Indiana Continuing Education Tracking System Pla

Strategic Plan for 2020–25

IUP's Strategic Plan for 2020–25 is designed to transform the culture at IUP to enhance the student experience by fostering exceptional student-centeredness. Transformation will include reordering resources to ensure every student is engaged and can be successful at every point in their journey—transitioning to the university, while enrolled at IUP, and after their time at IUP.

Putting Our Strategic Plan Into Action

To keep you informed about this ongoing work, a series of short messages from members of the IUP community will be shared with you via email throughout the upcoming months.

Core Principles

1. Every student is a priority.
2. Promote the search for, production of, and dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of our students and society.
3. Provide a wide range of intellectual and professional opportunities for students that will assist them in developing their potential for becoming productive and responsible citizens.
4. Construct an environment of respect that encourages the growth of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
5. Respond to students and their needs when and where they are to enhance student satisfaction.
6. Design and re-engineer processes and procedures logically to improve ease of use for students.
7. Improve communication, collaboration, and engagement across the university, and with our alumni and community partners.

Impact Areas

IUP-Readiness

1. Enhance and expand orientations to ensure all IUP populations—students, families, faculty, and staff, are successful.
2. Create intentional connections (both formal and informal) between populations who are new to the university, with each other and with the university community.
3. Create new and expand existing resources to ensure continuous improvement in the support of student success.
4. Improve communications that highlight resources and tools available to support student success.

Details / Examples

1. 1. Develop programming for all incoming classes: freshman, transfer, commuter, re-admits, veterans, transient, graduate, international, clock-hour, non-degree seeking.
   2. Develop programming for the support systems of incoming classes: parents, guardians, spouses, households.
   3. Enhance orientation for all employees: faculty, non-faculty, students, graduate assistants.
2. 1. Create a Facebook page for parents of incoming classes; connect incoming students by geographic location; connect online students and regional campus students prior to class start.
   2. Broaden peer mentoring and employee mentoring programs.
3. 1. Develop a one-stop resource to assist students with questions.
   2. Create a "Common Hour" across the university for students to work with staff/faculty as needed.
4. 1. Explore new social media software and communication tools.

Finding and Creating Community

1. Create, enhance, promote, and support opportunities for students to engage and network with like-minded students, both socially and academically.
2. Foster community-based initiatives and partnerships to increase experiential learning, research and professional opportunities for all students.
3. Customize innovative methods of intentional social media use to promote engagement within the IUP community.

Details / Examples

1. 1. Review procedures that may impede support of opportunities for students.
   2. Foster collaboration between student organizations.
   3. Allow students to positively engage by offering more ways to connect.
2. 1. Pair students early with alumni, businesses, organizations, and other leaders to foster learning and networking opportunities.
3. 1. Encourage meaningful and responsible social media use across the IUP community; Establish the purpose of each social media tool across all levels—university, colleges, departments, clubs.
   2. Provide faculty and staff education on social media use to promote IUP initiatives.
   3. Encourage faculty to increase or initiate social media content to promote their scholarship and cutting-edge academics.

Mental Health and Well-Being

1. Implement methods to support students in obtaining mental health services in a fast and efficient way when and where they need the help.
2. Promote mental health wellness across all IUP environments.
3. Collaborate with the community to engineer a responsive, comprehensive, and long-term system of mental health support for students.
4. Educate and support students to attend to physiological, safety, and financial needs.

Details / Examples

1. 1. Re-examine current procedures for students obtaining mental health services (e.g., electronic systems of referral, teletherapy options, providing confidential space for teletherapy appointments, etc.).
2. 1. Re-engineer the frequency, content, and methods for communicating with students about mental health and wellness maintenance and support services.
3. 1. Establish a mental health system of support for IUP students that utilizes continuous care within the immediate community and in communities students reside (e.g. working with county provider; moving beyond referral only; providing space for teletherapy).
4. 1. Utilize a mental health system of support for faculty, staff, and students to use to support all students in attending to, obtaining, and maintaining mental and physical well-being supports.

