First stage of strategic planning completed, officials say

Central Michigan University has completed the first phase of strategic planning said Strategic planning co-chairs at Tuesday’s Academic Senate meeting.

Claudia Douglass, interim vice provost of Academic Affairs, and Barrie Wilkes, associate vice president of Financial Services and Reporting, presented a report on strategic planning at the meeting.

Wilkes said some of the feedback criticized the old vision statement and mission statement for being too similar, and now the vision statement has been shortened in its fourth draft.

“Central Michigan University, an inclusive community of scholars, is a national leader in higher education inspiring excellence and innovation,” the vision statement reads.

Douglass said Phase 2 of strategic planning will further define the priorities by initiatives and explore ways to achieve the priorities. She said the university is going to use as much of the information that it already has while moving forward with strategic planning.

“We’re not going to reinvent the wheel,” she said. “We’re going to use the data that we have.”

The five priorities outlined in the report are: student success, research and creative activity, quality faculty and staff, community partnerships and infrastructure stewardship.

Pamela Gates, dean of the College of Humanities and Social and Behavioral Sciences, said the university should “go from the ground up” and look at strategic planning immediately at the department level and work to identify how to get resources to do what is needed.

University President George Ross presented a report on the fall enrollment numbers, which showed that undergraduate enrollment in fall 2012 was down overall 2.2 percent from last year. Undergraduate on-campus enrollment is down 3.4 percent, while global campus is up 1.4 percent from the fall 2011 semester. He said CMU had anticipated the drop in enrollment, and will take “corrective actions” to address enrollment.

Ross said all community colleges in Michigan lost enrollment and semester credit hours this year. He said he expects all 15 universities in the state will have their enrollment numbers available by the end of September or early October.

A-Senate approved one amendment to its constitution regarding the representation of the College of Medicine. Each of the three disciplines within CMED will be represented individually, as CMED Dean Ernest Yoder said disciplines are equivalent to departments in terms of representation at A-Senate.