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Strategic Plan

Mission of the University of West Georgia

"Bread and Butter" Goals and Visionary Goals: The "Three Fives"

Mission of the University of West Georgia
Revised January 16, 2007

The University of West Georgia seeks to achieve preeminence in providing educational excellence in a personal environment through an intellectually stimulating and supportive community for its students, faculty, and staff.

Purpose
The University, a charter member of the University System of Georgia, is a comprehensive, residential institution providing selectively focused undergraduate and graduate public higher education primarily to the people of West Georgia. The University is also committed to regional outreach through a collaborative network of external degree centers, course offerings at off-campus sites, and an extensive program of continuing education for personal and professional development. Opportunities for intellectual and personal development are provided through quality teaching, scholarly inquiry, creative endeavor, and service for the public good.

Essential Activities
West Georgia educates students in a range of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and professional programs at the baccalaureate level. It also offers a significant number of graduate programs at the master’s and educational specialist’s levels. The University has a commitment to education at the doctoral level in the field of education as well as other selected areas. In addition to being accredited as an institute of higher education, the University maintains national accreditation or recognition in most undergraduate and graduate fields of specialization.

The University of West Georgia pursues its purpose through the following activities:

  • Instruction in general education and the promotion of life-long learning that together lay the foundations of what is essential to being an educated person.
  • Faculty-directed student research and professional activities that complement classroom learning through learning by doing and reflection on doing.
  • Faculty research, scholarship, and creative endeavors that promote knowledge, enhance professional development, contribute to quality instruction, and provide for significant student involvement and field-based experience.
  • Educational opportunities such as the Honors College and, for extraordinary high school-aged students, the Advanced Academy of Georgia that serve the needs of exceptionally prepared students.
  • Systematic investigation of teaching and student learning that fosters innovation in teacher, professional, and pre-professional preparation.
  • The use and exploration of existing and emerging technologies that improve opportunities for faculty and student learning.
  • A broad range of public service activities and proactive partnerships that: promote more effective utilization of human and natural resources; contribute to economic, social and technical development; and enhance the quality of life within the University’s scope of influence.
  • Student services, including outstanding first-year experiences, which increase opportunities for academic success and personal development and enhance the climate of campus life.
Values
The University of West Georgia values the following:
  • High-quality general education, undergraduate and graduate programs, that:
  1. Are grounded in a strong liberal arts curriculum;
  2. Impart broad knowledge and foster critical understanding needed for intellectual growth, personal and social responsibility, cultural and global literacy and lifelong learning;
  3. Emphasize disciplinary rigor;
  4. Foster the development of effectiveness in communication, critical and independent thinking, problem solving, and the use of information resources and technology; and
  5. Create a learning community dedicated to instructional excellence where close student-faculty interaction enhances both teaching and learning for a diverse and academically well-prepared student body.
  • Cultivation of a personal environment.
  • Affirmation of the equal dignity of each person by valuing cultural, ethnic, racial, and gender diversity in students, faculty, and staff.
  • Practices that embody the ideals of an open democratic society and that cultivate an environment of collegiality.

These commitments culminate in educational experiences that foster the development of thoughtful and productive leaders and citizens who make a positive impact throughout an increasingly global society.

Vision Statement for the University of West Georgia Year 2000 and Beyond

The University of West Georgia will be a leader within the University System of Georgia in providing educational excellence in a personal environment.

The University of West Georgia will seek to create for students from various backgrounds every possible avenue to intellectual achievement, personal development, and leadership potential without compromising academic excellence. The University will maintain close contact with all people of the region, be responsive to their needs while raising their aspirations, and generating a more highly-educated populace. The University of West Georgia will be recognized for excellence in teaching and learning, research, and public service in undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education. The University will be recognized as being fundamental to the educational, social, cultural, technological, and economic advancement of the region and state.

Specifically, the University of West Georgia will be characterized by:

