Faculty and staff across IUPUI have been actively working on the individual campus plan that will align with IU 2030, the university’s seven-year strategic plan.

The strategic planning process will guide the advancement of IUPUI, IUPUC and IU Fort Wayne and will be closely integrated with Vision 2024, the realignment of Indiana University and Purdue University in Indianapolis.

Planning committees were formed in three core strategic areas:

• Student Success and Opportunity.
• Transformative Research and Creativity.
• Service to the State and Beyond.

The final strategic plan is scheduled to be shared with the campus community in March.

Jerry Daday, executive associate dean overseeing the Institute for Engaged Learning and professor of sociology in the School of Liberal Arts, is among three co-chairs of the Student Success and Opportunity committee.

IUPUI Today talked to Daday about where the strategic planning process stands now and what’s next.

Question: What are some of the main ideas and objectives included in the Student Success and Opportunity committee’s strategic plan draft?

Answer: Our group includes eight subcommittees, about 100 people total, tackling these areas of focus:

• Enhancing curricula, pedagogy and inclusive teaching practices.
• Enhancing student life and campus experience.
• Enhancing undergraduate career outcomes.
• Strengthening student enrollment.
• Improving equity and inclusion across the student experience.
• Improving graduate and professional education.
• Increasing retention and graduation rates.
• Integrating undergraduate high-impact experiences for all undergraduate students.

Themes that have emerged across many subcommittees include developing a broad financial aid strategy that supports enrollment growth and retention; emphasizing the role of greater Indianapolis in our communications and actions; identifying opportunities for greater community engagement through days of service and centralized internship opportunities; building upon the work we have done with applied and experiential learning; and providing a consistently high-quality first-year experience.

Q: What input and information have the subcommittees considered when developing the plan?

A: We encourage them to think boldly about what creates a powerful transformative experience for our students on campus. That includes things that we need to strategically start doing, things that we’re doing right now that we need to do more of and what maybe isn’t working that we can address through the strategic planning process.

The subcommittees solicited feedback from students throughout this process, and members have been thoughtful about reflecting on their own experiences working with students, either in student life or in the classroom.

Q: What are the next steps in the process?

A: The subcommittees have each generated an initial draft of their documents. They highlighted about five goals, provided metrics that might be used to evaluate student success, and identified campus offices and groups that need to be engaged in some of the next steps in terms of implementation.

The Executive Committee on the IUPUI campus reviewed those documents in December and provided feedback, which the subcommittees are now using to create more finalized drafts. The Executive Committee will review the new drafts in early February.

Q: What else would you like faculty, staff, students and other stakeholders to know about IUPUI’s strategic planning process and IU 2030?

A: I would love for people to know that members of the subcommittees have been hard at work on a very short timeline for the fall semester.

For a lot of these folks, this is the first time they’ve been involved in strategic planning for the campus, maybe the first time they’ve been involved in any kind of strategic planning, and they’ve embraced it with a lot of energy and positivity.

As we all know, there are a lot of changes happening on the Indianapolis campus, and these folks have rolled up their sleeves to really try and dream what the future of this campus is going to look like. It’s selfless work. They’re doing it because they care about this place, they care about students, and they care about each other.

My co-chairs, Rafael Bahamonde and Joe Hayes, and I are really proud of the work that they’ve done.