Strategic Focus Area 2: Student Well-being and Success

Strategy Group Accountable Person: Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs

• Tactic 1: Merge the Divisions of Student Affairs and Undergraduate Education to overcome institutional/organizational barriers to student success and flourishing.
• Tactic 2: Educate S&T community about Collective Impact methodology and apply it to all student well-being initiatives.
• Tactic 3: Identify, address, and communicate barriers to student success and flourishing.
• Tactic 4: Enhance initiatives that promote accessibility in and outside the classroom through collaboration with faculty.
• Tactic 5: Implement JED (Jed Foundation) Health and Well-being Committee strategic initiatives to improve measures of mental health and flourishing.

Strategy Group Accountable Person: Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs

• Tactic 1: Increase support for underrepresented and underserved populations.
• Tactic 2: Continue to cultivate and expand student-centered spaces that foster broad connectivity, socialization, and creative interaction (e.g. “third spaces” such as coffee bars and meeting lounges).
• Tactic 3: Design spaces that encourage inquiry, innovation, and team-based problem solving.
• Tactic 4: Create more nutritionally informative, interactive, and convenient dining experiences.
• Tactic 5: Bolster and coordinate community events that the university runs or participates in (e.g. St. Pat’s, Equinox, Family Weekend, Homecoming, Celebration of Nations, Convocation, First-Year Celebration).
• Tactic 6: Modernize and expand living-learning communities around topics that engage students.
• Tactic 7: Create a catalog of classroom capabilities (e.g. reconfigurable furniture) and teaching equipment to be used in scheduling courses in the most appropriate locations.
• Tactic 8: Design library space to meet evolving student needs.

Strategy Group Accountable Person: Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs

• Tactic 1: Broaden co-curricular experiences to improve career readiness across all majors.
• Tactic 2: Introduce a STEM-to-X advising initiative (where X = medicine and healthcare, the law, education, business and management) to encourage students to pursue professional career paths.
• Tactic 3: Infuse life skill development across services and programs, including integration of the Writing and Communication Center, Career Center, CEC’s Leadership and Innovation for Futures in Engineering (LIFE) program, Kummer Vanguard Scholars (KVS) colloquia and challenges, team-based design competitions, etc. into curricular and co-curricular experiences.
• Tactic 4: Regularly solicit the voice of students regarding their S&T experience using scheduled and pulse surveys.

Strategy Group Accountable Person: Associate Provost for Academic Operations, Accreditation and Assessment

• Tactic 1: Use student analytics to infer the effectiveness of interventions on first-year retention, adjusting interventions accordingly.
• Tactic 2: Investigate the feasibility of reducing time-to-degree through curricular analytics and curricular modularization.
• Tactic 3: Enhance post-graduation career success outcomes for all majors.
• Tactic 4: Facilitate transitions between majors by simplifying paperwork, approval processes, and course substitutions.
• Tactic 5: Support and evolve student success in underprepared student populations (e.g. first-generation students) through grants.
• Tactic 6: Clarify organizational structures for shared academic advising by combining centralized standards (including processes, training, and metrics) with distributed, department- and college-based expertise.
• Tactic 7: Expand pre-enrollment preparatory programs for incoming students.
• Tactic 8: Evaluate and enhance where appropriate tutoring and mentoring options, including one-on-one and faculty-led group tutoring.

Strategy Group Accountable Person: Vice Provost of Graduate Education

• Tactic 1: Adopt evidence-based programs for improving graduate students’ satisfaction, well-being, and belonging.
• Tactic 2: Monitor and increase year-to-year doctoral graduate student retention.
• Tactic 3: Establish appropriate targets for doctoral time-to-degree completion and monitor progress regularly.
• Tactic 4: Enhance post-graduation career success outcomes.
• Tactic 5: Develop a campus-wide policy on graduate student rights and responsibilities.

Strategy Group Accountable Person: Vice Provost for Online Learning and Educational Innovation

• Tactic 1: Adopt and implement best practices in online and distance education for course design, student support, and scheduling.
• Tactic 2: Identify and make available campus support resources appropriate to online and distance students.
• Tactic 3: Adopt methods to increase online and distance students’ sense of belonging.
• Tactic 4: Adopt processes, training, and metrics to customize advising for online and distance students.

Grow enrollment to 12,000 students; Achieve a top 100 ranking.

Student Success; Inclusive Excellence.