The strategic planning committee begins its fifth and final phase today before presenting to the Board of Trustees in January.

After completing the formation of the six themes at the Vision Conference in September, the next step is to come up with actions that will accomplish these goals.

The meeting will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the University Ballroom in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

The six themes are Academic Excellence, Marketing and Communication, Campus and Community Life, Financial Stability, Emerging Technologies and Global Competition and Changing Demographics.

Ken Baker, a tri-chair of the Strategic Planning Steering Committee and director of Campus Recreation, said it is a daylong event in which the invitees will divide into groups that correspond with the themes based on their interests.

“From there they will come up with actions to accomplish these goals, we will then meet as a group and eventually break back into the smaller groups to refine the actions,” Baker said.

Each group will create four to six goals which will be published on the website, as well as presented to the Board of Trustees at its January meeting.

“It is important that we focus on action, that is the key word in this phase, this is a five-year plan, and we want to be realistic” Baker said. “We’re coming up with three or four things we can do in the first year so we can show we are getting things done.”

William Weber, vice president for business affairs and tri-chair of the Steering Committee said it is a big workshop, were the steering committee invites about 80 stakeholders from on and off campus to help decide on these goals.

“We will be working programmatically to come up with an outline of what we want campus to look like,” Weber said.

Baker said 86 people have been invited to the conference and they expect anywhere from 75 to 86 to attend.

“We’re not trying to solve all of Eastern’s problems in one day, just actionable things we can actually change and get done,” Baker said.

The next step in preparation for the presentation to the Board of Trustees is to refine the information more and prepare to present it.

“We had the chance to listen and attend over 60 engagements, the goals conference is the first step in distilling all of that now,” Baker said. “When we started we didn’t know where we were going, this process is driven by encounters, which is what makes it different.”

Amy Wywialowski can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected]