President Denise Battles has called to action a new strategic plan—Geneseo 2021: Seeing Beyond the Horizon—this year in hopes that Geneseo will remain a leading college for the next five years. After Battles’ inauguration in Oct. 2015, it was announced that with the help of Geneseo’s Strategic Planning Group a new strategic plan would be devised. According to SPG member and Director of Institutional Research Julie Rao, the SPG revisited and tweaked the college mission statement and also developed a vision statement for Geneseo.
The strategic plan’s mission statement declares that the college comes together to improve students’ knowledge and motivate them to be socially responsible and globally aware.
“Coming into this plan, we have enjoyed a solid reputation among other colleges as a leading public liberal arts institution,” Battles said. “What we want to do is advance and expand our reputation as well as our quality.”
Battles explained that Geneseo’s vision statement outlines the college’s future aspirations. “The preceding document didn’t articulate a vision statement formally,” Battles said. “The vision statement articulates what our aspirations are, where we wish to be at the end of the plan period in 2021, how we wish to be known and where we wish to be in terms of our overall goals and priorities.”
The new strategic plan has four main focus areas: learning, access and success, advancing the public good and resilience and sustainability. Each focus area is assigned to a group of members who determine the most important objectives and action items within that specific area.
Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Paul Schacht stated that the strategic plan outlines specific curriculum goals to expand students’ perspectives and to provide educational opportunities for students outside of the classroom setting.
“The strategic plan speaks, among other things, for the need for us to think about our curriculum to ensure that the academic experience that students have is more global in perspective and to ensure that the institution itself is more diverse, has a greater diversity of students, has a greater diversity of faculty, presents students with a greater diversity of perspectives and makes sure that there are learning opportunities for students that go beyond the classroom,” Schacht said.
Battles believes that through Geneseo’s new strategic plan, the college will continue to improve its mission and vision.
“We’re an outstanding institution. No institution wants to be static,” Battles said. “It’s important that we are dynamic, that we continually engage in assessment, look at what we do well, look at what we could do better and then with those things that we could do better, identify concrete actions and priorities that will enhance our quality and ultimately help us to achieve both our mission and vision.”
Battles stressed that Geneseo’s strategic plan will help the college realize its future goals.
“The SP is called Geneseo 2021: Seeing beyond the Horizon because we want to emphasize that we are looking at a five year time period and we are looking out,” she said. “We don’t want to just see what’s in front of us. We want to anticipate, we want to be nimble and we want to be someone who is a leader.”