Our Goals

Goal 1: Improve Student Success

The ultimate measurement of student success is graduation. We plan to improve our six-year graduation rate by 10 percentage points.

Improved graduation rates must be prefaced by improved retention. To that end, we plan to improve our freshman retention rate by 10 percentage points.

Key Strategy: Develop a Student Success Center...

...as a student mechanism for helping us stay better connected with our students.

By offering advising, mentoring, tutoring, supplemental instruction, discipline-based freshman experience courses, on-campus employment, undergraduate research opportunities, and other valuable services and programs, this Center would help resolve and overcome difficulties that have discouraged many former students from continuing their education.

Goal 2: Promote and Support Faculty/Staff Excellence

To help students succeed, our faculty and staff also must remain current.

Key Strategy: Develop a Center for Professional Development...

...as an investment in faculty and staff quality.

This Center would be a source of support for faculty research, scholarship and teaching excellence techniques to insure that the best possible instruction is provided.

Goal 3: Develop a High Performance Learning Environment

Preparing our students for 21st century challenges demands that we stay current with changing technology as it impacts the ways learning is accomplished.

Key Strategy: Strengthen campus technology infrastructure...

...by integrating Web-based instructional systems with electronic services, e-mail and library resources to improve access to learning.

Goal 4: Expand Our Partnership Role for Advancing Positive Change & Economic Growth in our Region

We are committed to maximizing our responsiveness to Calumet Region issues.

To that end, we want to increase by 50% the number of faculty and staff engaged in sharing their expertise in matters of regional/community interest.

We also look forward to a 50% increase in community participation on campus advisory boards - bodies that help us design our curricula to meet local needs.

Additionally, we plan to be a bridge that connects various entities of the Calumet Region.

Key Strategy I: Develop a Technology and Business Center...

...as a source of knowledge transfer for economic development; applied research in serving business, government and industry; and furthering diversification of the region's economy.

Key Strategy II: Develop a Post-Secondary Learning Center in South Lake County...

...to consolidate the current array of multi-site, instructional facilities presently used. This Center would offer introductory level credit courses and serve as a feeder site to our Hammond campus. We envision it accommodating up to 2,000 students, up from 650 we now teach at four sites in Merrillville, Crown Point and St. John.

It also would be a facility made available to the region's other post-secondary institutions for offering classes, as well as conferencing and professional development instruction.