After a full year of 2030 strategic planning campus conversations – over coffee and lunch, during Town Hall sessions, through surveys and emails and listening sessions – seven core strategies have emerged as the driving forces behind the next decade of success at UCCS.
Communique will inform you weekly about each of the seven core strategies, which are not prioritized in any way. These updates will continue over the next six weeks, culminating in the next Town Hall on September 3, to which the entire campus community is invited.
This week, Communique will give an overview on sustainable enrollment. This core strategy working group was championed by Harper Johnson, assistant vice chancellor for information technology and chief information officer. Megann Murphy, associate director for event services, served as team lead. The names of the team members, all of whom volunteered for the working group, are provided here.
Sustainable enrollment
The charge of the second core strategy in the UCCS 2030 Strategic Plan: To enhance strategic enrollment and retention efforts. In doing so, UCCS aims to drive long-term stability and sustainability.
”UCCS will enhance strategic enrollment and retention efforts to drive long-term stability and sustainability.”
Working group
After Chancellor Venkat Reddy’s Town Hall sessions in March, faculty, staff and students formed and joined working groups for each of the plan’s seven core strategies. Core strategy working groups were tasked with identifying the priorities, initiatives, anticipated outcomes and measures of success for each of the strategic themes.
Johnson took charge of the core strategy working group, with Murphy taking on a role as team lead. Faculty, staff and student volunteers rounded out the group.
According to Murphy, “The reason I wanted to be involved in this particular strategy is because we’ve grown at such a fast rate over the last several years. We are serving more students than ever before and have more faculty and staff on campus. In order to keep serving our students with quality programs and retain quality staff, we have to look at growing in a way that we can sustain, regardless of state funding.”
Outcomes
By enhancing strategic enrollment and retention efforts, the core strategy working group envisions the following outcomes:
- Significant improvement in retention and graduation rates of all students.
- A significant increase in the number of online programs offered and the number of online students served.
- A significant increase in non-resident and international students enrolled.
Measures of success
As the strategy moves into implementation, the core strategy working group will measure success by the following criteria:
- Board of Regents reported retention and graduation rates and increased second to third year persistence rates.
- Increased numbers of online programs, fully-online students, and students taking at least one online course.
- Annual increases in both non-resident and international students.
Initiatives
To translate vision into practice, the core strategy working group recommends the following initiatives:
- Strengthened online programs that meet the evolving academic and professional needs of students.
- A campus-wide system to integrate the delivery of services from recruiting through graduation to support increased online and on-campus enrollment, retention, persistence and graduation, taking the form of a virtual and in-person one-stop-shop for the delivery of student services (including newly re-designed Career Center).
- An expanded recruiting pipeline to UCCS with a focus on non-resident and international students, online programs, high school concurrent enrollment and K-12 outreach.
Next steps
With a draft strategy in place, there are limited opportunities for further refinement. Campus community members with thoughts on how to fine-tune the existing strategy are welcome to submit suggestions on the strategic plan website. They will be passed to the designated core strategy working group for review, and appropriate changes will made.
Faculty, staff and students will have additional opportunities to participate in the strategic planning process as teams tasked to each core strategy form in the fall semester. Continue to check the strategic plan website for updates.
Chancellor Venkat Reddy is grateful to the active participation of faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members in helping to shape the future of the UCCS campus.
Read additional deep dives:
Strategic Plan Deep Dive Week 1: Excellence in research and creative works
Strategic Plan Deep Dive Week 3: Learning, engagement and inclusive belonging
Strategic Plan Deep Dive Week 4: Optimization of capabilities
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