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Chancellor Forum Strategic Planning
Welcome to the Chancellor’s Forum. I am Randy Woodson, I’m your Chancellor. This
is really an attempt on my part and others to do a better job of keeping the line of
communication open among all the constituent groups here at NC State. Students, Faculty,
staff and so it is a great opportunity for us to keep each other informed. So I hope
we have a number of these over the course of the year and in the coming years. And today
really there are a couple of goals. The first is for me to spend a little time as your new
Chancellor talking about some of my early observations after being here for five months
and I am excited to do that. And then to turn the podium over to Provost Warrick Arden to
talk about the strategic planning process which is just getting launched.
Before I get started, I want to say a few kudos. You know being a father of three college,
children that have gone to college, various colleges and moved a number of students into
colleges over the years, I want to say that this university through Tom Stafford’s leadership
and his colleagues in student affairs does a great job to help our students get into
the residence halls and get acclimated to campus. I was actually blown away by the organization.
As I walked around campus and watched this, a parent would pull up in their SUV with all
their kids stuff and as soon as they opened the door they would just be swarmed by all
of these students with red shirts to help move them away. And they would unload the
car and get it all up into the residence halls. Then the parents were standing there like
well what do I do, I mean I came here to be with Johnny and you’ve taken him away. But
it really is a testament to the way we feel about our students. I was very, very impressed.
Another big change that occurred over the summer that I think you know about is we hired
a new Athletic Director. Debbie Yow is doing a fantastic job and I think she is solely
responsible for an undefeated football team. Okay I am sure that is not the case. But it
is great to see our student athletes engage both in the classroom and on the field. And
I will talk a little bit more about it in later meetings. But what I am so impressed
by is Debbie’s commitment to help our student athlete’s succeed here as student’s in
addition to succeed as athletes. If you have not gotten to a volleyball game our Women
volleyball team is eight and one I think that is sort of unheard of so it is a great testament
to what that team is doing. Soccer is up and running. Tennis had a great weekend. So athletics
is in great shape and I am very excited about that future.
We’ve got a Provost search ongoing I think all of you know about that. Marjorie Overton
the chair of the faculty senate is leading the search and I know they are getting very
close to identifying candidates that would be invited to campus for visits. So hopefully
we would get that position resolved in the coming weeks and months. But certainly this
semester and keep moving forward.
Early observations and other Kudos. You know it was kind of hot this summer for a guy moving
here from Indiana. But I did grow up in Arkansas so I have experienced heat and humidity. But
our grounds people and our physical plant staff do a terrific job getting this place
ready for all the students to return. Kevin Macnaughton and his colleagues have a great
organization and I am very proud of what they have done. So the staff here are terrific.
We’ve got a world class faculty I see evidence of that every day and it’s a great testament
to the quality of the programs here. Just today the Wall Street Journal came out with
a new ranking. You know I’ve always said that universities like NC State are much more
highly ranked by the recruiters than they are by the academicians and that was true.
If you look at the recruiters ranking of the national universities and NC State was ranked
today by the national recruiters as the nineteenth best university in the country which is a
great testament. And if you are wondering Chapel Hill was tied for twenty fifth, just
in case you are wondering. But what that says to me is that we do a lot of things right
at NC State and what we particularly do right is we prepare students as career ready employees.
The recruiters love our product. We’ve got some challenges in terms of being able to
continue that high quality educational experience given the budget challenges and we will talk
a little bit more about that. But I think it is a great testament and I am glad it came
out now because as we are out on the recruiting trail one of the things I will tell you. When
the N & O asked me how do you feel about the eighteen percent cap on out of state enrollment
and I said I’d love to be there. Because we are at about nine percent maybe even less
about seven percent of our undergraduate enrollment is from out of state.
Now our priority is North Carolina without a doubt. I mean this state funds higher education
at a very high rate to keep it affordable for North Carolinians. We have great students
and we’ve got a lot of them, but I do believe the educational environment at this university
is enhanced by having students from around the country. And so as we get about the business
of telling students from all over the US that this is one of the best ranked universities
in terms of what the employers say about us and it is without a doubt one of the best
buys. In fact of those top twenty five universities Chapel Hill and NC State have the lowest out
of state tuition. So we are an incredible educational buy and we just need to keep telling
that story.
I’ve met a lot of over the course of the summer we’ve had alumni events all over
North Carolina. I’ve visited, I told the staff I wanted to go to all one hundred counties
and they said you know stop smoking because you are not going to get there in the first
year you’re here. And so the alternative strategy was for us to visit the seven economic
development regions in the state which represents all one hundred counties. I met with the boards
of all of those economic development regions and learned first hand the importance of NC
State throughout the state of North Carolina, and particularly the importance to the economy
of this state. Our alumni and in fact not even our alumni, what amazes me, I had lunch
last week with a couple of friends of NC State they are friends because they are both Chapel
Hill graduates but their kids came to NC State and they are just absolutely smitten with
this university because of the way we treat students. And it again it is a testament to
the faculty and staff that we care about the success of our students, help advise them
and nurture them along the way. So it’s we got a lot of great things going.
Now we do have some challenges not the least of which is a budget. This is the third year
we have not been in a position to raise salaries. That’s a challenge for us and I can tell
you other state universities and other private universities are taking advantage of that
and they are working hard to recruit our faculty and staff. So we have got to be attentive
to this. It is particularly a challenge in the state of North Carolina because we are
one of just a few states that still remain largely state supported. And what I mean by
that is the largest single portion of our budget is from the state of North Carolina,
not from the students that pay tuition and fees. That’s a great asset for the state.