Post-IUP Success

1. Connect current and previous students to resources and programming that support career exploration, preparation, development, and success.
2. Build stronger and intentional connections with alumni through mentorships, internships and business partnerships.

Details / Examples

1. 1. Work with the Career and Professional Development Center to enhance the curriculum
2. 1. Collaborate with university organizations (e.g. Alumni and Friends, Career and Professional Development Center).

Academic Success

1. Enhance students' initial experience at IUP, including academic support and personal development, in an environment that fosters health and wellness, and values engagement between all members of IUP.
2. Establish and/or enhance student-peer mentorship programs within each college to provide academic support and social guidance.
3. Enhance the course scheduling process across the university to better accommodate the students, allowing more flexibility, adaptability, and opportunities.
4. Identify and address obstacles that impede graduation.
5. Enhance advisee/advisor communication.
6. Increase and enhance experiential learning, research, and professional opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students.

Details / Examples

1. 1. Create a classroom experience for new learners that facilitates their particular transitional needs from home to college.
   2. Create student cohorts to enhance student support systems.
2. 1. Evaluate types of peer mentoring programs at all levels to refine programs that benefit all student types.
3. 1. Evaluate offerings based on history, trends and student/course demand. May include more evening and weekend courses, as well as increased distance education offerings.
4. 1. Obstacles could include: Curricular, financial insecurities, bottleneck courses, course sequencing, timing and recurrence of course offerings.
5. 1. Structure more interactions between advisors and advisees.
   2. Promote how students should use advisors as a resource.
   3. Consider pairing all students with student success coaches.
6. 1. Create more funded opportunities for students. Encourage and fund student travel to professional conferences.

Messages

Putting Our Strategic Plan Into Action – A Summer of Progress, Looking Forward: August 16, 2022

Colleagues,

This summer has flown by. I hope you all have taken some time to rest and rejuvenate.

As you know from updates throughout the summer, we have accomplished a great deal in the last three months related to putting our strategic plan into action.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of this ongoing work, including the members and leadership of our University Planning Council. The toolkit digital workbook is a great resource, and I have heard very positive feedback from those who completed the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Summer Academy. I also want to thank everyone who took time to create messaging to keep us informed of our progress on this very important work.

I am truly looking forward to a productive and positive year. IUP employees are talented, dedicated, and innovative, and I see, again and again, your commitment to our students and to becoming a more student-centered university.

As we transition back to face-to-face meetings and gatherings, and as employees return to work at their university locations, I look forward to more chances for informal, in-person discussions with one another, including meetings at the department and college levels. I'll be talking more about our future at the Opening of the Academic Year program on Friday, August 19, at 9:00 a.m. in Fisher Auditorium. I hope to see you there.

Thank you for embracing our strategic plan and for all of your efforts to make it part of your day-to-day work. I can't wait to see our campus come alive again. I have missed you.

Michael A. Driscoll

President

Putting Our Strategic Plan Into Action – Looking Forward, A Message from IUP's SGA President: August 2, 2022

Fellow Crimson Hawks,

I hope you all have had an enjoyable and relaxing summer.

For many of us students, this summer has probably been a typical one—working, vacationing, and most importantly, catching up on the sleep that we don't get during the academic year.

However, this summer has been far from typical for Pennsylvania's State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), the system to which IUP and our fellow sister schools belong. In fact, this summer has been historic for IUP and our fellow schools in the State System because on July 8^th, Governor Wolf signed the 2022-23 Pennsylvania budget approved by the Pennsylvania General Assembly.

Where do we, the IUP community, fit into this? Luckily for us, we stand to benefit from this tremendously—and here's why:

1. The state budget provides $552.5 million to PASSHE. This is a $75 million increase from the 2021-22 budget.
2. The state budget also provides $125 million in one-time American Rescue Plan Act funding to PASSHE in an effort to support the system as it is actively redesigning
3. IUP will receive a portion of this money based on an allocation formula.

