In this episode of Engaging the Community, Michele Skalicky talks with Missouri State University President Dr. Biff Williams about MSU's new strategic plan.
It seems like the strategic planning process just started, but after a nearly year long process, the 2025 2030 strategic plan is finished. The plan contains five main goals. What are those goals?
Williams: Well, the board just recently approved those. And the first goal is academic opportunities and innovation. So we'll be focusing on what are the opportunities within the academic affairs and what are the innovations that we can explore? The second is community partnerships and economic development. The third is institution of choice for students and employees. So we want our employees happy, but we also want our students — the fourth is student and alumni experience. In the fifth is branding and identity.
And I know you're not quite ready to go into a lot of detail yet because there's a specific day that the plan is going to be laid out. But I know the plan contains new mission, vision and value statements for the university. I saw the vision is for Missouri State to be the nation's leading public affairs university. Can you talk at all about how you plan to accomplish that?
Williams: So as we went through a number of workshops and we had stakeholders on our campus, the leading question was — we are a public affairs institution. Do we lean into that? Do we lean away from it? And it was overwhelmingly let's lean into it. And so a lot of our stakeholders told us that we've always been the public affairs mission, but not all of us can define it in our individual areas and so we're going to lean heavily into asking every dean to define it for their colleges, every department to define it for their departments, for every curriculum. How is the public affairs mission really educating them as they move forward with their students?
Talk about the new mission statement for the university.
Williams: So our new mission statement says Missouri State University is a community of citizen scholars, which we've been for a long time, committed to public affairs. Our innovative teaching, research and service create transformative experiences that benefit individuals and society. So we really wanted to continue to embrace the public affairs mission. But we also are experts in teaching, research and innovation with what we do at the efactory and the Jordan Valley Innovation Center. We wanted to make sure the innovation's there, but we have a lot of innovation that's happening on our campus, our faculty, our experts in innovating in the classroom. And so that's a heavy emphasis in our mission is how are we going to continue to be innovative in our practice?
And what about the value statement?
Williams: So the values — we've had a number of values over the years, but we've had these three pillars of public affairs: Ethical leadership, cultural competence and community engagement. As the stakeholder groups came together, we really embraced those three pillars should be our values. And so we've defined them, and we will continue to find them throughout our campus of what are we doing in all aspects of ethical leadership? How are we promoting cultural competence, especially with a new and different federal landscape? How are we continually being engaged in our community and how can we ask our community to be engaged with us?
What will be the emphasis areas for the first year?
Williams: So the first year we we brought together our university council and a number of groups, and we wanted to prioritize what is it that we want to accomplish first? So the first year with academic opportunities and innovations, we really want to look at connecting the curriculum to career outcomes, and so Academic Affairs will be focusing on that. With community partnership and economic development, we're really looking at promoting experiential learning. So goal one and two are really going to go hand in glove with one another so those work groups, those implementation groups will really work well together and trying to identify how are we embracing careers and opportunities, but how is that experiential learning happening in the classroom? For institution of choice and students and employees, we're really going to look at our leadership and talent development and retention. We're also going to develop a new strategic enrollment management plan. So we've had one, but we just hired our new vice president for enrollment management, so she will be leading the charge on developing that this first year. With student and alumni experience, we'll be focusing on promoting proactive student support, identifying what are the support mechanisms that we need in place for each of our students to be successful? And then the last of branding and identity. This will be a big one. And we're going to refresh our brand, not recreate our brand. We're going to refresh our brand. We have a great branding guide. We want to make sure that we're emphasizing that we're actually following the branding guidance, and so Suzanne Shaw will be leading that implementation team.
Lots of people were invited to provide input for the new strategic plan, from students to lawmakers and community leaders. How happy were you with the engagement process?
Williams: I was very pleased. I went to every one of the stakeholder groups, the town halls, and they were well attended. What I really appreciated is the first one is usually the most attended and then it trickles down after that. I think we had more attendance at the last one than we did at the first one. And so people, as we were including them in the thought process, as we were including them in the strategic initiatives, they got more and more engaged. And that's really what the goal of this entire plan was. How do we create our plan? And I think we have accomplished that. This is our plan. It's called Igniting Opportunities, and it will be our plan for the next five years. And I'm excited to see how many people continue to be engaged in the implementation.
When will the plan be unveiled?
Williams: September 22nd. It will be the the normal state of the university address. But this year, instead of the state of the university address, I will be unveiling the plan. We'll have promotional materials for that. We'll invite everybody over to the Plaster Student Union and — or theater and ask them to come and and help us celebrate the launch of a brand new future for the university.