It’s very affordable but the challenge going forward is when you are the only university
left in the country that is largely state supported when the state budgets are challenged,
we’re challenged. And that’s why you saw when the state couldn’t fund us this year,
the third or the second or third year in a row we had had budget challenges they offered
the opportunity for the universities to raise tuition to offset that budget cut. We chose
to do so knowing that that would be difficult for our students and we’ve tried to engage
in that conversation with our students as much as we could. It’s done a lot to bolster
the budget and to ensure that we can offer the class sections that are critical to keep
students on track to graduate. And Provost Arden and Charlie Leffler are working hard
to get those resources out into the colleges so that we can keep the university moving
forward. But long term we’ve got a challenge. And I have no doubt North Carolina continues
to want to funder higher education and wants to be the primary source of funding of higher
education. But we’ve got a year, an upcoming year in the legislature that is really going
to test the will of the general assembly and our ability to be responsive, because frankly
the removal of the stimulus funding is going to create quite a gap in funding for the state.
So stay tuned, but I give Charlie Leffler and others a lot of credit for preparing,
and the Deans frankly, who took a significant budgetary hit last year that have prepared
us to go into this budget in a little better shape frankly than many of the universities
within the UNC system and certainly a lot of universities around the country. So I have
a lot of confidence that we are going to get through this but it is going to be another
challenging year.
You know one of the things that I said early on and it was a real driver in my decision
to come here is NC State nationally is viewed as one of the most innovative universities
in the country. And an embodiment of that is Centennial Campus and the way we do business
on Centennial Campus. We celebrated that this morning an example of that this morning with
the entrepreneurship initiative under the leadership of Tom Miller and others. And we
launched the first phase of the garage project. Which is a physical space to bring students
together to be entrepreneurs and to develop their ideas, turn them into products, and
figure out how to create jobs more than take jobs. And I think that’s what NC State does
exceptionally well. And I want to keep the university innovative. I want us to be as
administrative lean as possible. To empower the faculty and staff to do their job and
to put as much resources as we can into the academy and we’ll keep working on that.
Terri Lomax and her colleagues in the research office and Billy Houghteling and others are
working really hard to make sure we continue to be seen as one of the most innovative partners
for the private sector in the state of North Carolina and in the country and that is definitely
true.
We have some areas I think we can invest a bit more in. In particular I think the life
sciences is a real opportunity for NC State. And we clearly have a lot of strength in the
life sciences. They are distributed across the university. But when you look forward
over the course of the next century or at least the first half of the century there
is no doubt that biology is going to drive a lot of technology because of our increased
understanding of the genome and the implications of that understanding. So I am excited to
work with the Provost and others to think about the best strategy for NC State to continue
to be seen as a major player in the life sciences. We don’t have to have a medical school to
be a major contributor to biological sciences and we are in fact a major contributor so
that’s an area that I think has a lot of potential.
When you look at the grand challenges that we face as a society, I mean water, climate,
feeding a growing population, delivery of health services to a growing population. All
of these are challenges that have technological issues embedded in them that we are very good
at and have social implications for those technological solutions that we are also very
good at. So NC State being a university that’s history is in the more technical fields of
science but its future has a lot of potential to grow in the social and behavioral sciences
and humanities, well letters and humanities. I see us as having, this is our time and we
ought to take advantage of it and continue to see what this university can mean to the
state and the nation.
Engagement is something that NC State has historically done extremely well. Our land
grant university background, extension, industrial extension, I mean we are among the best in
the US. But our willingness to partner with the private sector in ways that frankly other
universities are a little afraid to do is something that I think we have a real opportunity
to capitalize on. One example of it I think many of you may have seen this, a few weeks
ago the Triangle Business Journal did a survey of all of the industries in RTP and said what’s
the university that’s the most important to your success? And by a long shot NC State
led that survey. So the employers in the Triangle, I’ll give you one example and I won’t
say who because this is kind of a public meeting, but a large employer in the Triangle said
Randy I love your graduates from the college of management. It is one of the best colleges
of management in the country. The students hit the ground running, they are outstanding
students. I said I know it the college is young and it doesn’t have the national reputation
it deserves but it will have soon. He said please don’t do that. Don’t enhance the
reputation of the college. And I thought okay what is driving this? He said I don’t want
competition for the product. Well I want him to have competition and our students, it is
a great college and it is one example of that here at the university. So we have a long
history of partnering with the private sector. It informs the educational mission of the
university. It helps us to prepare students that are attractive to recruiters like we
just saw today in Wall Street Journal. So we are doing a lot of those things very well.
A couple of issues that we are going to have to work through: Our faculty is not big enough
for the size of the enrollment of the university. We have grown the enrollment. We have enjoyed
growing the enrollment because we have been paid to grow the enrollment at least some
years we have been paid by the state. But that has caused us to be a little stressed
in terms of delivering on our educational mission. Classes are too large. We don’t
have enough small classes. It has affected our reputational ranking in US News and World
Report. I am not a guy that will manage towards rankings but those rankings do reveal challenges.
And they tell us that over the last five or ten years as we have grown enrollment we have
crept up in the size of our classes, we haven’t been able to keep class sizes small enough
and that does affect the educational delivery here at NC State. So it is something we have
to pay a bit of attention to.
Our student to faculty ratio is not so out of line with our peers but it is in certain
areas, particularly the high growth areas. And it is something that I know if Damian
Shea were sitting here and he may be and he is going to jump up I can’t believe the
Chancellor said it. But you know biology; we have twenty three hundred undergraduates
studying biology at NC State. And we’ve just got to pay attention to the distribution
of our students, the distribution of the research opportunities and where we have opportunities
to grow our faculty. We have to figure out how to pay for it. But I’m excited to think
through those things.
The other thing that I think is critical to the success of NC State going forward is to
grow the endowment. Now our endowment is one of the smallest in our peer group. And at
four hundred and fifty million dollars it should be above a billion dollars. And it
is something that, it’s tough for a Chancellor to make it a priority because it is investing
in our future. But it is important to this institution that we invest in the future and
twenty five years from now we need to have one of the leading endowments in our peer
group so that these budgetary waves that we tend to ride will be a little more tempered.
And so Nevin Kessler and the Deans and the development officers in each of the colleges
are working hard to develop a strategy to grow our endowment with our future capital
campaign. And we just need to keep telling the story to get people to invest in the university.
We have opportunities to grow our research that comes with growth in faculty and staff
but it is something that we’ve got to pay attention to.
I’ve touched on rankings a little bit. I’m not going to harp on this but I don’t think
any of us were excited to see NC State drop out of the top one hundred in US News and
World Report. It is not who we are. It doesn’t reflect the quality of the institution. It
doesn’t reflect the quality of the faculty and the students and it is something that
we have got to pay attention to. Now you can ask why did that happen? There are a couple
of reasons potentially. Actually our reputational ranking didn’t change it hasn’t changed
in fact in the last ten years. We have been steady with regard to the way President’s,
Chancellor’s, and Provosts and Deans of Admission think of us. But they added a new
one this year. They asked high school counselors around the country what do you think of NC
State? They don’t know us. They don’t know us because we don’t enroll students
from across the country. Now they need to know us. Not because we need to grow our out
of state enrollment necessarily but because this is an incredible educational buy. Well
I’ve beat that horse, it’s dead. Can I say that in front of vet, oh I’m sorry.
The other areas that we’ve been compromised in relative to our peers is those that reflect
the educational atmosphere and what I mean by that is class size. The number of classes
under twenty, the number of classes over fifty, are going in the wrong direction for us and
its something we have to pay a bit of attention to. That’s money but we do have to think
through it.
Another area that Nevin’s on top of is we slipped, although it is a small part of the
ranking, but we slipped in terms of the percentage of our alumni that give back to the university.
We actually probably didn’t dramatically slip we just are actually counting things
a little more accurately right now, is that fair to say Nevin? I come on we’ve got to
be transparent here, yes sir. So we need to work on this and convince our colleagues and
people that love NC State and there are a lot that do love us to help us build a world
class university with their contributions. Good news Bennie Suggs is here and he is on
top of it. The alumni association membership is up five percent, ten percent, what, five
point five. I don’t know how you do the point. Five point five. I guess that is Morse
code. So alumni membership is up, we’ve got people excited about NC State. Everywhere
I go people are energized about the future of this institution and we are going to keep
working hard at it.
Now we are going to do some strategic planning. Okay, look I was as cynical as all of you
as a faculty member about strategic planning, but this is God’s work. I am a convert to
believing that if you clearly articulate measurable goals and you keep track of those goals year
end and year out people will respond. So this isn’t about creating a plan that sits on
a shelf. This really is about creating a plan that has measurable outcomes, sets lofty goals,
holds people accountable for those goals across the university and we set out to build on
what is already a world class university. It’s a big process and that’s because
we have a lot of folks. And I’m not interested in having a plan that’s created in the back
room of Holiday Hall with a few of us. So I am interested in having a process that engages
the campus community and it’s going to do that. And at the end of the day I hope you
will all partake of and participate in some of the sessions that are held by the various
task forces, because at the end of this academic year, before the end of this academic year,
I expect us to really clearly be articulating where NC State is headed and there won’t
be huge surprises there except to say that you can count on me working with the others
in Holiday Hall to deliver the resources against that plan. And to resource the plan in a way
that allows the university to meet its targeted goals. And there are some areas we’ve got
to be stronger in. Graduate education is one. This is a research intensive university in
case you all hadn’t noticed. And one of the ways that that benefits the country is
that we are heavily engaged in training at the highest level the workforce for the future.
And NC State has the capacity and the intellectual capacity to be one of the largest producers
of PhD’s and other graduate degrees in the country. And now that’s not to say, and
we already are one of the best and largest producers of baccalaureate degrees in the
country.
So with that you may have an ultimate, just an overwhelming desire to ask your Chancellor
something. And we can do a little bit of questions now but I am going to stay here throughout
and we will definitely have time at the end to have overarching questions. So if it can
wait we’ll do it at the end but if there is some dying question now that I’ve said
something that has stimulated your thought process and you need to ask me something before
Provost Arden comes up. Any questions for me right now? Yes.
Question from audience member: Yes, a few weeks ago a fence was erected in
the Lake Raleigh Woods Nature Preserve which is protected by both student and faculty senate
resolutions. This is surrounding your new residence.
Chancellor Woodson: It’s not my new residence.
Audience member: Oh excuse me, the new Chancellor’s Residence.
And it seems that they have a plan to destroy this part of the nature preserve and put in
a thing called the point. And I’m just quite concerned about this as an alum. And I’d
like to get your feelings on this and what it makes NC State look like in the world and
our dedication to sustainability that we are destroying one of our greatest natural resources
here. And that’s it.
Chancellor: Well I can tell you from my perspective the
overarching theme for that project is to do everything possible to preserve the natural
resources. In fact the landscape will be entirely sustainable and there is an effort to make
it one of the most green facilities on this campus. With regards to the fence I suspect
that is more about the construction, but I’ll ask Charlie if he knows. I don’t know about
the fence.
It is a fence that is intended to keep the deer out frankly as well as construction protection.
You may recall that the original map (unintelligible)… we backed away from that with the exception
of the residence site the residence site was never part of the reserve.
Audience member: Right that was the compromise to get the resolutions
passed was that the Chancellor’s Residence would be able to be located there. That was
the compromise.
Chancellor: I’m not aware of any change to the…
Audience member: Yeah I’m just asking about the point of
the Point. Kind of.
Chancellor: The point of the Point? Why build it?
Audience member: If it is going to be sustainable, why are
we taking out a nature preserve to prove our sustainability?
Chancellor: Look I wasn’t here when this, I don’t
know about the resolutions. I’m not sure what the resolutions were that you are referring
to. But apparently there was an agreement that that track of land would be used for
a new Chancellor’s Residence. Is that true?
Audience member: Yes that was the compromise to get the resolutions
passed was that the Chancellor’s Residence would be located there in an additional area.
Chancellor: Do you feel that we are going against that
resolution now?
Audience member: This is, yes, yes I do. Yes very strongly
I do. That this new area that is being usurped or taken over is the nature preserve. This
is so important. This is one of the most beautiful habitats in all of the Piedmont. I have lived
here my entire life. I went to pre-school on Avent Ferry. I went to college here. I
went to high school here. I have lived here for all my life. This is the most beautiful
land and nature preserve in the entire Piedmont. We should be holding this up and showing everyone
how great NC State is for preserving this, not taking it piece by piece by piece and
waiting for people to move on until we forget about it and then eventually it will be gone.
Chancellor: Well my impression is that we are working
hard to preserve a fair amount of that area and I don’t know about the original agreements
that led to the project except to say that in the course of running this university and
trying to build on the success of this university Chancellor’s Residence is a big part of
the fundraising activity of NC State. And so I am sure that that was some of the decisions
that went into building that. And apparently there were resolutions that at least approved
of that process. So I don’t see us backing away. In fact one of the things that I have
been amazed by is the willingness to put into that project very expensive technologies and
processes to insure that the habitat is least impacted as possible. The parking areas for
example will be entirely infiltrated, allow infiltration of water. It is going to be one
of the greenest buildings we have on campus for sure with geothermal heating. So you know
there’s a lot of attempts to put in place technologies that will actually speak to the
need to preserve our natural surroundings. Audience member:
Thank you I hope we can keep up those motives.
Chancellor: Okay. Provost Arden.
Provost Arden: Thanks folks. Good afternoon everyone. And
thank you Chancellor. And just a quick comment, to those of you who haven’t been to the
renovated Thompson Hall before I strongly encourage you to come and see one of our student
performances in this or the other theaters they’re truly remarkable as students who
do a phenomenal job. So this is a great facility and I really recommend that you take advantage
of it. It’s my pleasure this afternoon to talk briefly about strategic planning. And
what I’m going to do is walk us through very quickly the strategic planning process
as it’s played out over the summer and then talk a little bit about the task forces as
they are just being formed now. And as you’ll see it’s a fairly rigorous agenda to make
sure that we get through everything that we need to get through in the next year. But
I personally consider it to be an extremely important part of what we have to accomplish
this year. The Chancellor has said that he is a relatively
recent convert to strategic planning. I’m also a fairly recent convert for perhaps slightly
different reasons. Having been on this campus for about six years now, five years as a dean
and about a year in this position, I can tell you that I so frequently would like to have
a more precise roadmap of where we’re going as an institution and a way to guide some
of the decisions that we have to make if we go in terms of our investments and where we’re
headed. And so I’m really excited about this process. I think as the Chancellor has
said that if we can develop a really good strategic plan which is both a combination
of being both aspirational on one side and a clear roadmap with metrics on the other
side then we’ll have accomplished something very very significant for this university.
So, I’m very excited about the process. We began the process this summer back in June.
