all the faculty, students, staff, and others who are joining us this afternoon. The development of our Rowing, Not Drifting 2030 vision and the draft phase one strategic plan we will discuss this afternoon had come about through extensive collaboration over many months, as well as the hard work of sub-committees comprised of a number of students, faculty, and staff.

Andy Feinstein (00:00:32):
And I'm particularly grateful for the contributions that members of the President's Leadership Council and our strategic plan sub-committees have made over the last several months, beginning of this summer most recently. And I'm also pleased to have the opportunity this afternoon to collect input on our current draft from our community. As we worked through our planning, it became apparent that our interest in creating a living plan would be best served by dividing our strategic plan into five, roughly two-year phases. And today we'll discuss the key actions for the first two years.

Andy Feinstein (00:01:11):
Our plan is to convene every couple of years to identify a new set of actions to guide our collective work for the following two years in service of the 2030 vision and outcomes we had identified last fall. And if you'd like to reference that draft document during today's forum, you can access it at unc.edu/president/planning.

Andy Feinstein (00:01:38):
Our strategic planning process began, if you recall, in the fall of 2019. It seems so long ago. And the university came together to articulate a vision for UNC through open forums and working sessions. Our board helped refine the document, and then subsequently approved Rowing, Not Drifting vision in November of 2019. In the spring semester, we shifted our focus to developing a strategic plan that would help us realize our 2030 vision for UNC. We drew upon all of the input that had been generated by the university community during the visioning process. And if you recall, we formed representative stuff committees of faculty, students, and staff around each vision element, and charged them to develop drafts. We hold brainstorming sessions, open to the university to community to formulate priorities for inclusion in the plan. You may recall those town hall meetings we had over in the UC last year.

Andy Feinstein (00:02:40):
Work in the spring had to be suspended though, as the operations of the university were disrupted. But we quickly resumed our efforts at the start of the fall. And we once again reconstituted the five subcommittees, and we met weekly through the President's Leadership Council and also subcommittees to refine drafts towards a final set of key actions.

Andy Feinstein (00:03:04):
The subcommittees work with students, faculty, and staff across campus to ensure we developed a plan that generates enthusiasm to work together towards a common vision for UNC's future. And we presented that draft of the plan to the Board of Trustees at the November meeting. And you can go online on the Board of Trustees website and see the full video if you'd like.

Andy Feinstein (00:03:28):
Our work last fall led to the formation of five vision elements that focus our work on a set of priorities, students first, empower inclusivity, enhance and invest, innovate and create, connect and celebrate. And these vision elements helped to organize our work for developing our strategic plan. And will also frame our discussion today. And five subcommittees work to develop key actions around these vision elements. Although conceptually, you will see today that several of the key actions that we have developed also span multiple areas.

Andy Feinstein (00:04:07):
So this afternoon we wanted to collect your feedback on this current set of draft key actions for phase one of the strategic plan. And we have today representatives from each of the five sub-committees, and they all present the key actions that correspond most directly to their areas. We have about 15 to 20 minutes for Q&A on each of the five sections of Rowing, Not Drifting 2030. And I strongly encourage you to submit your questions using the the Q&A function at the appropriate time. And if we're not able to get to all the questions during our time today, we will be sure to follow up as soon as possible.

Andy Feinstein (00:04:47):
And also after today's presentation, we'll be collecting additional feedback from the campus community. And you'll be able to do that through an email that you'll be receiving shortly. And we'll share more about that coming up. So let's get right into it. And we're going to begin today with our students first sub-committee, which is represented this afternoon by Kim Medina and Katrina Rodriguez. Kim and Katrina.

Kim Medina (00:05:17):
Thank you, Andy. I wanted to start with the first of our 10 draft key action items. But first I want to reference everybody who was on our students for sub-committee through the President's Leadership Council, as well as outside of the President's Leadership Council. We felt it was very important to make sure that we had representatives from outside the typical offices that you would anticipate. We had students, both undergraduate and graduate, advisors, as well as personnel from our enrollment management, student affairs, and our advising officers.

Kim Medina (00:05:57):
The first of the 10 key actions, if we could, is that we'd like to get your feedback on and request information from you in regards to your thoughts is, as a part of our students first element, the first key action is to develop and implement an action plan to ensure that UNC is a student-ready campus of individuals at all academic levels.

Kim Medina (00:06:27):
We believe that student's success, both inside and outside of the classroom or laboratory, is often connected to a student's sense of belonging and their quality of engagement across, again, all areas of the university. From the traditional academic setting to campus life and support services, we want to strive in the next two years to better understand how our students interact with UNC departments and programs. And how those interactions impact their progress towards graduation.

Kim Medina (00:06:59):
In support of this key action, we will begin by completing the following. We will establish baseline data sources and needs related to student success and engagement across all areas of the university. We will take that data and we will analyze it to determine specific student engagement and academic success outcomes. And then we will share that data across the campus to develop students' first action plans at the department level. These key action items intersect quite well with our empower and inclusivity element that you'll hear from next. I'd like to turn it over to Katrina about our second action item.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:07:43):
Good afternoon, everybody. And thank you so much, Kim. In our second element, we will be looking at completing the second discovery phase of the Hispanic Serving Institution 2025 plan that's sort of incorporated in here. We certainly understand that the population in Colorado is shifting in terms of our student demographics. And we certainly want to incorporate that in our trajectory for UNC to become an HSI as we're moving forward about 24% right now. And certainly to serve all of our students well, we want to take an intentional approach to achieving this designation, that it's not just about the percentage of undergraduate enrollment, but certainly how we educate our student community and considering our students first mission.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:08:40):
Certainly the work that we did with our strategic enrollment and student success, our success plan, as Kim mentioned, the sense of belonging is really vital to our retention and graduation. So looking at an intentional approach to becoming an HSI really will help us establish those structures and practices that support students in contributing to a sense of belonging.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:09:01):
And so when I talk about the second discovery phase, this fall, as many of you know, we spent time in multiple open conversations about what it means for folks to be an HSI and trying to try to really generate some baseline information. And so that was really our first phase of looking through to see what our various stakeholders had as thoughts.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:09:34):
And then in the second discovery phase, then by June, 2022, we'll be having additional forums, beginning this spring, to really delve into what our goals and strategies might be, how we might implement those. And we'd really like an opportunity to meet with all kinds of stakeholders, both internal and external to understand how we might move forward and what kinds of strategies would make the most sense for us. So at this point, I believe we can open up to questions about the students first. And it looks like we do have a question here.

