Update from the Strategic Plan Steering Committee

Dear Colleagues, 

We hope your academic year is off to a great start. The beginning of the fall semester has brought with it a palpable sense of energy and enthusiasm, and we are hoping you will be willing lend some of that energy and enthusiasm to the strategic planning process! To that end, we are writing with an update on the Strategic Plan Steering Committee’s work to date, an overview of immediate next steps, and a framework for how we plan engage with the Marist community to ensure a meaningful and transparent process. Most importantly, we’re writing to ask you to be an active participant in that process.

In order to keep to our ambitious agenda of having a draft plan ready for consideration by the Board of Trustees in May of 2023, the steering committee has been meeting on a regular basis. This summer we developed a planning process and timeline, assessed the outcomes and impact of the 2018-23 Strategic Plan, and developed a community engagement strategy. We are in the final stages of a draft assessment of the impact and outcomes of the 2018-23 plan, which includes major accomplishments related to the three pillars of the previous plan: student success, innovation, and the social good. The assessment also acknowledges the profound impact that the COVID-19 impact had on the College's planning and the myriad innovations that resulted from rethinking how we operate. We look forward to sharing that draft with the campus community, and incorporating your feedback in the final product.

While we acknowledge the importance of reflecting upon the past before turning our sights to the future, we are most excited about hearing from you directly about how to chart a bold and ambitious course for the College’s future.  Our committee truly believes that the plan will be better for the active participation of all members of our campus community: faculty, students, staff, alumni, and friends – we want to hear about your hopes and aspirations for Marist.  President Weinman has invited us to “dream big” throughout this process, and we hope you will join us in that task.

The steering committee has therefore developed a stakeholder engagement plan to ensure that we consider and incorporate the perspectives from as many members of our community as possible. This strategy will include listening sessions (both in-person and virtual), meetings with stakeholder groups, the development of a new website, and survey instruments administered at important points in the planning process. We will host our first two in-person listening sessions for faculty and staff starting next week: 

• Tuesday 9-13 at 9:00 a.m. in Murray Student Center 3201
• Monday 9-19 at 12:30 p.m. in Hancock Center 2023

We are also opening an initial survey about the College's mission and strategic priorities moving forward. The survey can be found here: https://marist.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8BrwZ2jK3JmyqCG. The survey should take 5-10 minutes to complete and will remain open until September 28. Also, the steering committee is excited to announce the creation of a new homepage that can be found here: https://www.marist.edu/strategic-plan-2023. The page includes important information about the planning process, future updates on listening sessions, the assessment of the 2018-23 Strategic Plan, as well as developments relevant to this planning process. The page also contains contact information, in the event that you’d like to email a comment or suggestion directly to the steering committee.

Thank you in advance for your input into the development of the College's strategic plan. We look forward to hearing about your vision for the future of Marist, and hope to see you at one of the September listening sessions.

Sincerely,

Emily and James