CSUCI’s Strategic Initiatives 2018-23 expired in May 2023 (see a summary of accomplishments as of June 30, 2023). Initiation of a new strategic plan was not possible during an interim presidency that spanned the 2021 calendar year. A full-scale strategic planning process was further delayed by successive shocks to the campus in the form of the lingering coronavirus pandemic, significant changes in leadership and other personnel in calendar years 2021 and 2022, a severe enrollment decline, and an overall sense of overwhelm and exhaustion across campus evidenced in 2022-23 campus climate survey data.
To serve the need of replacing expired strategic initiatives in this context, President Yao and his leadership team decided in Fall 2022 to create a short-term “bridge plan” rather than launch a campuswide strategic planning effort. This bridge plan would link our 2018-23 Strategic Initiatives with our WSCUC accreditation visit in April 2024, and lead to the creation of our next full strategic plan, CSUCI for 2030+ to be developed in 2024-25.
Importantly, the Strategic Directions Framework/bridge plan is intended to focus on the President’s priorities and work underway since January 2021 rather than to identify aspirational new goals. Four new Strategic Initiatives (draft version 1) were drafted by the Chief of Staff, Kaia Tollefson, in Jan-Feb 2023 through identifying, analyzing, and categorizing the many already-underway initiatives deriving from several “planning strategically” efforts dating back to President Yao’s interim appointment of Spring 2021. In 2023, Cabinet members reviewed, critiqued, and revised this draft – adding to it several additional strategies/initiatives not included in the original (linked above). On the second tab of this draft #2, Strategic Initiatives were renamed as Strategic Directions (draft v2) – underscoring through metaphor the importance of having a clear path forward, while at the same time emphasizing the need for flexibility.
We engaged the campus community in a number of ways with Strategic Directions (draft v2) in its earliest days – through presentations to the Academic Senate, CI Staff Council, Student Government, and campus administrators; through our Strategic Resource Planning Committee, which is our campuswide budget committee; through interactive WSCUC Accreditation Gallery Tours that engaged students, staff, faculty, and administrators in reviewing, critiquing, and offering suggested revisions and additions; and through our Critical Learning Collectives whose recommendations for improving campus climate were presented to President Yao and his Cabinet in a series of late-Spring 2023 meetings – after these groups had spent the year until then studying, making sense of, and ultimately making informed use of campus climate survey data. Gallery Tour feedback and CLC recommendations were incorporated into the Strategic Directions Framework (draft v3).
On August 30, 2023, Chief of Staff Kaia Tollefson engaged all units in the Office of the President in a first division-level, in-depth review of the Strategic Directions Framework (draft v3) for the purpose of refining that draft prior to division-wide review and critique. The next iteration of the Strategic Directions Framework (draft 4), incorporates that feedback. To finalize, Cabinet Members were asked to collect and submit feedback from their divisions. With a common theme from divisional feedback being to simplify and focus the Framework, that input was incorporated in this final version of the Strategic Directions Framework through 2024-25.
These four Strategic Directions serve as a bridge connecting our 2018-23 Strategic Initiatives that expired at the end of last semester, our WSCUC accreditation visit in April 2024, and the creation of our next strategic plan: CSUCI for 2030+ that will build out the President’s vision for campus priorities. By having the Strategic Directions Framework focus on the immediate future, we will be able to make significant progress on immediately impactful strategies and set ourselves up for using accreditation feedback in the formation of our next full strategic plan.