07 Strategic Initiatives and Goals

In order to meet our vision and fulfill our mission, The University of Texas at San Antonio is committed to pursuing five strategic initiatives, encompassing more than 30 goals. All of the initiatives will demand the collaborative work of the entire university community. Three foundational themes underpin these initiatives, and five areas for collaborative excellence are identified to guide our efforts.

Foundational Themes of the UTSA Experience

The three themes woven throughout the strategic initiatives provide a foundation for the UTSA experience. They represent skills and perspectives that we offer every member of our community.

Promoting diversity is a philosophical position that calls attention to the ways that individuals and social or cultural groups within a larger society view the world, express themselves, and relate to each other, and the intellectual and moral obligation of a society to understand and value differences among its members.

Globalization–the unfolding process of linkage among the world's peoples, societies, and economies, transcending regional and national boundaries - directs us to prepare our university community members with the technological, communicative, social, and cultural knowledge and skills, as well as the practical experience, that will equip them to lead and succeed in an ever more intensively connected world.

Transformative leadership is guidance marked by critical thinking, analytical and reflective evaluation, and the ability to effect positive change. This theme should be cultivated in the endeavors of our faculty and staff as well as in the educational experience of all our graduates through their coursework and their university experiences.

Areas of Collaborative Excellence

The five areas of collaborative excellence represent areas in which the University is further developing expertise and activities. While not restricting academic endeavors in unrelated areas, they provide interdisciplinary research and educational opportunities and expanded strategic alliances with external partners, both public and private. These areas take on different facets within different disciplines. It is the combination of views that provides the fullest examination of the issues and provides the most potential for finding solutions.

Health: The biomedical knowledge, technology, human resources, education, and policies needed for the maintenance and improvement of health, including fighting disease and the adverse effects of aging, are of critical importance in our global society.

Security: A pervasive concern for security that has broad implications in today's rapidly changing world demands the knowledge, technology, resources, and policies necessary to ensure a safe environment for individuals, communities, and businesses.

Energy and Environment: The challenges of ensuring the future availability of energy resources and a clean environment on a global basis while nurturing productivity require technologies, policies, and education.

Human and Social Development: Holistic exploration of human and social development through education, economic and policy development, technology, the arts and humanities, and the sciences fosters discoveries that nourish both individuals and society.

Sustainability: While facing the demands of our rapidly changing world, we must address issues of sustainability - the importance of preserving our resources, infrastructure, and heritage for future generations, while ensuring their present availability for all people.

Strategic Initiative I

Enriching Educational Experiences to Enable Student Success

UTSA's mission statement notes that we are dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. Our students are the reason for our existence and the ultimate symbol of our success. We are committed to providing students with a university experience that develops the whole person-academically, socially, and personally. To achieve the status of a premier public research university, we must remain committed to student success at both the undergraduate and graduate level, providing a rigorous educational environment with the academic and other support services. To prepare our graduates to meet the challenges faced by future citizen leaders, we must offer our students opportunities to develop the awareness and skill sets needed to compete in a global environment. Our programs, services, and policies are developed to create a sense of place and belonging within a diverse educational environment that offers our students opportunities to engage the campus, local, and global communities. Together these concerted efforts will significantly improve our graduation rates and contribute to Texas' degree-attainment goals set forth in Closing the Gaps by 2015: The Texas Higher Education Plan. UTSA has developed six goals to offer enriching educational experiences to enable student success.

Goal 1: Improve student success by strengthening and enhancing undergraduate and graduate educational experiences to increase graduation rates and other measures of student success and learning.

Goal 2: Enhance the educational experience by infusing into our programs the three themes that underpin student success: building programs that meet the needs of a global society, promoting diversity, and fostering transformative leadership.

Goal 3: Develop multidisciplinary and experiential learning opportunities, including research and internships, consistent with the five collaborative areas of excellence in both our undergraduate and graduate programs.

Goal 4: Reduce identified barriers to student success and promote student realization of academic and professional goals as well as personal and social development by aligning our programs, services, and policies.

Goal 5: Support student success by offering a broad array of opportunities for engagement in campus life, including a diverse range of student organizations, intramural and intercollegiate sports, on-campus employment, student governance, cultural and entertainment events, and service to the community.

Goal 6: Integrate global perspectives as an integral part of academic programs, including specific courses and applied experiences, such as study-abroad and exchange programs.

Strategic Initiative II

Serving Society through Creativity, Expanded Research, and Innovations

UTSA is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery. Success in this endeavor is essential for providing the rich knowledge base, innovation, and workforce required to grow and sustain the quality of life for an increasingly diverse and rapidly changing global society. Sharing discoveries through publications, presentations, performances, exhibits, and other creative outlets is critical to fulfilling our role as a premier research university. Building upon a broad research base, five areas of collaborative research excellence will provide UTSA with expanding opportunities for multifaceted research and interdisciplinary research collaborations:

Health
Security
Energy and Environment
Sustainability
Human and Social Development

Additionally, UTSA will maintain a supportive and proactive environment for the development of the institution's research enterprise and other creative endeavors. UTSA has established five goals to advance its research mission.

