Strategic Plan

Fiat Lux!

Theme 1: Transform Student Lives and Better Our World

  • Define, deliver, and promote the Alfred University brand
  • Define our brand—utilizing CCA, stakeholder input, and market research—and establish a plan to live and promote it. (Spring 2018)
  • Redesign our website and implement a plan to sustain it with new content, photos, and videography. (Spring 2018)
  • Establish an integrated marketing plan for consistent communication through social media, print, and other channels with our target audiences. (FY18)
  • Build a centralized marketing organization and hire a director. (Fall 2018)
  • Help our students identify their passions and develop the confidence to pursue them
  • Develop the Alfred University educational model that provides enduring value to our students and capitalizes on the breadth and excellence of our academic and co-curricular programs in a highly personalized setting. (FY19)
  • Assess learning outcomes to enhance our students’ creativity, critical thinking, and communication skills so as to both measure our impact and promote ongoing improvements in our educational model. (FY18)
  • Invest in curricular and co-curricular innovations in promising fields while reducing expenditures in declining programs. (FY18)
  • Ensure consistent, high-quality advising across all academic units. (FY18) 
  • Prepare our graduates for professional success and societal impact
  • Ensure that every student has an APEX opportunity and that the funding to support such opportunities is sustainable. (FY21)
  • Connect our students with our Career Development Center (CDC), ideally by the end of their sophomore year. (FY18)
  • Engage alumni in student mentoring/hiring while strengthening the value of our network by making our alumni database accessible to alumni. (FY19)

Theme 2: Forge Strength through Inclusivity

  • Build on our 181-year history of inclusivity
  • Increase faculty/staff diversity by at least 5 individuals, with priority placed on instructors of color; initiate a doctoral pipeline program supporting the return of alumni of color. (FY22)
  • Promote curricular and co-curricular opportunities for students to work with others who have different backgrounds and beliefs; better capitalize on our Institute for Cultural Unity. (FY19)
  • Collect and share data to enhance our knowledge about the learning needs of diverse populations. (FY19)
  • Increase cultural competency training for faculty, staff, and students. (FY19)
  • Enhance the distinction and impact of our Social Justice Studies program.
  • Bring speakers to campus, especially alumni, to address key policy issues, thus fostering constructive dialogue across ideological lines. (FY19)
  • Develop improved strategies for ensuring the physical and psychological safety of our students, staff, and faculty. (FY19)

B. Enhance the global and multi-cultural awareness and mix of our students

  • Increase the number of students studying abroad as well as in different settings in the United States by 50 percent. (FY22)
  • Increase first-year students from outside of New York State by 10 percentage points, from 20 to 30 percent; and from outside the United States by 5 percentage points, from 1 percent to 6 percent. (FY22) 

C. Support our community

  • Foster APEX opportunities in our community. (FY19)
  • Pursue external grants in partnership with Alfred State College to better our community. (FY19)
  • Leverage AUNY and Art Force 5. (FY18)

Theme 3: Amplify our Impact

  • Build an engaged, innovative, and collaborative culture
  • Promote engagement, ownership, and collaboration through vehicles such as the Executive Council, Student and Faculty Senates, staff councils, a budget advisory group, and Trustee committees. (FY18)
  • Develop alumni-based advisory boards for campus units and key cities. (FY19)
  • Secure at least $5 million for a Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) to grow our revenues, notably through enrollment and advancement. (FY18)
  • Semiannually survey our campus climate to identify improvement opportunities.
  • Take better care of our people and facilities
  • Develop an annual salary pool that accounts for merit, the inflation rate, and other relevant labor market dynamics. (FY20)
  • Increase the number of faculty/staff living in our community by 10 individuals by being mindful of opportunities for spouses/partners, sharing job listings with other area organizations, and incentivizing home purchases. (FY22)
  • Increase our annual investment in buildings and grounds by at least $2 million per year from the present annual level of $12.5 million. (FY22)

C. Enhance the robustness of our business model

  • Attract 550 first-year students with improved net tuition metrics and without compromising quality. (FY22)
  • Increase our retention rate for second-year students by at least 5 percentage points to 81 percent. (FY22)
  • Grow non-traditional student net revenues by 50 percent from a base of $397,000 in FY17. (FY22)
  • Increase annual unrestricted giving to the Alfred Fund to $2.5 million from an average of $1.3 million over FY12-FY16. (FY22)
  • Double annual new gifts/commitments to at least $10 million from an average of $4.9 million over FY12-FY16. (FY22)
  • Grow research grants by 25 percent from a current annual level of $6.9 million. (FY22)
  • Ensure alignment of our resources with our strategic goals through the development of a five-year financial plan and the establishment of a Budget and Planning Advisory Committee. (FY18)
  • Promote ownership of our plan and develop mechanisms to assess our progress
  • Ensure that unit goals are guided by and consonant with our University plan.
  • Establish annual metrics to assess our progress. (FY18)

Rev. 2-5-18