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Institutional Effectiveness

The SUNY Cortland strategic plan reflects both our strengths and aspirations as a community of scholars, citizens and colleagues. Building on our mission, vision, and priorities, we have identified a set of objectives that will guide our growth in critical areas. These will be enacted in work throughout the college and hold us accountable to continual improvement in each of our priorities. As we look toward our future, we hold on to our institutional mission and traditions while challenging ourselves to reflect, innovate and excel as individuals, as a college, and as a community.

Introduction to Strategic Plan

Our Mission

SUNY Cortland is an academic community dedicated to diverse learning experiences. Students grow as engaged citizens with a strong social conscience fostered by outstanding teaching, scholarship and service.

Our Vision

SUNY Cortland will be a college of opportunity, from which students graduate with the knowledge, integrity, skills and compassion to excel as leaders, citizens, scholars, teachers and champions of excellence. Prospective students and employees will choose SUNY Cortland in response to its nationally recognized academic programs, innovation and experiential learning, and the rich intellectual, social and athletic life on the campus. SUNY Cortland will be a center for intellectual, cultural and economic growth, distinguished by successful partnerships with organizations, schools, agencies and businesses throughout the region, the nation and the world.

Our Priorities

Academic Excellence, Transformational Education, Well-being and Maximize Resources.

These four priorities focus SUNY Cortland on our greatest strengths and opportunities to realize our potential as an academic institution and community. Within each priority, we have established objectives and outcomes that provide direction for our work and decision-making over the next five years. Key indicators will allow us to evaluate our progress and help us revise and refine the strategic plan as a living document.

Academic Excellence

Students and professor chatting in classroomWe will cultivate academic programs that provide students with the best opportunities to develop their knowledge, skills, and dispositions (trying to get at affective piece of learning/development). This means ensuring that we have relevant and engaging curriculum, effective and innovative delivery methods, appropriate facilities, and a culture of continual improvement. We will foster the highest levels of student and faculty engagement and support their contributions to their disciplines, the college, and communities locally and globally.

Transformational Education

Athletic training students learn to treat an injury.We will provide intentionally designed, highly effective, educational opportunities that challenge how students see themselves and the world in profound new ways. Transformational education involves all of the opportunities that expose students to new environments, cultures, perspectives, and knowledge. It also challenges them to reflect, acknowledge their self-efficacy, and continually expand their understanding and skills to be more engaged agents in their lives and their communities.

Well-being

Students in a spinning class in the Student Life CenterWe will advocate for personal and community well-being through our academic disciplines and our campus programming and facilities. We actively promote the physical, emotional, cultural and social well-being our students and employees, determine areas of greatest need, and respond with policies and programs that recognize the well-being of each individual is critical to our strength as a whole. This includes striving to be a campus community that enacts values of inclusivity, collaboration, respect, and care where contributions to the community are recognized and we hold ourselves accountable for supporting a positive campus climate.

Maximize Resources

workers installing solar panelsWe will sustain resources and carefully align our decision-making and allocation process with the mission-based functions of the college and our strategic vision for the campus. Maximizing resources includes being fiscally responsible, thinking about efficiency while maintaining excellence, and communicating clearly about resource allocation. It also means focusing on sustainability and ensuring that the campus maintains a dedication to responsible use of natural resources and consideration of our impact on our environment.

Planning

  • Institutional
    • Strategic
  • Operational
    • Include ongoing operations and divisional goals
  • Responsive and adaptive to emergent/critical issues that arise

Assessment

  • Institutional Indicators and review of progress based on broad benchmarks emerging from priorities and outcomes
  • Divisional and office indicators that support on-going work of campus institutional priorities. Annual reports include updates on assessment
  • Ensure anticipated outcomes and resolutions that will come from ad hoc activities

Budget

  • Align allocation with operations, mission and plans.
    • Clarify roles and processes.
  • Periodic review of budgeting allocations to ensure operational costs are covered to meet functional needs.
  • Process for the consideration of budget requests that emerge outside of the regular budget process.