By Brianna Gleghorn
A strategic planning town hall meeting took place on April 17 in the Williamson College of Business Administration auditorium to discuss the strategic planning process of Youngstown State University.
The Strategic Planning Organization Team, also known as SPOT, is composed of 18 people who are representatives of faculty, administration, staff, students and members of the Board of Trustees.
There are three areas that have come up in the team’s research, including collective impact with the region, academic distinction and discovery of knowledge and student futures and lifelong learning.
AJ Sumell, economics professor and a member of SPOT, discussed about what the team has done, what they are doing and future plans for the next academic year.
“What SPOT has done the past year, and continues to do is, is try and come up with different ways to engage campus. To get thinking about what we want to be moving forward, and how best to execute the plan in the future,” Sumell said.
The team plans to have a rough draft for the strategic plan at the end of summer 2019 and spend the fall semester receiving feedback from the campus to revise and submit the revised copy.
President Jim Tressel was present at the meeting and talked about future plans for the university regarding student success and impacting the region.
He said the infusion of the diversity and inclusion strategy begins in the classroom.
“If you infuse it in the classroom, people will now know more about the services. If it’s never mentioned in the classroom, how will they even know it’s there?”
Tressel announced that there are new positions at the university for assistant provost for teaching and learning and assistant provost for diversity and inclusion.
“There is nothing more important for this region than Youngstown State University,” Tressel said. “Our mission must include the fact that we are going to continue to have, and even increase, the impact that we have on this region. We’re going to need to do it collectively. We’re going to need to do it side by side.”