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MARQUETTE Charting a course for the future President’s Strategic Planning Workshop brings together faculty, staff and students To ensure collaboration at the critical goalsetting stage of the university-wide strategic plan, President Scott R. Pilarz, S.J., chose to forego this year’s Presidential Address to bring the university together for an interactive workshop Jan. 30. Speaking to an overflow crowd assembled in the AMU’s Monaghan Ballroom for the President’s Strategic Planning Workshop, Father Pilarz noted the importance of collaboration throughout the strategic planning process, which began last spring with 17 listening sessions. “Throughout this process, if we have heard anything loud and clear, it has been the need to collaborate, and about the powerful things that happen when we reach across traditional departmental boundaries to cooperate with one another,” Father Pilarz said. “Along the way, we’ve learned the importance of preparing our students for a world that demands they cross boundaries.” Nearly 425 faculty, staff and students attended the workshop to share their ideas for university goals. Participants were seated at tables of eight, which were assigned in advance to ensure they included faculty, staff and students from different departments. “Today is about the university community having a forum that promotes reaching across traditional boundaries,” Father Pilarz said in his opening remarks. “If you think about it, that was the genius of Father Marquette: to reach out fearlessly, to explore, to imagine the future.” Father Pilarz offered several guidelines for participants: • This process is about university-wide goal setting, so please think outside your department or division. What goals will help advance education across Marquette’s full range of colleges and departments? • Try to break away from your day-to-day role. Be creative. What would you see for Marquette when you think about the university in a more holistic way? And don’t afraid to be bold about that. • Not every idea will ultimately make it into the plan, but all of your ideas will influence us as we determine the goals that will be
Photo by Dan Johnson
By Lynn Sheka
Nearly 425 faculty, staff and students shared ideas for university-wide goals at the President’s Strategic Planning Workshop on Jan. 30. Each table brainstormed goal ideas stemming from six overarching strategic planning themes. The workshop took the place of the annual Presidential Address this year.
included in the plan. So don’t hold back. At this stage of the game, there are no bad ideas. He concluded by reminding participants that they were engaging in a time-honored Jesuit tradition. As long as there have been Jesuit colleges and universities,” he said, “there have been educators just like you ‘reading the signs of the times’ and determining how to best use the gifts at their disposal to extend knowledge and prepare students for lives as leaders — agents of change — in a world waiting to be more gentle, more just.” After Father Pilarz’s opening remarks, Dr. Jeanne Hossenlopp, co-chair of the Strategic Plan Coordinating Committee, dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for research, provided further directions for developing goal statements before the brainstorming portion of
the workshop began. During the discussions, Father Pilarz, Provost John Pauly, Executive Vice President Mary DiStanislao, Hossenlopp and Strategic Plan Coordinating Committee Co-chair and University Architect Tom Ganey, wound their way through the tables, listening to conversations. Table facilitators — academic department chairs, director-level staff and assistant/associate vice presidents — kicked off the roundtable discussions and helped to keep the conversations focused on goal-setting. Participants wrote their ideas on paper tablecloths and index cards provided at each table, and facilitators also documented ideas. The planning leadership then reviewed and synthesized the goal ideas collected from the workshop, the University Academic Senate, the
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CAM PU S H A P P E N I N GS Nominate a colleague for an Excellence in University Service Award Nominations for this year’s Excellence in University Service Awards will be accepted until Friday, March 22. The application can be found at marquette. edu/excellence/.This is an opportunity for Marquette employees to nominate colleagues who demonstrate and support the Ignatian ideal of care for others, and carry out the mission of the university. Candidates should be nominated based on service that is above and beyond the duties normally assigned to their position. Four employees will be chosen to receive Excellence in University Service Awards. Faculty members, deans and vice presidents are not eligible. Nominations from 2012 were kept on file for consideration this year.
Law School hosting conference on charter schools The Law School will bring together noteworthy national, state and local figures to examine the charter school movement at a free conference Wednesday, March 20, from 8 a.m. to noon in Eckstein Hall. More than two million children nationwide are enrolled in charter schools, but the impact of such schools has been difficult to assess. Speakers will include the director of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, Sarah Carr, author of Hope Against Hope: Three Schools, One City and America’s Struggle to Educate its Children, and a panel of local leaders. Register online at law.marquette.edu.