Strategic Visioning and Planning

Chancellor

Our strategic work is centered in 4 themes

Public liberal arts for the future—Building the model 21st-century public liberal arts college
Excellence for everyone—Fostering capacity with respect to community, culture, climate, and governance
Vital campus community—Ensuring a sustainable and stable University community
Engaging with the Region, State, and Beyond—UMN Morris as a leader and partner for tomorrow

  • guided by 8 strategic aspirations 
    • (Endorsed by Campus Assembly, A1-8, 11/2018) 
  • with 18 strategic priorities to achieve our vision
    • (Endorsed by Campus Assembly P1-10, 5/2019 and P11-18, 5/2020)

Aligned with UMN MPact 2025 Commitments: 
1. Student Success
2. Discovery, Innovation, & Impact,
3. MNtersections
4. Community & Belonging
5. Fiscal Stewardship

For 2023–24, our highest priorities are:

  • Priority 3: Improve pathways to, through, and beyond a UMN Morris degree. Improve campus knowledge about and understanding of these opportunities.  
  • Priority 5: Improve campus climate.
  • Priority 12: As a University community, create and communicate a unified internal institutional identity both internally and externally. 
  • Priority 14: Improve student retention and participation. 
  • Priority 15: Develop integrated strategies to build and maintain an optimal and sustainable student body size. Engage students, staff, and faculty to contribute to our overall success.

1. Public liberal arts for the future—Building the model 21st-century public liberal arts college

Aspirations

  • 1: We aspire to honor our liberal arts tradition by preparing students to create and discover solutions to complex problems of the 21st century,through inquiry, community-engaged learning, and rigorous experiential projects across the curriculum, including integrated first-year and capstone experiences. 
  • 2: We aspire to strengthen our commitment to scholarship by supporting faculty, staff, and students in research and creative activities. 

Priorities

  • 1: Build a simpler, more integrated set of general education requirements by designing requirements that are more easily understood and explained. 
  • 2: Develop a First-Year Experience with coherent curricular and co-curricular elements that will introduce students to UMN Morris, to the resources available to them, and to the education they can expect to receive, as well as lay the foundation for students’ successes beyond their degree. The academic component of FYE will be considered afresh and not necessarily as a revision of IC. 
  • 3: Improve pathways to, through, and beyond a UMN Morris degree. Improve campus knowledge about and understanding of these opportunities. 
  • 4: Identify gaps in research funding currently available at UMN Morris and work to promote more equitable access among students, faculty, and staff. 

2. Excellence for everyone –Fostering capacity with respect to community, culture, climate, and governance

Aspirations

  • 3: We aspire to acknowledge the first peoples of this land and the land’s history as a Native American boarding school through curriculum, programming, and partnerships with Native Communities, as well as through visual markers on campus. 
  • 4: We aspire to create a democratic community committed to open communication where students, faculty, staff, and local community members from all backgrounds are empowered to contribute to decisions, infrastructure, and liberal arts education. 
  • 5: We aspire to provide full accessibility to all of UMN Morris’s teaching, living, service, and learning spaces and technologies to create an inviting and usable environment for everyone on our campus.  

Priorities 

  • 5: Improve campus climate. 
  • 6: Recognize the unique obligation and opportunity at UMN Morris for greater equity in education for Native American students fostered by the history of this place; provide indigenized support for student learning, health, wellbeing, and success; and produce graduates from all backgrounds who have a greater understanding of and appreciation for Native American history, cultures, and lifeways. 
  • 7: Enhance the liberal arts education opportunity for students from all backgrounds, especially those from diverse, first-generation, and low-income populations. 
  • 8: Increase access through the use of universal design to make the physical campus visually welcoming and physically accessible for people of all abilities to participate actively in our liberal arts mission. 
  • 9: Strive to provide greater availability of high-quality mental and physical health services, recognizing the importance of all aspects of health for the success of everyone in the community. 
  • 10: Continue to build on efforts to support work/life balance and wellbeing for faculty, staff, and students. 

3. Vital campus community – Ensuring a sustainable and stable University community

Aspirations

  • 6: We aspire to develop integrated strategies to build and maintain an optimal and sustainable student body size while also recruiting and retaining high quality faculty and staff. 

Priorities 

  • 11: Create and implement an enrollment management plan.
  • 12: As a University community, create and communicate a unified internal institutional identity both internally and externally. 
  • 13: Continue efforts to secure external funding for the American Indian Tuition Waiver. 
  • 14: Improve student retention and participation. 
  • 15: Identify what key decision makers will develop integrated strategies to build and maintain an optimal and sustainable student body size. Create a structure and strategies for engaging all constituents and clarify how all students, staff and faculty on campus contribute to our overall success in this area. 

4. Engaging with the Region, State, and Beyond – UMN Morris as a leader and partner for tomorrow

Aspirations

  • 7: We aspire to ensure that UMN Morris is a leader in environmental, social, and economic sustainability. 
  • 8: We aspire to amplify UMN Morris’s place as a center for education engaged with the region, state, nation, and world, and solidify our role within the University of Minnesota system so that we can strengthen and be strengthened by the system campuses. 

Priorities 

  • 16: Become a national model for comprehensive rural sustainability and develop a plan to showcase our progress. 
  • 17: Develop and implement a plan that brings more people to the UMN Morris campus, connects them with campus programming, and provides direct regional engagement. 
  • 18: Meet our campus goal to be carbon neutral by the end of 2021.