As originally planned, and now under the leadership of President Kevin Guskiewicz, the strategic plan is being refreshed to reflect on lessons learned, adjust course and make progress toward becoming a more contemporary institution focused on cross-cutting priorities and solutions – with “synergy unleashed.”
The refreshed, reframed and reimagined strategic plan, MSU 2030: Excellence for Global Impact, reaffirms leadership’s commitment to a shared vision for the university through the end of the decade.
Here to discuss the evolution of MSU 2030 are MSU President Kevin Guskiewicz and MSU Vice President for Strategic Initiatives Bill Beekman.
Conversation Highlights:
(1:15) – Kevin, you’ve said that the compelling vision of an institution taking on the challenges of the 21st century is among the things that attracted me to Michigan State. How so?
(2:08) – Bill, you’ve been involved with the plan’s development and implementation since the start. What strikes you about the plan’s refresh?
(4:11) – Kevin, you’ve often referred to MSU 2030 as a roadmap. Why is it important for MSU to have this plan and to refresh it now? And what do you mean by “synergy unleashed?
(6:24) - The newly revised MSU 2030 plan maintains as foundational elements six strategic and cross-cutting themes and priorities — Student Success, Staff and Faculty Success, Discovery and Innovation for Impact, Sustainable Health, Stewardship for a Sustainable Future, and Access, Opportunity and Excellence.
Let’s talk about the cross-cutting themes that are injecting new energy into these ongoing efforts and uniting key areas. How do they complement the themes? How and why were they developed and elaborate on what you mean.
First, Grow Talent for Michigan and Beyond.
(9:10) - Drive Health Transformation.
(11:27) - Enroll for the Future.
(14:27) - Build Community Together.
(17:05) - Achieve Next-Generation Operations and Organization.
(18:50) - Access, Opportunity and Excellence.
(20:15) - What’s next? How will implementation proceed, and how will we measure progress and success?
(21:48) – Final thoughts.
Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Conversation Transcript:
Russ White:
Michigan State University unveiled a new strategic plan MSU 2030 in September, 2021, articulating a shared vision for the university and six bold priorities for continuous improvement as originally planned. And now under the leadership of President Kevin Kasowitz, the strategic plan is being refreshed to reflect on lessons learned, adjust course and make progress toward becoming a more contemporary institution focused on cross-cutting priorities and solutions. With Synergy Unleashed, the refreshed, reframed, and re-imagined strategic plan MSU 2030 Excellence for Global Impact reaffirms leadership's commitment to a shared vision for the university through the end of the decade. Here to discuss the evolution of MSU 2030, our MSU President, Kevin Guskiewicz and MSU, vice President for Strategic Initiatives, bill Beekman and Kevin and Bill, great to have you back in the state of the art studios of Impact Radio here on campus. And Kevin, you've said that the compelling vision of an institution taking on the challenges of the 21st century is among the things that attracted you to Michigan State. How so, and why?
Kevin Guskiewicz:
Well, Michigan State University is a proudly public university, one that fills a commitment to the people of Michigan. We rely on taxpayer dollars to transform the lives and improve the quality of life for Michiganders. And so much of the work that's done here through our teaching research and outreach is about the common good. I mean, the new strategic plan that we're here talking about, it's woven throughout the entire roadmap. It's about all that we do is for the public good, the common good. And we felt that the first time we touched down here in East Lansing. And 18 months in, I feel even better about where we're headed than what I did two years ago when I started exploring the opportunity.
Speaker 1:
And Bill, you've been involved with the plan's development and implementation from the start. What strikes you about the refresh?
Bill Beekman:
Well, I think one of the most important things about the refresh is the fact that we're actually doing it. So often you have strategic plans that get built and there's inordinate amounts of time spent working on them, and then they sort of drift away. And I think what's really wonderful about the creation of this plan and those that were there at the start, is that they very intentionally decided that we should have a refresh that about a third 40% of the way into the implementation of the plan, that we should pause, take a look at the environment, what's changed, what's going well, what should we be thinking about changing based on internal and external factors and recalibrate. And so it's really a living plan. And to me that's one the most important aspects of the plan is that it does change. It does adapt to our circumstances and our environment.
