By Patrick Healy, Managing Editor
Canisius’s Strategic Planning and Prioritization Committee (SPPC) held its first public forum last Friday, Feb. 3. Led by chair Dr. Sara Morris, the committee asked for input from forum attendees — largely college employees — on every area of the college.
Morris briefly introduced the committee’s charge. Noting that the committee’s work must be completed by the end of the semester, the college’s vice president for academic affairs said the committee must “work very, very quickly.” She said the end product would be a six-year plan identifying “realistic goals and areas for assessment.”
After introducing the “forward-looking and practical” committee’s charge, Morris brought the audience’s attention to an array of posterboards and invited each attendee to write five ideas on sticky notes and place them on the appropriate board, which included eight topics such as academics, facilities and financial vision.
Each member of the committee was then tasked with leading discussion on an aspect of the college they are most familiar with. They took their area’s posterboard to a table and led a discussion with those audience members who chose to sit at their table. For instance, Sandy Miller, an SPPC committee member and Canisius’s director of government and foundation relations, led a productive discussion on the college’s external relationships.
These initial discussions lasted 25 minutes, after which audience members were asked to move to a different table/topic for a second round of 25-minute conversation. Morris and Vice Chair Dr. Joshua Russell finished the forum by asking audience members to have their friends and colleagues who could not attend to submit five ideas to an online survey which closed yesterday, Feb. 9.
The next public forum will be held on Thursday, March 2 from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at Science Hall Commons with the purpose of reviewing the pillars and objectives developed up to that point.