Looking at the future of UTM: Strategic Plan

Chancellor Carver and the SGA sponsored a forum on March 19, in Watkins Auditorium to discuss the five-year Strategic Plan for UTM.

The Strategic Plan focuses on “Where we are, who we are and what can we do,” said Carver. These three aspects were the guiding points in creating the new plan for UTM.

Carver addressed the needs behind the Strategic Plan and where the students fit into the goal for UTM.

“The truth of the matter is, when you look at the core mission of what colleges and universities do, it’s about students. It’s about learning. It’s about the transmission of knowledge. It’s about undergraduate research. So we are here because of you; we want to have a plan that reflects your wants and needs,” said Carver.

Before the new strategic plan, there had not been a comprehensive plan implemented in over 30 years, according to Carver.

A steering committee and task force made up of students, faculty and staff, alumni, as well as community members began meeting in August 2017 to discuss and create the Strategic Plan that would best benefit students.

The Strategic Plan will be a living document in order to progress. The university is continuously searching for ways to improve it, not only within the next year, but for the next five years. New implementation teams will continue to be created to review and to look back at the achievements and failures of the Strategic Plan.

“In 12 months, in 24 months, we are going to look at it again…. But the biggest thing is, we don’t know how we are going to get on the journey if we don’t know where we are. We are going to set up guidelines and metrics to see where we are going,” said Carver.

The process began with reevaluating the UTM Mission Statement. Previously, the statement was lengthy and difficult to understand concisely, what the goals of the university were, as it has changed over the years, said Carver. The Mission Statement is also a tool used to evaluate the university during the SACs accreditation period to make sure the university is optimizing each aspect of the statement. Carver explained the steering committees had focused on the five main aspects the university values the most: academic program excellence, student experience and success, inclusion, resource management, and advocacy and service.

Academic program excellence focuses on the university being recognized as a leader in high-quality education at an affordable price, increasing the number of degrees earned in four years, providing internships and optimizing Governor’s Schools. UTM is among the most affordable universities in the state of Tennessee, while also maintaining a high number of degrees earned.

Student experience is responsible for the recruitment of incoming freshmen and transfer students, with the goal of reaching an average enrollment. Tennessee students, as well as students within a 250-mile radius of Tennessee, begin hearing from UTM their sophomore year of high school. Many of Tennessee’s border states are increasing their tuition by nine and 10 percent each year, while UTM isn’t, according to Carver.

UTM is the smallest four-year university in the state. Increasing enrollment is one of the major goals of the Strategic Plan. There has been a 12 percent increase in first-time freshmen and a 10 percent growth in transfer students. Carver expects for these numbers to grow within the next few years as the plan is implemented, but he is also focused on maintaining high retention rates.

While enrollment has been lower than average the past few years, its contribution to smaller classrooms is one of the major attractions of UTM. The average classroom size is 23 students. Hunter McCloud, a freshman Political Science major from Portland, addressed an issue of trying to increase enrollment rates and how it will affect the classroom sizes. After touring all of the schools in the UT system, “The greatest thing I found about Martin was it was a smaller school with the smaller class sizes I wanted,” explained McCloud.

“It’s what establishes Martin compared to UT Knoxville; and why people choose Martin compared to Knoxville is because of the lower enrollment and smaller campus.”

Carver believes UTM being the smallest four-year campus is a great thing because of the closeness of students with faculty and staff provided by a small class environment. He explained that even though there is much room to grow, the students who are looking for that will still find it at UTM.

Student experience also involves bettering advising programs, increasing four-year graduation rates and facilitating faculty and staff development opportunities. Carver encouraged students to communicate their wants for the university to help better graduation rates in four years. Focusing on freshman to sophomore retention rates is also important in maintaining enrollment. This past year, 76.1 percent of the 2016 freshman class returned to UTM, making it the highest retention rate yet. The goal is to reach 80 percent within the next few years.

“We’ve got to do better in getting y’all the support you need to keep coming back to school each year,” said Carver.

Inclusion focuses on aggressive strategies for the recruitment of minority and international students, staff and faculty. The main goal of this is “to create a campus that is open to all and hostile to none,” said Carver. He encouraged students to talk civilly about different beliefs and opinions in a safe environment, such as Martin, to freely practice the First Amendment.

Resource management will create an effective budget, refine campus-wide salary and work to become efficient in how the university deploys its resources.

Advocacy and public service work to help the region to grow. Weakley County has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state of Tennessee, which is why UTM is beginning to work with elected officials, commerce and industry, and developers to help create new programs that will serve as training sites for new businesses.

“When you think about advocacy and public service, when our elected officials and business and industry are thinking about public education in West Tennessee, we want them to think about UT Martin. We want to be at the table. We want to help provide solutions to the problems because as we interact in commissions and things in our region improve, things will improve for us at UT Martin.”

The Strategic Plan will develop action steps to help the university reach their goals but also serve as a way to measure them. The use of state data, surveys and other collections will help determine how the Strategic Plan is improving. All data concerning the plan will be available on the Strategic Plan website, in order to be as transparent as possible.

Carver emphasized the goal of the plan being to make sure students are heard and help improve their experience at UTM, but it will have to be a group effort. “We have to do this together.”

The drafting process of the program began July 2017 and is estimated to be finished by May 2018. Carver will present the Strategic Plan to the Board of Trustees in June.

To view the Strategic Plan and the entire process so far, visit https://www.utm.edu/strategic/ for more information. If interested in serving on a task force for the Strategic Plan, email Carver at kcarver@utm.edu.

Chancellor Carver addresses students about the 5-year Strategic Plan for UTM during the forum sponsored by SGA. (Photo credit: Madison Vaughn)