NEWS RELEASE:
Purdue Calumet implements 6-year strategic plan
Building on the accomplishments of its previous plan, Purdue University Calumet is moving forward with a newly adopted, six-year strategic plan packaged to position the university as a leader in providing an effective, 21st Century education.
Approved last week by the Purdue Board of Trustees, Purdue Calumet’s 2008-14 strategic plan features five goals:
- Foster Engaged Learning
- Prepare an Educated Local Workforce and Citizenry
- Improve Student Success
- Support Faculty and Staff Excellence
- Develop a Vibrant Campus Community
“Unlike private residential colleges and public research universities, Purdue Calumet has a multi-faceted challenge of providing a quality education to students whose educational pursuit is often affected by other important factors and obligations, such as work and family responsibilities,” Purdue Calumet Chancellor Howard Cohen said. “To position our university as a leader in providing an effective 21st Century education, we have adopted a plan that addresses goals for helping our students persist successfully toward their degree.”
The engaged learning objective of Goal 1 embraces an active approach to learning that includes full implementation of Purdue Calumet’s new experiential learning component. This fall, Purdue Calumet has joined a small group of colleges and universities nationally to adopt as a graduation requirement for all newly-enrolled undergraduate students the integration of traditional classroom learning with the applied learning that occurs within a real-world, work-related environment.
By fostering engaged learning, Purdue Calumet has committed to helping students integrate and manage their transition from the classroom to their worlds of citizenship and work.
To achieve Goal 2 of preparing an educated workforce and citizenry, Purdue Calumet plans to implement strategies designed to selectively increase undergraduate and graduate student enrollments, expand career and placement services to alumni, help stimulate business growth within key Indiana disciplines, and build and strengthen partnerships with business and industry in response to environmental issues.
Response to the goal is a university initiative to enhance society by equipping and enabling graduates to be effective contributors.
Building on an objective of the university’s 2001-06 strategic plan, Purdue Calumet’s response to Goal 3, to improve student success, includes striving to increase retention and graduation rates, establishing a highly responsive and consistent faculty-student advising system, and expanding the use of different learning technologies to provide various course and degree delivery methods.
In short, the goal focuses on ways to help students persist efficiently in their degree pursuit and reduce obstacles that often interrupt or delay progress.
Purdue Calumet plans to respond to Goal 4, to increase support for faculty and staff excellence, by strengthening professional development, faculty research and scholarship support structures; increasing compensation; and rewarding and recognizing success.
The goal seeks to advance a well-prepared, enthusiastic and motivated faculty and staff who are willing and able to support student expectations and efforts to succeed.
Goal 5, to develop a vibrant campus community, involves furthering flexible opportunities for student involvement in campus life; identifying and adopting best practices for recruiting and retaining a diverse community of students, faculty and staff; developing a quality improvement process; and expanding and improving campus facilities.
“We want to encourage students to spend time on campus and be vested in our campus,” Cohen said. “We also want to continue efforts to build a culture of helpfulness that leads to student success, as well as develop physical space that meets our needs and of which we are all proud.”
Strategic plan progress will be assessed annually using metrics specific to each core strategy.
News Release Date: October 1, 2008 |
