Priority four
Ensure Institutional Sustainability — Embrace sustainable campus operations that ensure wise stewardship of our resources.
Objectives
- Adopt agile and lean business practices and systems that ensure efficiency, maintain a focus on solutions, and meet or exceed industry standards.
- Invest in and expand our operational focus on the efficient use of energy, reduction of waste and consumption, sustainable development, sustainability, and environmental responsibility.
- Strategically invest in and rebalance our portfolio of educational offerings to meet current and future learner, employer and societal needs while remaining accessible and affordable.
- Foster a culture of continuous improvement and informed risk-taking through reinvestment of funding into either new programs that create impact or into ideas that create efficiencies.
- Implement strategies for new and diversified revenue streams with a focus on enhancing advancement and fundraising activities and identifying mutually beneficial partnerships with other organizations to further the goals of CMU.
SMART goals
- Foster a university-wide culture of continuous improvement with a focus on:
- Creating a system to review policies and processes that result in inefficiency or stymie innovation, and appoint a cross-divisional team to carry it out.
- Measure: Number of policies reviewed, changed or deleted and new processes created by August 2025.
- University stakeholders expanding the portfolio of new non-traditional educational offerings.
- Measure: Initiate tracking and transcription systems to count learners pursuing credentials and the number of offerings successfully launched by April 2025.
- Pursuing additional opportunities for partnerships with other organizations to further the goals of CMU.
- Measure: Develop the plan to generate and evaluate opportunities by August 2025.
- Creating and implementing a comprehensive technology plan to identify and prioritize academic and operational needs.
- Measure: Develop the plan, with annual goals, by August 2025.
- Creating a system to review policies and processes that result in inefficiency or stymie innovation, and appoint a cross-divisional team to carry it out.
- Review, clarify, and revise division roles, responsibilities and organizational structure with a focus on removing barriers, improving efficiency and accountability, and enhancing customer service.
- Measure: Number of internal processes mapped/reviewed and identified for enhancements by August 2025.
- Initiate a comprehensive review of programs and strategies targeted towards student retention.
- Measure: Establish the criteria to evaluate return on investment, and impact by June 2025.
- Continue to develop and implement the planning phase strategies for a comprehensive campaign. This includes efforts for staffing, technology, university priorities, prospect identification and qualification, case statement development, etc.
- Measure Year One: Determine the feasibility of the campaign and next steps by August 2024.
- Measure Year Two: Finalize and implement campaign strategies while remaining flexible and nimble to integrate the vision and ideas of the new president by June 2025.
2024 Progress
Successes
- Established a policy review governance structure and prioritized policies for cyclical review.
- Overhauled CMU’s administrative policies page to make policies searchable and easier to find and understand.
- Adopted a new software platform to improve the process for reserving space on campus for events.
- Achieved a two percentage-point increase in first-to-second-year retention rates, moving from 72.9% to 74.9% retention.
- Surpassed fundraising goals and marked CMU’s best-ever year for philanthropic giving by securing more than $29.5 million in contributions.
- Implemented a new donor engagement solution and designated additional resources to increase advancement team staffing.
Ongoing efforts
- Continuing to review and update or eliminate policies that do not improve efficiency or bolster innovation.
- Compiling a comprehensive list of non-credit options offered across the university, including those from academic colleges, Innovation and Online, and non-academic units.
- Developing technology plans to support all divisions of the university.
- Collecting organizational structure data from all divisions, including synopses of office responsibilities.
- Conducting a university-wide inventory to capture all retention efforts underway at CMU; developing an assessment tool to determine the return on investment of all efforts.
- Planning and preparing for the next CMU comprehensive campaign.
CMU’s Commitment to Free Expression and Free Speech
As a public institution of higher education, Central Michigan University aims to be both a marketplace for the free and open exchange of ideas and a community that fosters an environment conducive to teaching, learning and research.
That’s the message behind CMU’s Commitment to Free Expression and Free Speech, outlined on a recently published page of the university’s website, and the rationale behind updates to the university’s Expressive Activity and Advocacy Policy, formerly called the Advocacy Policy.
The right to explore and exchange ideas
CMU students are known for their civic engagement, with voting rates well above the national average. They also engage in the community though hundreds of student organizations, many aligned with social causes, nonprofit organizations and political groups.
The university’s updated Expressive Activity and Advocacy Policy provides clearer contact information, updated definitions, and guidance for a variety of forms of advocating for causes, including posting signs, distributing printed materials, reserving space for gatherings, and more.
Faculty and staff also regularly engage students in discussion of challenging and sensitive topics, creating space for the exchange of ideas and opinions; these have included programs such as Conversations that Matter, Critical Engagements, Soup and Substance, and courses offered through the Institute for Transformative Dialogue.
CMU President Bob Davies said the university will monitor its effectiveness and usefulness to the university community throughout the year.
“We encourage our students, faculty and staff to review the policy and to share their experiences working with it,” Davies said.
An online feedback form is available on the Expressive Activity and Advocacy Policy webpage.
Policy review and updates
John Danner, CMU’s general counsel, said CMU regularly reviews and updates administrative policies and procedures to ensure they are relevant, appropriate and effective for the campus.
CMU recently reviewed several policies, including the Sexual and Gender-Based Misconduct Policy, the former Advocacy Policy, Workplace Violence Policy and several others. Some are still being reviewed and revised, Danner said.
Mary Martinez, Assistant to the President for Institutional Equity and Title IX Coordinator at CMU, said recent Title IX changes necessitated updates to the Sexual and Gender-Based Misconduct Policy. However, pending legislation involving Title IX may require additional changes to be made, she said.
Members of the university community can review all CMU’s administrative policies on the newly updated webpage. Anyone can share thoughts and suggestions on the Sexual and Gender-Based Misconduct Policy using an online feedback form, and on the Expressive Activity and Advocacy Policy using an online feedback form.
Making policies more accessible
Over the summer, CMU’s University Communications and General Counsel partnered to reshape the way the university community searched for and explored administrative policies.
“Previously, all policies were posted to the website as PDF documents, which did not always pull easily into searches of the website,” said John Veilleux, vice president of university communications. “By rebuilding each policy as a standalone webpage, we were able to improve search engine optimization using keywords, headings and more.”
On the new Administrative Policies, Procedures and Guidelines page, community members can more easily search for and find relevant policies, and individuals who use the search bar on the home page will also more quickly find the necessary content, Veilleux said.