Strategic Plan 2025

Strategic Plan 2025 Executive Summary

Wildy Important Goal (WIG)

In order to meet the growing need for leaders who are well-educated, experienced, and trustworthy, by 2025 Marian University will double the number of annual graduates to 1,500 men and women who are prepared to serve as transformational leaders in education, health care, business, ministry, and other professional fields.

To achieve this aggressively aspirational goal, Marian University will need to grow substantially its human, physical, and financial resources. Marian University’s Strategic Plan 2025 provides a detailed, measurable pathway to implementing our vision, mission, and five power goals.

Power Goal 1: Mission and Identity

Place Marian University at the forefront of national and international efforts to educate and form lay, vowed, and ordained leaders for key roles in the Church’s mission of health care, education, social service, ministry, and administration through the vibrant living out of the Catholic and Franciscan sponsorship values of Marian University. The Franciscan values and traits of Marian University (intellectual, spiritual, and abilities) will be evident in our graduates, helping them in their professions and beneficial to their personal lives.

Power Goal 2: Academic Quality

Advance the academic quality of Marian University to the top 10 percent of peer universities as measured by the following:

• Retention – achieve an 85 percent retention rate. This is our target, and our progress toward it is a lagging indicator. The Moving the Needle project gives us a number of leading indicators we can use to track progress as well. The Credo MTN team would say that achieving this will require an improved new student profile as well as the MTN module improvements.
• Increased presence and strength of graduate programs and leadership programs; increasing numbers of students and programs are lagging indicators; applications and admitted students by program are leading indicators.
• Achievement of promised learning outcomes via objective measures such as test results, passing professional exams, portfolio building, job placement, and graduate/professional school acceptance are lagging indicators.
• Institution of a robust system of measuring the satisfaction of corporations/organizations with the preparedness of our graduates (including M.A. and Ph.D. candidates and professional studies students), as well as the satisfaction of these graduates themselves with their education and preparation. Satisfaction surveys of graduates and employers are lagging indicators.

Power Goal 3: Enrollment

Increase full-time equivalent (FTE) students from 2,700 in 2014-15 academic year to 4,200 in 2024-25. This will require attracting an additional 750 graduate students and 500 undergraduate students (for a total undergraduate student population approaching 2,000 by 2025). Lagging indicators are created by annual growth plans and goals.

Power Goal 4: Leadership

Establish a culture of leadership threaded throughout curricular and co-curricular programs so that every student and faculty member will gain valuable leadership tools within their specific academic majors, our leadership programs, and comprehensive institutional commitment to excellence in leadership development. Marian University will be nationally recognized for the transformational leaders it prepares for health care, education, business, social services, civic, and church life.

Power Goal 5: Expand Resources Available

Secure the financial resources needed to more than triple our current net assets from $85 million to $350 million so as to fully achieve the aggressively aspirational vision and goals of Marian University’s Strategic Plan 2025. Provide the facilities required to serve the university’s vision and mission, accommodate enrollment growth in the Byrum School of Business, School of Mathematics and Sciences, and School of Liberal Arts, and support student life programs in leadership, fitness, and extracurricular activities.