Welcome to VISION 2023
Colleagues,
After months of consultation, research, input, discussion and refinement, we are ready to activate VISION 2023.
I am looking forward to working with the university community to bring this vision to life over the next five years.
You will note that the structure of VISION 2023 is quite different from that of Vision 2018. Yet you will also see that many of the themes are familiar.
That is intentional.
VISION 2023 includes revised mission and vision statements and 12 new goals that will guide our planning and decision-making over the next five years. We have also included intended impacts for each goal. But behind all that are a number of themes that we began working on in Vision 2018.
By building on and continuing the progress made in Vision 2018, we will advance our mission as a polytechnic university that fosters innovative teaching and learning, along with relevant research and scholarship. We will reflect and serve our diverse, dynamic and growing region, and will ensure that our graduates are prepared for a lifetime of learning and re-learning.
Those of you who participated in the initial inquiry stages of this process will recall using Thoughtexchange, an online engagement tool, to share your ideas and then to rate and rank those that were collected from others.
The use of Thoughtexchange was key to overcoming the geographic realities of KPU. We engaged more than 1,300 people in just a few weeks including hundreds of students. The quality of engagement was high and the result was a rich set of data that quickly told us a story about the student experience at KPU. We received deep insight into what it’s like to be a student at KPU, and learned that there are important and actionable ways to improve that experience.
The other themes that surfaced were sustainability, creativity and quality.
VISION 2023 addresses each of these themes from the viewpoint of our major stakeholder groups: our students, our employees and our friends. The concept of “friends” includes external partners: governments, business and industry, donors, alumni and others who work and volunteer with us.
Based on the Thoughtexchange data, a small Strategic Planning Taskforce prepared a first draft of the new plan back in January. Taskforce members met with our governance bodies, faculty councils and various other stakeholder groups across the university, in our communities and beyond. We used that input to refine the plan, and then sought further feedback. Each revision resulted in more clarity and simplicity about who we are and what we need to achieve.
It has been endorsed by Senate and approved by our Board of Governors. Now it is up to all of us to activate the plan.
Please take the time not only to read VISION 2023, but to begin thinking how its goals can help guide your decision-making and your planning over the next five years. We will provide regular updates on our progress toward achieving the 12 goals and we look forward to sharing success stories from across KPU as teams throughout the university embrace and act on the plan in your respective faculties, divisions and departments.
We will build out resources to help you keep VISION 2023 at the forefront of your planning, and I urge you to be creative in your approach. Take a good look at how we plan to measure progress and what we hope the impact of each goal will be on the university community. Where do you fit in the plan? Where can you make a difference? Where can you have impact?
VISION 2023 is focused on people – the people who learn and work at KPU, as well as those in our communities who believe in what we do and want to part of our story. This focus will ensure we remain true to both our vision and our mission.
So I invite you to join me on this journey to achieve that vision: In 2023, KPU is a learning ecosystem rooted in a culture of sustainability, creativity and quality that inspires our people and our communities.
In doing so, we will accomplish our mission: By thinking and acting together, we transform lives and empower positive change.
I look forward to working with you as we embark on VISION 2023.
As we bid farewell to Vision 2018, I am proud to report that together we made good to excellent progress towards most of the goals in the plan.
Where we did not quite achieve success, we will continue that work in VISION 2023.
Overall, we achieved, or substantially achieved, the targets for 56 of the 75 performance measures assessed. You can find the detailed reporting on the final report here.
More work will continue on a number of these items through VISION 2023 and the 2023 Academic Plan.
Thank you to the entire KPU Community for embracing Vision 2018 and for having worked so diligently on achieving these goals over the last five years. When we released this strategic plan, we all made a commitment that it would not sit gathering dust on a shelf. Rather, we decided it would be a living, breathing plan that would inform and guide us in our decision-making and in our commitment to making KPU bigger, bolder and better. Thank you for helping make that happen.
I look forward to continuing this good work as we collectively embrace VISION 2023.
Sincerely,
Alan Davis, PhD
President and Vice Chancellor