Presidential Updates

Clif’s Notes for Oct. 5, 2021

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Students increasingly go to college to get a good job or to gain a career advantage. This is true nationally.

Based on information gathered during our marketing research a few years ago, we also know it is true at Missouri State.

Preparing our students

To meet our students’ needs and goals, it is important that we match the education we provide with current career and professional development opportunities.

It is not enough that we educate our students for careers that existed 30 or 40 years ago when I (and some of you) graduated from college. It is not even enough that we solely educate our students for careers that exist today.

Many aspects of the workforce of today require professional individuals who must have a high degree of specialized education, even advanced-degree qualifications for many careers.

To thrive in the modern world, our students must be workforce ready when they graduate and equipped with the knowledge and skills they need, and the capability to continue learning in order to stay workforce ready throughout their careers.

The future of work

Several of the action items in this year’s Action Plan contemplate the “future of work” and steps MSU should take to position ourselves and our students for the ever-evolving world.

In late October we and our partners with EAB will host a Future of Work Summit on campus. The goal of this summit is to discuss the future of work and actions MSU can and should take under our long-range plan to prepare students for the modern workplace.

Following the meeting, three work groups will begin to meet to develop specific recommendations.

The topical assignments for the groups include:

  • Developing recommendations for partnerships with employers to provide educational opportunities for their employees.
  • Developing recommendations to coordinate the university’s existing processes related to internships and student work opportunities with a goal of connecting those processes with our business-facing operations in IDEA Commons to leverage new opportunities for employers and our students.
  • Analyzing subscription model options with a goal of proposing a subscription model (likely for a defined group of alumni) to pilot at MSU.

We are still working to assemble the rosters for the work groups. Once rosters are finalized, we will send each work group their respective charge and invite all work group members to the Future of Work Summit.

If you have thoughts or ideas you’d like to share with our work groups as they discuss the steps the university should take to prepare MSU and our students for the future of work, please email them to me.

Recognizing staff

Finally, I want to encourage you to recognize your colleagues who have done exceptional work.

The Staff Excellence in University Service Award recognizes excellence in service to the university among staff employees. Through this award, the university recognizes staff who strive to do their jobs well on a daily basis, who go beyond the call of duty in a special situation, and who have contributed in a significant way to the success of the university.

Each year, six full-time staff receive this award (which includes a one-time $1,500 award).

Currently enrolled students, employed staff, faculty or administrators are encouraged to nominate full-time staff employees for the Excellence in University Service Awards.

The deadline to nominate a staff member is Nov. 12. You can review the selection criteria and complete a nomination form on the Staff Excellence in University Service Award webpage.

Thanks for all you do for Missouri State!

Clif’s Notes for June 22, 2021

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Last week the Board of Governors approved our 2021-2026 long-range plan for the Springfield campus.

As I discussed in a prior note, our new plan is built on aspirational stories and examples of big ideas that will guide our decisions and reality over the next five years.

Those stories and ideas fall under four topical headings:

I would encourage you to take some time to review the plan and see yourself and your unit or department in the stories. Respond to the stories and engage with the ideas. Talk about them with friends, family and colleagues — on and off campus.

You will like some of the ideas and dislike others. Most of all, I hope you will be inspired. I hope you will come up with your own big ideas to propel the university to success over the next five years.

Making the Action Plan

Each unit or division should develop a list of action items that align with the themes of the plan.

We will continue to do that centrally by developing an annual action plan and reporting on that plan at the end of each academic year. The administrative and academic leadership teams will begin to develop the Action Plan for 2021-2022 at a planning retreat this week.

We will also continue to track metrics and establish measurable goals. The board discussed metrics under the new plan at their meeting last week.

In addition to many of the metrics tracked under prior plans, the board would like to track metrics in three additional areas:

  • Number of global partnerships.
  • Number of professional doctorates and masters of fine art.
  • External funding received.

Administration will present draft metrics and measurable goals to the board at their retreat in August.

Thankful for a hard-working team

Developing the 2021-26 Long-Range Plan was an arduous process.

I would like to thank Suzanne Shaw and Shawn Wahl for their hard work to co-chair the steering committee and lead this process.

