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Correction Jan. 28, 2019: This article previously stated the wrong date (Feb. 14) for the Academic Futures town hall that in fact will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 13.

Beginning today, the campus is launching a new schedule of updates on its strategic initiatives. At the beginning and close of each semester, there will be a special edition of CU �鶹ӰԺ Today reviewing the progress of the campus’s strategic initiatives. Additionally, there will be monthly articles in CU �鶹ӰԺ Today in the fall and spring semesters, giving updates on the progress of the initiatives, including Academic Futures, Financial Futures, Foundations of Excellence, the Inclusion, Diversity and Excellence in Academics (IDEA) Plan and Strategic Facilities Visioning, among others.

Visit the Strategic Initiatives webpage to understand each of the initiatives, their relationship to one another, and their strategic purpose and value to the university.

Academic Futures

Provost Russell Moore and Senior Vice Chancellor Kelly Fox are asking for volunteers and nominations for a project-specific working group on interdisciplinarity.

Moore has asked Interim Dean of Arts and Sciences Jim White to lead a campus conversation on how the campus can engage in Interdisciplinary Teaching, Research, and Creative Work and the value in doing so. Moore is asking that nominations for the interdisciplinarity committee be made by the end of business on Friday, Feb. 1, and that the committee begin work by early to mid-February.

Two town hall meetings also have been scheduled to continue the discussions on how Academic Futures is integrating with the other initiatives. Other town halls will be scheduled and announced to update the community on the work of the interdisciplinarity committee.

Very soon, Moore and Fox also will announce a path forward on the Academic Futures project Teaching and Technology, Online and Distance Learning.

Financial Futures

Financial Futures completed its initial diagnostic phase this fall and identified ideas and opportunities for generating resources in support of Academic Futures and other key strategic initiatives. In the current phase, solution design, workstream sponsors and leads are working with focus groups and Financial Futures leadership to review the ideas that have been generated and to prioritize ideas with the greatest “return on mission.”

Over the next several weeks, members of the CU community can attend town halls and workstream-specific listening sessions designed to answer questions about the Financial Futures process and to solicit vital community feedback on the ideas generated so far.

CU students, faculty and staff are encouraged to participate in either the Jan. 25 or the Jan. 30 town hall, the listening sessions, and to send questions, comments or ideas through the Financial Futures contact page.

IDEA Plan

The Revising Committee for the Inclusion, Diversity and Excellence in Academics (IDEA) Plan is diligently working through more than 50 submissions received online during the open feedback period November–December last fall, as well as feedback from 12 open town hall sessions. Minor changes, clarifications and additions to the draft of the plan are underway. 

The committee will submit its revised plan to Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement Bob Boswell and the chancellor's cabinet for feedback and acceptance, with a target completion of February 2019. 

The upcoming spring 2019 Diversity and Inclusion Summit on Tuesday, Feb. 12, will include a session about the IDEA Plan and how individuals can connect to the plan's goals and have a personal impact in their respective communities. 

Strategic Facilities Visioning (SFV), which will create a framework for facilities decision-making for the next 30 years, in recent weeks wrapped up the interview portion of its initial deep dive phase.

During this phase, the project team has been meeting with “visionaries” from every college, school, research institute and major support unit on campus to gain a holistic view of individual program visions. The SFV project team will continue this month to synthesize results from these valuable sessions, mapping each conversation to key themes that have begun to emerge to discover which topics arose across multiple departments.

In the next phase of SFV, Scenario Planning, visionaries will be working in interdisciplinary groups to develop and test future facilities and infrastructure options in relation to a variety of identified university requirements centered around our ever-evolving landscape of education and research, informed by the campus’s multiple strategic initiatives.

In this and future phases, SFV is ultimately building toward creation of a facilities planning tool that will help inform the campus in making the most meaningful and impactful facilities and infrastructure investments in the coming decades. This effort also will create the foundation for our next campus master plan update in 2021.

You can get the latest information and engagement opportunities on all of our strategic initiatives at the “Strategic Initiatives” webpage.