OU President Duane Nellis introduced OHIO's Strategic Framework to university stakeholders during his Sept. 12 State of the University address.
In the framework, titled “Fearlessly Forward,” the university identifies four themes that will guide the university’s decision making, according to Ohio University’s website.
These themes are access and inclusion, student success and transformation, research and knowledge discovering in support of vibrant communities and sustainable academic enterprise.
“As far as the new model, it will have to be experimental,” said Travis Gatling, artistic director and head of the dance division within the School of Dance, Film and Theater. “We just have to try some things out and see what works. If something is not working, to not view it as a failure.”
The reason a change is being made is that a fundamental shift in higher education is happening, according to the plan.
There is a convergence of economic and demographic challenges as well as emerging opportunities. According to the plan, it will “reinvent and refresh” the university’s academic value to current and future students.
The model will provide clarity about resource allocations to support strategic goals. The budget plan will be reimagined into 2025.
The enrollments at OU have declined while institutional expenses have increased. Operating budgets will be resized to balance out revenue and expenses.
To accomplish this, OU will enact administrative and academic benchmarking to fit the institution’s size. It will also invest in growing programs and developing new programs and certificates to strengthen academic quality.
OU will also be changing how it uses its space on campus.
The university’s physical footprint is one of the highest expenses to the institution that relates to capital and operational investment. Digital and technology needs are also transforming the capitial footprint and infrastructure needs of students, faculty and staff.
OU will conduct a study of space ownership, management, utilization and needs across the university. It will also rethink how space should be deployed to meet university needs.
One of the changes in the plan is a general education reform by the fall of 2021. The education model reform comes as national education standards and expectations change and post-secondary dual enrollment and other transfer credit programs grow.
Another goal the strategic framework has set is for OU to become a university of “digital transformation.” The university wants to improve processes, student learning outcomes, teaching environments and the campus by using technology, according to the plan.
The digital transformation will require significant investment, according to the plan. The university will be strategic where the investment is placed given current budget constraints.
To help the digital transformation, OU will look at the student experience from recruitment until graduation and determine what needs to be changed. Along with other methods, OU will also support recruitment, enrollment, retention and persistence of students by using analytics and data-driven interventions.
Another step to realizing the university’s goal is to “reimagine the academic enterprise,” which involves redesigning the structure, process and practice in delivering leadership skills to meet the clear value expected by students, according to the plan.
This involves changing the nature of faculty members’ roles and procedures such as changing or modifying curricula.
“(Ohio University) will focus on intentionally creating teams with expertise from essential disciplines to address problems and capture opportunities relevant to our students, our region, and our nation,” the policy said.
The reason for this change is to advance teaching and research missions, eliminating redundancies, ensure alignment of all missions as well as many other reasons.
OU has focused on diversity and inclusion, enhanced academic quality, building an engagement ecosystem and encouraging dialogue and civil debate, according to the plan.
“We must continue to engage our community as we move forward together,” Nellis said at the faculty convocation on Sept. 12. “We’ve already started down that pathway.”
Another point in the plan is student success.
OU wants students to graduate in a timely manner, according to the plan. This requires improved student retention and graduation rates. This part of the plan is closely tied into the other elements of the plan, such as a general education redesign, diversity and inclusion efforts, enrollment management, data analytics and scholarship leveraging.
To accomplish this, OU will develop a student success intervention and programming that reflects the differing needs of students. The goal is to increase retention rates and improve 4-year and 6-year graduation rates, among others.
Another goal of the university is to amplify research, scholarly productivity and creative activity. To do this, the university wants to increase applied research to inform communities, support research-funded positions, expand partnerships with corporations and global partners and leverage strong undergraduate research.
“I truly believe that we need to include undergraduate students in all of our research projects if possible,” John Bowditch, director of the GRID Lab, said at the convocation.
OU also wants to shift from focusing on rising freshmen in Ohio to recruiting students into hybrid and online programs for adult learners across the country. It also wants to increase that shift to further focus enrollment attentions to attract more out-of-state undergraduates.
To do this, OU will shift its enrollment efforts from heavily focusing on in-state undergraduates to a more balanced strategy that includes adult learners and non-traditional students. It will also refocus scholarship strategies as well as other goals.
“What is happening now is that non-traditional is becoming traditional,” Nellis said. “We need to be prepared for this new dynamic.”
When people think of an undergraduate student today, they usually picture someone between 18 and 22 years old, who just finished high school, said Elizabeth Sayrs, dean of university college. She said this is no longer accurate.
“We need to shift our recruitment efforts to better fit with today’s landscape,” Nellis said.
A marketing and branding initiative will be looked into to develop a brand strategy that recognizes the “long history as an institution but also moves us into the future and promotes an inclusive university community,” according to the plan.
The last portion of the plan is for alumni engagement and coordination to be increased.
This initiative will leverage alumni to support enrollment and recruitment efforts and connect the alumni base in retaining a student body.
