Effective strategic plans require widespread input, and to accept and promote a plan’s essential components, the Brock community must first understand it thoroughly. Understanding and collective ownership require engagement from the outset, so, to that end, we are requesting your creative thoughts and best ideas about how to shape our future.

Our approach to strategic planning covers eight Strategic Objectives that are critical to Brock’s future development. They include sections on

• enrolments
• academic innovation
• research initiatives
• student life
• employee support and development
• infrastructure renewal
• community engagement
• sustainable financial plan and fundraising

Over the course of the next month, we invite all faculty, staff, students and Board members to provide input to each area. Each week for four weeks, members of the Brock community will be directed to a new online questionnaire allowing people to submit feedback on specific themes. Some topics or questions may be more meaningful or pertinent to you than others, but please, reply if and as you see fit. All comments will be held in confidence.

At the end of this exercise, we expect to identify a small number of critical initiatives under each of our eight Strategic Objectives, and will consult further to ensure that we get this analysis right.

This important exercise will bring focus to Brock’s operational and budgetary plans for the next several years. As projects conclude, we will identify new initiatives that advance our goals. The strength of this planning initiative will rest on our ability as an academic community to pull in the same general direction.

Of course, not every action that takes place on campus needs to fit within the plan, and individual initiatives to pursue excellence in any area will always be welcome. But to move the University forward in the most effective manner, we must attempt to ensure strategic focus wherever possible.

We must also secure the multiple synergies inherent in different aspects of the plan. For example, enrolment success will generate more income that can support academic program initiatives, which in turn can attract additional enrolments that may require improved infrastructure, which makes the campus more attractive to students, but which requires additional funding. One can elaborate these linkages at length, but the point about the impact of synergies becomes clear.

We plan to post the questionnaires for our Strategic Objectives on the following schedule:

Week of Jan. 23:
Objective 1 — Achieve Optimal Enrolment Outcomes
Objective 2 — Deliver Outstanding Student Experience

Week of Jan. 30:
Objective 3 — Enhance Educational Programs and Outcomes
Objective 4 — Support Increased Research Output and Impact

Week of Feb. 6:
Objective 5 — Develop Brock’s Excellent Human Resources
Objective 6 — Support Campus Infrastructure Improvement

Week of Feb. 13:
Objective 7 — Enhance Mutually Beneficial Community Engagement
Objective 8 — Establish a Sustainable Financial Framework

Each posting will have a two-week deadline for responses. Your comments can be brief point-form observations, elaborate data-driven analyses and recommendations, or anything in between. Anonymous submissions will be accepted, or you can identify yourself if you want us to contact you for further detail or explanation.

Thank you for your support of this critical venture.

Tom Traves
Interim President and Vice-Chancellor