  • Educational Excellence evidenced by outstanding educational experiences, national and regional recognition of selected programs, faculty who excel in their disciplines, superior staff support, and an increasingly capable student body. At West Georgia, teaching, research, and service will be intricately intertwined and supportive of each other.
  • A Safe, Supportive Community committed to enhancing learning, through close contacts between students and faculty, small classes taught by senior faculty wherever possible, and through dedicated staff who help provide a vibrant campus life.
  • An Outstanding, Diverse Faculty and Staff who demonstrate effective communication and teaching skills; utilize new technologies and innovative strategies to enhance student learning; and exhibit the highest standards of intellectual achievement, research, and continuing growth.
  • Educational Opportunities for a Wide Range of Academically-Prepared Students that include a strong academic knowledge base for the development of leadership skills and life long learning.
The University of West Georgia will help ensure its students' future success by developing the ability of individuals to access, interpret, analyze using current technology, and make use of, relevant facts, information, and knowledge to think critically, solve problems, work with, and communicate effectively with others.
West Georgia will develop the whole individual so that as alumni they will continue to be contributing members of their families, institutions, communities, state, nation and world.
  • Educational Opportunities for Exceptional Students: West Georgia's will build a reputation for having an honors college with a distinctive liberal arts curriculum and additional peaks of excellence in selected undergraduate and graduate majors and professional programs, with student involvement in faculty research, and themes that run across the curriculum, such as communication, leadership development, interdisciplinary studies, critical thinking, and problem solving.
  • A Region-Wide Learning Community that Engages and Inspires Traditional and Non-Traditional Students to become educated persons with global and multi-cultural perspectives, and advanced technological knowledge. The University will help develop both ethical principles and intellectual flexibility for the future, and will celebrate and energize the human spirit through respecting and supporting individual differences in learning styles, identities, and personal/professional goals.
  • Pro-active Partnerships with Public and Private Schools and Other Educational Institutions, Business, Industry, Government, and Cultural and Social Organizations in order to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, predict, and respond to changing state and regional needs, to support Georgia's educational, economic, and cultural development, and to ensure graduates' readiness for the present and future.
  • A Unified, Clearly Focused, University with each part contributing to and understanding how every other part contributes to the mission of the University and to the larger society.
"Bread and Butter" Goals and Visionary Goals: The "Three Fives"
"Bread and Butter" Goals

The University's "bread and butter" goals are those that we (faculty, staff, and students) must reach if we are to be an excellent comprehensive state university. UWG would survive if we fail to meet them, but we would find it difficult to fulfill our mission.

These are the goals we believe are necessary for the University's success over the next five years:

1. Commitment to UWG's mission and goals. University and College administrators must agree on the University's direction and goals, and must work together to achieve them.

2. Enrollment management. We must improve undergraduate and graduate recruitment and undergraduate retention while continuing to raise admission standards.

Recruitment:

  1. Improve the reputation of UWG among high school guidance counselors, teachers, and college-bound students. (See "Public Relations" below.) 
  2. Develop focused recruitment plans aimed at qualified and diverse high school students.
  3. Build stronger ties and articulation agreements with the two-year colleges of the University System of Georgia (USG) and the technical colleges of the Department of Technical and Adult Education (DTAE). 
  4. Develop focused recruitment plans for our graduate education programs. 

Retention:

  1. Enhance the Freshman Center. 
      - Consider expanding its role to encompass more than the freshman year, with an appropriate name change. 
      - Give it a central physical presence on campus. 
      - Develop more peer tutoring and mentoring programs. 
  2. Develop a comprehensive strategy for academic advising, perhaps in conjunction with the enhancement of the Freshman Center. 
  3. Develop students' ties to UWG so that they want to stay until they earn their degrees rather than transfer to other USG institutions. (See "The University Experience" and "Campus infrastructure" below.) 
  4. Increase undergraduate admissions standards each year as we have since 1997. 
  5. Increase scholarship support and counseling for students with emergency financial needs.

3. Academic programs. Academic excellence is the essential goal of the University. Academic programming must be shaped by the mission of the University.

  1. Use periodic program reviews to ensure that departments and programs are mission-driven. 
  2. Allocate resources for the improvement of existing programs and the development of new ones only in accordance with our mission as a comprehensive state university. 
  3. Give high priority to obtaining and maintaining accreditation for every program for which a national accrediting agency exists.  
  4. Include faculty-directed student experiential learning, research, creative, or professional activities in academic programs whenever possible. 
  5. Ensure that the general education program offered in the core is coherent and rigorous, with learning outcomes that can be clearly and consistently communicated.

4. Public relations. Public relations must become a campus-wide focus. Too often, UWG’s image does not reflect who UWG is and what UWG does well. Inaccurate public perceptions of the University are a prime barrier to UWG’s continued progress.

  1. Launch a campus and statewide campaign to define and promote UWG as an excellent comprehensive state university, targeting the visionary goals defined in the strategic planning process. 
  2. Use campus resources, particularly mass communications students, faculty, and equipment, to maximize the effectiveness of Public Relations (PR) office activities. 
  3. Encourage faculty and staff members, administrators, and students to participate in Public Relations initiatives. 
  4. To increase participation in PR, form a subcommittee of the General University Matters committee of the Faculty Senate to take the lead on the Committee’s existing charge to recommend policy and procedures for public relations. The subcommittee should include representatives from the administration, staff, and student body in addition to its faculty members. 

