Strategic Plan Update

To the UAlbany Community,

Every day I learn more about UAlbany’s excellence in teaching, research, scholarship, and service—and I become even more convinced that we are a nationally leading institution in many critical areas. But to meet our full potential, we need a strategic plan that will guide our progress.

During the 2016-17 academic year, the University began a strategic planning process that engaged many members of our community. This effort resulted in a Draft Strategic Framework identifying three imperatives to guide the University’s initiatives moving forward: Fostering our Culture of Excellence, Innovating our Programs, and Strengthening our Research.

Going forward, we need to take these imperatives and align them with our comprehensive fundraising campaign, branding initiative, and key institutional priorities: student success, research excellence, diversity and inclusion, globalization, and public engagement and community outreach.

Because Academic Affairs and Student Affairs together will form the cornerstones of our strategic plan, I have asked Provost Jim Stellar and VP for Student Affairs Mike Christakis to lead the next phase of the process. The first step is to create a new, expanded Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) that includes a larger number of campus and community stakeholders.

The SPC will be organized into five workgroups, one for each institutional priority:

• Student Success (Jeanette Altarriba and Ed Engelbride, co-chairs)
• Research Excellence (Jim Dias and Simeon Ananou, co-chairs)
• Diversity and Inclusion (Tamra Minor and Elga Wulfert, co-chairs)
• Globalization (Harvey Charles and Laurie Feldman, co-chairs)
• Public Engagement and Community Outreach (Darrell Wheeler and Mark Benson, co-chairs)

On Friday, November 3, the expanded SPC will hold its first meeting, and workgroups will begin to identify initiatives to advance each area of focus. I have asked Jim and Mike to deliver a draft plan in mid-January 2018, to solicit comments and feedback from the campus community and external stakeholders on that draft, and to produce a final plan that will be launched in March/April 2018.

For more details about the strategic planning process, visit our updated website at  https://www.albany.edu/strategicplan/

I look forward to working collaboratively with the campus community on this critical process, which will create UAlbany’s roadmap to success over the next five years.
 

Sincerely,

Havidán Rodríguez
President