President Paul Hennigan joined United Student Government (USG) Monday to discuss and receive feedback about the University’s Strategic Plan. 

Beginning the discussion, Hennigan first explained its exact purpose and opened the conversation to members and staff in attendance. 

“Strategic planning is a very common concept for most organizations,” Hennigan said. “We have a Strategic Plan that asks where we want to be in five years, and it is usually a real stretch, but that is the purpose of it. Otherwise, we would kind of be marching in place and not making any progress.” 

In the process of drafting the document, Hennigan talked to not only USG, but also full-time faculty and will soon meet with the part-time faculty and alumni to gather as much feedback as he can before the end of the term. He and others, with the information they have received, then sit down with the board of trustees, who have to approve the plan before it is official. An operating plan is then established. 

“Every unit of the University then goes through the goals, and they write annual operating objectives,” Hennigan said. “We have to make sure everyone is working together to accomplish the same goals.” 

Listed at the top of the proposed Strategic plan is the University’s vision statement. According to Hennigan, previous Strategic Plan’s visions were to be one of the most dynamic urban universities in the United States. For the 2015-2020 proposed plan, the vision changed to becoming the No. 1 university in that category. 

“We wrote that over eight years ago because we, at the time, hadn’t developed this campus, but rather we were just heading down the path of becoming this urban university,” Hennigan said. 

“Now that we are there, we are going a little bolder by saying we want to be the most dynamic university in the United States.” 

Several students asked Hennigan about previous goals and their success rate, and Dean of Student Life Michael Gieseke addressed this concern. 

“It’s not so much that we haven’t achieved goals in the past, but more the fact that we are taking them to the next level,” said Gieseke. 

Within this discussion, concepts such as the new Playhouse, Student Center expansions, an increase in the online program and Alumni Affairs progress were addressed. Ken Middlemiss, assistant coordinator of Student Involvement, questioned whether this plan had any focus on expanding even more. 

“We don’t anticipate growing as much on the ground going forward as we have in previous years, but we do anticipate significant growth in our online education,” Hennigan said. 

Previous to the Strategic Plan discussion, USG officially announced the actions that will be taken in the vote of no confidence in food services. After much talk about pursuing this, USG President Julian Singleton recited the statement that they would be sending to the University’s administration. 

“This is the right time. We have done the research on our part, and we have tried our hardest to work with food service, but we don’t see them coming through for the students,” Singleton said. “Today, we officially say that is something we are going to pursue.” 

Because he was present to hear this announcement, Hennigan spoke in regards to this issue. 

“The University feels badly that you feel this way; however, your opinion is very important to us, so that motion will get sent over,” Hennigan said. “My opinion is that we are going to put the food service out to bid.” 

According to Hennigan, it will take at least a year for this goal to be met and for students to see Aramark replaced.