Kim Medina (00:10:17):
It looks like that question is specifically for action item seven and 10. So we might want to allow folks relating to those to answer that question.

Andy Feinstein (00:10:30):
Well, I have a question.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:10:31):
Sure.

Andy Feinstein (00:10:32):
So Katrina, we're talking about the HSI plan and we state that this is the second phase of discovery. How can people find out more detailed information of the plan since we're not technically describing phase one or the other aspects of this and they may be confused as to what the different phase of the planning work we're doing is?

Katrina Rodriguez (00:10:54):
Absolutely. So there are five phases. And in the coming weeks, we will be wrapping up a report that shares the findings from our conversations that occurred in November, October/November. And so with that, will be a plan that'll show the five phases and the results of the first plan. And what the five phases look like is sort of the first phase as a exploratory, what is our baseline information along with some statistical data from the university as well as nationally.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:11:29):
The second phase will be looking at what the goals are and strategies that we might consider. Then we'll start into some pre-implementation strategies, probably beginning July 2022, as we launched into that second aspect of our Rowing, Not Drifting vision 2030 plan. And then as we go along, we'll be doing continual assessment of the strategies, making sure that what our outcomes are, that we're actually meeting those as we project that will be of full HSI will be looking at designation in year three or four and getting those applications ready as well as looking for some funding opportunities that will be available to us. So we're kind of looking at a five-year timeline in order to be sure that we're thinking about all of the pieces.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:12:24):
The other thing I think that came up rightfully so in the Board of Trustees meeting and in some of our early conversations, why are we waiting so long? If we're already at almost 24%, why do we need to wait so long to become an HSI? And it may be that our timeline moves up a little potentially. We want to make sure that we are fully thinking about the strategies that will allow us to be successful in students first focused, student minded, rather than just being a percentage by which we can say we are this and we go forward. We want our actions to reflect in all the work that we're doing. And so that's why it'll take a few years to get there, to make sure we have everything in place. And then any funding we do receive that we could go back into the programs. Did I answer your question well, Andy?

Andy Feinstein (00:13:19):
Yes. I have a question for Kim too.

Kim Medina (00:13:22):
Okay.

Andy Feinstein (00:13:23):
Kim, when we talk about UNC being a student-ready campus, what does that mean? What does being a student-ready campus mean?

Kim Medina (00:13:34):
Andy, that will be something that we will fully flush out in those first two years. Because ideally, what we want the strategic plan to look like is that every department, and this goes to one of the questions that we have in the chat, how would the action plan consider the different situations in different departments and colleges? We want every department on campus to be able to understand what it means to them to be students first.

Kim Medina (00:14:03):
And what that means to an academic department or a service-oriented department might be something different than a department that serves, let's say parking services, what it means to be student first. So we are going to understand where our students are and how they get some baseline data, look at some of the data that we already have from a lot of the good work that's happened with assess plan and other institutional research initiatives, and support each department to understand what being a student's first department means to them. So I think it's going to be very individualized. And That's going to be the way that we make sure the plan is not something that we shelf.

Kim Medina (00:14:57):
Katrina there are a couple of questions here about specific to HSI. One is from Jim Keaton, what is the optimal way for faculty both to conceptualize and to plan for becoming an HSI?

Katrina Rodriguez (00:15:13):
Absolutely. And this is such a great question, Jim. I think the work I'm looking forward to as we have some opportunities for open forum conversation, much in the way that we did for our vision work in terms of looking at what does it mean for faculty? How do we think about this? How might we look at curriculum and potentially pedagogy that would encompass aspects of those best practices of HSI? Included into curriculum, it's not necessarily in place of right, it's the value added and how do we put those into place? I think it'll be important as we think about our goal-setting to also do some information sharing in terms of those institutions that are doing a really great job of considering their strategies to increase retention and persistence. And I think the other aspect of this that's heartfelt for me is the notion of really eliminating our equity and achievement gaps, such that we know if we drill down into the, both college department and course level, data that we can see who is succeeding and who is not by various types of information, whether that be Pell eligible, by gender, by race and ethnicity.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:16:54):
And so looking at those things, there are some really great strategies out there that we can implement. And I know that we've got some folks in our biological sciences area that are doing some really great work with this that we could also partner with so that we're looking at things like syllabi and how to think about the languaging around those. How do we think about just various aspects of the course curriculum? So I would look forward to that. I realize my answer is very broad, and I think that some of the work that we can be doing so that altogether we look at what makes sense for what types of courses and really being able to individualize that.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:17:42):
I also see a question, thank you, Kara, about a website. We are working on that. That's still to come. We had a little bit of somebody who is going to this great work for us. And I know they've taken another great opportunity. And so we will be putting those together as we go along here so folks can access all of that information.

Andy Feinstein (00:18:10):
Any other questions? Well, again, there'll be some more opportunities to respond with a survey that will go out and we can keep the questions coming. Is there another one that just came in, I think? Maybe it came in the chat instead.

Kim Medina (00:18:28):
It's a comment as well, that may be speeding up the HSI process would enable us to have competitive preference priority for numerous grants that can aid our students and our research.

Andy Feinstein (00:18:41):
Agreed.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:18:42):
Yes. And it may be possible in our work depending on... I think getting it off the ground and really looking at those goals and strategies is really important and if there's a way to dovetail our designation with funding opportunities. I think there's some really strong ways to do that. I think some of that will be in the exploration, and I would look forward on task force that we'll be creating in the spring, Karen, yourself, and/or others who could help us with looking at those to see what our options are. So I think that's an area of exploration that we haven't quite gotten to that level of detail, but look forward to doing. So I think there's a way to put that all together.

Kim Medina (00:19:30):
There was another question. Am I right that there are no faculty on this committee? If I'm right, can you address how and why that happened? I think that's specific to the students first committee, is that correct?

Andy Feinstein (00:19:41):
Can we pull back up the student's first committee slide?

Katrina Rodriguez (00:20:04):
Yes, that is true. On getting our group together on this, I think we made some asks and folks couldn't quite, time-wise, make it work. And so we went with the group that we had. I think the other piece is understanding that this committee was responsible for coming up with some of our broad key actions that we also utilize from last fall's work that we did. So trying to kind of work through those pieces.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:20:39):
The group that will take forward our HSI work will be a brand new group that we intend to have widespread of faculty staff, some external individuals, if possible, folks from all areas of campus to work on the HSI piece. As well as the students first, some of the other key actions, those have not yet been determined. And so as we start with working...