As the IUP community, we should see this not just as in an investment in public higher education in Pennsylvania as a whole, but as a direct investment in us. That's right—the state of Pennsylvania is investing in us: our education, our jobs, and our futures.

This investment will be essential to advancing one of the main goals represented in IUP's 2020-25 Strategic Plan: student centeredness and student success. This increase in funding will help give faculty and staff the resources to focus on putting this strategic plan into action in ways that will put students at the center of all IUP actions.

Guided by the IUP Strategic Plan and implemented in conjunction with this historic investment from the state, the path ahead is looking brighter than ever for the IUP community.

I can't wait to see what the future holds for us.

Abby Hancox
President, IUP Student Government Association
Student Member, Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education Board of Governors

Putting Our Strategic Plan Into Action – Empowering Student Research: July 14, 2022

Colleagues,

A total of 17 undergraduate students from a variety of departments are doing research this summer through U-SOAR (Undergraduate Summer Opportunities for Applying Research), working on projects ranging from studying the use of White's Woods to regeneration of organs in zebrafish.

All of the students are paired with faculty mentors. For some students, the U-SOAR projects are extensions of ongoing study; for others, it's opening the door to the possibilities of research, and seeing themselves as researchers.

Two of the core principles of the Strategic Plan directly speak to the importance of providing individualized and unique opportunities for research—which IUP does very well: "promote the search for, production of, and dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of our students and society" and "provide a wide range of intellectual and professional opportunities for students that will assist them in developing their potential for becoming productive and responsible citizens." These principles fit perfectly with IUP's designation as a "High Research Activity" (R2) university by the American Council on Education.

IUP is one of only 93 public universities in the nation with this designation.

U-SOAR is just one of many initiatives related to helping our students imagine themselves as researchers in every discipline. This summer, we hired our first "maker-in-residence" for STEAMSHOP, which will facilitate student access to the resources of this campus makerspace (more to come on this). And, the Applied Research Lab (ARL), which provides support for student researchers, especially our graduate student researchers, will have a new, full-time director—we'll be making a formal announcement soon with more details. Dr. Andrea Palmiotto, currently in Germany for a field school at the site of a World War II plane crash, is gearing up to begin a new academic year as director of the Undergraduate Research Office, which will include the National Achievement Scholarship Office.

By the way, IUP students have won 18 Fulbright scholarships since 1965, and more than 70 faculty have received Fulbrights since 1950. That's on top of 12 Goldwater Scholarships (providing funding for graduate education), 21 Gilman Awards and 10 Freeman-Asia Scholarships (for international study)—and many, many other competitive national scholarships.

IUP provides more than $6 million annually in graduate student scholarships, graduate assistantships, teaching associateships, and funds to support graduate student research grants, professional development, and presentation of original scholarship at scholarly conferences.

We are proud of the contribution IUP graduate students make to the creation and dissemination of high-impact research.

It's extremely gratifying and motivating to see the incredible work and excitement of our student—and our faculty—researchers. It keeps us focused on our goal of helping IUP to embrace its identity as a doctoral research university through supporting our researchers and providing our students with every opportunity for success and growth.

Dr. Hilliary Creely
Dean, School of Graduate Studies and Research

Continuing Our Commitment to DEI: June 29, 2022

Colleagues,

A total of 56 faculty, five Center for Teaching Excellence personnel, and two graduate students from departments and programs throughout the university just completed an intensive two-week Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Summer Academy with Dr. Chavella Pittman focusing on building inclusive teaching. Faculty will continue to meet monthly throughout the 2022–23 academic year to support the development of their inclusive teaching practices.

Dr. Pittman is currently a professor of sociology who founded the consulting company,Effective and Efficient Faculty. Her work focuses on providing faculty support for inequities in teaching and campus experiences. You can hear her discuss some of these issues on the Teaching in Color podcast . She provides consultations, keynotes, workshops, online courses/training, and coaching on a variety of diversity, teaching, and faculty development topics.

