The seven-year plan will fall on Murray State’s 100th anniversary and was approved by the Board of Regents in June.
Story by Alicia Steele, Staff writer
Strategic Initiatives Plan suggestion boxes are placed around campus for student, faculty and staff who would like to submit a suggestion.
Over the last six months the administration and a group of facilitators have been working diligently to progress the goals of the seven-year Strategic Initiatives Plan that was approved by the Board of Regents last June.
ADMINISTRATION
Renee Fister, Senior Presidential Advisor for Strategic Initiatives, said this plan is set to be accomplished by the year 2022, which marks Murray State’s 100th anniversary.
Fister, along with Tim Todd, Interim Provost, and Bob Jackson, President of the MSU Foundation, have been working with a group of faculty and staff facilitators to create an open project that is welcoming to anyone who wishes to participate.
“It’s very much focused on shared governance,” Todd said. “Shared governance at this institution is very much alive and well and this process is focused on shared governance.”
THE PLAN
The plan consists of four strategic initiatives, each with multiple subdivisions within them. The four main strategic initiatives are:
- Academic Excellence
- Student Success
- Scholarship, Research and Creative Thought
- Community Engagement
Each initiative contains a committee of facilitators, each in charge of their own objective.
These facilitators are responsible for reporting the progress of their objectives to Fister, Todd or Jackson who will then present it to the Board of Regents.
Fister said of the 64 objectives, fourteen have significant progress to be reported to the Board of Regents in February.
Examples of the 64 objectives include increasing the overall enrollment of students in the Honors College, a compensation study for faculty and staff, partnering with international universities, an economic study to show the impact Murray State has on western Kentucky, beginning a joint admission agreement with community colleges in the area to make the transition for transfer students easier, the tuition and scholarship model and improving the freshman admission standards.
Todd said right now they are working on things that can be checked off quickly, such as the economic impact. However, some of the objectives will take all seven years, such as an improved graduation rate.
“You can’t change that one overnight,” Todd said.
STUDENT INVOLVEMENT
“We put out an open call for participation,” Todd said.
Clinton Combs, Student Government Association president, said Fister spoke to SGA mainly about helping with recruitment from “the golden triangle,” and asked that students go home and recruit students from the region they are from.
“We’re helping out as best as we can, and of course we support the president and his strategic initiatives,” said Combs. “We’re working alongside of them in any way that they see fit and that we can provide assistance to.”
Combs said he is involved in an objective that involves increasing student involvement in their residential colleges. He said meetings with their facilitator consist of talking through ways to achieve their objective, and they often leave with research homework, such as finding out how much technology needed would cost.
Combs, Todd and Fister all said the Strategic Initiatives Plan is very open to any student, staff, faculty or alumni who wish to participate. They advise visiting the webpage set up on Murray State’s website and looking through the list of objectives that are currently in progress and contacting the facilitator of the objective that someone is passionate about.
“This is defining our university for the next several years,” Combs said. “This is the president’s plan through 2022 and we’re all going to be here for at least a portion of that.”