Katrina Rodriguez (00:21:03):
... key actions. Those have not yet been determined. And so as we start working forward on those, we will be incorporating those various groups. HSI stands for Hispanic-serving institution, sorry. Yes, we will be working with community colleges in Colorado. Aims is an HSI and so we've been working with them and have some additional folks connecting with some of our Aims colleagues as well and certainly, excited to work with other HSIs in the state. Thank you, Priscilla, for collecting data on the Latinx student needs. We are looking to the literature for a lot of that information. We also are working with a group, HACU, Hispanic, I'm going to get it wrong, Association of College and Universities, I believe, as well as a group called Excelencia in Education. And these two groups, especially Excelencia, has a lot of research out there that they have been doing for a number of years.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:22:11):
So we're utilizing that information. And we're also going to look at our UNC students and some of the various data that we have collected and that we may need to collect as well to get certainly point in time, as well as longitudinal data so we can ensure that we're meeting the needs of students here at UNC, and that will be really critical. We certainly want to use all available information and literature to be able to do that.

Andy Feinstein (00:22:39):
I think there's just another question about faculty representation on the committee and I think you did answer that, and we did solicit input from faculty, I think faculty on all the other committees, but I think there was some, I think, conflict of why there was not participation of a particular group. But you did solicit input and talk to many faculty members in developing your work with the students first committee. So I do agree that that is an oversight, not to have a faculty member on that committee, but I know that the committee members did solicit input and discuss those topics, not only with that sub committee itself, but also collectively when we brought back discussions and conversations to the entire body, which included numerous faculty members, students and staff.

Katrina Rodriguez (00:23:35):
I also know that the work that we conducted from early fall to just before COVID hit in March, that there were also a number of faculty on those committees as well that couldn't be with us the second time. So for students first in particular.

Andy Feinstein (00:23:51):
Well, for the sake of time, we'll carry on and move forward. Kim and Katrina, thank you very much for your presentation. And let's move over to empower inclusivity, which was chaired by Tobias Guzman and Kyle Nelson. And they're going to present key actions for empower inclusivity and also facilitate a Q&A.

Tobias Guzmán (00:24:17):
Well, hello everyone. Thank you, Andy. Appreciate that. On the screen, you'll see the members of the empowered inclusivity committee, and I want to thank the faculty staff and students, which we had graduate and undergraduate students assist with the process. The transition from the students first committee and the HSI key action item to this empower inclusivity element is really a good example of the interconnectedness and really dovetails well with the rest of the vision elements. Diversity, equity and inclusion are at the core of the HSI work along with being a student ready campus. The work of the empower inclusivity committee really focused on a framework that included themes of communication and educational awareness, assessment, culture, investment and infrastructure, and compensation, recruitment and retention.

Tobias Guzmán (00:25:24):
And each of those things, policy and climate touched each of those things very differently. The proposed initiatives that you'll see here in a few minutes, specifically focused on the student population of UNC and the various steps to develop efforts around faculty and staff, the development of faculty and staff. The committee utilized data from the 2017 campus climate survey, which was provided as a basis for UNC climate. Last January, an assessment of UNC's strengths and areas that needed improvement related to diversity, equity and inclusion on our campus was also utilized. The empower inclusivity initiatives will manifest in a sequential and progressive manner. It's not just flip on a light switch and it happens. Furthermore, implementing these initiatives in an existing organizational culture takes time, perseverance and tenacity. Subsequently, the first steps is begin with laying the foundation for creating a DEI culture and climate, and DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. The policies, practices, and procedures of our university, faculty, student, and staff recruitment, as well as retention strategies and the learning experiences of our students support mechanisms for our students and inclusive instructional pedagogy and more. There's plenty of opportunity. So now I'll direct your attention to the slide, which talks about one of the first key action items, and that is to create systems of accountability, effectiveness, and collaboration to address DEI. What does this really mean? Well, first of all, if you've been on our campus for some time, you realize that we already have an established culture.

Tobias Guzmán (00:27:28):
And part of that is with this particular initiative, it's reaffirming what our values are and publishing a statement on respectful behavior, which really lays the foundation that supports the vision, the values of the institution. It begins to shape the culture and reflects what UNC values. Some of the issues that are reasons to address this that exist, excuse me, are microaggressions or micro-bullying that impacts the culture and the climate on campus. Clear policies and clear expectations ultimately lower rates of these types of toxic behavior. A second example is to develop DEI standards of measurement, which is to be included in all faculty and staff evaluations. There are many faculty right now that already do this and have this as part of their evaluation process and in such things, there's research or creative activity in a faculty member's areas of expertise that involves inequalities or barriers for inclusion for underrepresented groups.

Tobias Guzmán (00:28:53):
Another example can be developing courses or curriculum materials that focus on themes of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or the incorporation of under-represented groups. These are just two examples that can be used in faculty evaluations, and of course, there are plenty others for staff evaluations. Developing and deploying a consistent and constructive process of evaluating and rewarding employee performance while also fostering varied opportunities for feedback and growth outside of the traditional supervisor/ employee dynamic. What this means is that we provide systemic professional development theories that examines individual beliefs about diversity, equity and inclusion, deepens the cultural competencies in the classroom, in the workplace. Increases knowledge across all faculty and staff.

Tobias Guzmán (00:29:50):
These we've been hearing across campus over a couple of years, that there is this raving and desire for a professional development opportunity that really allows people to sharpen existing skills, perform better, increase productivity and be better teachers, practitioners, leaders, and scholars for our students. And then lastly, developing a comprehensive compensation plan. Although as you probably have heard and seen, President Feinstein has communicated about looking into this further and actually taking some action to plan out what a comprehensive compensation plan looks like. We believe it's important to embark on this plan and making sure that it's equity-minded, competitive and sustainable, especially as we approached 2030. I am joined by Dr. Kyle Nelson who will assist and help with the question and answer portion of this.

Andy Feinstein (00:31:04):
So just a tactical question, if, Dan, you can put back up that slide again, and you'll note that the two items that you presented are item three and item eight. Could you just explain why it jumps from three to eight?

Tobias Guzmán (00:31:24):
Sure. They're all numbered. I think it's one through 10 in the larger document. And so this is item three and number eight of the one through 10. That larger document is the one that was sent to the board of trustees so I think campus had access to that.

Andy Feinstein (00:31:51):
Right. And I think that we just selected two of the key actions that most accurately align with empower inclusivity.

Tobias Guzmán (00:31:58):
Correct.

