February 16, 2023
Announcing our Next-Gen K-State strategic planning task forces
Submitted by Richard Linton and Chuck Taber
Dear K-State Community,
We are excited to share with you an important update on our Next-Gen K-State strategic planning effort.
Over the past several weeks, our strategic planning advisory committee has been hard at work helping us refine our draft vision and values based on your feedback from the survey that closed on Jan. 20. We thank all of you who responded to the survey. Today we are happy to share our updated vision and values that reflect these discussions and will guide our continued work throughout the spring semester.
We have also talked extensively among our advisory committee about what these values mean — not just to each of us individually but to our broader university community. They are the threads that bind us. They are the litmus test through which we run our decisions and daily actions. They are how we hold ourselves and one another accountable to a shared set of expectations for how we live our mission and do our vitally important work.
We also want to thank our deans, Cabinet members and governance council leaders for their suggestions of individuals to serve on the task forces, which will address the themes that we announced last month. In total, we received nearly 400 recommendations that we then worked to narrow down to around 15-20 individuals per task force. Rest assured; this was not an easy process. These task forces, which include students, faculty, staff, administrators and alumni, have been intentionally crafted to ensure its membership includes the expertise, experience and perspective necessary to be successful, based on the theme.
Today, we are pleased to share the task forces that are now forming and will begin meeting next week to support our strategic planning process throughout the spring semester. We hope you will echo our enthusiasm, excitement and appreciation for these talented individuals who have agreed to serve on our six strategic planning task forces and contribute significant time in the coming weeks to help us develop goals, strategies and outcomes that will power our future as a university. These task forces will also be working alongside our Brand Task Force, which continues to meet and work toward recommendations that evolve K-State's brand platform and visual identity in alignment with our future and strategic direction.
Please take a moment to view our task forces and members and join us in thanking them for their continued commitment and service to K-State.
As we have shared before, this is an exciting but uncharted time for our university. Much is changing in higher education on a seemingly daily basis. We must challenge ourselves to think about all we do differently — from teaching and research to Extension and engagement. What will define K-State by 2030 in each of these areas? What will we have accomplished? How will we know we have been successful?
These and many other questions are what we have challenged our task forces with answering and using as the basis upon which they will deliver recommendations that inform our university's next strategic plan. We have also updated our timeline to allow for more planning time throughout the spring and extended the time for feedback on the draft plan throughout the summer. With this new timeline, we will launch the final strategic plan in late September. The Brand Task Force will continue along the current timeline and plan, with their recommendations expected to be completed in May.
We encourage you to continue to follow our planning progress and share any thoughts or ideas that can help inform our future with our task force members, advisory committee members, governance council members, deans, Cabinet members and us.
Much more to come — both in the near future with strategic planning and long term as we work toward becoming a next-generation land-grant university. We look forward to continuing to go down this path together and all we will accomplish — together.
Go 'Cats!
Richard Linton Chuck Taber
President Provost