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When reflecting on this past year, my third as president of �鶹��ý, I focus primarily on the development and launch of the strategic plan, designed with an eye toward ensuring a thriving future for CSU and successful outcomes for all our students by 2030. The creation of this plan began with our Board of Trustees' visioning and prioritizing retreat in Spring 2024, followed by a summer design kick-off retreat with the Senior Leadership Team. Those initial discussions and ideas formed the kernels of what would become our 2025-2030 strategic plan: Cleveland State United.

I am immensely proud of the mission, vision, values and priorities that make up this plan and, frankly, impressed with the efficient timeframe in which we brought it all together. The Strategic Planning Task Force, charged with building specificity around the early design ideas of the Board and Senior Leadership Team, did a terrific job of consolidating and aligning dozens of ideas into a nimble framework that is easily understood and adaptable by our divisions and colleges.

While the process of building a coherent whole out of multiple initial ideas was itself a substantial undertaking, the Task Force also incorporated extensive community input and feedback into the entire strategic planning process. This report summarizes the extent of the data that resulted from this community inclusion, but the numbers don’t fully illustrate the positive impact that engaging so many in our community had on the plan itself. Through webinars and in-person gatherings, we collected invaluable comments and ideas that filled in the gaps, added clarity and improved the tone of our statements. Given the hundreds of people involved in developing this, as we neared the end of the fall semester and the Task Force considered what to name this new strategic plan, the title of Cleveland State United seemed perfect to all of us. 

As a reminder, the primary elements of Cleveland State United are as follows:

Mission Statement

Cleveland’s University. Infinite Opportunity.
We are in and of the city of Cleveland. We leverage our unique location and strategic partnerships to equip learners with knowledge and future-ready skills. Through innovative research, dedicated service, and exceptional talent, we address the evolving needs of our community.

Vision 2030

“Where Everyone Thrives”
CSU aspires to be a national leader in social and economic mobility. We will be a great place to learn and work.

Values — "CSU"

Collaborating with Community
Serving Students
Unleashing Creativity

Priorities

Advance Academic Offerings, Delivery, and Scholarship to Foster Success

• Expand experiential and work-based learning
• Integrate undergraduate, graduate, exploratory and continuing education for lifelong learning
• Improve the student experience and enhance our culture of student success

Reimagine Community Partnerships to Increase Opportunities

• Enhance relationships with community partners to expand opportunities for prospective and current students/learners
• Build a corporate/community partnership structure that leverages and coordinates all that CSU offers
• Serve as a convenor and thought-partner to help address Cleveland’s most pressing social and economic challenges

Restructure Operational and Financial Model to Enable our Mission-focused Work

• Initiate a comprehensive multi-year stakeholder informed technology digital transformation
• Develop and implement a sustainable financial model and process
• Cultivate a campus-wide culture of transformation and continuous improvement

These and other details of Cleveland State United are available on a comprehensive strategic planning webpage. Included on that webpage is a dashboard, which serves as a progress report on our success in meeting these goals and their specific objectives. We will regularly update the dashboard so that our Trustees, members of the CSU community and the public can monitor how we are advancing our mission as Cleveland’s university.

As explained in detail in the full report, the Senior Leadership Team underwent a substantial restructuring over the summer. The benefits of that restructure can be seen throughout this report. The accomplishments included here are a reflection of the focused work undertaken daily across all divisions and colleges of this University. I give full credit to my colleagues on the Senior Leadership Team who daily create the conditions and set the expectations that enable our employees across campus to thrive and advance our mission. I am fortunate to serve �鶹��ý alongside such talented professionals. To each of them, I offer my sincere thanks.