Strategic Planning 2012

The Board of Trustees unanimously approved our new, six-year strategic plan at its daylong meeting Saturday, congratulating the university community for its dual commitment to strengthen academic quality and our financial resources.

After thoughtful deliberations, trustees offered several recommendations to ensure success. At their request, we will engage external evaluators to assess metrics demonstrating annual progress on enriching academic quality, add emphasis to the Catholic theological tradition as part of an interdisciplinary approach to Catholic Studies and determine distinct trigger points in which anticipated revenues must materialize before planned investments are undertaken or move more aggressively to implement strategic initiatives if operating income and bottom lines are generated more quickly than expected.

Trustees also addressed ways to fund the plan and accepted in principle the university’s proposal to divert $4 million from the bottom line in next year’s budget to augment funds already included in the 2006-07 operating budget to help kick off the plan. The board’s Academic Affairs and Finance Committees will add this proposal for approval to their next meetings’ agendas.

Now that we have secured board approval, the university can switch gears from planning mode to implementation. I have asked John Culbert, dean of The Theatre School, to coordinate efforts to introduce the plan to the entire university community in the spring and fall. I know John will be grateful for your ideas and assistance.

Many voices have shaped this plan, and the time has come to celebrate this community accomplishment and concentrate our activities on achieving our goals. To facilitate this Helmut Epp, executive vice president for Academic Affairs, has asked Charles Strain, associate vice president for Academic Affairs, to create ways of monitoring and measuring DePaul’s progress toward our academic goals – the heart of our plan. I know that Charles will be grateful for your ideas and assistance as well.

The March 15 issue of Newsline will include a special strategic planning section and a poster summarizing our six goals and their numerous objectives. You can visit Campus Connection to further educate yourself by checking out a series of white papers prepared for the board on important themes reflected in the plan.

Hundreds of faculty, staff, students, committee members, council members, deans and vice presidents invested a tremendous amount of time and talent in researching and developing this plan. I want to thank them all. Vision 2012 sets us on a path to enhance academic rigor, student services, diversity and our Catholic, Vincentian identity while achieving targeted enrollment growth, increasing fundraising success and improving our overall financial condition. I want to recognize Gerry Mulderig, Helmut Epp and especially Susanne Dumbleton for their energy and leadership of this inclusive planning process.

I look forward to working with you in the coming months as you develop ways in which each of your areas will contribute to this collective vision of DePaul’s future success.

Sincerely,
Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M.
President