KSMU's Michele Skalicky talks with Missouri State University President Dr. Biff Williams about the strategic plan one year in.
Good morning, Biff.
Williams: Good morning.
Today we're going to talk about the strategic plan. Year one is under your belt. Last year Missouri State rolled out the 2025-2030 strategic plan called Igniting Opportunity. The plan features five key strategic areas. Those are academic opportunity and innovation, community partnerships and economic development, institution of choice for students and employees, student and alumni experience in branding and identity. What are some of the things that have been done in year one to work toward the goals laid out in the plan?
Williams: Well, I think the title of the plan, Igniting Opportunity, really sums up a lot of the work that was done this year, a lot of benchmarking, a lot of looking at where we need to be and where we need to go. I'll march you through the goals and kind of give you a few of the highlights. For goal one, academic innovation opportunity, if you look at, you know, what is our outcome in five years, we really wanted that R2 designation, that public affairs being embedded. This year, as you know, we forwarded one PhD program. That's going to the Department of Education and Workforce development. But there's also 10 interdisciplinary proposals per se, if you want to call it that, that the faculty have been doing a good job of looking at that. We've also looked at our general education program, benchmarking that among other institutions, which, again, that's igniting opportunity. Where are we at? What do we look like for other institutions? We also, with the faculty in mind and the staff is creating directories for expertise. Our faculty, as you know, are experts in many areas. So we want to make sure that the community knows if I have a question about a certain thing, I can go to them. With goal two with community partnerships has been a lot of roadshows. So myself and Vice President Brad Bodenhausen, we've been going out and talking to businesses and asking them, what is it that you need from your university? How are we best serving you? Are our students prepared when they come out? What's the exciting things that we can do for you? We've provided a lot of technical business support through our efactory, which has been really good. And then we've defined experiential learning. Eight faculty were funded to really create experiential learning opportunities for students.
So it's been a busy year, it sounds like. One of the goals, of course, was to rebrand the university. Where are you at with that? And you know, part of that is Conference USA. Looking back at year one in the conference, how do you think it went?
Williams: So if we look at branding and identity, a lot of work has happened. Again, it's that igniting opportunity, look at the benchmark data. We hired Carnegie to come in and do a branding refresh. So right now, there's two phases. The first phase they came in, they conducted town halls to really look at our brand. What are the messages, what's resonating with students, what's resonating with stakeholders, with donors, with the nation? So they're right in the end of that, collecting those data, so they're going to come back and tell us, here's the messages that resonate. Here's your value differentiation. This is what you should be looking at. Two is really putting in that practice. And that will happen this summer, so we're going to get a fresh start on the first, a really quick start on phase two. That will be the creative concepts and what that looks like. Conference USA was a big part of that. That fan spirit, amping up spirit. If you look at what we did with season tickets that really improved this year. The bowl game was exciting for us. We competed at every level in Conference USA. If you look at women's basketball, men's basketball, we showed up really well. So that all contributed to that branding and identity.
How are you tracking results of the efforts that are being made toward meeting the goals in the strategic plan?
Williams: So we have a software called SPOL, Strategic Planning Online, and it's a software where each of the goals has a goal leader. And each goal leader looks over all the strategies. But there's a strategy leaders and those are teams. We have over 125 individuals that are planned out here. They go on to SPOL and they identify, okay, this is what we're trying to achieve this year. Here are the strategies, here are the benchmarks. Here's the metrics. And then they put that into SPOL, and so we're tracking that year to date every year.
How do you feel about what the university was able to accomplish in year one?
Williams: I'm really excited about the work. It's — you always worry about year one. How are people going to embrace that? And they embraced it really well. We had our strategic initiatives report out. People were really engaged, really excited. But I think the benchmark for how well we're doing came from our accreditation site visit, the Higher Learning Commission. I sit in an exit interview, and they were so impressed that the university as a whole, when they talk to students, faculty, staff, stakeholders, everyone knew what the strategic plan was. Everyone that they spoke with had some part in planning that. Everyone that they spoke with could identify what the goals were, where we're heading. And so to me, that's a metric that we have embraced igniting opportunity. We're excited about it and that we're moving forward.
And what are some things you hope to really focus on as you go into year two?
Williams: So year two, right now, the strategy and goal leaders are looking at what work needs to be built on there. If I could sum it up from a 30,000-foot view, is take those benchmark data and make it into reality. Now that we have the benchmark, our peer institutions and others looking at each goal and saying, okay, here's what we're trying to accomplish this year. Here's what we're trying to accomplish in year five. And I think that's what's going to happen this year in the most part.