Initially, the program was developed to accommodate 20 faculty, but was expanded due to the increased response from faculty. This speaks positively to our IUP community—first, that faculty would take time from already overloaded schedules to participate, after a busy semester; and second, that university leadership made resources available to invest in faculty participants.

Our faculty were extraordinary in their professionalism and commitment to developing their skills and to thinking more deeply about inclusive teaching. We know that a great deal of good work and practices are in place and will continue to be developed. We hear again and again from students that faculty who create inclusive classrooms make the difference between success at IUP and giving up on their educational goals—they notice when faculty go that extra mile to meet them where they are. It was wonderful to see faculty share their success stories—and the issues that keep them awake at night—in order to move forward in our university-wide commitment to student success. Faculty told us that they learned a great deal during the Summer Academy course and cohort discussions, including building more relationships with colleagues from different disciplines and Colleges.

Like our Difficult Dialogues work, it is our expectation that participation in this Academy not only help faculty to develop skills important to serving a student population that is increasingly diverse, but that Academy participants share their experiences with their colleagues, both formally and informally (more on these opportunities will be coming in the fall). In fact, many faculty participants are already asking for "round two" in order to continue development of skills and strategies to better serve our students and to work more collaboratively with colleagues. We'll be sharing those opportunities with the community as they are finalized.

It was also very gratifying to hear Dr. Pittman's praise for the quality of the work—and the faculty attitudes and commitment to DEI—that is already in place.

While there is a great deal of work yet to be done, we want to thank every member of the IUP community who participated or supported this year's Summer Academy in any way. We look forward to continuing the conversation and putting the work into action.

Elise Glenn
IUP Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer and Title IX coordinator

Rachel DeSoto-Jackson
Director, IUP Center for Teaching ExcellenceAssociate Professor, Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance

Toolkit Digital Workbook Now Available : June 14, 2022

Colleagues,

As mentioned inlast week's message, the University Planning Council (UPC) has been working to create resources—a "toolkit"—to help units, departments, and divisions implement the strategic plan in your current and future work. (IUP login is required to access the toolkit)

The first element of this toolkit is a digital workbook designed to assist you in thinking through short- and long-term planning and keeping the student experience at the center of our processes and systems.It also includes a link to a digital worksheet as a culminating activity to help to identify actionable tactics that align with the impact areas of thestrategic plan.

Please take some time to review and consider how this workbook can assist you in your planning, and if your areas may want to engage others across the university in your work. UPC team members are available to help facilitate this process; please reach out to us, as co-chairs of the UPC,Scott Moore (rsmoore@iup.edu)orPaula Stossel (pstoss@iup.edu), to get started in identifying your specific UPC liaisons.

In addition to the toolkit, UPC is working on recommendations for restructuring our university-wide committees (as President Driscoll mentioned in his April 19th"The Future of IUP" speech), to build on the progress of prior committees about student success, retention, and recruitment, to specifically focus on the five impact areas of the strategic plan.

Also, we welcome your suggestions about students who are available this summer to participate in creating short video clips to show and highlight examples of exceptional student centeredness.If you have students who would like to participate in this activity, please email UPC co-chair Paula Stossel, pstoss@iup.edu.

Thank you for your continued commitment to this important work. You will hear more from us and from other members of the university community throughout the summer months.

Scott MoorePaula Stossel

An Update from UPC: June 6, 2022

Hello from UPC!

Thank you for continuing to include the University Planning Council in your planning conversations. As we continue to meet with units across the University, we have identified some common questions and themes, and are actively creating resources to help address those items.

For example, some areas have asked for a refresher on the key elements of thestrategic plan.  Others have asked for assistance in thinking through how to develop strategies and tactics within their areas.  And others have asked, "what do we really mean by student centeredness"?

We are finalizing a toolkit that will include a workbook to help our community think about student centeredness and operationalize the strategic plan.  Elements include questions to think about during brainstorming sessions; worksheets designed to help think through implementing the five impact areas of the strategic plan; prompts to help areas set specific short- and long-term goals; suggestions for determining metrics and determine if proposed goals are achieved; and a culminating worksheet that will enable areas, in partnership with UPC, to document and track our progress.

We are also working toward creating short video clips this summer—with the help of our students—to show and highlight examples of exceptional student centeredness.  If you have students who are available this summer and would like to participate in this activity, please email UPC co-chairPaula Stossel, pstoss@iup.edu.

We will be in touch again soon with details about the toolkit, workbook, and next steps.

Scott MoorePaula StosselUPC Co-chairs

Breaking Down the Impediments: May 24, 2022

Colleagues,

Thank you for the feedback on my May 9 email. Please continue to be in touch with your thoughts, suggestions, and comments.

As promised, you'll hear from me and other members of the IUP community throughout the summer about the ongoing work of putting our strategic planinto action.

Today, I want to address the topic of the "stupid stuff" that, in my "The Future of IUP"speech, I invited you to stop doing.

When members of the University Planning Council met with students, campus groups, and offices while drafting the strategic plan, one common refrain was concern over the impediments or barriers that people encountered in their work that hindered helping students.

When I say, "Stop doing stupid stuff," I am empowering you to identify and then work with your supervisor and your colleagues to remove or redesign these processes, keeping the student experience as the deciding factor.

For example, since we opened the Information Desk in the IUP Libraries in fall 2021, students and staff have answered close to 10,000 calls. They have worked hard to answer questions directly, rather than bouncing students from place to place. (Redirecting students is one of the items on the "impediments" list collected by the UPC.) So, let's look at frequent questions and concerns and use that information to make appropriate changes—including assessing if additional staffing is needed for this service, including during the summer months.

In your responses to my May 9 message, several of you suggested things we might stop doing (and some things we might emphasize).

In the next message on this topic, UPC cochairs Scott Moore and Paula Stossel will discuss what the UPC is doing this summer to advance this work, including providing a tool kit to help us eliminate impediments to serving our students.

Thank you for everything you continue to do for our students and for this university, including participating in theSummer Utilities Savings Pilot Program.

As you continue your work, also make time to rest, rejuvenate, and celebrate your successes of the past year. And, enjoy the sunshine.

Michael A. Driscoll
President

Defining the Goal: May 9, 2022

Colleagues,

It's been an incredibly busy and productive semester. Thank you.

As promised in my "The Future of IUP" message, we cannot wait—we must build our new future, as outlined in our Strategic Plan.

Some have been asking what being student-centered, the central goal of our Strategic Plan, really is.

I don't have all the answers: we need active engagement and discussion—including actively involving and listening to our students—to understand what it really means for IUP, and for each of us as part of the IUP community.

The University Planning Council has done a lot of thoughtful work to frame the discussion.

Here's some  ideas to help to move the discussions forward:

• In any practice or process at IUP, the primary focus is the student experience for every  type of student—undergraduate, graduate, clock hour, transfer, commuter, incoming, adult. If the practice or process doesn't advance the student experience, then we must change it.
• In every interaction we have with a student in any fashion, we must meet the student as an individual where they are, at that point in time.

In short, everything our students experience should be carefully and deliberately designed with the individual student positioned squarely in the spotlight.

A great example is the restructuring of Clark Hall.  After students told us that the old arrangement wasn't working for them, we made changes to offer a wider range of services in one location.

The Hawks Q & A Center is another example of putting students at the center of our focus—a place where we provide answers to student questions on their schedule, not ours.

I know that many of you are actively working on initiatives to advance student-centeredness, or that you have suggestions about additional things that we need to do.

I want to hear from you about this work, and your recommendations, so that we can work together. I'm easy to reach: driscoll@iup.edu.

You can expect regular updates from me and others—including students—throughout the summer.

So, let's take a collective deep breath, and let's go. We will do this.

Michael A. DriscollPresident

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Source: https://www.iup.edu/about/strategic-plan/index.html

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