March 29, 2017
2025 progress and update
Submitted by President Richard Myers
Dear faculty, staff and students,
Welcome back from spring break. We have passed the halfway point for the spring semester and are looking forward to spring activities celebrating the achievements of students, faculty and staff across our campuses. This time marks the end of my first year as interim and now president of Kansas State University. It's also time to get started updating our K-State 2025 visionary plan.
Our successful path to 2025 has come from the commitment of faculty, staff, students, administrators, donors, alumni and other friends. As was the case in creating the original K-State 2025 plan, I want the updated plan to be the result of an open and transparent process with broad involvement from the K-State community.
I believe the K-State 2025 aspirational visionary and theme goals are sound, as are the basic directions in the plan. The current plan is high-level and directional, emphasizing the core mission of a land-grant university — integrated education, research and engagement/outreach. The plan provides an overall framework for the real implementation plans — those at the college and unit levels. It also aligns with our highly successful $1 billion Innovation and Inspiration Campaign.
That said, successful strategic plans are never static and must evolve in response to changing circumstances. Our goals remain the same — excelling as a student-centered land-grant university on our way to becoming nationally recognized as a Top 50 public research university — but we need to reevaluate the path we are taking to reach those goals. As we consider potential changes to our plan, it's important to take into account our successes to date, our challenges and our changed funding environment since 2010.
After consulting with the Cabinet and deans, I have reached two conclusions. First, in regards to the five university metrics used to measure progress to our Top 50 goal, we will replace the "Number of National Academy Members" with "Annual Giving." This more accurately reflects where we are placing our efforts, particularly given our challenging financial situation. You can learn more about the K-State 2025 university metrics at "Our Progress."
Secondly, our update effort will concentrate on changes to the activities and outcomes of the plan over the next five and 10 years. This keeps our focus on what we are going to do (activities) and expected results to be achieved (outcomes) as we continue to pursue our visionary and theme goals.
To get us started, I invite you to visit our K-State 2025 Update website and provide comments and suggestions for changes to the plan. Here you will have the opportunity to review the current K-State 2025 plan by theme and provide suggestions and comments on what is missing, what's in the plan that is no longer needed, and overall general comments. The online survey collecting your input will be available through May 19.
The information collected will be compiled and made available to the university community and general public over the summer. I also will be appointing a university strategic plan update committee in August to revise the plan based on feedback received. The draft revised plan will be shared for comment later in the fall prior to finalizing. Our goal is to roll out the updated K-State 2025 visionary plan in December 2017.
You can find additional details on the update process and track our progress at the K-State 2025 Update website.
As I have said before, we can be proud of the tremendous energy spent advancing our university in the directions defined in K-State 2025. This exciting vision for the future of our university is one of the reasons I decided I wanted to take on the role as your president. I look forward to continuing to work with all of you as we adjust our path forward to 2025.
Richard B. Myers
President
Kansas State University