Goal: Process Strategic Initiatives for the four focal areas
- Expand current programs and consider meeting market needs, such asengineering and local business needs; focus on interdisciplinary programs, such as gaming and animation or expand our focus on the car; Leverage our existing relationship with the Nigerian COB with an African Center.
- Residential campus and community is important; student’s romanticize the idea of living off campus; need to understand that students not living in dorms will eliminate some economies of scale we currently have.
- Expand focus of services to include parents and extended families—more online streaming and connections for families and the campus.
- Campus entry & surrounding roads need attention.
- Technology: How do we use technology as a critical thinking learning tool allowing students to learn about all the options and skills giving them opportunities to decide whether they would accept or decline the particular tool; Could technology or specifically mobile computing be a “theme” faculty/campus rallies around—understanding/integrating its role in a student’s life; Mobile technology is affecting how we relate in the community; Our “Hailing” distance today is 0 ft.
- Community by Design: Explore designing a community that has a culture of responsible use of technology (mobile focus); responsible living/learning (residential); engaged co-curricular—take on a particular area each year to redefine our community; Community and how we build or define it will be critical for growth.
- Designing “appropriate” technology for other countries could be an applicable way to engage the faculty and students – could utilize the MAC Marketplace idea.
While I think I understand what is suggested by expanding program and looking at the market, I feel there is also merit in increasing the quality of existing programs. I’ll teacher ed out there. While our grads are getting jobs, I know that not all of them are as high a quality as I would like. We’ve been discussing what we can do to improve our program and part of that is simply the soft skill/dispositions.
On the flip side, I’ve heard a couple of people in the community comment with surprise that we don’t have a chemistry program that has closer ties to the pharmaceutical, plastics, or oil refinery industries that our right here.