Academic Senate discusses outline for new strategic plan
At the Jan. 31 Academic Senate meeting, artificial intelligence and the next strategic plan were on the agenda.
Strategic Plan in Process
The main focus of Tuesday’s meeting was a presentation from Joe Garrison on the progress of constructing CMU’s next five-year strategic plan.
Garrison is the executive director of financial planning and budgets at CMU, and served as a representative for the president’s office during the meeting.
During his presentation, Garrison emphasized the importance of student input in their planning process.
“CMU needs to utilize the lens of current and future students when creating a new strategic plan,” Garrison said.
He added that his office is in the process of having QR codes available around campus for students to use, which will be available in the near future.
Garrison shared the schedule for the planning process in his presentation:
- January: Initial planning meetings, information gathering, and campus engagement for input
- February: Continued campus engagement for input and aligning the work of the strategic envisioning process to strategic planning
- March: Continued campus engagement for input, aligning work of the strategic envisioning process to strategic planning and synthesizing all information
- April through early May: Campus engagement to validate information, develop measurable goals and metrics and create the draft strategic plan
- May through July: The SPEC and the board review of the draft strategic plan
- August: Finalization of the strategic plan
- September- Approval of the strategic plan, updated mission and vision statement (including annual and long-term goals)
Garrison said there are also several committees working on different parts of this process:
- Board of Trustees
- Strategic Planning Executive Committee
- Strategic Planning Team
- Strategic Planning Advisory Council
- Strategic Envisioning Advisory Team
- Strategic Envisioning
“What worked 20 years ago won’t work for students now,” Garrison said. “We want to me progressive and make sure we’re listening."
Artificial Intelligence
President Bob Davies said there will be a workshop on Feb. 2 for faculty interested in learning about how to use AI constructively in classrooms, rather than combating violations of academic integrity policies.
In their report to the senate, Davies and Provost Nancy Mathews included a statement about faculty involvement with AI.
“Faculty are encouraged to speak directly to their classes and/or incorporate language into their syllabi to inform students that the misuse of AI for elevated coursework is considered plagiarism and is in violation of the university’s policy on academic integrity.”
The Academic Senate meets bi-weekly on Tuesdays from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the French Auditorium. Livestreams and recordings of each meeting are available on the senate website.
