E-Insight

September 2004

Discovery Team Fine Tunes Strategies and Goals

Dr. Hank Gardner, Associate Vice President in the Office of the Vice President for Research and Information Technology, and Dr. Lance Perryman, Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, are co-chairing the University’s Strategic Planning Committee for Discovery. The Discovery Team has nearly completed its work having defined three strategic choices, developed specific goals within the strategic choices, and made steps forward in developing metrics to measure progress. Drs. John Belisle and Patrick Brennan are serving on the Discovery Team as faculty representatives.

The Discovery Team has developed three strategic choices to help guide the University’s Discovery mission in the coming years. These include:

Strategic Choice 1: Identify and address the needs of society through Discovery that is relevant, creative and transforming. Define Discovery as the continuous process of identifying questions, pursuing answers and delivering the benefits to society through research, scholarship and artistry that are disseminated as publications, artistic presentations, education, outreach, inventions or commercialization directly and with our partners.

Strategic Choice 2: Grow Colorado State’s Discovery effort in the interdisciplinary super-clusters areas of Environmental Sustainability, Biomedicine and Infectious Disease, and Agriculture, Nutrition, Health and Well Being, where Colorado State and its partners can deliver world class benefits to society while establishing cross discipline integrated learning programs to produce the leaders that will continue the delivery of the benefits through their ongoing work.

Strategic Choice 3: Enhance Colorado State’s culture as a leading research university characterized by the same quality indicators as the nations’ other great research universities by creating an environment that both attracts and allows Colorado State to keep the best research talent in the world.

The Discovery Team plans to have its report to President Penley by the end of September. President Penley has been charged by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education and the University’s Board of Governors to have the overall strategic planning process completed by October. This has required all strategic planning committees to work at a brisk pace during the summer months, but team members are confident that the committee members – who represent a broad spectrum of the University community – have done their jobs well. Once each committee’s report is completed, it will be posted to and made available at a Web location to be designated at a later date.