And the Chancellor lost the strategic planning initiative. He asked myself and Margery Overton,
the chair of the faculty, to lead the process. We’re very pleased to do so. We began by
having a planning team. And on that team were, in addition to Margery and myself, were Karen
Helm, Marvin Malecha, Charlie Leffler, Terri Lomax, Mark Hoyt, and Joe Hice. And the plan
to plan team was designed to, was brought together to look at the overall design of
the process and make sure that we had a process that was very inclusive process. This was
always something the Chancellor really emphasized to me very early on. In his own words you
heard him say he “didn’t want this to be a plan that was developed in the back rooms
of Holladay Hall and dropped down on the university.” This really had to be a plan that was our
plan. NC State’s plan. A plan that was developed with input from our faculty, from our staff,
from our students, and really embodied where we’re headed as a university. And so transparency
opened us inclusion. We’re really trying to build into the fundamental aspects of developing
this plan. The Strategic Planning Steering Committee
was formed in July, and we began by having a university council retreat. And at that
retreat, it was a really interesting retreat, because one thing we decided to do was rather
than having everybody walk in cold, send out a pre-retreat survey to begin stimulating
people’s thoughts about what were really the top things that were on their minds. Asking
them to put down one, two, three, four. Here are the top things on my mind. I’m giving
issues. And then we had an outside contractor come in assemble those things together and
present those ideas that were emerging as the most important things for us to wrestle
with. Not necessarily a direction but simply these are things we need to wrestle with as
a community and make some progress on. And so after the retreat the Steering Committee,
and I’ll talk a little bit about the Steering Committee in just a moment, finalized the
strategic issues, tried to bring those common themes that were brought together at the retreat
together, define what the task forces were going to be, identify members and the charges
to the task forces, and review the communication plan that we were going to build around the
strategic planning process. Because this truly is a process in making sure that it’s a
two way communication plan, making sure that this isn’t something that’s developed
in by the committees that are formed, the task forces that are formed, and then sent
out to the campus community that would constantly go back and forth as a itinerary process,
receive input on the draft and incorporate that input into the plan as we develop the
plan was really important. As we go into August and September we formed
nine task forces, and the task forces are listed there, and I’ll refer to them in
a little bit more detail in just a moment. Undergraduate Student Success, Graduate and
Post-Doctoral Program Development, Faculty Excellence, Research and Scholarship, Comprehensiveness
and Interdisciplinarity, Global Engagement and Competitiveness, Partnership Innovation
and Entrepreneurship, Campus Culture and Community, and Resource Strategies. And I think you can
see that this is a little bit different to some of the…some of the strategic plan topics
that have emerged before. In a lot of ways previously we’ve been very program oriented
in our plans and said that we should be addressing for example health and well-being, or educational
innovation, or energy in the environment. Those things are all very important and they
have informed I think a lot of our programmatic thinking as an institution. I think this time
we’re starting to look at issues which are cross-cutting across campus and will really
help to a large degree inform us about how we do our business as an academic community.
So, perhaps a little more inwardly focused in as much as yes we know we have to address
the major issues of the day, but the question really becomes “How do we do that as an
academic community, most efficiently, most effectively?” “How do we refine our processes
and how do we make ends towards those strategic goals?”
We solicited input from the University Council as to who could serve or should serve on those
task forces. I was really pleased to see that we had over four hundred names submitted to
serve on those task forces. And then the Steering Committee worked with those four hundred names
trying to derive committees that were very balanced. And we’ve just finalized those
committees over the last couple of days. They’ll be approximately, I think we’ve got out
there a hundred and fifty, but a hundred and sixty individuals will be serving on those
committees with I feel very good representation from across faculty, staff, and student bodies
and from across each of the colleges. Going forward, September, October, November,
there’s going to be a lot of work in the coming months. The task forces will be at
work, working on each of their individual issues. It is going to be incumbent on each
of the task forces to do several things. It’s not going to be a matter of working in isolation
it is going to be incumbent on each of the task forces to reach out to the campus community
and continue to solicit input on what they feel will be relevant to their particular
task force issue. It will also be really important for each task force to have a couple of things
in mind as they move forward. Number one is to go…is to have very firm
metrics about how do we define success, not only what are we defining for example if we
deal with undergraduate student success, but how do we measure it, what will we measure
it, when are we going to measure, how we’re going to measure our progress toward goals.
I think define the metrics that surround each of these task force issues is going to be
very very important. We also have to think in terms of each of these task forces although
there is one task force called Resource Strategies think each task force is going to have to
think about where are the resources going to come from to enable us to achieve these
goals and how do we incorporate those resource strategies into our particular task force
plan to accomplish our goals. The Task Force Planning Committee in the meantime
during this period of time is hopefully not going to be twiddling its thumbs. We found
out at the retreat, oh and one thing that really surprised me a little bit at the University
Council Retreat is that I had thought that most folks at the retreat would say that our
mission statement was fine. Let’s not mess with our mission statement too much. It’s
okay. Let’s move on. What I found was that most folks didn’t think that our mission
statement was fine. In fact most folks thought that our mission statement needed a lot of
work. And so there was some discussion as we would actually have a task force working
specifically on the mission statement. Then we realized probably the best way for that
to occur would be if the Steering Committee and the Full Strategic Planning Committee
would work on that at the same time as the task forces were working on their agendas.
So, trying to bring those things together, going back and forth to the campus community,
really trying to refine our mission statement, which says a lot about who we are as an academic
community. And it is also the plan of the Chancellor to have a forum associated with
his installation on October 26th that town hall style meeting to gain input not just
on the strategic plan but on a number of issues across campus, but certainly the strategic
plan and strategic planning process will be one of the issues that we’ll be talking
about associated with the town hall installation. In December we’re hoping to have the task
force reports back to the Strategic Planning Committee and begin to assemble those task
force reports in January into a cohesive strategic plan. One of the things that I think would
be unfortunate would be if we simply took nine task force reports and sort of stuck
them together and said here’s our strategic plan. There is absolutely no doubt that the
nuts and bolts of this will be in the task forces. But the task forces working to define
their topic areas, gain input and write very precise strategies. But then we have to in
some way put an overarching document together that really defines the commonalities of those
task forces and the strategic thrusts over the coming years. I see the task force reports
as being addenda or important parts of the final document, but this should be an overarching
element to this that attempts to join the key components out of the task force reports.
And so December and January is going to be a busy time I think for many of us. As we
go forward January and early February once again we want to come back to the campus community
with this draft report. We don’t simply want to send it through a series of reviews.
We want to come back to the campus community. I look at this period of January and early
February as being what I call the open comment period. This is a period where we’ll be
going before the Faculty Senate, the Staff Senate, the Student Senate. It’ll be out
on our website. It’ll be discussed at a number of different forums including the Chancellor’s
forum on January 27th. This is our time to gather input on that draft strategic plan
and make fairly significant modifications of the plan if necessary.
