What could the College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) become if we put our minds to it? Where do we envision ourselves to be in five years’ time? Who should be included in helping us to get there? When would be the best time to create a five-year plan for the College? Why should we undertake such a process at this juncture?

These are just some of the questions that we have been asking during the past year while developing a five-year strategic plan for CVPA. The planning process began with a 10.5-hour listening tour in fall 2019. At each stop, I asked faculty members, “What does your program do well?,” “What is your program doing that it could do better?,” and “What is your program not doing that it should be?”

During the winter of 2020, we distributed a survey to all of our constituencies: students, staff, faculty, alumni, patrons, and donors. Project consultant Dave Mineo and Assistant Dean Brigette Pfister spent over 100 hours identifying the themes in the listening tour transcripts and survey responses for our new strategic plan.

Titled “The Path Forward,” CVPA’s 2020-2025 strategic plan challenges our College to lead the local and regional community by embracing change, fostering diversity, developing new forms of visual and performing arts, and creating culturally responsive curricula to prepare our students to create the art of the future.

With four clearly defined strategic objectives of increasing student success, embracing diversity and a common identify, transforming—and being transformed by—our community, and creating an infrastructure to support our mission, this strategic plan charts the path forward.

Here you can peruse the strategic plan and its stated objectives in detail. What hasn’t changed are our shared values of excellence and innovation, access and inclusivity, equity and ethics, and community and place. Our fundamental character as a College remains the same, but collectively we have defined where we want to be by 2025.

I’ll be posting annual updates on our progress, so stay tuned. “The Path Forward” sets the course of where we are headed and the direction of our route together. I hope you’ll join us for the journey!

Sincerely,

bruce d. mcclung, Dean
College of Visual and Performing Arts