Alanna Grady
Features Editor
Since arriving at Springfield College last year, President Mary-Beth Cooper has brought a lot of noticeable changes to campus. Many of these changes are in response to a plan that Cooper, along with the college’s board of trustees, developed. This plan addresses the top five priorities for Springfield College.
According to Cooper, enrollment, diversity, safety, marketing and strategic communication, and non-tuition revenue generation were determined as the top priorities as a result of research gathered throughout last year.
Steve Roulier, Springfield College’s Director of Marketing and Communications, described Cooper’s process of gathering this information.
“This started with that grass-roots effort of going all across campus,” Roulier said. “She had a lot of interviews with students, faculty, staff, trustees, the outside communities, and the mayor.”
While there was a similar plan in place that was left by former President Richard Flynn, Cooper’s strategies were developed and approved by the college’s trustees in June.
“I always knew that the goals needed to come from the college community,” Cooper said. “Soon into my role as president last fall, it became clear to me that the community has many needs and priorities. From the beginning, we systematically approached the gathering of all the information, and these five themes emerged from there.”
The priorities were influenced by suggestions from suggestion boxes that were placed all over campus last year, which Cooper used as another way to receive student input.
“I can honestly tell you that, in every group we heard from, we actually found pockets of responses that focused on and represented each of the five priorities in one form or another,” Cooper said. “These five priorities were clearly represented across all constituencies.”
Besides naming five particular areas that the college wants to improve, the plan also includes three to five detailed strategies for each priority, as well as metrics, which give specific numbers and percentages that the college is hoping to reach by the 2016 and 2020 school years. The metrics, Cooper said, were determined by the college’s senior leadership board to measure how the college is able to achieve its goals.
Roulier said that the metrics will give members of the college a better sense of the specifics surrounding the college’s improvement and goals that each department should aim for.
“Why we’re calling them metrics is because we’re going to grade ourselves,” Roulier said. “We have benchmarks to hit on each [priority].”
Roulier himself plays a key role in the enhancement of Springfield College’s marketing strategies, which include the rebranding project which was recently launched, an improved design of the school’s website, and an increased presence on social media. Roulier also said that each project is also assessed in terms of the guidelines laid out by the plan and how it can best accomplish the goals that have been set. Achieving these goals will require cooperation from different areas of the college.
“There’s not one person who will be solely responsible [for the strategies],” Cooper said. “Several departments will be charged with overseeing a specific priority and reporting and analyzing the metrics, but many people and departments are ultimately responsible for their success.”
Results of these priorities can be seen in other areas of the college as well. Safety, Cooper said, was something that the college concentrated on first. This attention led to the addition of more blue safety lights around campus, as well as the implementation of the new RAVE emergency alert system that was launched at the beginning of this school year.
To increase diversity, the college hopes to host more events like the 50th anniversary celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s commencement speech that will bring awareness to campus. Both Cooper and Roulier described the idea of non-tuition revenue generation as a chance for the college to look at its expenses within individual departments and determining how to strategically spend money in a way that will benefit the college.
While the specific of many of these priorities may seem removed from the daily lives of students, both Roulier and Cooper emphasized the importance of student involvement. A student forum discussing the priorities is planned for November 6.
“We’ve shared [the priorities] this fall with faculty and staff, and now our students will have an opportunity to see scribed the idea of non-tuition revenue generation as a chance for the college to look at its expenses within individual departments and determining how to strategically spend money in a way that will benefit the college.
While the specific of many of these priorities may seem removed from the daily lives of students, both Roulier and Cooper emphasized the importance of student involvement. A student forum discussing the priorities is planned for November 6.
“We’ve shared [the priorities] this fall with faculty and staff, and now our students will have an opportunity to see what we’re working on,” Cooper said. “I’m looking forward to their input.”