In light of the challenges and opportunities that the University of California, San Diego faces, Student Affairs recently completed a comprehensive strategic plan. Through this plan, we are strengthening our sense of community, enhancing the quality and memorability of the student experience, and aligning co-curricular programs more closely with the university’s academic mission — all to better serve UC San Diego students.
Our extensive strategic planning process was launched in 2008. We began with interviews of faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members in order to gain a broad perspective on needs, perceptions and expectations. We then engaged the Student Affairs Leadership Team, as well as all departments, in numerous visioning sessions that resulted in five aspirational goals, each based on a set of vision statements.
By the summer of 2010, we had developed five sets of Goal Frameworks, each including a vision section at the top (color-coded red), followed by the goal statement and goal nickname, then a set of objectives (orange), and under each objective a set of expected results (green) that are measureable.
Under each result are the major actions (color-coded blue) required to achieve the result. The actions were updated and verified through several rounds of reviews by each SA department. In each result column, actions are grouped into lead actions, followed by related or collaborative actions.
Each Goal Framework has its own glossary of terms and abbreviations. Every action, result, objective and goal has a unique identifying number. Persons and offices responsible for each action are identified by abbreviation.
Our final step was to incorporate assessment information into the Goal Frameworks, which occurred during the summer of 2011. The first page of each Goal Framework includes, under each result, one or more key performance indicators or KPIs (color coded yellow). The KPIs are followed by the assessment method (purple) and finally the unit/ person responsible (pink).
The Goal Framework pages containing actions show KPIs in lighter shaded boxes in the objectives and results categories, each with a unique identifying number.
In preparation for the new Student Affairs Strategic Plan, and to assure programs and services meet the needs of our students, Student Affairs adopted in 2009 a set of Student Learning Outcomes.
The Student Learning Outcomes were revised in the summer of 2012 to: