University of Colorado at Boulder Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson today announced the next step in the formulation of a strategic plan that will examine the realities the campus will face in the year 2030.
Titled "The Flagship 2030 Strategic Planning Initiative," its work will be managed by a steering committee of 60 members composed of CU faculty, staff, students, community members and alumni all selected by Peterson, with input from the Boulder Faculty Assembly, campus administrators and others from within the campus. It will be co-chaired by CU Provost Phil DiStefano and CU Senior Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer Ric Porreca. Peterson also has retained former CU System Vice President and CU-Boulder Vice Chancellor for Administration Stuart Takeuchi to coordinate the strategic planning effort.
"This is an exciting process that I am eager to begin," said Peterson. "It will involve our looking outward at the external factors that shape our mission - things like enrollment, public expectations, resource allocation and the changing public-private landscape, among many factors. The goal is to arrive at a vision for the future that will help chart our course in the world of 2030 and examine what that world might demand of us at the local, state, federal and global levels."
The steering committee will first review and discuss possible enrollment scenarios for the future of the campus, consider the long-term feasibility of CU-Boulder's existing plans and speculate about the environment within which CU-Boulder "is likely to find itself" in the world of 2030, Peterson said.
Then the committee will be divided into six subcommittees, each of which will focus on one critical area that will factor heavily into CU-Boulder's future, such as the education of graduates; research; the state of Colorado; the Boulder community; the university community and financial and structural alternatives for CU's future. The subcommittees will be supplemented with the input of other vital members of the campus community.
Each subcommittee will be asked to prepare a "position paper" that outlines responses to questions posed by the chancellor to frame the issues. These position papers will then be shared with the broader campus community by various means and media, and each subcommittee will then form an action plan of long- and short-term steps that will seek to implement the characteristics of Colorado's flagship university in the year 2030.
A final combined report and action plan will be built upon the subcommittee's reports and there will again be opportunities for the campus community to review and provide input on that plan. Peterson has asked that the final plan be submitted to him by May 4, 2007, in order that he can forward it to CU President Hank Brown for action by the CU Board of Regents at its meeting in September 2007.
The steering committee is currently being formed, and its membership is expected to be finalized by early December and announced to the public quickly thereafter.
"What pleases me about this vision process is we are working from the ground up," said Peterson. "We are asking the vital questions we need to ask to guide us to our future, but we're asking them with the guidance of both key internal and external stakeholders. This is a process with high stakes that builds on the other strategic planning our schools and colleges have recently done, and it will shape where we go and how we serve future generations of CU students and the state of Colorado."