Access and Excellence

Developing a New Strategic Plan
for The California State University
October 2006

As approved by the California State University's Board of Trustees in September 2006, the CSU's strategic planning process to succeed Cornerstones will focus on two major elements of the University's mission, "Access and Excellence." The consultative process is to begin with sustained conversations at each of the twenty-three institutions in the System, led by the President. The purpose of beginning the process at the campus level is to ensure that the process leading to the next CSU strategic plan will be broadly inclusive, involving dialogue among—and outreach to—the multiple constituencies that define the University and its mission. The steering committee that has been appointed to guide this exercise (see attachment for list of members) urges Presidents to ensure a campus consultative process that will be inclusive of students, faculty, and staff, as well as alumni, members of advisory boards, and other community stakeholders from outside the institution. Consistent with the CSU's commitment to shared governance, Academic Senates should play a significant role in these campus conversations.

Recognizing that it may not be possible for every campus to schedule a single all-campus event that will involve simultaneous participation by the full range of stakeholders, we hope that as many campuses as possible might find a way to do so.

At its first meeting, on October 16, 2006, the steering committee developed questions in six broad issue domains considered basic to the issues of "Access and Excellence." We hope that each campus will consider these questions-along with any other issues the campus deems to be important to the University's future. The resulting advice and feedback from the twenty-three campuses will serve as the basis for proposals that will then be brought to a CSU-wide "issue summit" in the spring of 2007, preliminary to development of a first draft of the "Access and Excellence" plan.

Questions proposed for inclusion in each campus conversation are attached:

Domain 1. Assuring Access and Student Success

Areas and Questions:

1. Comprehensive outreach to encourage improvement in academic preparation in P-12.
1. What capacities does the campus have to reach out, with the goal of fostering and encouraging improvement in P-12 academic preparation? Is there capacity to do this through networking, communications, and partnerships?
2. What role can the campus play in encouraging students to consider early in their academic careers the option of going to college?
2. Systemic advising through the student life cycle
1. How can the campus reach students as early as in middle school to begin comprehensive advising about getting to college?
2. How can the campus assure that this comprehensive advising continues through to graduation from the CSU?
3. Broad networking to assure student success.
1. How can we assess the success of campus internships programs; of campus support from parents, community, and especially donors?
2. What is the relative need, and the relative availability, of such networking on behalf of graduate programs vis-à-vis undergraduate programs?
4. Growing and improving transfer student success.
1. Does the campus have comparative measures of native versus transfer student attainment of the baccalaureate?
2. What assessments are needed to determine where transfer student success needs improvement?
5. Methods of tracking student success beyond the traditional six-year graduation rate.
1. What is known, and what should be learned, concerning graduation in a 7th, 8th, or subsequent year of baccalaureate study?

Domain 2. Connecting to P-12 Schools and to Community Colleges

Questions

1. What are the benefits to the CSU of having better connected, strong and sustainable partnerships with P-12 and California Community Colleges? Should the CSU aspire to be nationally known for such partnerships-- particularly P-12?
2. Given the changes that can be foreseen for California:
1. What strategies are needed to prepare teachers for P-12?
1. How can we listen to P-12 and Community College partners in developing strategies?
2. What strategies are needed to prepare students well for admission to the CSU, and to make apparent to them advantages offered by the CSU?
3. What strategies can we devise to insure an effective 2-way relationship between P-12 and the CSU? Between the Community Colleges and the CSU?

Domain 3. Fulfilling Commitments to Multiple Stakeholders

1. What are the local, regional, and/or national groups/constituencies your campus seeks to serve?
2. What are your campus mechanisms for maintaining / strengthening connections with internal stakeholders?
1. What indicators exist that demonstrate that the campus values internal stakeholders?
2. What new indicators and/or processes should be sought?
3. How does your campus develop capacity to communicate with external stakeholders (employers and others)?
1. What indicators exist that demonstrate that the campus values external stakeholders?
2. What new indicators and/or processes should be sought?
4. What is the evidence for success in communicating or making connections with stakeholders, both internal and external?
5. What are the barriers to achieving connections with key stakeholders both internal and external?
6. What communities/stakeholders would you like to have connections with but do not - and why?

Domain 4. Ensuring Success in Student Learning

For graduate, undergraduate, credential, and non-degree programs:

1. How can the campus most effectively demonstrate that it is achieving the student learning outcomes that CSU names as high priorities?
2. Where achievement of desired outcomes can be demonstrated with integrity and rigor, in what ways should credit to the degree be awarded irrespective of traditional class attendance?
3. At the system level, in defining CSU's core values and "brand," how can we best demonstrate and communicate value-added in terms of these goals for student learning?
4. How can we provide access to, and support through to success, promising new students who show deficiencies in academic preparation?

Domain 5. Faculty/Staff Excellence to Promote Student Success

1. Relationship between faculty quality and student performance
1. How do faculty diversity, the mix of temporary and permanent faculty, together with more familiar indices of faculty quality, relate to quality of student performance?
2. How does this vary by program type: baccalaureate program; graduate program; credential program; certificate / non-degree program?
2. Relationship between staff quality and student satisfaction and persistence
1. What indicia of staff quality are measured now, and with student satisfaction and persistence as the goal, what indicia of staff quality should be further developed?
2. How does this vary by program type?
3. What does your campus think the faculty of the future should look like, and what are you doing to recruit-and retain-- that diverse and excellent faculty?
4. What is the campus doing to support the teacher-scholar model at every level?
1. What are you doing to increase the funding, and how may current funding be used more effectively?
2. What programs does the campus or the CSU have that provide incentives for full professors to perform at the highest level?
5. How does the campus ensure service excellence to support student achievement?

Domain 6. Now and in the Future: Campus / System Identity

1. How can the CSU better articulate its core identity?
2. What are the strengths of the CSU system?
3. What national and international priorities should become part of CSU's core identity?
4. How does your campus identity relate to the overall CSU identity?
5. What system-wide or campus policies prevent you from meeting these goals and/or achieving these identities? Which policies assist you in doing so?
6. How can the CSU foster dialogues with key state and national policy makers? What do these key policy makers want from CSU?
1. What are key policy makers willing to pay for?
2. What is CSU's vision for the "right answer" to those questions?
7. Uneven demand across campuses, regions and facilities: How can we best assure that demand and capacity are in suitable balance at every campus and in every region?
1. How can we insure that smaller campuses but with important regional missions are provided the means for growth?
8. Balance between and among learning programs, and thus between and among student types:
1. Undergraduates
2. Graduate students
3. Credential students
4. Non-degree students

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