Phase 3 | Achieving Financial Sustainability

Phase 3: Building a Strong and Healthy Foundation

As we start Phase 3 — Building a Strong and Healthy Foundation — it is important to recognize that these first initiatives are not an end unto themselves. Rather, they serve, along with our flexibility, commitment, and resolve; to remove barriers and to build a strong and healthy foundation that will lead us to financial fitness, sustainability, and ultimately enable us to achieve our strategic objectives.

The Process

In October of 2020, we launched the Strategic Budget Initiate (SBI) which was designed to be a collaborative, strategic undertaking to identify both short-term operational and longer-term opportunities to improve our financial position. That work has been powered by five task forces and sixteen working groups responsible for idea generation, analysis, validation, and recommendations in distinct subject areas.

Over the past seven months, over 300 faculty and staff have engaged directly in the SBI with thousands more participating in surveys, meetings and campus conversations. Overall hundreds of ideas were generated, researched, evaluated, and prioritized with 23 initiatives ultimately presented to a broad leadership team—including all Deans—with the potential to save or generate millions of dollars.

The Initiatives

The final Working Group Reports presented to leadership in May 2021 are linked below. A subset of initiatives from these reports were selected to move forward to implementation.