LAS Strategic Plan 2021-2025

Improve support, mentoring, and recognition of civil service employees, academic professionals, and specialized faculty across the college.

Actions:

1. Develop unit-level plans for professional development and mentoring of professional staff members and specialized faculty.
2. Create, distribute, and implement college-wide policies for the annual review of professional staff members and specialized faculty.
3. Create additional programs to acknowledge the vital role of professional staff and specialized faculty.

Increase understanding of college resource administrative processes, improve clarity on budget and allocations, provide transparency on resources and protocols, and encourage faculty governance.

Actions:

1. Establish annual strategic budget reporting process for academic units.
2. Engage faculty to develop and evaluate budgeting policies in the college.
3. Evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the college structure and operations throughout the college. Identify and implement recommendations.
4. Prioritize the college’s values, including creative and innovative pedagogy and diversity, equity, and inclusion, when evaluating potential and existing initiatives and programs.

Maintain, enhance, and create physical spaces in support of the college mission.

Actions:

1. Evaluate current and future programmatic needs of college units and initiatives utilizing master planning and space usage analysis.
2. Seek opportunities and resources to revitalize and create state-of-the-art facilities and technology for research, teaching, and student support.
3. Increase efficiencies, make environmentally and fiscally conscious decisions, and manage facilities in a responsible manner to preserve resources.

Build a model marketing and communications operation that creates visibility, drives engagement and affinity with key stakeholders, and increases resources for the college.

Actions:

1. Build a branding and messaging strategy grounded in research that leverages the new campus brand.
2. Continue to develop and implement a college-wide marketing plan for recruiting and diversifying our undergraduate student body.
3. Establish new community partnerships and boost public engagement efforts to increase visibility of the college.
4. Create an enhanced communications plan for sharing research from across LAS, articulating its impact and contributions to the community.
5. Review, assess, and make recommendations on communications support across college units, creating clear expectations on the role of unit communicators.
6. Continue implementing and improving the college website framework to ensure consistent messaging for key audiences including prospective students and donors, with the goal of 100 percent unit participation.
7. Cultivate and support faculty to excel at communicating their expertise to broad audiences.

Build relationships with key constituents in order to leverage their time, talent, and other resources for the advancement of the college and its mission.

Actions:

1. Educate, train, and mobilize unit executive officers to create strategic plans that will build strong advancement partnerships across the college.
2. Optimize the advancement structure of LAS to reflect college and unit-level priorities and needs.
3. Take a lifespan approach to connecting with alumni across all stages of their lives through a variety of opportunities that appeal to all forms of philanthropic engagement.
4. Build connections and infrastructure to leverage opportunities for corporate and foundation support of research, scholarships, and job placement.
5. Enhance alumni advocacy to advance college priorities.
6. Reinvigorate the Lincoln Scholars Initiative to secure the next generation of support for LAS students with demonstrated need.