5. The university experience.  Faculty and Staff must improve the quality of the university experience for both commuter and residential students if West Georgia is to fulfill its mission. To improve recruitment and retention, faculty and staff must change the sense of many students that UWG is just the place where they take classes.

  1. Give students a reason to stay at UWG on weekends. 
  2. Continue improving the programming and facilities of the University Center. 
  3. Tie commuter students into the life of the campus. 
  4. Explore ways to provide off-campus transportation to improve access to entertainment, shopping, and residences. 
  5. Continue to encourage cultural, ethnic, racial, and gender diversity in students, faculty, and staff, and to work to ensure that equal opportunities and resources are available to all. 
  6. Recognizing both the appeal of having an on-campus multipurpose stadium and the difficulty of fundraising, study the feasibility of building a multipurpose stadium. 

6. Student, faculty and staff morale. UWG must continue to improve the positive campus climate at UWG and to enhance the morale of our students, faculty, and staff members.

  1. Develop policies that address student and faculty concerns about class size to ensure that UWG can offer each student educational excellence in a personal environment. 
  2. Develop clearer faculty workload, promotion, and tenure policies that are consistent with the University mission. 
  3. Review staff workload, promotion, and compensation policies. 
  4. Promote faculty governance through the Faculty Senate and its committees. 
  5. Develop procedures for assessing and improving campus services for students. 

7. External relations. UWG must work to improve ties off-campus.

  1. Increase the engagement of alumni in recruitment, fundraising, and public relations. 
  2.  Forge stronger and broader town/gown relations. 
  3. Emphasize regional service in our academic and extracurricular offerings. 
  4. Promote an understanding of cultural diversity within the region. 

8. Regional collaboration for economic and community development. UWG must form partnerships with government agencies, businesses, and non-profit organizations that let UWG apply the resources of the University to the solution of our community’s economic and social problems.

9. Information technology. UWG must employ appropriate information technology to enhance student and faculty learning, provide access to distance education resources, and conduct the administrative functions of the University.

10. Campus infrastructure. UWG must develop effective plans to maintain infrastructure necessary to deliver university services.

  1. Allocate adequate resources to building maintenance: mechanical systems, roofs, carpeting,  paint, etc.
  2. Develop a comprehensive strategy for requesting and scheduling maintenance.
  3. Develop adequate budgets for computing and networking technology. 
  4. Treat replacement of computers and networking equipment as recurring budget items rather than as one-time capital expenditures. 
  5. Explore ways to improve student housing to compete effectively with UWG’s peer institutions. 

11. Capital campaign. UWG must raise money and expand sources of funding beyond the local community. State funding and current external fundraising activities like A-Day cannot meet UWG’s needs for facilities. Therefore, in conjunction with UWG’s new centenary date of 2006, hold a multi-million dollar capital campaign.

Visionary Goals: The "Three Fives"

The University of West Georgia (UWG) will achieve national recognition as a leader among, and model for, state comprehensive universities in these five areas:

  • faculty-directed student research and professional activities
  • the Honors College and Advanced Academy
  • the First-Year Program
  • technology across the curriculum and
  • innovations in professional preparation.

The foundation for each of these goals is provided by one or more existing programs or activities that offer a starting point for our efforts. All the goals satisfy the criteria defined in the charge of the University Strategic Planning Committee:

  • Enhance educational excellence in a personal environment
  • Multidisciplinary, they are feasible and assessable and
  • Funded or externally fundable.

Each goal also meets an additional criterion set by the committee: all will support the University’s efforts to achieve its “bread and butter” goals, including recruitment and retention.

The “three fives” define for the University community areas in which UWG should work to achieve national recognition. It will be up to those who carry out the later phases of the strategic planning process to decide how individual units should participate in achieving the goals and, based on those decisions, how our progress towards reaching them can be assessed.

Faculty-directed student research and professional activities.
Faculty-directed student research and professional activities complement classroom learning by providing opportunities for learning by doing and by reflection on doing. UWG can build on existing programs like the Celebration of Scholarship, Big Night, the debate program, the Concerto Competition, and the Sigma Xi research paper competition to become national leaders in this area.

The activities best suited for a particular student will depend on the discipline and the talents and interests of the student. Appropriate experiences may include theoretical or applied research in collaboration with a faculty member; creative work under the supervision of a faculty member; community service, co-op, and internship positions on or off campus related to the student’s area of study, with faculty members providing the structure for reflection on the “real world” experience; and academic competition under faculty guidance, like debate tournaments and investment management contests.

