When mapping out a strategic plan, it’s essential to create long-term goals, but in today’s rapidly changing environment, you probably shouldn’t chisel them in stone. That’s the approach the University of North Dakota has taken with its strategic plans, and according to Dr. Charles Kupchella, president, it’s working better than expected.

At the turn of the millennium, UND, which is located in Grand Forks, mapped out Pathways to the Future, a strategic plan that saw the university through five fruitful years. But in 2005, Kupchella and his team determined that the plan needed to be reconsidered, so a new plan was developed, Building on Excellence, which targets eight priority action areas essential to UND’s mission of excellence and distinction in all of its programs and services.

Dr. Charles Kupchella

Strategic improvements
The first major focus of Building on Excellence is strengthening UND’s general education program based on assessment data and best practices. Major initiatives associated with this focus include establishing a baseline for student learning outcomes, asking all departments to demonstrate their use of student learning assessments to push program improvement, and raising faculty salaries to reach the average of UND’s peer institutions as identified by the State Board of Higher Education by 2010.

The second priority action area concerns research program development. The university set a goal of raising $100 million in sponsorships, $80 million of which will go to research programs, including neuroscience, ground water clean up, and alternative fuels. Since 2001, internal and external sources have granted UND more than $400 million for such programs. “This goal resonates with our three-fold mission of teaching, research, and service,” said Kupchella.

Under this initiative, UND identified several centers of excellence in economic development, including its Energy and Environmental Research Center, with projects in hydrogen and fuel cell technologies and in other important areas of non-renewable and renewable energy resources; the Center of Excellence in Life Sciences and Advanced Technologies, which is expected to be the anchor of an 80-acre research enterprise and commercialization park; and the Center of Excellence for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. (UAVs, once only available to the military, are making their way into the civilian aviation industry.) UND’s centers of excellence are expected to become an economic driver in the state, supplying jobs and creating additional business opportunities.

Creative climate
Increasing UND’s educational offerings is the third priority action area. The university plans to offer at least 20 evening and weekend undergraduate degree programs by 2007, increase activity in summer programs over the next five years, and continue to increase the breadth and depth of its American Indian programs. UND is one of the country’s leading universities to serve American Indian students with more than 30 programs, including a very successful one that prepares students for a career in medicine. Kupchella says that overall, more than 400 American Indian students attend UND.

Creating a positive campus climate for living and learning is number four. The university regularly conducts surveys to learn how students, staff, and faculty feel about the campus environment and is in the midst of several construction projects, including a $20 million Wellness Center, a 746-space parking ramp, and the “University Village,” which includes town homes, several mini-malls, and a family physician clinic. “We are a couple of miles from the commercial center of town, and part of our 550-acre campus was laying fallow, so we dedicated it to University Village to bring some services that our students, faculty, and staff need nearby,” said Kupchella. “These are all lease projects, so we will also collect considerable revenue from them.”

Enrollment management is a large factor in the fifth priority action area. As of fall 2005, UND enrolled 12,954 students, 10,498 of which were undergraduates. About 54% of students are natives of North Dakota, with the remainder representing all 50 states, seven Canadian provinces, and more than 60 other countries. “We needed to determine how much we wanted our student body to grow and find the right balance between graduates, undergraduates, international students, under-represented minority students, etc.,” said Kupchella.

To that end, UND has created a goal to raise the number of international students by 5% within five years and to increase the number of graduate students versus undergraduates. “This is a doctoral research university, and we found we have fewer graduate students than we would like. And that goes hand in hand with our sponsored research program because our graduate students would be engaged in that activity,” said the president.

Measurable goals
Technology is priority action area number six, which is deeply connected to the university’s enrollment management program. State-of-the-art technology will not only enhance learning in the classroom, but also enable UND to further develop its distance learning and continuing education programs, for which it has become renown.

“We have great programs for nurses, doctors, lawyers, and teachers serving about 10,000 people a year in addition to our typical enrollment numbers,” Kupchella explained, adding that UND has the only accredited distance-engineering degree in the country. “Students come here during the summer, but they can earn the majority of their fully accredited engineering degree from home.”

The seventh item on UND’s list is fundraising, and several initiatives are underway for this public university to raise more private funds. For starters, the university has created a development advisory committee made up of deans, the provost, and representatives of the UND Alumni Association and Foundation, charged with developing guidelines for fundraising and planning a capital campaign. A $20 million campaign is nearing completion for the College of Business and Public Administration, and the university has launched a campaign for the School of Medicine and Health Science.

The eighth action area is a catch-all plan that includes fostering a well-prepared and enthusiastic faculty and staff, world-class physical facilities, more-than-adequate financial resources, and an efficient organizational structure. The university measures progress toward each of the aforementioned goals regularly. Some, such as enrollment and admission applications, are measured every week, while others, such as sponsored program activity, are measured monthly.

The goals UND has set are solid and everyone is expected to participate in making them a reality, but Kupchella and his team are always open for new opportunities to help UND grow—not for growth’s sake—but for the sake of the students.