I would also like to thank all of the members of the steering committee. They met weekly throughout the year and invested many grueling hours to coordinate the creation of the plan.

Thanks for all you do for Missouri State!

Clif’s Notes for May 4, 2021

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We have made history at Missouri State over the past 20 years.

Milestones include adopting the public affairs mission, changing the university’s name, and establishing IDEA Commons and a campus in China.

More recently we fought for funding, advocated for new programs outside of our traditional mission, and leaned into public private partnership opportunities.

We have been the second largest public university in the state for some time. However, we have become more recognized and respected over the last 10 years. Our reputation and profile has grown, and our influence is greater.

These things didn’t just happen. We made them happen.

The same will be true as we look toward the future. We cannot just wait for our next successes to happen. We must make them happen.

Embracing big ideas

When we began working on our next long-range plan, we decided to infuse it with our entrepreneurial spirit and take a little different path in its development and presentation.

Our plans in the past have been good. They have helped us become who we are today as an institution.

For our next plan we wanted to go farther. We wanted to create a new plan that doesn’t just tell people what to do. We want the plan to inspire our faculty, staff and students. We envisioned a plan that allows everyone in the university community to dream bigger.

I challenged the steering committee to embrace big ideas, and they have crafted a long-range plan that does just that.

Review the 2021-26 plan

See yourself in the stories

Our past plans laid out lists of things we will accomplish over the next five years. You will not see that in our 2021-26 Long-Range Plan.

You will instead see a plan that tells stories and gives examples of big ideas that will guide our decisions and our reality over the next five years.

We want you to see yourselves, your units and departments in the stories. We want the stories to evoke emotional reactions (positive or negative), inspire other ideas and help you think of ways you can contribute to the future of our university.

Unlike a top-down list of instructions and action items, this plan allows more people at the university to be creative and develop their own initiatives, programs and ideas.

Building action plans

This doesn’t mean we will wholly abandon lists of action items. The long-range plan will have metrics. We will still work through our central process of developing an annual action plan with bulleted lists of action items organized under the themes set forth in the long-range plan.

Each division throughout the university will be responsible for developing their own lists of action items that align with the themes of the plan.

We will all continue to be held accountable for completing the tasks set forth in these traditional organizational documents.

These are important processes for linear thinkers (like me). However, our long-range plan will appeal to and elicit buy-in from a broader, more diverse group of people.

The long-range plan will exist as a creative sketch of our future. It will provoke and drive the action items, initiatives and programs that will make our future happen.

Presenting the long-range plan

We will present the long-range plan to the Board of Governors in May, and they will vote on it at their meeting in June.

In the meantime, we’d like your feedback as we finalize the plan. If you missed last week’s town hall meeting on the long-range plan, you can view a recording of the presentation online.

Once you have viewed that presentation, if you have ideas or thoughts you’d like to share, please email them to me at president@missouristate.edu.

Thanks for all you do for Missouri State!

Clif’s Notes for Sept. 22, 2020

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As I mentioned last week, two of the things we will focus on this year are completing our strategic enrollment management plan and developing the university’s next long-range plan and visioning guide.

SEM planning

We began developing our strategic enrollment management (SEM) plan last year. Unfortunately, the pandemic intervened and we had to stop working on the plan.

We have resumed our work on the SEM plan, and a final draft will be presented to the Board of Governors in December.

When we paused our process last year, we had finalized guiding principles and enrollment goals. We were in the process of developing specific strategies and tactics.

As we resume our planning process, we will narrow and reassess our goals to focus more directly on measurable success in enrollment, both recruitment and retention. We will develop strategies and tactics prepared to address the challenges identified before the pandemic but also to address the new challenges that have recently emerged.

As we narrow the focus of our SEM goals, we will also reduce the number of SEM councils involved in finalizing the plan. If you are involved with the SEM steering committee or one of the remaining SEM councils, please re-engage as we complete the plan.

All members of the university community will work together to implement the SEM plan. I look forward to presenting the final plan to you later this year.

Long-range planning

I hope you are as excited as I am to map our future through the 2021-26 long-range plan. We will develop that plan throughout this year and present it to the board for approval this summer.