By late February the Strategic Planning Committee will consider the input, revise the draft,
and hopefully present that to the Chancellor toward the end of February or the beginning
of March. During March, the Chancellor will review the draft plan, provide further input
and help make modifications. And then we’ll review the strategic plan with the Board of
Trustees in April. We’ll incorporate their final recommendations and revisions and then
hopefully have it in final format to the board by June.
Now that all seems a pretty rigorous agenda. But I really think it is important to try
to get this done and fairly well locked down this academic year, so that we can go into
the next academic year, the next budget year really understanding where our priorities
are going to be for the next three to five years and how we’re going to expand our
resources for the next several years. The Strategic Planning Committee, I thought
you’d want to know who was on the committee. The full committee is going to include the
members of the Steering Committee and one or two others who I’ll mention in just a
moment and then all nineteen chairs of the task forces will be on the full Strategic
Planning Committee. So this will be a large committee that will be working together quite
intensively over the next six, seven, eight month period. So, in addition to Margery and
myself, John Cavanagh from Biochemistry, Randy Colby – Chair of the Staff Senate, Karen
Helm – Director of Planning Analysis, Mark Hoyt – Vice-Chancellor for IT, Kelly Hook
our Student Body President serves on the Steering Committee, Terri Lomax, Ben Jenkins who is
Chair of the Audit Finance and Planning Committee for our Board of Trustees will be on the full
planning committee, Ali Kefeli who is President of the Graduate Student Association, Marv
Malecha – Dean of Design, Benny Suggs representing our Alumni, Walt Wolfram from the Department
of English, and then as I’ve said all nineteen co-chairs of the task forces.
Alright I’m going to spend a few minutes on the task forces. I don’t want to go into
detail on the task forces, just give a brief overview. The first task force that we defined
was Undergraduate Student Success. It was really interesting at the retreat that of
all of the things that we discussed this topic came to the top every time in almost every
discussion. There was almost no doubt that this would be a task force. There was a feeling
that while we do a great job in undergraduate education right now, we’re still not where
we need to be. There were many many issues to consider both academic and non-academic
student support issues. It is far more than simply graduation retention rates. It is really
all about how do we prepare a student body that is really ready to enter the workforce
and make significant contributions to our society. And how do we do that in the most
effective manner possible. There are many many embedded issues here. And what I really
need to emphasize is that you’ll see under each of these, these task forces a number
of bullet points. I want to emphasize that the task forces will have the authority to
change, modify, include more bullet points here as sub-themes of the task forces. These
are not meant to be limiting factors or sub-themes. They are meant to be simply a starting point
for each of the task forces. I want to thank Maxine Atkinson, Jo-Ann Cohen, and Marycobb
Randall is our student representative leading this task force. We have three co-chairs of
this particular task force. I think there’s a tremendous amount that this task force can
accomplish in the coming several months. The second task force for consideration is
Graduate and Postdoctoral Program Development. Our co-chairs there are Audrey Jaeger and
Barb Sherry. We know as an institution that one of the directions that we need to take
is to put a little more emphasis on growing our graduate programs, growing the quality
of our graduate programs, linking that to the quality and scope of our research programs.
I think this is going to be a very, very exciting task force. One of the things that is going
to be important I mentioned about making sure that we include the financial component of
each of these issues. One of the things that we’re dealing with now as we plan tuition
as we plan enrollment increase is how do we fund and how do we most effectively utilize
our graduate student support plan. If we’re going to move in this direction we have to
make sure that we have the facilities and the ability to attract, retain, and enable
the best graduate students in this country to come to NC State and be successful. So,
there’s a lot to consider here under Graduate and Postdoctoral Program Development.
The next task force will be Faculty Excellence. The co-chairs there will be Trudy MacKay,
and Dan Solomon. There is no doubt I think that as an institution we could be doing more
to grow the strength of our already excellent faculty and enable faculty success. If we
look over time we probably as the Chancellor has said haven’t put enough resources into
insuring this element of our academic core, insuring we are recruiting and retaining the
very best faculty to come to NC State, insuring that we’re enabling the faculty that we
have to be optimally successful, making sure that we remove obstacles and barriers from
the success and ensuring that we have a supportive environment for our faculty to be effective
in. So, I think this will be a really exciting task force.
The next task force is going to be Research and Scholarship. That will be chaired by David
Threadgill, Head of Genetics, and Greg Parsons from the College of Engineering. Once again
the issue is how do we grow our research programs. How do we increase the scope of our research
programs, the relevance of our research programs? We’re doing extraordinarily well in some
areas. We’re doing less well in other areas. There are certainly programmatic areas that
we need to emphasize that have not caught us well over the last several years. And there
are other areas that are doing extraordinarily well. So, how do we spread that success across
our whole research enterprise? I think this is also going to be an interesting conversation.
The next task force is Comprehensiveness and Interdisciplinary. These are two large themes
that I do think belong together to a certain degree. How do we define what comprehensiveness
is for this institution. People use the term comprehensiveness a lot, but it has different
meanings at every institution. What does it mean for NC State? What is the role of the
arts, designs, humanities, social sciences? We have great traditional strengths in the
stem disciplines. How do we utilize and leverage those strengths and develop other strengths
across campus. Interdisciplinary, we’ve talked about as the campus community for some
time. How do we ensure that we take what has traditionally been a great strength of this
university, which is our very very strong college? and extend that into a domain where
we really can develop programs, both academic programs and research programs that reach
across the traditional budgetary and college domains. I think this is going to be one of
the keys for our success in the future. The next one that I want to talk about is
Global Engagement and Competitiveness. This is going to be co-chaired by Mike Giancola
from CSLEPS, and Dan Robison from Natural Resources. We know that as a university we
have to be positioned to take advantage of the changes that are occurring around the
world, not only to be visible internationally but most importantly to give our faculty and
our students international skills global skills and equip them for a place in the global workplace.
