Wednesday, August 18, 2010
By Denise Dick
By DENISE DICK
youngstowN
Development is under way to provide the framework for Youngstown State University into 2020.
Cynthia Anderson, YSU president, in her State of the University address Monday, said she asked Ikram Khawaja, provost and vice president of academic affairs, and Gene Grilli, vice president of administration and finance, to chair a new strategic planning committee.
The goal is to have the plan to the board of trustees for approval by the end of this year, Khawaja said.
The 40-plus-member committee includes representatives from the faculty, staff, students and the community.
“The committee has identified five areas — known as cornerstone areas for the plan,” Anderson said in her speech.
Those areas are student success, accountability and sustainability, urban-research transition, regional impact and communication.
“The board of trustees and I have embraced and will be promoting a more strategic culture that will guide our planning and our budgeting — how we actually link planning to budget and how we must fund new priorities without new dollars,” Anderson said. “It will be incumbent upon us to align our priorities and strategies with our budgets.”
Khawaja said the cornerstones were a determination through YSU’s board of trustees with assistance from a consultant during a 11/2-day retreat earlier this summer.
“They devoted a significant amount of time to the planning process,” the provost said.
Khawaja, Grilli and Jack Fahey, interim vice president for student affairs, attended the retreat and determined that the board’s big- picture issues fell into the cornerstone areas.
Accountability and sustainability, or institutional vitality, for example, deals with how the university’s resources are best distributed to accomplish objectives.
“This group is going to look at the big picture of resources — not just money — to maintain and sustain the university so it remains vital,” Khawaja said.
“How do we do budgeting? What do we have to do differently? We need to have that reality. Looking at the big picture, do we need to do things differently?”
He acknowledged development of the plan is on an ambitious schedule but says members are making good progress.
Subgroups are meeting with a steering committee meeting set for Aug. 31 where each subgroup will report its progress.
A website has been established as part of the communication subgroup, and the idea is to not only provide information about the plan’s progress but also to allow people to provide input.
The site is http://web.ysu.edu/2020strategicplan.