Neal Smatresk
Executive Vice President and Provost

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas has changed dramatically in the past 50 years, growing from a small local institution into a comprehensive research university in a dynamic urban region.  There have been a number of planning exercises that have provided vision for our growth, but as we begin to reach a more stable enrollment, it is time, once again, to consider our identity and the unique nature of our institution as we move in our next 50 years. 

In his inaugural address to the faculty, President Ashley challenged us with a bold change agenda.  On September 12, at our academic convocation, President Ashley officially launched this process, by announcing a year long planning process that will allow our student, faculty, staff, and community stakeholders to participate in shaping the near term evolution of our university.  The major goals of this process will be to:

• Define our unique identity as derived from our programs, values and the region around us.
• To uses that identity to inform, build and improve our educational and research programs.
• To determine how our current support and physical infrastructure will need to change for us to reach our educational and research goals, and how that in turn is connected to our budget.

During this year of planning we ask those of you on various planning, visioning and implementation committees dedicate your efforts to supporting and providing input to the planning process.  While we will hold some "pre-planning" meetings in late August and early September, we also invite the entire university and friends of the university to our first official kick-off event on Friday, September 2. This event will provide everyone with a common data set reviewing our history, performance measures helping us to understand where we are now, how we compare to aspirant institutions, and a focused presentation on our fiscal status – how we allocate and spend our resources and university funding streams and projections.

The morning presentations will be followed in the afternoon by four panel discussions on:

1. Identity and values
2. how our identity informs our educational mission
3. how our identity can drive interdisciplinary research growth
4. the infrastructure challenges that we need to address to reach our goals.

Panels of university students, staff, faculty, community members and administration will provide their thoughts on a series of challenge questions on these issues.  These conversations will help us proceed with a set of "town hall" meetings that broadly engage the university and greater Las Vegas community.  These meetings will solicit input from all stakeholders as to our future directions and how we will implement our plans.  A schedule of these town hall meetings is attached, and we hope you will all find time to attend and contribute to each of the major themes.  We will also solicit web based input, and will post meeting summaries and planning progress on this website.

We will gather input through early December. In January, the steering committees along with the deans, faculty senate executive committee, and central administration will meet to begin to condense the planning input into a workable plan.  We anticipate a reasonably short and to the point plan, focused on a series of planning and budgeting priorities revolving around education, research, and infrastructure.  The plan will be benchmarked with a set of reasonable timelines and deliverables.   We anticipate a completed plan that has gone through the internal review and is submitted to the cabinet and president for final approval by April 2008.  The final plan will be submitted to the Board of Regents for approval in June 2008.

This is an incredibly important time in our short history, and we hope that you all will contribute to and support the strategic planning process.

Neal Smatresk
Executive Vice President and Provost