Kyle Nelson (00:32:12):
Tobias, I wanted to emphasize, I think you summarized really well the synergy that we had within our subgroup and then there were subgroups within our subgroup. And we all were totally focused on culture, as well as practice, as well as policy. So thinking about what we value at UNC and how we want to improve diversity, equity and inclusion, how we want to show value for it, and then how we can better measure and improve it. So really we've been thinking about documentation, support, encouragement, professional development and that culture growth.

Tobias Guzmán (00:33:00):
Absolutely. I think when institutions focus only on culture and there's no policy or vice versa, just policy and no culture, it runs into issues and so the focus on both is really critical. A question, do you have a plan on how to help grow outside of traditional supervisor employee style? It's a really good question and those are the kinds of paradigms that we need to get into. If we really want to look towards 2030, we have to start to think about our HR practices and our advising practices, whatever practice that is, and begin to look at how students of today, the 21st century student is receiving those kinds of practices or that kind of delivery. And so that can even be a supervisory style. One of the presentations that I have done with some colleagues on the campus is the top 10 dominant styles that are on a traditionally white campus and what that means and what that looks like.

Tobias Guzmán (00:34:25):
And so, yes, to answer the question [inaudible 00:13:27], absolutely. Kyle, do you have anything to add to that one?

Kyle Nelson (00:34:33):
No.

Tobias Guzmán (00:34:37):
Let's see. Next question is, some faculty are concerned about how BEI can be fairly included in evaluation. Staff probably wonder about this too. Have you thought about how this will work? I'm going to shift over to our expert. Kyle?

Kyle Nelson (00:34:55):
I don't know about the expert part, but I do know what our conversations have consisted of and the reviews of the literature that we've been conducting. So our primary step here, well, there's a series of initial steps, but in faculty and staff evaluation, what we're thinking about first is affirming the values and praising and recognizing where the effective DEI activities are taking place. And so just as the baseline of saying these issues are important, here's what they are and here's how they can be recognized. So even for faculty that may not directly research or teach in areas that touch closely to diversity, equity and inclusion like I do in sociology, there's ways to get professional development in different classroom techniques, there's ways to look into advising for different groups, there's ways help programs like the McNair Scholars Program or the [inaudible 00:35:56] program.

Kyle Nelson (00:35:57):
There's a lot of ways that we can show that we're emphasizing these practices in our work. But the initial step is not about flagging problems necessarily, but about highlighting the value of it and the good accomplishments. That's been our initial conversations, and absolutely, each unit will define and apply these standards in their own way as they do now. These are just items we want to hopefully reestablish or promote in all of our evaluations for all employees at UNC. And then, Tobias, there's a question from Dr. Falcon about examples of how UNC is promoting diversity in faculty hires now. I know you know more about that than me.

Tobias Guzmán (00:36:47):
Sure. Hello, Dr. Falcon. So a couple of things. One of them is making sure that we have a broader perspective of where we advertise for positions. And it seems as though maybe we tend to pick some of the traditional places that we like to advertise positions. And when we broaden that, we have the opportunity to not only pick from areas that are within our own discipline or our own industry, but perhaps even looking at others. And so on the HR website, there are a list of free as well as paid sites that you can advertise for faculty. It's also very specific to LGBTQ faculty, or black faculty, Latinx faculty, and it's very broad. Secondly, it's also making sure that when we have interviews, we're asking questions that are more directed at behaviors. So for example, instead of asking, what does diversity mean to you, that is a regurgitation of a definition.

Tobias Guzmán (00:38:14):
And so when a candidate answers those kinds of questions and you really get a good understanding of how they will be, what their way of being will be in their diversity, equity and inclusion practices. The other part is also trying to develop a pipeline, and this is not fully executed at this point. But developing a pipeline, we know that there are graduate assistants, as well as postdoc fellows who are out there that we really need to be tapping their shoulder to start to look at UNC as a place to work and a place to teach. So if we continue to do more of those kinds of things, we'll have a better result in who we see teaching at UNC.

Kyle Nelson (00:39:08):
Tobias, I would just add too that part of our conversation is how do we better position ourselves as an attractive place to work for our peers from different groups, representing different identities? And Jim Keaton asks, "How does the committee conceptualize inclusion? Are we using the constructs of ethnicity, identity, ideology or something else?" And I believe we've been operating with the sort of seven federal protected classes, and then embracing at least that as a starting point of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexuality, disability and family status.

Tobias Guzmán (00:39:51):
I think it's also important to note that when we talk about inclusion, it's not about what my ideology is or a political paradigm or the left versus the right, but it's making sure that all students on our campus and faculty and staff, whatever they believe in, do feel supported. And sometimes for all of us, we're going to need to be stretched to support the students who may have different perspectives than we do. A good example is that in the residence halls, RAs don't have the choice to put up particular wires that are advertising things that they don't believe in. In fact, they are resident assistants for every student on their floor. So that's an example of that kind of culture that we need to hang out at UNC.

Speaker 1 (00:41:00):
We have time for one more question.

Tobias Guzmán (00:41:02):
One more question. I don't know what order here. Let's see here.

Andy Feinstein (00:41:06):
I think Jennifer's question is relevant.

Tobias Guzmán (00:41:08):
Got you. Jennifer, is there a discussion to have candidates for faculty positions include a diversity statement with their application materials? So believe it or not, yes, there's several things. Diversity statements are, there was a great write-up in The Chronicle the other day about diversity statements, because what we want to get from a candidate is a full understanding of what they have done throughout their professional and personal time, and that it's not just a time for, if they really want to get this job, how can they shine in diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the last year. In fact, we want more of that to get a better understanding of that throughout their lifetime. So everything from diversity-

Tobias Guzmán (00:42:02):
-their lifetime, so everything from diversity statements to presentations on diversity, equity, and inclusion, how they foster DEI in the classroom or in their office, whatever it may be. So yeah, absolutely. Jennifer,

Andy Feinstein (00:42:20):
Well, thank you, Tobias and Kyle, for your presentation and answering some questions. Now let's move on to enhance and invest. I'm going to ask Oscar Levin to talk about enhance and invest and then open it up for a conversation. Oscar.

Oscar Levin (00:42:38):
Thank you, Andy. Thanks, everyone, for being here. I'd like to also thank all the people on the enhance and invest subcommittee. We had three co-chairs, because we all kind of juggled various responsibilities on that. I'll point out also in particular Lyda and Koreen, who are very much involved with professional development of faculty and staff, were on the committee. We also had two graduate students, insofar as graduate students also need professional development and are looking for that, as well as representatives from the professional administrative staff council. Lindsay was the chair of the classified staff council.

Oscar Levin (00:43:23):
The way that I've always thought of the enhance and invest part of the vision is asking how we can support the employees of UNC so that we can support our students. I think one of the key actions that Tobias and Kyle just talked about, number eight, is a large part of that, and definitely compensation and identity belongs there. The two that I'd like to highlight today are items four and seven, and both of these really have a lot to do with how to support faculty and staff in terms of professional development. So four very specifically is about establishing infrastructure for having professional development for all employees, and during all of our strategic planning work that we've been doing since last fall, time and again, a key strategy that people have brought up as a way for us to support our students better is, "Well, if we could give our employees some professional development so they could be better at this or if we could give faculty professional development and inclusive pedagogy, for example, then that would improve this thing." So with that in mind, we realized that we need to have some basic infrastructure at UNC to support that professional development.

Oscar Levin (00:44:47):
Staff in particular have said that they sometimes feel like they have to do professional development on their own time. There's not an opportunity to do that as part of their job description. So we really want to look at ways that we can support that at all levels. So the first step towards that, some of the ways that we're going to support that, in action four, we want to establish a faculty advisory board to create a clearinghouse of professional development currently offered in various topics, and we want to develop a catalog of professional development opportunities for classified exempt staff that will be maintained by human resources. While we know what we have, we can figure out how to offer more and what we might be missing. So that's really the first step towards having professional development available and part of the culture of UNC.

Oscar Levin (00:45:45):
Another type of professional development that affects faculty specifically is the ability to do research scholarship and creative works. For many faculty, this is a very desirable part of their job at UNC. It's something they want to be able to do more of. Doing good research and scholarship and creative works helps us faculty support our students, either directly by working with students in our research or just by giving us a better foundation from which we can teach. We used to be an R2-classified university. We slipped from that. It would be nice to get back to that, and that's one of the goals in key action number seven. We feel like the first step towards elevating our research at UNC is to figure out the internal supports for that, which could be new and existing internal grants. It could also be establishing equitable practices across the colleges that allow for differentiated workloads. We've already started conversations on how to do that. That's going to be ongoing.

Oscar Levin (00:46:57):
[inaudible 00:46:57] asked a question at the beginning of this before she had to leave that I can address right now. So she's curious about the equitable practices across colleges for differentiated workload and how baselines can be determined. It sounds as though those colleges which have more grant activity currently will be expected to produce even more. Without more support from grant management, it seems unlikely we'll be able return to R2 classification. She also asks about community-engaged learning and scholarship and how that's being prioritized. I don't have an answer for this, except I want to say that I agree completely with this sentiment, and figuring this out is really the work that we need to do over the next year and a half or two years as this first part.

Oscar Levin (00:47:48):
Determining what equitable diversity workload looks like is no easy task. My department has been struggling with this all fall, trying to come up with an internal policy. It is not an easy thing to do. So we need to figure that out over the next few years and also how to support faculty who are looking for external grants in terms of the kind of professional development for how to do grants, but also just the administrative support to do that.

Oscar Levin (00:48:16):
So I'd be happy to answer other questions that you type into the Q and A box, and I'll try to both read and answer them at the same time, even though I'm not particularly great with that.

Oscar Levin (00:48:28):
So you mentioned that staff don't feel like they have space for PD. Neither do faculty, especially in the current environment when we're being asked to do more and more and more with less and less and less. How do you imagine creating space for faculty workload for PD, and how do you hope to get faculty buy-in?

Oscar Levin (00:48:45):
So I would say that the differentiated workload, especially with respect to the professional development that takes the form of scholarship research and creative works. Going to a conference is a form of professional development for faculty. So if we could have more support for those things, I think that would help with that. We had tossed around ideas in the committee about, at least for staff, building it directly into workloads, like one hour a week is set aside for doing professional development. But no decisions like that have been made. These are just some ideas that we need to start discussing. I think a large part of getting faculty to support professional development is recognizing it in part of evaluation, which ties in a lot with key action number eight.

Oscar Levin (00:49:46):
Let's see. Recommendation for faculty professional development create a speaker series featuring national scholars who are proficient in asset-based pedagogy. Yes, absolutely. So the work that [inaudible 00:49:57] is doing right now is they're making huge advances in what sort of professional development are available for faculty in particular. They've recently created an advisory board to look at things specifically like that. So thank you for that suggestion.

Andy Feinstein (00:50:23):
Any last questions for Oscar? ( silence) Okay, Oscar. Thank you very much for your presentation and answering some questions for us. Now I will ask Bret Naber to lead a discussion about innovate and create. Bret.

Bret Naber (00:50:48):
All right. Thanks, Andy. So we had a group of faculty, staff, and students that helped us put this together, and like many of the other groups, we had a chance to do this kind of twice. It really helped us sort of build up exactly what we wanted to come out of the innovate and create. So a lot of times, we came back to asking ourselves questions like, "What do we want the students to look like when they leave UNC? What kind of experiences do we want to hear them talk about when they leave the institution, and how does that tie into innovation and some of the experiences that they had in the classroom or outside of the classroom?"

Bret Naber (00:51:27):
We spend a lot of time talking about those experiential learning opportunities that students have and how those really help students in their careers and really help them out in life. So we discussed and looked for opportunities to get more innovation in the way that we sort of conduct a classroom. So that's certainly a place where we wanted to invest a lot of energy, and to do that, it wasn't just equipment in the classroom or technology in the classroom. It really was how are we teaching the classes? So professional development has come up a lot in here, and it certainly came up here, too. It's opportunities to get innovation in the way that that teaching is taking place and making sure that faculty, staff, and students all have opportunities to learn about technology and trying to figure out ways to sort of weave this into whether it's annual plans or division plans, but ways to really integrate innovation into everything that goes on.

Bret Naber (00:52:28):
This really would help students be more ready for their career and other parts that play into that is this sort of community engagement, so more opportunities to students have interactions with the community, opportunities to have experiences doing things outside of the classroom, where maybe they take what they learned in the classroom, but they're able to sort of use it somewhere else. So that was certainly a big focus. Again, integrating in the professional development, making sure that we have ways to do that.

Bret Naber (00:53:01):
One of the interesting things, I think, that came out of it, too, was the idea of having innovation sessions where we talk to students about some of their experiences, maybe in their K-12 or maybe other institutions that they've been at, and ask them, "What sort of technology did you use? What other kinds of things were going on?", but also engaging the community and finding out more things that we could bring into classrooms that were more like what they might experience outside of the classroom. So certainly getting students career-ready was a big focus.

