Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students,

I write to you today to update you on the University's strategic positioning process, and to invite and encourage your participation in this critical effort.

At President Bruinink's direction, I have led since July a taskforce of well-informed faculty and staff in the creation of several working documents that will serve as the starting point for a broader discussion of the University's strategic directions. This process is an effort to create a framework for making decisions, investments and reductions, in order to position the University for growth and improvement in the future.

The taskforce's work has resulted in two draft documents. The first document contains a preliminary list of our framing concepts, our goals, vision, mission, values, organizational culture and strategies. The second document outlines a set of potential planning criteria for evaluating programs and setting priorities. President Bruininks and I have taken both of these draft documents to the Board of Regents for its review. We would now like to share these drafts with the larger University community for input.

To facilitate this important consultation process, we have set up a special Web site. Please visit www.umn.edu/systemwide/strategic_positioning, where you can access both working documents, as well as some additional background material. Once at this site, you will find a response link you can click to send back to us your comments and suggestions.

Additionally, I will host a series of Town Hall meetings, during which I will outline both documents and take your questions. Further information on dates and locations will be distributed soon.

Once we receive feedback from the University community as well as outside constituencies, the taskforce will finalize a strategic positioning paper and take it back to the Board of Regents for theBoard's final review. To accomplish this, we need your input by November 15, 2004.

For a process like this to be successful, we need the entire University community's input, energy, commitment, and enthusiasm. I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Sincerely,

E. Thomas Sullivan
Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
University of Minnesota