Laurentian University laid out a road map for its future Feb. 6 with the launch of its 2012-2017 strategic plan.

The five-page plan was developed after a 10-month-long process involving more than 40 consultation sessions in Sudbury and Barrie.

A 27-member steering committee then whittled down into measurable goals the information gathered during the consultations. The plan was endorsed by the university's senate in November and approved by its board of governors in December.

“What really came about during the consultations was the need for our university to focus,” Laurentian University president Dominic Giroux told reporters after the press conference where the plan was launched.

“We wanted the strategic plan to to be useful to the university, to guide decisions and investments between now and 2017-18. That's why we're really excited with the outcome.”

The plan sets out five key goals — student engagement and satisfaction, national recognition, university of choice, community responsiveness and organizational excellence. 

It also sets out a plan to meet those goals, breaking them down into seven aspirations and 40 results it expects to achieve by 2017.

Giroux said the university will plan its budget over the next five years with these goals in mind, earmarking “significant resources” to support the implementation of the strategic plan. 

The fact that Laurentian now has a balanced operating budget, and is well on its way to meeting its $50-million capital fundraising goal, makes it easier to implement the strategic plan, he said.

“We're in a much better position compared to other universities,” Giroux said.

Board of governors vice-chair and Northern Life president Michael Atkins said the board wanted to make sure the document had measurable goals, and wasn't just “a list of things we'd really like to do.”

“What I thought was remarkable was we had 27 people who met with literally hundreds of others, worked through all sorts of individual priorities, and were able to isolate the things that were most important.”

First-year Laurentian biomedical science student Emilie Thibault shared her thoughts about the strategic plan at the press conference.

“When I was asked to envision Laurentian five years from now, I immediately thought of how much it had progressed in such a short time,” she said. 

“It would be hard for me to forecast its accelerated growth, but I think it can be whatever it sets out to be. It really can. It has the power, it has the might, it has the will. It's also in very capable hands.”

An interactive version of the full strategic plan can be viewed at www.laurentian.ca/strategicplan.

Laurentian's aspirations:

- Be among the top 25 per cent of Canadian universities in student satisfaction and student engagement.
- Be among Canada's top 10 universities in its category.
- Be known for its world-class expertise in nine specific fields, including rural and northern children’s health; stressed watershed systems; mining innovation and exploration; multicultural sport and physical activity; genomics and bioinformatics; particle astrophysics; environment, culture and values; applied evolutionary ecology; and nanotechnology.
- Become a first-choice destination with a reputation for academic excellence and opportunity, attracting the best students, staff, and faculty from across Canada and around the world.
- Actively engage with community partners ensuring that Laurentian continues to contribute to the prosperity and well-being of the cities of Greater Sudbury and Barrie and their surrounding regions, and that local communities actively champion Laurentian.
- Further its partnerships with Francophone, First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities, faculty, and staff using resourceful and supportive approaches.
- Be known for its positive organizational culture.

The results it expects to achieve include:

- Raise total annual research dollars from $21.9 million in 2010 to $30 million.
- Increase full-time student enrolment from 7,200 in 2011 to 8,300, while increasing the average entry grade from 80.1 per cent to 83 per cent.
- Modernize the Sudbury campus, including classrooms designed flexibly to accommodate diverse teaching-learning styles.
- Increase the proportion of international students from 6.1 per cent in 2011 to eight per cent.
- Launch new programs in occupational health and safety, Indigenous relations, IT security/data centres and management, théâtre et littérature franco-ontariens, integrated approaches to environmental science and environmental studies, northern policy.
- Complete a Laurentian campus in downtown Barrie to serve 2,500 full-time equivalent students.
- Reintroduce men’s and women’s varsity hockey clubs.

Laurentian also introduced a new purpose as part of its strategic plan:

Laurentian University with its federated university partners* offers an outstanding university experience, in English and French with a comprehensive approach to Indigenous education, that prepares students as agents of change by stimulating them to ask new questions, to challenge what they know, and so empower them to create innovative solutions for future local and global issues.

*Huntington University, Thorneloe University, and University of Sudbury

Posted by Arron Pickard