Bret Naber (00:53:31):
The second piece is developing a new university-wide infrastructure, data infrastructure to focus on a lot of things. Really, we're looking at ways that we can take data for decision-making, for strategy, organizational design. We've done some things on that, but continuing to take data that we have, making sure that we have it in a central repository, make sure that we can get it to everyone who needs it, make sure that we have all of the pieces in place so that it's functional and that it's in the right hands and it's being used correctly, and making sure that we're supporting things like student success.

Bret Naber (00:54:06):
So that was a focus that really actually came out of some of the other committees and certainly rolled into the innovate and create as a place that maybe it had had the greatest focus and to talk about how we support other goals that we've already talked about, one of the things was disaggregated data to look at students in underrepresented areas. So the idea of having this data infrastructure would certainly support that.

Bret Naber (00:54:40):
So that was kind of the main focus. Looking at some of the other things, like I said, a lot of community engagement, mentoring, internships, ways to get students involved earlier in their careers so that they have experiences early on. This also included research, and Oscar talked about that a little bit, too. We really actually talked a lot about research in our group, because I think a lot of innovation can come from that, and getting the research into the classroom was really important so that the faculty who have had experience doing research, could they share that with students? Some of the students we interviewed talked about how well that really prepared them later on to pursue research. So any way that we can make that happen, and certainly, again, how these all tie together is we need those investments and things to make that happen.

Bret Naber (00:55:36):
Right. Looking at the questions here. So I think the part that we looked at for community engagement, I mean, we went as far as thinking, "Could there be a central office that did community engagement?" I think what we found, talking with various areas on campus, was that we had all the pieces in place and that, really, some of it just sort of needed to be funneled. It needed to be a little easier to find, and there kind of needed to be a central place that you could go to find that community engagement, whether it's connecting with alumni or maybe it's an internship or a mentor opportunity. So I think that what came out of our plan was it needs to be more centralized. There are pieces of it taking place, some pockets of some really great stuff happening, but, really, we sort of need to pull it together and make it a little easier to find. So hopefully that answered that question.

Andy Feinstein (00:56:39):
I can answer the campus compact question from Mike.

Bret Naber (00:56:43):
Okay.

Andy Feinstein (00:56:43):
Mike, that was really my call. I was a part of the campus compact conversations. I went to a couple of their meetings. We were spending tens of thousands of dollars in membership, and I just didn't see much value in the work that they were doing in directly supporting our institution. Certainly, it's something that we can revisit. I'm happy to have a conversation with you about a campus compact. If you have some ideas or suggestions or maybe a better insight into the benefits of campus compact, I'd like to hear them. But looking at a couple of organizations, this being one of them, I just didn't see the value of the investment we were making in being a member of the campus compact.

Bret Naber (00:57:26):
Okay. I think I can answer Renee's question next. This could get tied into a lot of things, because this is probably an area I spend a fair amount of time in my day job working on, too. Career readiness as it relates to the Students First group, and I think maybe this is implying or connecting to some of the things like co-curricular transcript or badging, some of the other ways that we can sort of implement certificate programs and other ways that we can prepare students for their careers. A lot of times, those sort of micro-credentials really can assist a student, because it gives them the really specific skill set that they need for a particular job. I'm not sure if that's exactly what the Students First group, if that was the point, but I know having worked with Renee and certainly have talked about co-curricular transcript and worked on that for a while, those are certainly things that we're coming up to. I know there's some momentum in a couple of different places right now to support that, and it probably really does sort of fit in in the career readiness statement, I would say.

Bret Naber (00:58:38):
Carol, let me read your question here. So as far as tying into global and cultural competencies, the only way I could sort of say the innovate and create group, where we got on that was we were looking for more ways to get students experience outside of the classroom. Certainly, that could be anything, right? I mean, and certainly cultural experiences and getting involved in opportunities, again, outside of the classroom would certainly support that. I think the idea, again, going back to the co-curricular transcript is those opportunities and how can we sort of formalize that they occurred so that the student can capitalize on those and take them to their next job or to whatever opportunity they take outside of college. So I think it sort of is dependent on what the student's after, and certainly the focus on a global and cultural category would be something I think would be helpful.

Bret Naber (00:59:57):
Yep, and so another point about research and students. So we had a lot of good feedback from the students. Some of their best experiences in the classroom were faculty bringing back research and talking about it and got them excited. Also, we had a grad student in our group and talked about, really, to get good at research and be able to do some of these things, the sooner you get exposed to it, the sooner you understand what all of the intricacies are, the better you could do and the better questions you would ask and be ready for maybe grad school after undergrad. So yeah, certainly any opportunity to expose people to that research would be better. I think there's even a push for more undergraduate research.

Bret Naber (01:00:48):
So this one about community engagement, I can't really speak to the specific office, and what its purpose was or how it was sort of laid out. What came up in our group was really just this idea that we needed a more centralized approach. So I think, like I had said before, there were pockets where some of this was really happening, and it was really functioning well. People were getting connections with outside agencies and companies and groups and doing a lot of things, and it was just a matter of making sure that that was easy to find. So I think that was really the heart of what needed to happen, and that came up in a couple of other places. It might get touched on in the next group as well.

Andy Feinstein (01:01:35):
Bret, I do think that we need to revisit community engagement and possibly even re-establishing that as a way to facilitate our relationship with the community, the city, the county, and beyond. So I think it's something certainly to look in, and that's, I think, part of the planning process. We'll have that conversation and see what we can do to address that office and see if it's appropriate to reinstate.

Oscar Levin (01:02:09):
In fact, I know that the provost office and [inaudible 01:02:14] in particular has established an engagement task force that is working between ... It started mid-November. It's going to be working through spring break to make specific recommendations about that. There was a call put out to all faculty for involvement, and there's broad representation of faculty across colleges on that. So that work has started.

Andy Feinstein (01:02:38):
Thank you, Oscar. Any other questions? Okay. Well, thank you very much, Bret, for your presentation. Now I'd like to introduce Allie Steg Haskett and Nikki Troxclair, who are going to talk about connect and celebrate. Allie and Nikki.

Andy Feinstein (01:03:02):
... and celebrate. Allie and Nikki.

Nikki Troxclair (01:03:06):
Thank you, President Feinstein. My name is Nikki Troxclair. I'm the assistant vice president for university marketing and communications, and I had the privilege to help chair the Connect and Celebrate committee.

Nikki Troxclair (01:03:20):
Much like the other committees that we've talked about today, our committee was comprised of a nice cross-section of faculty, staff, and students, many of whom were part of the strategic planning efforts last fall and in the spring. Those members were able to provide great insight and feedback to past efforts, as well as the new members who were able to share valuable information and their thoughts related to the phase one key actions and the needed deliverables for the upcoming timeline in the next couple of years. So we were happy to have their involvement, especially the students who were able to be involved. We got a lot of energy from them, and we're inspired by the continuous information and thoughts that they were provided. So we thank everybody for their time, energy and efforts to join us.

Nikki Troxclair (01:04:11):
But as a reminder, Connect and Celebrate and the mission of this particular committee is to provide strong community connections that provide authentic learning experiences and reciprocal partnerships and collaborations. We set the standard for how engaged universities enrich the lives of those on campus throughout Colorado and beyond. And so, as we started our work, we made sure that we revisited the purpose of this particular area and all of the work that was done previously. And from that, we worked through a number of different ideas related to what our key actions could be over the course of the next two years and beyond, and really were able to drive it down into two particular key areas. Had a lot of great ideas, many of which would be supportive tactics and initiatives that could support the two that came forward, as we'll talk about in a little more detail today. The ones that we've focused on relate to marketing and communications, as well as philanthropy. I will talk about more of the marketing and communications key tactic, and Allie will provide more details on number 10 related to our philanthropy efforts. So related to number nine, in particular, that key action, number nine is to develop and begin implementation of a data-driven strategic marketing and communications plan that will showcase the university's important role on a local, regional, state, and national basis. And so, the goal of doing so in developing a UNC integrated marketing and communications plan is to develop a consistent approach to our messaging, our personality, and the look and feel for internal and external audiences.

Nikki Troxclair (01:06:08):
Leveraging the Rowing, Not Drifting 2030 strategic plan, the university will be presented with a great opportunity to successfully launch a strategic marketing and communications initiative. We'll be able to develop our own unique brand and marketing communications platform through concise messaging, consistent values, and through shared common goals. By 2030, UNC will be recognized as a leader in the state for academics, research, creative activity and community impact. Our diverse faculty, students, staff, and alumni provide us with this great opportunity to enhance our brand and educate and communicate to our consistence about our progress.

Nikki Troxclair (01:06:59):
The marketing and communications plan will focus on how we are truly unique because of our ability to promote community wellbeing and individual achievement. Furthermore, we will also discuss how UNC stimulates economic development and diversification, how we also foster a climate of innovation, promote health, and enrich the cultural vitality of the communities we serve.

Nikki Troxclair (01:07:27):
Specific key objectives that we will focus on as part of this plan include developing and implementing an integrated marketing approach that is focused on positioning UNC as a leader in the state and across the country. We also live and understand our core positioning through consistent messaging and branding on campus, and with our target audiences locally and throughout the region. We will research and create marketing strategies that work in tandem with academics, admissions, research, fundraising, alumni engagement, athletics, and community outreach goals and objectives. We'll engage our external constituents through education, consistent messaging and communication, ongoing engagement, and through event related activities. And of course, we'll focus on enhancing key stakeholder relationships.

Nikki Troxclair (01:08:26):
So these are very broad objectives, but our hope is to engage with different departments and individuals across campus so that we can develop more directed tactics to enhance our outreach and our communication goals. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Allie, who can focus on number 10 and go through some of our ideas related to that particular key action.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:08:51):
Thanks, Nikki. Before I dive into number 10, I would just kind of emphasize, as Nikki said, the subcommittee that worked together on Connect and Celebrate had a lot of ideas, and what you see here with numbers nine and 10 were the two that we felt were the most important to start with first, but not necessarily the most important or the only important ones. They were the ones that felt foundational, and that would allow us to build upon for the remainder of the 10-year plan. And part of the reason I say that is I know there've been a lot of questions in the Q&A about community engagement, and particularly related to community engaged research and the academic community engagement that has been so strong on our campus.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:09:37):
And so, please know that I'm not seeing it here as in no way a value statement about whether or not it's important, but rather that we felt that that was important to continue to tackle and work on as an entire campus. And as Oscar said, Nancy Matchett out of the provost office is working on kind of creating a roadmap for what community engagement on the academic side will look like with the changes that have happened in academic affairs.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:10:06):
So with that, I'll dive into number 10. And our key action is to implement UNC's Rowing, Not Drifting 2030 campaign, including the creation of philanthropic investment opportunities, engagement, and fundraising goals, a feasibility study, and a timeline for all campaign phases.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:10:26):
As people have heard me say before, I think it's fitting that this key action is the final one in our list of 10, because it's really the opportunity that we have to invite our external constituents, whether donors, friends, lawmakers, alumni, it's one of the ways that we can invite them to help us accomplish the rest of the 2030 vision. And the reason I say that is as we work to create these philanthropic investment opportunities that are such a key part of action 10, we'll be working across campus with academic leaders, student affairs leaders, athletic leaders, to really help our external folks understand the ways that they can come alongside us and help support the things that are important to UNC.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:11:16):
And so, we're excited about this being our first step, because as we know, with key actions one through nine and many, many of the other ideas that didn't make it to the final 10 here, one of the barriers we often have is the funding to accomplish these things. And I know Dr. Falcone then had a note earlier about the fact that the pandemic has hit students hard and we need financial support for them. Absolutely true. And so this is an opportunity for us to really identify the most important and the most strategic ways our donors and potential donors can help support us, not just in the ways they want, but also in the ways that are material to UNC and help move this vision forward.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:12:02):
So I think that's really exciting and will be an opportunity for our campus to participate in this fundraising activity in this campaign, no matter what your role is. So it's not just about the frontline fundraising team going out and asking for gifts, it's about working with all of our campus partners to really understand what those opportunities are and how folks can help us move the needle.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:12:27):
Of course, we'll be also identifying engagement and fundraising goals. When we talk about campaign and the work of fundraising, the dollars usually kind of win the day with what we talk about. But the reality is it's important that we see engagement of all kinds from our alumni and friends. And so when we talk about engagement goals, we'll be talking about ways our alumni can support the things that innovate and connect or... sorry, innovate and create, or our students first are working on related to career readiness, right? We want our alumni to be providing opportunities for internships and other things like that. And so we'll be working on goals here that also allow our external folks to really plug into this plan as a whole. The feasibility study and the timeline for campaign phases are maybe a little bit more inside baseball, but also the important steps to really getting to the point where we are living and breathing in a campaign culture.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:13:38):
I think with that, I may pause so that we have time for any questions. I don't see any in the Q&A yet, but I'm sure someone's got to have one.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:13:53):
Thanks, Dr. Keaton. Yeah, I think you're right. Our donors don't want to fund... So Dr. Keaton's question, sorry, I realize not everyone can see all of them, is he says, "As we all know, donors will not fund mediocrity. What targeted areas of excellence will kickoff our philanthropic campaign?" Thank you. I feel like this is a good softball question because you're absolutely right, our donors don't want to fund mediocrity or help us get a tiny bit better, they want to know that they're investing in big things that are important to us. And the reality is having a vision for 2030 is what gives our donors the assurance that the things we're inviting them to invest in are the big things that are transformative.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:14:41):
To drill in and put a finer point, we'll be working with academic leadership in each college. The deans will be engaging department chairs and faculty in departments, as well as our academic area colleagues in student affairs and athletics, to really understand what the priorities are, what the big things are, so that we're sure that the places we're inviting donors to participate have really been kind of vetted at every level and are things we can deliver on and that will make a big difference.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:15:21):
There's another question about a structural plan on how to get contact with our alumni and keep track of them in the long run. Absolutely. We have an office of alumni relations. That's a part of the advancement team. And Lindsay Crum, who is our AVP for alumni relations was a part of this committee. We have a strong team that works... strong but small and mighty, as is always the case at UNC, that works really hard to connect with our alumni so that we know where they are and what they're doing so that we can better invite them in the ways that are meaningful to them, into the opportunities that exist at UNC. And so a part of those engagement goals that I discussed just a moment ago will be Lindsay and her team really working at how we strategically connect with our 150,000 plus alumni worldwide to make sure that we're inviting them to participate in UNC in a way that helps UNC and helps them. Let's see.

