Goal-setting and strategic planning is a process, one that Chancellor Joe Steinmetz believes should happen from the ground up – and be as inclusive as possible.

As part of this comprehensive approach to learning about the needs of the University of Arkansas, the chancellor has started the process in the academic units through a series of meetings with academic departments and many centers on campus. The purpose is to gain a deeper knowledge of the issues faced by these units, while providing an opportunity for departments to share their strengths, priorities, and future direction.   

Some planning milestones thus far:

• 75 meetings have been set as of Feb. 16
• All department meetings will be completed by May 31
• Approximately 10 have been held as of Feb. 19
• Additional meeting requests will be considered later in the semester
• There are 29 additional meeting requests

The first phase is underway and the rest of the process will unfold in several more phases.  

1. Spring Semester – Campus academic departments, a number of centers and programs have been asked to weigh in by summarizing their own strengths, weaknesses, and challenges with an eye toward their future direction during a meeting with the chancellor. Departments have been asked to define long-term goals, needs, priorities, direction for the future and submit a written report no more than three pages to the chancellor's and provost's offices and the deans by the end of the semester.  
2. Summer – Deans and their staffs will look at these documents and begin to identify themes across the individual colleges. The provost and his staff will conduct this exercise for cross-cutting units.
3. Summer – At the same time, groups of faculty, staff, and students will be created to look at the individual unit responses with an eye toward identifying university-wide themes that have emerged from the unit discussions. These groups will be organized by the traditional mission areas of research and service; teaching, learning and scholarship; and outreach and engagement.
4. Late Summer – A group will further collate these themes at the campus level to begin to define the university's goals for the future.
5. Early to Mid-Fall – The direction and institutional goals will emerge as draft institutional goals, that will be shared back out to the entire campus, along with a succinct draft of a plan that is cross-functional in form and utility.
   • Campus will be asked to weigh in on the goals that emerge.
   • The rest of the campus, including the non-academic and service units, will be asked to develop plans to support these institutional goals.

"This has been such a valuable way to learn about the campus," Steinmetz said. "I knew relatively little about the University of Arkansas before October of last year. You can only find out so much from a website or a brochure. I find getting out to meet the faculty and department heads to be an essential first step not only to building my understanding, but also to share first-hand with our faculty how we are going to determine our institutional goals together.

"It's also great that the provost, Ashok Saxena, is able to attend many of these meetings," he added. "I'd say we are finding an extraordinary depth of commitment to the institution, and shared interest in making it even better."

"A number of programs and departments have been recommended by deans and others for additional meetings," said Laura Jacobs, chief of staff. "Those requests will be considered later in the semester – simply given the number of meetings we are setting and the chancellor's available time this spring, we need to prioritize."

The chancellor is tweeting about his visits @JoeSteinmetz.

Send questions to Jacobs at laura@uark.edu.