This is going to remain incredibly important. You know over the last fifteen months we undertook
a study, a fairly extensive study which construed a lot of time to look at establishing an international
branch campus. One of the things that always struck me about that project was that we really
never had the discussion where does the branch campus fit in terms of our strategic plan
for globalization. What do we mean by globalization and what are the most cost effective ways
of achieving the end points of globalization? And so where does a branch campus or any other
model fit into that plan? Next one is Partnerships, Innovation, and
Entrepreneurship that’s going to be co-chaired by Ted Baker and Blanton Godfrey. As the Chancellor
has said Centennial Campus has become a national hallmark for partnership and innovation. We
want to make sure that that continues, but we also want to make sure that essence of
innovation something that NC State is known for and should be continued to be known for
is across the whole campus, not just across Centennial Campus. And so we anticipate that
that will be a very important task force. Campus Community and Culture is going to be
co-chaired by José Picart and Carolyn Argentati. It’s going to be very, very important that
we as a campus community communicate with one another and recognize each other’s strengths
towards working towards the strategic goals that has to be an integral part of who we
are as a campus that everybody who walks onto this campus is embraced with the strengths
that they bring to this campus. And I think this is going to be an important task force.
Lasting resource strategies at the end of the day, we’ve got to figure out how to
pay for all of this. Where is the money going to come from? This is a changing budgetary
environment. We know as the Chancellor has said we have been the beneficiaries of a very
generous system of state support. But during difficult budgetary times that is challenged
and our budgets are very, very uncertain at the moment, depending on how state revenues
are going. How do we diversify our resource support portfolio? How do we add new elements
to our resource support portfolio? And as much as anything we have to be willing to
reallocate the resources that we have versus simply saying where do we get more new money
to do the new things that we want to do. This has to be an embedded part of each strategic
plan that we felt it was important enough that it should be its own strategic goal.
That’s going to be co-chaired by David Bristol and Roby Sawyers.
Okay. So, there is full information on the strategic plan and strategic planning process
on our website at info.ncsu.edu/strategic-planning. We hope to have the names of the , the full
names of the task forces up within a day or so. So, this really is going to be an open
process that we need and want your input on. So, to those of you who are on the task forces…thank
you. To those of you who have agreed to chair the task forces…double triple thank you.
It’s going to be I think a fun six months and really looking forward to the end results
of it. With that I’ve left a few minutes at the end, probably not enough, but a few
minutes for either questions for the Chancellor or I on strategic planning or other issues.
Yes sir? Provost - The question is do we do a peer
assessment. Very early on in the plan to plan committee we did do sort of a landscape scan
and pulled several strategic plans and recent strategic plans from other institutions. And
all major institutions have done a strategic plan within the last several years, but we
looked at some of the most recent ones. And the model of going out and developing task
forces and trying to include broad representation across the university is one that several
other universities have utilized. Our Chancellor has utilized this before in strategic planning
at a previous institution. I think the advantage is that it really gives us the broad representation
that we need. So, yes there are other universities using a very similar model of strategic planning.
Come on. (Unintelligible background talk) Provost - It’s a really good question and
nearly all of the individuals are from the university. Now there will be outside representation
in terms of each task force will be asked to reach out to its constituents including
both its internal and external constituents. We of course have representation from the
Board of Trustees on the strategic planning committee. But this is quite a point of discussion
that we went through. We felt that with all the work that had been done in the past for
the UNC Tomorrow Study, which was very very externally focused with development of the
NC State response to the UNC Tomorrow Study, we’ve really gone through a tremendous amount
of external engagement and getting external input. And we really wanted this plan to take
that and build on that and focus a little bit more on how do we do our business. How
do we really become the great university that we can become. And so this is a little bit
more inwardly focused. And so we didn’t put external members directly on those task
forces. (Unintelligible question)
Chancellor - Very little. Don’t count on my installation speech to be our strategic
plan. That would be presumptuous. But to the extent that, I mean I think that you will
get a good sense of some of my thinking in that installation, but it clearly we won’t
have a full roadmap until this plan is completed. Yes. (Non-intelligible question)
Provost - Okay. So, all of the members of the task forces have already been notified
and have agreed to serve on those task forces. We’ll be publishing those full task forces.
Each task force is somewhere between fifteen and twenty individuals. It will be largely
up to the chairs and the task force members to do their scheduling and be responsible
for engagement of the stakeholders as well. Now the Office of Planning and Analysis, Karen
Helm, and my office will work closely with each of the task forces, but there won’t
be one central scheduling for each of the task forces. We think there has to be enough
flexibility left of the local level to ensure that.
Chancellor - I intend to interact with all of the chairs as we launch it. And Rog to
your question you know I would expect almost all of these task forces to have some sort
of open process where others that have an interest in the area are invited to give comment
and to have feedback. The partnership area is one great example. You, we can’t do that
without partners being engaged in that conversation. You know the businesses we work with, economic
development partners across the state so…but that’s going to be each task force will
have the opportunity to think about how they do that.
