Strategic Goals
The umbrella goals of the college define the broad areas within which this strategic plan develops specific objectives and actions. This section identifies the main objectives (ends) within each of these goal areas and a series of actions (means) for achieving each objective. The objectives specify particular directions within the goal areas. The action items for each objective identify a few key ways to make significant progress on these objectives over the next five years. Some of these involve resources and some do not. The actions for a given objective should be read as a package, but it is feasible to phase in the actions on the basis of priority, cost, opportunity, timeliness, and the like. Decisions about phasing in the objectives or actions are part of the implementation stage of the strategic plan.
It also is important to recognize that the college is currently making significant efforts and achieving successes in several of these areas. By including an objective related to ongoing efforts, this plan affirms the importance of such activities and proposes to focus more energy on that area and push it even higher on the university’s agenda. Whereas all of the objectives are important as such, resource constraints (time, effort, money) will make it essential to set priorities among the objectives for the next five years, and with this in mind, each section concludes with a statement of priorities among the objectives. These priorities suggest which objectives should be addressed first and thus have implications for the phasing in of efforts directed at each objective.
Below is a listing of the objectives in the plan. There are five to seven objectives for each umbrella goal. Priorities among these objectives are established in this section.
- Faculty Excellence
- Increase the size and quality of faculty in strategically important academic areas.
- Significantly increase the diversity of faculty through new hires.
- Ensure competitive faculty compensation.
- Develop and implement policies to retain highly valued faculty.
- Devise and implement new mechanisms or policies for rewarding outstanding faculty and for continually assessing faculty performance as scholars and teachers.
- Foster an exciting intellectual environment by providing opportunities for more dialogue and engagement.
- Develop ways to enable faculty to focus their time on being highly productive in their core academic activities (research, scholarship, and creativity; teaching; public engagement).
- Create and sustain a culture that supports teaching excellence in all academic units.
- Strengthen institutional structures that promote pedagogical innovations both centrally and within Departments and programs.
- Strengthen the educational impact of international opportunities and experiences for students.
- Promote the health and well-being of students (undergraduate, graduate, and professional) as a foundation for academic and life success.
- Strengthen efforts to attract and educate an excellent and diverse body of undergraduate students.
- Strengthen the capacity of graduate and professional programs to recruit and educate a diverse body of the very best students.
- Provide a more unified and shared educational experience for Cornell undergraduates.
- Increase the number of LCML departments or graduate fields that have achieved world leadership in their areas.
- Build and maintain world leadership in a select set of departments within the following broad areas: Project Management; Accounting; Finance; Global Management; Leadership; Human Resource Management; Entrepreneurship and Supply Chain and Management.
- Strengthen support for and recognition of important interdisciplinary areas, while ensuring excellence in disciplines as a foundation.
- Significantly improve institution-wide services for the administration and support of research grants (including government, foundation, and industry funding).
- Maintain and selectively strengthen in cost-effective ways the core infrastructures for research, scholarship, and creativity, including in particular libraries and shared research facilities.
- Make public engagement a distinctive feature of education at LCML.
- Construct a unified concept and vision for the College’s public engagement mission.
- Develop rigorous, systematic evaluations of all outreach and extension programs.
- Promote stronger collaborations and partnerships between the university and stakeholders that can make use of and strengthen LCML’s research (e.g., business, nonprofit organizations, government).
- Give priority to retention of highly qualified staff in valued positions as the College reorganizes to address budgetary constraints.
- Attract a talented and diverse workforce to LCML.
- Be an exemplary employer across the entire spectrum of staff.
- Provide job skill training to staff in a variety of venues.
- Sustain and, wherever possible, enhance flexibility in the workplace and workforce.