Strategic Decisions
Enhancing differentiation and restoring economic viability
The key strategies to achieving the vision are those that maintain Cal Poly differentiation, leverage core competencies, and sustain competitive advantages, together with those that restore financial viability by strategically managing revenues, costs and allocation of resources. Detailed institutional action plans for proceeding with the following strategic decisions are in development. However, part of this strategic plan is that every campus unit should examine their role and contribution with respect to these initiatives.
- Cal Poly will continue to develop its unique comprehensive polytechnic university identity by emphasizing programs in the professions that are science-, technology- and mathematics-based, and academic and professional programs in the arts and sciences.
- Maintains our institutional differentiation
- Leverages our existing core competencies
- Sustains our competitive advantage
- Cal Poly will define all majors as “polytechnic” having depth of expertise in the professional or academic discipline, and breadth, balance and literacy in technology, the arts and sciences, integrated seamlessly to prepare whole-system-thinker graduates.
- Increases our institutional differentiation
- Leverages our existing core competencies
- Sustains our competitive advantage
- Expands our inclusivity and strengthens sense of community and commonality
- We will need curricula development activity
- Cal Poly programs will be more integrated to connect and interlink our disciplines, faculty, staff and students, all as partners in teaching, learning, scholarship and service, to provide a comprehensive polytechnic educational experience and common polytechnic identity.
- Increases our institutional differentiation
- Leverages our existing core competencies
- Sustains our competitive advantage
- Expands our inclusivity and strengthens sense of community, partnership and commonality
- We will need curricula development activity
- Cal Poly will build on its core learn-by-doing pedagogy to ensure all students have a comprehensive polytechnic multi-mode education that could include project-based, cross-disciplinary, co-curricular, multi-mode, experiential and international opportunities.
- Increases our institutional differentiation
- Leverages our existing core competencies
- Sustains our competitive advantage
- We will need curricula development activity
- We may need review of all programs and course offerings
- Cal Poly will shift the mix of students to increase the proportion of graduate students and international students while maintaining the quality and polytechnic identity of our graduates.
- Increases our cultural diversity, increases heterogeneity
- Elevates our academic scholarly climate
- Improves our economic viability
- We will need expansion of recruitment strategies and support services
- We may need curricula development activity
- We will need review of all programs and course offerings
- Offsets anticipated declining in-state K12 pool that is STEM-ready
- Enhances global perspectives
- Cal Poly will restore institutional economic viability by strategically managing revenue, costs and allocation of resources, improving effectiveness and efficiency, while maintaining quality.
- Improves our economic viability
- Sustains our competitive advantage
- We will need comprehensive management of enrollment, retention, progress and graduation, costs, and review of curricula to optimize course offerings
- Expand the number and amount of revenue streams such as more effective use of summer quarter, on-line STEM curricula for P12 teachers, etc.
- We will need strengthened relationships with our external partners and stakeholders
- Cal Poly will adopt and implement comprehensive enrollment management.
- Will improve alignment and match of student to appropriate program choices
- Will remove all institutional barriers to timely graduation
- Will improve retention, progress-to-degree, and graduation rates, and providing value to each student by reducing their total cost
- Will improve ability to plan course offerings, optimize schedules, and use of faculty time
- Will need comprehensive review of curricula
- Cal Poly will adopt and implement institution-wide vision-driven and evidence-based decision making and continuous improvement processes.
- Improves our economic viability by identifying opportunities to reduce costs, improve effectiveness and efficiencies
- Continually reallocate resources to the most effective methods of increasing enrollment, retention, progress and graduation
- Can increase agility by decreasing elapsed time for decision-making and implementation
- Align budgets and other resources to desired achievement of mission and vision