Steering Committee Retreat – What Happens Now?

The Wichita State University Strategic Planning Steering Committee engaged in an energizing retreat this week. Kevin Bomhoff (Director of Strategic Development, WSU Center for Community Support and Research) and Misty Bruckner (Associate Director, Center for Urban Studies in the Hugo Wall School of Urban and Public Affairs) served as our moderators for the two-day retreat. We found their help to be invaluable. The resources on our campus, such as Misty and Kevin, are amazing. 

The Steering Committee members—composed of campus and community volunteers—dedicated their time, thought, and effort to a successful retreat. We made tremendous progress on draft vision, mission, values, and big audacious goals. We are not ready to release anything publicly, yet. There is still work to be accomplished. Our plan is to introduce a refined draft plan to the WSU campus and larger Wichita communities, later this month. Watch for details of the April 25 town hall rollout meeting.

What Do We Want To Be?

WSU Strategic Planning
Data Analysis Effort

During our strategic planning listening process, on many occasions we have heard that Wichita State University must not try to be all things to all people. We must decide what we want to be, and then be what we say we are. This seems simple, but it is not.

During a recent campus update, WSU President John Bardo said that we have not engaged in a campus-wide full discussion of expectations with regard to what it means to Wichita State University to be a “research university.” There are many types of research universities, each with different allocations of time and resources.

What does it mean to you for Wichita State University to be a “research university”? What do we at Wichita State University want to be? How do we establish a unique niche? What should that niche be? I would like to hear your thoughts.

By the way, much of what President Bardo discussed during his campus update is linked to what our Steering Committee is hearing in our strategic planning discussions. If you have access to the myWSU website, you can access his update on the home page.

Preparation for the Steering Committee Retreat

The Steering Committee for the WSU Strategic Planning Initiative is preparing for a two-day retreat later this month. Our goal for the retreat is to develop a draft of the strategic plan. Parts of the plan will be taken out in April for our last round of campus and community town hall meetings.

There is a tremendous amount of data for the Steering Committee to consider. If you look at our website, it contains much of these data. If you can imagine reading all of the information, making sense of it, and then developing a vision and big, audacious goals for WSU, that is what the Steering Committee will be doing at the retreat. As you might expect, the Steering Committee is data fatigued at this point. Fortunately, two graduate students are working on projects to help us make sense of the data. 

We hope that everyone who has wanted has taken the opportunity to participate in the data gathering process. If there is anything you would like to tell the Steering Committee before we move into the plan-writing phase of our initiative, there are several ways to contact us. First, provide your thoughts through the “Talk to Us” link on our website. Second, post comments to this blog. Third, e-mail Steering Committee members at the addresses listed on our website. 

Thanks to all who have participated thus far. The process will be a success because of you.

Town Hall Thoughts

This week (Thursday, February 28) we hosted a joint campus and community town hall meeting. We talked about core values and big, bold visions for WSU. Thank you to all the attendees. Your participation helps shape our important work on WSU’s strategic plan.

A big “thank you” to our guest blogger, Charlie Claycomb (WSU Alumnus 1971, 1991), who provides his thoughts about the town hall. 

There was a great turnout for the Strategic Planning meeting this week. There were people from Wichita City Council, WSU, Butler Community College, and the general community from Wichita, Goddard, Haysville, Andover, El Dorado, and Kansas City to name a few. There was much discussion about what values are important for our university and its strategic plan.

The general theme seemed to be that students and the university would benefit from more practical experience and more cross discipline idea exchange. It was felt that students would be more successful during and after college if they had broader real world information and experience.  

There were far too many ideas shared in the meeting than one could record mentally, but notes were taken and bold ideas were left on note cards for future assimilation. This is an exciting process with many valuable ideas coming from all who attended.