February 7, 2005

President Wilson convened the fourth SPSC meeting of the Spring 2005
semester at 11:30 a.m. At the President’s request, each Committee member
had prepared a list of the top 5-7 strategic goal areas as s/he understood
them based on conversations among the SPSC itself, discussions across campus
over the past several weeks, and the extensive written comments the
Committee had received since early December. Each member’s list was posted
on the wall for all to see.

After all members read the lists, the President asked the group to identify
those areas that appeared most often. Nine areas emerged for further
discussion. Five topics appeared on a majority of the lists: increasing
financial resources, supporting faculty and staff, better communicating
institutional identity, improving teaching and learning, and enhancing the
IWU student experience. Four additional areas were mentioned on several
lists: globalization/internationalization, environmental sustainability,
information technology, and physical resources.

The President asked teams of SPSC members to begin working on statements
that would articulate clearly but succinctly what some of the goal areas
would mean if we were to adopt them. The Committee agreed to review these
statement drafts at its next meeting on February 25 and to continue to
evaluate which of the nine areas should be proposed to the University
community as strategic priorities.

Distributed to all faculty and staff—February 23, 2005