(03:08):
It allows for us to think about where should we be course correcting? What things should we be doing differently? How should we learn from what we've done? And that constant course correcting and a living plan, I think continues to make it relevant to what we're doing. And so the process has really been wonderful and allowed our team to focus on the future. It was fortuitous that it happened as Kevin had been here for about nine months or thereabouts, so his energy and vision could be incorporated into the work we're doing. And so yeah, it's been a wonderful process and it's great to see it finished and the work of implementation goes on.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yes. And Kevin, you've often referred to MSU 2030 as a roadmap in addition to a strategic plan. Why is it important for MSU to have this plan and to refresh it now? And what do you mean by synergy unleashed?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Well, I've always used the word roadmap rus because I think you need a roadmap to get to a destination. And the destination that was agreed upon back in 2021 were set of established goals and priorities and how we were going to get there needed to be sort of re-imagined. But again, I think as Bill's already said, it's sort of reaffirming those six initial priorities that were laid out in 2021. And I really liked the way we put these cross-cutting themes in place that link these priorities. I felt through my listening and learning tour that maybe we were viewing these priorities in isolation of one another. And what the crosscutting themes do is that it ties together some of the priorities in an important way. In Synergy Unleashed, I've often used it to describe the importance of interdisciplinary research and teaching. This is a place, it's a culture of collaboration that exists here. I learned that on my listening and learning tour, and I think we needed to amplify that more to talk about the importance of solving the grand challenges of our time, identifying the grand challenges of tomorrow through these, viewing it through different lenses and bringing a world class faculty together to solve these grand challenges. So that's what I think I've always meant by Synergy Unleashed. And I think that the cross-cutting themes in some ways are doing much the same,
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Right? And the newly revised MSU 2030 plan maintains as foundational elements, the six strategic and cross-cutting themes that Kevin mentioned, and those priorities, they are student success staff and faculty success, discovery, and for impact sustainable health, stewardship for a sustainable future and access opportunity and excellence. So let's talk about the cross-cutting themes that are injecting new energy into these ongoing efforts and uniting key areas. Talk about how they compliment each other and why they developed and elaborate on how they're evolving. Kevin, how about we take grow talent for Michigan and beyond? So consistent with your green and white council work?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
It is, and this is about being a talent attractor and a talent activator. And to do that, we've got to show the opportunities that exist here so that we can draw people here, not just the students, but the world-class faculty and dedicated staff that allow the enterprise to do the great things that we do. But growing talent from Michigan and beyond is a commitment. I think we have a responsibility to that to do that. We're proud of the fact that about 70 to 75% of every incoming class, they come from the state of Michigan. And then 63 to 65% of those graduates each year start their first job or career here in the state of Michigan. So growing talent from Michigan and beyond is linking together access, opportunity, and excellence. One of those pillars, priorities that you mentioned. It ties it together with student success as well as our discovery and innovation for impact priority and probably brings in sustainable health as well. So I'm pleased that we're going to be talking about the plan, the roadmap of using these crosscutting themes. And I think it'll bring alignment across our 18 colleges here at the university and the many centers and institutes that drive our research enterprise.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
That's exactly right. And we've had these six pillars. There are six strategic priorities from the start. And when you look at each of the cross-cutting themes, as the president just referenced, they knit together different pillars in different and unique ways. And so while we continue to strive for success in student success, for example, we also have a very immediate focus on some of the cross-cutting themes that impact multiple pillars in different ways. And you mentioned talent for Michigan, but we've got a very active work going on in driving health transformation that impacts obviously our health pillar, but also our students, our faculty, really the community more broadly to whom we provide so much healthcare in the region and really around the state. So as we think about each of these crosscutting themes, they really involve many pillars and provide an immediate driving force for creating positive impact in our community and really around the world
