After 14 months, 120 meetings and public forums, 600 e-mails and thousands of hours of work, the pages of the VCU 2020 Strategic Plan soon may close.
The plan details goals and initiatives that lead VCU, from construction to class sizes to research goals for the next 15 years.
Stephen D. Gottfredson, provost and vice president for academic affairs, recently presented the near final draft of the plan to students, faculty and staff for discussion.
“We really want this to be VCU’s plan, and that means it has to come from the VCU community,” said Gottfredson, co-chair of the VCU 2020 planning commission along with Sheldon Retchin, vice president for health sciences and CEO of VCU’s Health System.
About 90 people, mainly faculty and staff, attended the public forum at the Grace Street Theatre where Gottfredson spent 30 minutes discussing the draft, but the audience asked only a few questions about the drafting process.
The reason?
The commission had consulted students, faculty, staff and alumni throughout the drafting process.
“We really have saturated the community,” he said.
For instance, Kathryn Murphy-Judy, the Faculty Senate president, said the senate has been involved from the first discussions. Furthermore, last year’s president, Judith Lewis of the School of Nursing, served on the executive committee of the planning commission, which consisted of students, faculty, staff and administrators.
A student-centered university represents one key part of the strategic plan with the University College and the Campus Compact as the two initiatives that focus on student engagement with the university, with other students and with learning.
With students being a major issue, Eddie O’Leary, student body president, said the commission consulted the Student Government Association on every issue to ask its opinion. As a representative of the student body, O’Leary will join the commission for its final meeting.
Since the SGA became involved throughout the process, O’Leary said the plan calls for more common space for students and meeting places for student organizations. The SGA also requested more tenured faculty and more teachers in general.
O’Leary said he is happy with the way the plan is developing.
“It’s such a comprehensive plan-a lot of the things we were concerned with were addressed,” he said.
Murphy-Judy said the Faculty Senate is also pleased with the process, and it, too, likes the concept of a student-centered and learning-centered plan.
“We agree that it is farsighted and that the process has been transparent,” Murphy-Judy said. “We’ve had a buy-in.”
With the many available committee positions, focus groups and forums, virtually any member of the community could be involved during the drafting process. The commission also set up a VCU 2020 Web site that allowed visitors to read the latest draft of the plan, review committee members and their decisions as well as examine numerous other documents.
The site allowed another avenue of input as well because people could e-mail the commission with their feedback. Gottfredson said the commission received more than 600 e-mails by the end of the process.
Among other goals for 2020, Gottfredson said he hopes to increase VCU’s name recognition.
“We’ve been pretty quiet about the story of VCU. I hope we get a little noisier about that,” Gottfredson said, then smiled.
After the executive-planning commission meets again Nov. 3 to approve the final draft, the plan then will be presented to the Board of Visitors at its November meeting for a final discussion. After that discussion, the plan will be printed, then presented in February for ratification by the board.
Gottfredson said the university will begin implementing the plan immediately after approval.