After 18 months of planning, writing and revision, the University’s new academic plan is preparing to enter the final stage of its life — its implementation.
Details of that implementation were hinted at during Thursday’s Board of Trustees meeting, where the plan’s co-chairs presented key points of the document that will shape the next decade of the University’s academic and financial development.
Unlike the last academic plan, the latest version includes a provision for an implementation committee, suggesting that more of the initiatives outlined in the length document — 85 in all — will be brought to fruition than in the last plan.
“This is a very exciting plan,” Chancellor Holden Thorp told the trustees.
While many of the trustees heard the highlights of the plan for the first time — which include provisions urging guaranteed enrollment in a first year seminar, a fast-track bachelor’s to master’s degree program and increased faculty salary parity with peer institutions, among other points — the document presented Thursday morning largely mirrored the first public draft of the plan released last November.
Minor tweaks in language and content — some of which were garnered from an exhaustive series of meetings with campus academic officials, students and staff since November — have left the core message of the plan intact.
The last plan, completed in 2003 by former Chancellor James Moeser’s administration, had far-reaching effects on campus life.
Thorp reiterated the influence of that plan Thursday.
“In that plan, almost all of our most recent programs had a start,” Thorp said.