Higher education, especially regional comprehensive universities like SRU, face unprecedented times in many ways, and some facets of the post-secondary world are daunting, yet our strategic planning process will focus on ideation, prototyping, environmental scanning, testing and melding ideas, student and labor market data, and innovative ways to serve our region, in ways we might have never imagined. We will think differently. We must think differently. We will continue to refine how we convey “the difference” that is contained in our tagline “Experience the Difference”.
Strategic Goals
The following goals delineate the strategic planning focus of Slippery Rock University. As such, the administration, faculty, and staff align their objectives with these goals and use them to frame planning, budget requests, and assessment.
Goal 1
Increase enrollment while enhancing student quality and diversity.
- Tailor data-driven recruitment, marketing, communication and financial aid/scholarship approaches to market segments (freshmen, transfers, graduates, internationals, adults).
Goal 2
- Offer a quality, flexible, agile, and integrated curriculum and co-curriculum to develop the intellectual, social, physical, and leadership capacities of students.
- Be responsive to the needs of employers and the interests of students.
- Ensure the curriculum has a meaningful liberal arts and sciences foundation.
- Enhance the curriculum with programs and courses reflecting global trends such as demographics; resources and sustainability; science and technology; globalization; inequality; health and wellness; and security (data, cyber, national).
- Interweave value-adding co-curricular activities with curricula.
- Offer programs at times, in places, and using modalities accessible to target audiences.
- Engage in accreditation, assessment and program review to improve programs.
Goal 3
Fuel learning with powerful pedagogies and transformational experiences.
- Increase the number of students participating in courses and non-credit activity which involves study away, undergraduate scholarship, and service learning, among other things.
- Raise the level of student engagement in learning through providing challenging courses, opportunities for peer learning, faculty-student interaction, and effective teaching practices.
Goal 4
Maintain an unwavering focus on success for all students.
- Invest in data-driven initiatives that increase retention and graduation rates for students in general, and that distinguish the needs of different classes and special populations.
Goal 5
Provide a caring campus experience, supported by quality housing, dining, recreation, health, safety and administrative services.
- Optimize student facilities and services, balancing quality and cost.
- Strive for quality interactions and a supportive environment through training.
Goal 6
Attract, retain, and develop highly qualified and diverse faculty, staff, and administrators.
- Train those involved in hiring to recruit and select desirable employees.
- Make SRU an attractive place to work.
- Develop employees to help them to be more successful in their positions.
Goal 7
Increase financial resources, enhance physical facilities, employ cost-effective technology, and adopt sustainable practices.
- Prioritize activities that lead to greater state appropriations, enrollment and hence tuition revenues, grants, and donations.
- Promote continuous improvement through efficiency, effectiveness, productivity, use of available technology, and the development of technological solutions.
- Steward our physical resources to support the mission.
- Reduce risk to the campus community.
Goal 8
Engage alumni and friends in the life of the University.
- Develop a greater appreciation for the transformative effects of an SRU education.
- Increase alumni participation in the Alumni Association and campus activities.
Goal 9
Engage communities in collaborative and mutually-beneficial partnerships to advance the quality of life in the community and enhance learning, research, and civic engagement.
Implementation Strategies:
- Leverage economic, environmental, human, and intellectual resources of the university for the well-being of local, regional, national, and international communities.
- Address community defined priorities through service-learning.
- Co-create socially-useful and academically-sound knowledge that serves the common good.
- Engage students, faculty, staff, and partners to promote civil society and strengthen democratic values.
