REGENTS GET OUTLINE OF STRATEGIC PLAN

Southeast Missouri State University's Board of Regents will be asked to approve the university's strategic plan in February.

Provost Charles Kupchella outlined a preliminary draft of the plan, which has been in the works "seriously for a year and a few months" at Tuesday's regents meeting.

The plan focuses on achieving six "very neat and tidy priorities that we are going to be about as an institution," Kupchella said.

Those priorities are developing a "top quality" curriculum; increasing enrollment to 10,300 over the next five to 10 years; optimal use of technology; effective service to the Southeast Missouri region; improving the campus community; and developing a campus master plan.

"Yet to come is an action plan, how we are going to meet these goals," Kupchella said. "University Planning is working on that now."

Through the strategic plan, he said, Southeast will become the state's "comprehensive professional arts and science" university.

"We're going to integrate a professional degree and liberal arts so well that students will be prepared for professions for a lifetime, even though we don't know what some of those professions might be yet," Kupchella said.

Toward that end, he said, the curriculum will shift focus from providing students with general knowledge to providing them with the means to acquire knowledge and information.

Kupchella outlined several steps to help increase enrollment. They include developing evening and weekend programs, which is already in the works, establishing new two-year programs and expanding the articulation agreement to make Southeast "the transfer university of choice," he said.

The strategic planning process began with a series of community forums last year to gather input from residents throughout the region.

During that process, Kupchella said, "we were exhorted a lot about serving our region more effectively, and we know we need to do that.

Suggestions for improving accessibility and service include a regional needs assessment; expanded services and articulation agreements with hospitals, community colleges, high schools and other institutions; offering new two-year programs; long-distance learning via computer and video link; encouraging applied research by university to benefit the region; and expanding cultural arts programs in the region.

"We want to get everybody involved, get the community involved, to have the university be the focus of as big a range of people and places and things as we can," said Donald L. Harrison, president of the Board of Regents.

Some of the suggestions are already being implemented, Kupchella said. He said he could not give an estimate on the total cost of implementing the strategic plan, because it's not known yet what funding will be available.

"What we'll probably do is take all these things we want to do and put them in priority order and go after them one at a time," he said.

After the regents heard Kupchella's report on the strategic plan, Dr. Ken Dobbins, the university's executive vice president, outlined the campus master plan, which focuses on upgrading the university's physical facilities and campus community.

Seven priorities have been identified by consultants Mackey, Mitchell and Zahmer of Kansas City, Dobbins said. Those include creating a sense of community on campus; optimizing the utilization and allocation of existing space; improving campus transportation, including parking; enhancing the campus's image through the use of signage, lighting and other improvements; integrating technology with planned academic advances; and identifying capital budget requests to the Missouri General Assembly for planned improvements over the next five to 10 years.

A series of focus groups began meeting in November, Dobbins said, and preliminary data from those groups will be shared with the regents in February, he said. The final plan should be ready for the regents' approval in June.

"Some of these issues will take three to five years to do," he said.

Dobbins said it was too soon to try to estimate what the cost of the suggested improvements would be. "We don't even know what the configuration's going to be," he said. "Right now we're still in the data-gathering portion of campus master planning."

Southeast Missouri Board of Regents

Dec. 19, 1995

University Center Ballroom

Action Items

Approved a policy for awarding honorary doctoral degrees and honorary professional degrees.

Approved re-appointing Dr. Ken Dobbins, executive vice president, to the Show-Me Center Board of Managers for a three-year term.

Approved conferring of degrees for the 1995 Winter Commencement.

Approved a resolution recognizing the women's volleyball team and coaches for winning the Ohio Valley Conference championship.