Plans to Refresh Academic Affairs Strategic Plan Announced

The Office of the Chancellor at UMass Amherst has recently announced a process for Academic Affairs to refresh its strategic plan. This initiative includes the schools and colleges, the Commonwealth Honors College, the Library and the Graduate School.

Building on the 2018-2023 Campus Strategic Plan “Be Revolutionary: A Vision for the Future,” this high-level, multi-year planning exercise will continue the culture of planning and assessment, update strategic thinking and capture creative and data-informed ideas to advance the university’s mission over the next three to five years ahead of the mid-cycle NECHE accreditation review in 2023 and to act as a bridge to the next strategic planning cycle.

To support this work, a series of prompts linked to each goal of the campus strategic plan and campus-wide datasets have been developed with broad input from stakeholders across campus, including faculty and student governance bodies, and are available through Flagship Analytics. Additional prompts and sources of data may be provided by colleges/schools to reflect discipline-specific considerations and opportunities.

Each department should complete and submit a strategic plan (no more than 10 pages) using the provided template to its college or school by mid-fall 2021, and these plans, along with college/school plans using the same template, should be submitted to strategic-planning@umass.edu by the end of the fall semester.

Deans, directors and department chairs have been informed of this plan and will work together to lead efforts to gather information and complete all necessary work.