Message from the President: Vision, Mission, and Strategic Plan Update

Dear Colleagues,

As you know, the Central Washington University community has embarked on a collaborative and inclusive process to develop a new Vision, Mission, and Strategic Plan. The Steering Committee has had one meeting in which we began to develop the process for gathering feedback and input on our work together. Notes from our first meeting are now linked off of the public web page. On this page, you will find the agenda for our first meeting, research on drafting vision and mission statements, examples of vision and mission statements from other universities, and notes from our first meeting relating to how we will define a vision and a mission.

The next step in the Steering Committee's process is to finalize our own CWU definition for a vision and a mission and develop a survey for the campus community to gather your thoughts on what our vision and mission should be. Members of the Steering Committee will take this feedback and draft several vision and mission statements, which will be shared during open forums. Your participation in this process is critical to its success. The vision statement will be the clarifying and unifying aspiration for CWU that will provide direction for where we want to go as a university. The mission statement will capture the essence of who we are and why our work matters. And, importantly, the strategic plan will provide the roadmap for getting us to our aspirational vision; it will be a document that we will use to make programmatic and resource decisions, which will be new to CWU.

The timeline for the process is as follows:

• October 4 to 15 -- Survey of the university community and associated individuals
• November 15 to December 3 - Open forums for feedback on draft vision and mission statements

While feedback will be sought from our university community throughout the process, and while our many different representative organizations will have the opportunity to provide an endorsement of the final work, the Executive Leadership Team and the Board of Trustees are responsible for the final approval of the new Vision, Mission, and Strategic Plan.

For information on the Steering Committee membership, its charge, the process, and our timeline, please visit the CWU Vision, Mission, and Strategic Plan development web page.

We look forward to your participation! If you have questions, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Jim Wohlpart

President