Dr. Shawn Wahl and Suzanne Shaw will lead a steering committee for the long-range plan. The steering committee roster will be finalized in the coming weeks and a webpage with updates about the planning process will be published.

We want everyone in the university community to provide input and be part of the planning process. You will have multiple opportunities throughout this year to participate in focus groups, town halls and virtual exploration sessions.

Your first opportunity to engage is an interactive presentation titled Future Visioning Webinar. This presentation is scheduled from 1 – 2 p.m. Sept. 28. Additional details can be found online.

Your vision for MSU

We will also develop our 2021-2026 visioning guide. The visioning guide assists the university in planning our facilities for future growth and development. You can see the current visioning guide online.

Throughout this year, we will analyze our space needs, poll the campus community, and interview critical space stakeholders as we develop our next visioning guide. I hope you will engage in this important process, too.

Public Affairs Conference

The public affairs conference is next week.

The conference theme is The Power of Voice. We are surrounded by voices all offering different information, ideas, opinions and points of view.

This year’s conference will explore how these voices impact us, how we can use our voices, and how we can find ways to respectfully agree and disagree.

This year’s conference will feature four plenary speakers:

This year’s conference is virtual, and individual Zoom links for each session are available on the conference website. Session start times have been scheduled to align with start times for most classes on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.

All sessions of the conference are free and open to the public. No registration is required to participate.

As in prior years, employees may use up to two hours of their work time, in coordination with their supervisors, to attend the conference. I encourage you to attend, and I encourage supervisors to facilitate attendance by individuals in your offices or divisions.

Thanks for all you do for Missouri State!

 

Clif’s Notes for Nov. 6, 2018

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Today is Election Day. I encourage each of you to put the public affairs mission into practice by voting at the Welcome Center or your regular polling location. I am in China this week meeting with government officials and representatives of our partner universities, but I voted absentee before I left.

In last week’s Clif’s Notes, I summarized some of the issues on the ballot and told you how I voted on Proposition D (the transportation funding proposal). If you missed that note, you can find it here.

Setting new goals

When we developed the 2016-21 long-range plan, we also established measurable goals to track our progress under the plan.

I am pleased to report that the university has met two of these goals.

We set a goal of awarding 4,900 degrees and credentials annually. Last year we awarded 4,723 degrees and 461 certificates for a total of 5,184.

We also set a goal of having 14 percent of our faculty and staff be international or members of historically underrepresented groups. In fall 2018, 14.5 percent of our faculty and staff were international or members of historically underrepresented groups, a nearly 4 percent increase over the past 5 years.

The board discussed this progress, and the university established new goals.

The board recognized the flat trend in numbers of high school graduates in Missouri. The board also recognized that our future enrollment growth will be more focused on targeted areas of high workforce demand. Accordingly, we have established a goal of awarding 5,200 degrees and credentials annually by 2021.

The board and the administration agreed that it was important that we continue to press forward on our work to diversify the university’s workforce. Accordingly, we have established a goal of having 16 percent of our faculty and staff be international or members of historically underrepresented groups by 2021.

Room to improve

We have not yet reached our goals with regard to retention and graduation rates.

We have a goal of achieving an overall six-year graduation rate of 57 percent and a first-to-second year retention rate of 82 percent. Our 2018 rates were 54.5 percent and 78 percent respectively.

We also have a goal of increasing our retention and graduation rates for underrepresented, Pell-eligible and first-generation students to 79 percent and 50 percent respectively. Our retention rates for these groups of students range from 64 to 76 percent, and our graduation rates range from 38 to 57 percent.

We are doing a lot to achieve our retention and graduation goals. We continue to expand our designated GEP 101 sections. We are in the process of implementing the Center for Academic Success and Transition (CAST), creating an academic care team for students in academic trouble, encouraging more students to create and utilize four-year plans, providing training on proactive advising and undertaking numerous other initiatives designed to support student academic needs.

In December, the board will discuss the retention and graduation data and the initiatives currently underway.

I am proud of the work we have done, and I look forward to the work that lies ahead to achieve each of these important goals.

Thanks for all you do for Missouri State!