Provost - You know that’s a great question. And I think the reason historically that some
of us may be even many of us have been a little bit (unintelligible) by strategic planning
or any form of planning is we’ve seen some beautiful documents sit on the shelf and collect
dust over the years. And the reality is the only way this will be…well I think a good
start number one is the Chancellor’s vision is that this is an inclusive document that
represents broad input from the campus community. It’s simply not an administratively conceived
document dropped down on the campus community I think makes a huge difference. Because that
means there is a high level of ownership from the campus community as a whole. So, I think
that’s the step one. Step two quite frankly is that I think that it has to be linked to
resource allocation. We really have to, in the past planning has been linked by the compact
plan process. We haven’t devised exactly now whether we will continue or change the
compact planning process, but we do have to link the resource allocation and reallocation
to the strategic priorities that we list. Absolutely.
Chancellor – So, the only thing that I will add to that is I fully expect this plan to
have clear measurable outcomes and metrics associated with it. So the way the plan continues
to be a living document is we constantly talk about where we are. If a plan is a roadmap
you need to constantly measure how far you’re getting towards that final destination. And
that’s a data intensive process, in fact we’ll continue to have conversations with
all the deans, and department heads, and unit leaders, and directors about where we are
in the journey. And when you do that you’re constantly referring to the plan. And a plan
involve…that’s so data intensive can’t sit on the shelf because you’re always pulling
it off to refer to where you are in the journey. So, we’re not just going to stand up and
say that we’re going to be the best land-grant university in the country. We’re going to
say how to measure that. What are the numbers associated with it. What is our goal for faculty
to student ratio by discipline. I mean we’re going to have data associated with this that…I’m
a real *** retentive guy and I use…that’s a Freudian term that’s okay. And I’d like
to use real analytical tools to help us to know where we are on the journey.
Provost – And I recommend the first draft of the task force members, we spend about
another ten days going over that and modifying it and insuring that we had really good representation.
Representation from faculty, student, staff administrators. Representation from all of
the colleges. Very good diversity representation across the task forces. We’ve tried really
hard to make it a combination of those who will bring experience and skill to each of
those task forces that have really good representation from across the various areas of campus. Now
I won’t stand here and tell you it’s perfect, but I will tell you that we’ve put a fair
bit of work into trying to make sure that this is truly a representative process.
Provost - Yes sir? I should put that one right to Kelly Hook, your Student Body President.
So, Kelly the question was how are the students going to be involved in the strategic planning
process. You want to answer it or you want me to answer that? (un-intelligible background
talk) Provost – The umm. Kelly and the umm Graduate
Student President are on the Steering Committee. There are students represented on each of
these task forces and one of the students is Marycobb Randall is co-chairing the Undergraduate
Student Success Committee. So, this has been very important to us to have significant involvement
with the student body, and it will work back through the Student Body President of the
Student Center to engage the student body as we move through the process.
(Unintelligible talking) Provost- Okay. Chancellor – I’m told…I don’t know
the exact number, but there are over twenty students that are members of the task…various
task forces. So, student engagement is a very big priority for me.
Provost - Yes. (Unintelligible background talking)
Chancellor - No that’s very valid. I’m (unintelligible background talking) Yeah.
We’ve got enough of those. The executive officers know how I feel about. So, one of
the things is…I hope this isn’t out of the realm of possibility, but I think one
of the things that and I’m not sure how much we’ve talked about this, but I think
it would be important for every task force to think about the resource implications for
what they’re proposing. And they may not be fully empowered to do that. There may need
to be subsequent study. So, you know I’m not…I’m not sure how much further we would
go with implementation groups, but I don’t expect any plan to come out of this that isn’t…hasn’t
been thought about in terms of resources and impediments.
(unintelligible background talking) Chancellor – No I…no you’ve. It’s
already duly noted. Provost – I think it’s too late. Well
you’re from the middle point which is that you can develop a great plan. You can even
link it to resource allocation, but frequently we don’t go back and check. Were those resources
utilized appropriately and did they have the desired result? Did they move us into the
correct direction? I think the Chancellor’s concept of having this very metrics run of
each task force in the overall plan saying…this is the end point. This is the goals. This
is how we’re going to know whether we’re getting there or not. And then it’s incumbent
upon us. And whether that is an implementation task force or whether it is a group of administrators
and faculty is incumbent upon us to go and look at those metrics. I think be very honest
with ourselves. Is this driving things in the direction that we anticipated and wanted
at the rate that we wanted? Absolutely. Chancellor - We’ve got to remain open to
mid-course corrections too. Provost – One in the back there Jim.
(Unintelligible comment from audience) Those are good points. Thanks Jim. I think we had
one more over here. (Unintelligible question from audience) So,
the question is will we address immigrants. I hope that’s addressed in multiple elements.
It’s not drawn out in a specific task force or a theme in its own right. But it’s as
you’ll see a lot of these task forces are very cross-cutting themes. And I think that
there is room within many if not most to have themes such as addressing the role of immigrants,
the role of new citizens, the role of a number of different issues. So, I would hope that
that is addressed in multiple formats in several task forces.
Chancellor – Let’s hope there’s a successful (unintelligible word). Oh. I guess I just
exposed my policies. You know one of the things that astounded me a bit was a conversation
about charging international students for being here and that doesn’t make a lot of
sense to me, because the federal government doesn’t in fact subsidize higher education.
So, your federal taxes don’t go to support the university directly. They go to support
Pell grants, and grants to students, which international students are not eligible for.
But I don’t view international students, which is I know not where you were going,
but it’s a piece of the overall diversity on our campus. I just don’t view international
students differently than I view a student from Arkansas, which is like another country.
(laughter) Oh, come on, I’m from Arkansas. Thank you all. (applause)