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Really. An important distinction. Yes. And Kevin, a little more on drive health transformation.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Well, we're proud of the fact that we graduate more physicians than any other university in the country. Something I was unaware of 18 months ago when I got here, and we have two outstanding colleges of medicine, our College of Osteopathic Medicine, our College of Human Medicine. We're trying to find ways that they can even work in a more collaborative way, getting back to the Synergy Unleashed theme. So that is one of the ways in which I think we have a responsibility. We have partnerships with several healthcare providers across the state, whether it's corwell out west to McLaren here, more in mid-Michigan to Henry Ford in the eastern part of the state, and a great opportunity to do this. But again, that drive health transformation, again, links access opportunity excellence with student success, sustainable health, and I think it'll help us to articulate this priority and these priorities in a better way
Speaker 3 (10:16):
In drive health transformation. You can think of it across a number of different axes. At MSU, we're blessed to teach and train students, not only medicine but nursing. We have a PA program. We have a huge grant that trains frontline workers. The person that when you go to the doctor's office, takes your vitals, checks your blood pressure, isn't a trained medical professional, but does that basic entry level work that is so important and in need in the state. So you can look at it across the whole spectrum of healthcare, but also as the president just mentioned, the spectrum of service across the state from our student teaching and Marquette to communities in the northern upper peninsula or lower peninsula to, as he mentioned, west Michigan to East Michigan and points in between. So you can really look at it across a whole variety of different AEs and planes in terms of how we're impacting the state and driving health transformation.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
And another cross-cutting theme, Kevin, enroll for the future.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
A lot of universities right now are struggling with this. As we know, we've been hearing a lot over the past two or three years about the enrollment cliff and that there are fewer college bound students probably over the next 15 years than what we've seen over the past 50 years. And so universities like us are thinking about where can we to have an impact? How can we continue to impress upon people the importance of earning a four year college degree? And fortunately, for three consecutive years, we will enroll over 51,000 students at Michigan State this year coming in just slightly behind probably where we were last year, which was the largest incoming class in the history of the university. But we want to be strategic as we think about that, where do we want to excel? What programs do we want to expand upon? Which programs are either under-enrolled or underperforming that we may want to think about eliminating?
(12:29):
And sadly, that's what, well, actually, that's what a good strategic roadmap does. It tells you not only what you're going to do and where we're going to place more emphasis and resource, but also what we're not going to do. And so that's, I think as we think about enrolling for the future, we have to think about different populations. Should we be thinking more about online distance education for non-traditional students? And there's a lot of opportunity there. And how do we think about transfer students? We had a session yesterday as part of our stakeholder engagement meeting, which was a fantastic day here on campus with about 50 55 of our partners and community leaders, student leaders and our board of trustees. And we learned a lot. And I think we have to think about the future and how we want to enroll and best position Michigan State University for the future.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And that ties back to the work of the Green and White Council. When we think about enrolling students, providing them with the programs that they need to succeed to be active participants in whatever line of work or endeavor they choose to do. And working with businesses and corporations to better understand what their needs are, what the future is. I'll steal a line from the president. The students that are joining us now will be ending their work career 40, 45 years into the future in many cases doing jobs we can't even imagine,
Speaker 1 (14:05):
That don't exist yet,
Speaker 3 (14:06):
That don't exist yet. So how do we make sure that we're teaching them a set of skills that allow them to be adaptable, to grow, to be continuous learners for a future that none of us can predict.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
And Kevin, what would you say about the next cross-cutting thing? Build community together.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I've been using this probably for the last 12 to 15 years. As we think about the different lived experiences of the students that we enroll, whether it's here at Michigan State or previously at University of North Carolina, I talked about that you can have the best curriculum in the country, but when you bring a diverse group of students together, and there are different lived experiences, allow the curriculum to come to life when you're sitting in a classroom environment talking about the issues in a particular class, that's what makes a Michigan State special. And so this is, we talk about again, access, opportunity and excellence. I've shared with you before that we're one of only five institutions in the country that has an acceptance rate above 70% and a graduation rate above 80%. And we're proud of that. And a lot of institutions that have high acceptance rates, their graduation rates are well below what we're able to accomplish.
