Imagine 2030: We Need Your Input

Re: Imagine 2030: We Need Your Input

To: All campus

Nov. 19, 2020

Dear Campus Community,

Whether you are a first-year student or a founding faculty member, you know that we have reached a momentous time in UC Merced’s history. The ambitious Merced 2020 Project is complete, we have a new leader in Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz, and we continue to reach new heights in national rankings. We are the youngest university to ever achieve the Carnegie R2 classification for research activity, and we are already taking steps to move toward R1.

As Chancellor Muñoz announced last month, UC Merced is not resting on its laurels. We are proud of all we have achieved in such a short time, but also know that we must plan now for our next great chapter. To that end, we are undertaking a comprehensive strategic planning exercise, the result of which will be a plan to guide UC Merced’s growth and development through 2030.

Today we are launching our strategic planning website,which includes draft goals, information about the planning process and a self-guided engagement platform so that everyone can contribute to this process and its outcomes. I hope you’ll take some time to review the site and share your thoughts and ideas. How can we support expansion of our research enterprise in pursuit of R1? How can we continue to refine and redefine what it means to support student success? How can we ensure that equity, diversity and inclusion are not just institutional priorities, but core values that are embedded in everything we do?

In addition to gathering input via the website, our Planning Task Force will soon begin organizing and facilitating engagement meetings with divisions and teams across campus. Our hope is that there will be broad engagement to ensure that we have a comprehensive view of what will make UC Merced distinct among our peers, and how you’d like to see UC Merced grow in the coming decade.

We recognize that beginning a strategic planning process in the middle of a pandemic is far from ideal, but there is also a tremendous sense of opportunity and urgency in this moment. Our three schools are already in the process of developing their own strategic academic plans, and this new campuswide planning effort will go hand-in-hand with that process. The plans will support and inform each other — the goals at the heart of our campus strategic plan will align closely with the goals that have been developed through academic planning, enhanced and refined with input from all areas of the campus community. In the end, we will have a plan that will serve as the north star for everything we do, from research to education to public service and beyond, while representing our values of equity, diversity and inclusion.

If you have questions about the planning process, please email [email protected]. Let’s imagine our future together.

Sincerely,

Gregg Camfield

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

This is an important message from UC Merced. Please share with colleagues who may not have ready access to email.