Goal 1: Create a vibrant research culture by engaging undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff in research, and providing the campus community with incentives and the infrastructure needed for success in this arena.

Goal 2: Increase annual research expenditures on a consistent basis through the strategic hiring of quality faculty, supporting the five collaborative research areas, encouraging multidisciplinary work, and streamlining infrastructure.

Goal 3: Become a premier research university by developing and sustaining high-quality doctoral programs consistent with the five key research areas and the strategic expansion of the current programs.

Goal 4: Generate knowledge and innovations for societal benefit through collaborations with both public- and private-sector partners at the local, national, and international levels.

Goal 5: Pursue research leading to intellectual property commercialization so that scientific breakthroughs and innovations can be transformed into useful technologies and made available to the global community.

Strategic Initiative III

Promoting Access and Affordability

The University of Texas at San Antonio values its role in promoting access and affordability. Texas and the nation face enormous challenges to enhance educational opportunities for our citizens. Promoting access helps to develop an educated citizenry that will benefit from the opportunities and contribute to the goals of the changing global environment. The enrollment growth experienced by UTSA during this decade has necessitated planning for future growth to enable the University to reach its expectations for educational and student development programming, graduation rates, and research contributions, while maintaining affordable access. UTSA has established three goals to foster access and affordability.

Goal 1: Create and market an enrollment plan that promotes student success and supports the goals of Texas' Closing the Gaps initiative. The enrollment plan will include student recruitment and financial aid strategies to meet the goals of access and affordability.

Goal 2: Develop partnerships with families, schools, community colleges, and communities that facilitate a collaborative teaching, learning, service, and research environment and communicate to learners the pathways toward their educational and career goals.

Goal 3: Refine policies and expand programs for student financial aid to help qualified students gain and maintain access to a high-quality, affordable education.

Strategic Initiative IV

Serving the Public through Community Engagement

Community engagement at UTSA is the active involvement of the university community through its faculty, staff, students, and alumni in strategic partnerships with the broader community to enrich learning and research, to prepare engaged citizens, and to contribute to the public good. Community engagement values a culture of openness and access, creating value and improved quality of life, active communication and collaboration with community stakeholders, and positive constituent services at all levels. Engagement initiatives work to transform the lives of individuals and communities through active involvement with UTSA's stakeholders by building relationships, conducting dialogue focused on common goals, and extending university knowledge, resources and expertise that contribute toward the advancement of society. Five goals address engagement with our communities:

Goal 1: Develop community partnerships to provide quality, accessible, and lifelong learning, including programs such as P-20 (preschool through graduate education) outreach; service learning; Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) initiatives; executive and entrepreneurship education; and extended education.

Goal 2: Engage community employers through dialogue, internships, and other cooperative learning experiences to ensure that UTSA graduates are prepared to enter the future workforce and play leadership roles in the globally competitive knowledge economy.

Goal 3: Stimulate social and economic development through activities such as outreach, service, and collaborative research and commercialization programs that respond to community needs and align with the UTSA mission.

Goal 4: Develop a rich and vibrant culture in the arts and humanities that will expand the community's awareness and appreciation of the human condition, our history and cultures, and aesthetic awareness through an active community program of visual arts exhibitions, debates, discussions, and theatrical and musical performances; preserve and present our history through the Institute of Texan Cultures.

Goal 5: Enhance the local community's global role by serving as a resource for sharing global understanding and perspectives such as linkages with our international exchange student programs, international faculty, and global research activities.

Strategic Initiative V

Expanding Resources and Infrastructure

To become a premier public research university, UTSA must expand and align its resources with its mission and vision. To meet this challenge, UTSA must pursue innovative resource utilization and development strategies consonant with best practices of premier research institutions nationwide. This will foster an environment that provides adequate resources to nurture learning through research and scholarship. Evolution toward our future profile of people, culture and processes, infrastructure, revenue mix, and global capabilities will be addressed through the following five goals.

Goal 1: Retain and recruit faculty and staff who are committed to our vision, mission, and values, and who diligently contribute to excellence.

Goal 2: Create an organizational culture, administrative processes, and structure that value and promote productivity, while optimizing both the utilization of existing resources and the generation of new resources.

Goal 3: Provide the physical infrastructure - buildings, classrooms, laboratories, studios, and libraries - that will allow us to support the work of our faculty and staff, and to serve our students in alignment with the University's Master Plan.

Goal 4: Increase and optimize the revenue mix beyond the traditional sources of tuition and fees and state support through expansion of resources such as sponsored projects and research, gifts and endowments, scholarships, auxiliary services, partnerships, and entrepreneurship opportunities.

Goal 5: Ensure that administrative processes and technology are aligned to efficiently enable faculty, staff, and students to act globally and access international resources appropriate to their discipline.