(15:34):
And that's because we make it a priority. We have student success initiatives and put a lot of resource toward that so that students can thrive while they're here. And so it ties together student success staff and faculty success. We're proud of the diverse faculty that we have and staff and those different lived experiences show up in the classroom every day and benefit our students so that when they graduate, they can be active participants in a thriving democracy. And I talk often about that. So that's what I mean by building community together where every student knows their voice matters, that they belong here, and that they will graduate from here and thrive throughout that process.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Universities are places of ideas, but they can only be places of ideas if there is a diversity of perspective, a diversity of opinion, and those opinions are heard and respected and thoughtful discourse occurs, and that requires trust and that requires a respect. And so building that community not only on campus, but in our region, working with our regional partners and our faculty all sort of ties together to create the very special place that is Michigan State. And as the president said, that really involves almost everything in our strategic plan in one way or another.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
What about achieve next generation operations and organization, president Kasowitz? I think we know what that means, but could you elaborate?
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah. I think it's a commitment to effective operations that best steward our limited resources and improved services provided to students, faculty, and staff. I think sometimes this is described as operational excellence and we can always work to get better and to create some economies scale, especially in a time of constrained resource. And so we're working hard toward continuous improvement of the organization. And some of that though means that we can save some resource so that we can think about new innovations that can help drive some of the transformations that we talked about in these other cross-cutting themes. And I think we have to get this one in order to be effective and successful with those other cross-cutting themes.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
And we've worked hard over the years to be innovative in this space from the creation of the co-generation steam plant 40, 50 years ago to our largest solar grid at a public university. And so it's continuing to push the envelope, continuing to think creatively, continuing to explore how we can be better stewards of our resources. The better you stewards your resources, the more you have, the more opportunity you have to grow to develop, to try new things to experiment. And so it's a constant watch point that happily we've got some really creative people working on every day.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
And the sixth cross cutting theme, president Sitz that you've been talking about throughout access, opportunity, and excellence, that's the land grant mission, isn't it, really?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
It is. And that's what I think I would just emphasize is that I think taking together our leadership priorities represent a sharpened vision for Michigan State University that accelerates our efforts to build on our rich land grant traditions where access and opportunity was always at the forefront, but it also allows us to become a more contemporary, connected and future focused university. And that's what I hope as people take a look at the plan, the roadmap. I'm actually referring to the framework that Bill, I'm want to credit Bill and Heather Swain with really developing. I've been calling this our green print for next, and I think that I
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Love it.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
It is a roadmap, but a green print taken off of a blueprint. But I'm excited about it. And as I've said, these themes, crosscutting themes we've been discussing, don't replace the plan's original six priorities. We have reaffirmed our commitment to those, but I'm excited about it. I talk often about our one team approach, and I think people are beginning to align to that, and I think the roadmap just further underscores the importance of it.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
So I guess what's next? How do you see it evolving over the years or how will we measure success, that kind of thing?
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Well, we'll look at a whole variety of metrics that we track that cover the six strategic priorities and the five cross-cutting themes, and we report on, on a regular basis to our leadership and to our board. But really the exciting part of this is that it's not that sort of stereotypical plan that sits on a shelf. We've got committees working on all aspects of this. We've got a variety projects that are well underway from things like the Spartan Bus tour, which is starting, I think the third tour shortly to the Williams scholarships. Our first Williams scholars are on campus now for a week. So many of the projects that came out of this work and out of the president's vision are well underway. We're creating more and new interesting ideas as we go. Then in a couple of years, I don't know that we'll do a complete refresh, but we'll continue to refine and reflect and change this living plan as we go, going right into 2030, which will be our hundred 75th anniversary as a university.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Well, President Guskiewicz and Vice President Beekman, thanks so much for giving us an update on MSU 2030 Excellence for Global Impact. Just some final thoughts you'd like to leave with our fellow Spartans.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I hope that the community, be it our faculty, staff and students, even though they've got a lot that they're working on, as we're now about to enter our third week of the semester already, which is hard to believe.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
We'll just take some time to reflect on it and that I want everyone to see themselves within this roadmap and that they can align to it and see that we're a better institution because we have some aligned priorities and these crosscutting themes to help guide us.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Well, it's MU 2030 and much more online@strategicplan.msu.edu. President Guskiewicz, Vice President Beekman, thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Thanks, Russ.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Thanks, Russ. Appreciate it. And as always, Go Green!
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Go Green,
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Go white. I'm Russ White. This is MSU today.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Find rate, and subscribe to MSU today with Russ White on Spotify, apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows. And please feel free to share this episode if you're so inclined.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Thank you for listening to MSU today.