Colorado State University-Pueblo will hold an open forum this Tuesday for strategic planning. The forum is an opportunity for the campus and community to give feedback on proposed ideas to better the university. The forum only takes place once every five years.
“The 2013-2018 strategic plan is totally dedicated to ‘student success,’” said Jennifer Mullen, CSU-Pueblo’s chief of staff. “In other words, its focus is on how best to recruit students to CSU-Pueblo and how to retain them so that they graduate college with us.”
The strategic plan contains four goals that the university faculty and staff hope to achieve: excellent academics, affordable education, transformative opportunities and student support life.
In the area of excellent academics, the staff is looking into ways that it can better meet the academic needs of both current and prospective students at CSU-Pueblo.
“We’re looking at who we should be recruiting to CSU-Pueblo, how to ensure our academic programs continue to be excellent for our students, and what kinds of things we should be teaching our students so that they are successful in whatever they choose to do after college,” Mullen said.
The primary focus of the second area, affordable education, is stressing to students the importance of understanding the potential consequences of student loans. The staff is also exploring ideas to keep CSU-Pueblo affordable for students through financial aid and scholarships, Mullen said.
In order to provide transformative opportunities, the university will to continue encouraging diversity among the students, staff and faculty and finding the most effective ways to teach students. These methods could include more online courses, hybrid courses and various types of curriculums in the classrooms.
The final goal of the strategic plan is the area of supportive student life. This area targets the students’ activities and events, campus safety, technology on campus and the grounds and maintenance of the university.
“Your ASG leadership is interested in ideas students may have, particularly in this fourth area, to include in the plan,” Mullen said.
Taking the steps to initiate this plan will take time, and according to Mullen, the action which will come of this plan haven’t been determined yet, and probably won’t be until 2014.
“It takes many months to develop a plan such as this because we have a very large group of dedicated students, faculty, and staff and they all share in its development,” Mullen said.
The plan will continue to change over the course of the next five years because society, the state of Colorado and the students at CSU-Pueblo will all change, according to Mullen.
The Strategic Planning forum will take place Nov. 5, in the Hearthwell Lounge of the Occhiato University Center from noon to 1:30 p.m. Students are asked to RSVP by 3 p.m. on Nov. 1. To RSVP, students can contact Shirley Duran at 549-2718 or email her at [email protected]