Nikki Troxclair (01:16:30):
Allie, I can take the next one if that's all right.

Katrina Rodriguez (01:16:32):
Perfect.

Nikki Troxclair (01:16:33):
As part of the marketing and communications plan, one of the things that we're going to be doing is really building out our brand platform. And as part of that, our messaging component is going to be really foundational and really honing in on our value propositions, not only as we prepare students for careers, as you mentioned, but also how we continue to add value to an individual's life and their career longterm. So it's really important for us to talk about how we as an institution, help prepare students for the future in general, not only for their careers, but how we are problem solvers or how we educate future problem solvers, how we educate future leaders, how we help the community in general. And so there's a lot of different value propositions as the future research will show that we'll really focus on as part of how we define ourselves as a university and how that translates to our students as well.

Nikki Troxclair (01:17:40):
I think involving students in obtaining feedback in that messaging will also be really important to see what resonates and how that translates to only our current students, but also to our alumni and our prospective students as well. So there's multiple messaging points that we'll be focused on as we move forward as part of this marketing and communications plan.

Andy Feinstein (01:18:10):
Okay. Well, thank you, Allie and Nikki, for your presentations. I also want to thank all of our strategic planning subcommittee members for presenting today, and for everyone who participated in today's forum. I do want to spend a couple minutes. We have a few minutes left. If there are any general questions from the audience that would like to contribute. I see we still have over 130 people participating. So I'll just give it a moment to see if any other final questions come up before we conclude our presentation. Or any comments for that matter.

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
Andy, you were going to tell folks about the Social Research Lab [crosstalk 00:01:19:00].

Andy Feinstein (01:18:59):
Exactly. Yeah. I'll do that now because I don't see any more questions coming in, but we do want to hear your feedback. Like we've done previously, we partnered with the Social Research Lab to develop a survey, to collect additional input from all of you, our students, our faculty and staff, and we'll be distributing a link by email in the next couple of days. And I do hope that you take a moment to share your thoughts on this draft of phase one. Our plan is to get this rolling and implemented and start making decisions and showing some progress beginning in the spring semester.

Andy Feinstein (01:19:41):
I see maybe there's a question that's come up. So what universities can provide us with best practices in these critical areas? Haven't heard any references to other institutions. I know certainly, as we started the planning exercise, we looked at a lot of our peer institutions in Colorado, talked extensively with colleagues and peers at CSU and CU, and I have a network of presidents that I've been communicating with and CEOs across the state. I've also been in communications with my peer institutions in the big sky. So I regularly talk to the president of Sacramento State, Montana, University of Montana, Southern Utah, just to name a few. Idaho, Idaho State. So we have been discussing the work that they're doing. And certainly many of us on the committees have come from other institutions.

Andy Feinstein (01:20:39):
I've been relying upon my experiences at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Cal Poly Pomona, and San Jose State. I was involved in all three of in strategic planning at the university level, and I taught planning for a decade. And so I think it's a collaborative effort, and I think there's certainly more opportunities for us to engage with other institutions to determine best practices.

Andy Feinstein (01:21:02):
But I also remember just even in starting the kind of strategies of operationalizing our plan, we looked at San Diego State's strategic planning document most recently, and a couple of others. And that's how we came to a conclusion of by chunking the 10-year planning process down into two year increments in which we could actually show key and measurable actions and accomplishments, rather than just thinking about what was going to be accomplished in a decade from now. The question from Renee Welch is what is the plan to involve campus to keep this work going? First of all, the president's leadership council meets weekly, and it's a representative group of faculty, students, and staff, and that will continue certainly for the foreseeable future. And we will regularly update that group, but also make periodic presentation, discussions to the campus community. I think the next thing we'll see early in the spring semester is our marketing communications team will be taking this work and recrafting our vision document into a much larger strategic planning document that will include not only the vision elements, but also now these key actions, and this work that kind of defines what we'll be doing for the next two years.

Andy Feinstein (01:22:23):
So look for continuing dialogue with the campus, additional information, and a much more robust, not only planning document, but also we have a website that will keep all of you current as well. And we plan in the spring also to do our weekly updates on Thursday morning at 9:00, and so I can see opportunities for us also to share where we are with the planning work as well.

Andy Feinstein (01:22:56):
Well, this concludes our presentation for today. I want to thank all of you for your questions, the conversation. I know this isn't the last time that you can provide input. You'll be hearing from the Social Research Lab by the end of the week, we hope that you take an opportunity to answer additional questions and provide feedback. And as always, you're more than welcome to reach out to me directly at andy.feinstein@smcun.com or any of the members of the president's leadership council, and all their contact information is located on the president's website.

Andy Feinstein (01:23:29):
I hope that all of you get some time off. I know this is finals week, so there's still a lot of work ahead, particularly for our faculty members in the next couple of days, and our students. And I hope that when that's done, I know that we have about a two-week vacation coming up, hope that all of you get some time off for yourselves, your friends, your family, your loved ones, and I look very much forward to seeing you in the spring. Thanks, everybody.