How the Strategic Planning Process Is Already Impacting Campus

Chancellor reflects on first year at UC San Diego

UC San Diego’s strategic planning process is still underway, yet the input gathered, and the emerging themes and goals, have already led campus leaders to identify and seize opportunities over the last several months.

“This process has helped us to sharpen our mission to be a student-centered, research-oriented, service-oriented public university,” said Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “Going forward, every decision we make will be based on these eight words.”

Key decisions based on these emerging themes this year include the creation of the Chancellor’s Associates Scholars program, the Center for Brain Activity Mapping, and an initiative to increase the number and quality of Ph.D. students at UC San Diego. The campus also initiated a review of credit requirements to improve time to degree, and began renovation on biology and chemistry labs.

The strategic planning process began last November with town hall meetings, interviews, focus groups and surveys, to gather input and ideas from a wide range of campus and community members on what they envision and want for UC San Diego’s future. The information-gathering phase is complete, and the Chancellor and the Executive Vice Chancellor have worked with cabinet and council members to finalize a mission statement, overarching values and goals for the campus, which can be viewed on the strategic planning website: plan.ucsd.edu. That framework will lead to the first draft of the strategic plan.

In this video, the Chancellor talks about the progress of the strategic planning process and what we’ve accomplished as a campus over the last year.