Given this wide range of activities, each academic department at UWG can participate in the achievement of this goal. In addition, student research and professional activities can contribute to the success of the other visionary goals.

UWG’s national standing, in this area, can be assessed by using such measures as:

  1. Rates of participation in experiential learning activities. 
  2. Number of publications in undergraduate research journals, of juried exhibits and performances by students, and of adjudications. 
  3. Amount of external funding for student research. 
  4. Number of student presentations at academic and professional conferences. 
  5. Success in academic competition. 

The home unit responsible for this goal would be a Center for Student Research and Professional Activity.

The Honors College and the Advanced Academy.
 The Honors College at UWG is one of fewer than fifty such colleges in the U.S., and has developed a strong foundation for future growth. The Advanced Academy is one of fewer than ten such programs in the nation.

The development of the Honors College and the Advanced Academy can work hand-in-hand with each of the five visionary goals by increasing the likelihood of success in each. By strengthening the Honors College and the Advanced Academy ties to other programs like international studies, the Honors College can contribute to the success of other programs while fashioning a unique niche for itself.

UWG’s national standing, in this area, can be assessed by using such measures as:

  1. Growth in enrollment in the Honors College and the Advanced Academy. 
  2. Admissions standards. 
  3. Breadth of Honors offerings. 
  4. Participation of Honors and Academy students in research and professional activities. 
  5. Admission of Honors graduates to graduate and professional study. 

The home unit responsible for this goal would be the Honors College.

The First-Year Program.
Building on the work of the Freshman Center, the First-Year Program would provide an integrated approach to the academic, social, and personal development of UWG’s freshmen.

The First-Year Program would offer programs such as learning communities for groups of freshmen who would take classes together; peer mentors for learning communities; access to LIBR 1101 for all at-risk students; service-learning opportunities; and comprehensive academic advising.

UWG’s national standing, in this area, can be assessed by using such measures as:

  1. Listing in the University of Colorado’s “College and University Service-Learning Programs” directory. 
  2. Staff presentations at the National Conference on the First-Year Experience and publication in the Journal on the First-Year Experience. 
  3. External funding for support of first-year programs. 

The home unit responsible for this goal would be the EXCEL: Center for Academic Success.

Technology across the curriculum.
UWG should develop a comprehensive strategy for incorporating information technology into academic programs and student services. The University should:

  • Develop high-tech minors and programs for students in the humanities, natural and social sciences, business, and education
  • Ensure that every graduate is competent in the use of information technology in his or her discipline, and
  • Become a leader in the innovative use of asynchronous learning environments to support both distance education and classroom instruction.

An institutional focus on technology across the curriculum could contribute to UWG’s success in faculty-directed student research and professional activities and in regional economic and community development. It could also help provide distinctiveness for the programs of the Honors College.

UWG’s national standing, in this area, can be assessed by using such measures as:

  1. Inclusion in Yahoo! Internet Life’s list of Top 100 Wired Colleges. 
  2. Listing in the Sloan ALN Consortium Catalog of On-Line Educational Programs. 
  3. Publications and presentations in asynchronous learning journals and presentations at asynchronous learning conferences. 
  4. Disciplinary recognition for the integration of information technology into academic programs, particularly in traditionally low-tech disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. 

The home unit responsible for this goal would be an expanded Center for Teaching and Learning.

Innovations in professional preparation.
Drawing on resources from the three Colleges, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Education, and Richards College of Business, UWG should become a national model for innovations in professional preparation grounded in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

This goal links two core elements of the historical mission of state universities like UWG: professional education and a commitment to excellence in teaching. To reach it, the challenge will be to infuse the systematic investigation of teaching and student learning into professional preparation.

Achieving this goal can help satisfy urgent state and national demands for innovation in teacher preparation while strengthening the professional and pre-professional programs offered by the three Colleges. Moreover, insights gained through the scholarly study of teaching and learning can be generated by and can contribute to the work of faculty members in any discipline. While the focus of the goal is on improving professional education at UWG, the benefits will accrue across the University.

Achieving this goal will require support by the University and the Colleges for the scholarship of teaching and learning in all disciplines and collaboration among the Colleges to promote innovation in professional preparation.

UWG’s national standing, in this area, can be assessed by using such measures as:

  1. Participation in the Teaching Academy Campus Program of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 
  2. Recognition by scholarly and professional societies for work in professional preparation and the scholarship of teaching and learning. 
  3. External funding. 
  4. Improvement in acceptance rates to professional schools. 
  5. Improvement in passing rates on professional licensure and certification examinations.
  6. Media coverage of our innovations in professional preparation. 

The home unit responsible for this goal would be a Center for Innovations in Professional Preparation.