Building A Better Brockport

Plan Introduction

SUNY Brockport provides an exemplary undergraduate and graduate public education, encompassing and valuing both the liberal arts and our professional programs. We aim to cultivate the skills and knowledge, critical inquiry, innovation, and resilience necessary to transform society. In doing so, we support our faculty and staff in their pursuit of excellence in teaching, scholarship, creative endeavors, service, academic support, and engagement in the University and beyond. We put student success at the heart of what we do, recognizing the need to be a student-ready University. We recognize the need to adapt and reflect, keeping the students, their needs, their experiences, and their outcomes at the center of our work.

• More Information

  Our achievement of our ambitious goals requires a framework, dedicated resources, and a clear assessment plan. Building a Better Brockport offers this framework, with the knowledge that the institution-wide goals described here are supported and enhanced by unit-level plans, including more specific metrics that are related to individual units.

  All of the strategic plans of the University—the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion plan, the Strategic Enrollment Plan, the Academic Strategic Plan, the Facilities Master Plan and Residential Master Plan, to name a few—fold under this plan. Moreover, this plan works in concert with SUNY-wide plans and will continue to be a dynamic, living document that is reviewed regularly and revised as appropriate, given changing political, economic, social, and technological landscapes.

  As the next Chancellor of SUNY develops additional frameworks for the System, Building a Better Brockport will adapt accordingly, while remaining true to the core values that define us: Excellence, Community, Inclusion, Transformation and Engagement. These values offer a supportive framework for our University and articulate the fundamental building blocks of the Brockport Experience.

  We know that values guide behavior, and behaviors determine culture. As we build our culture, we put critical inquiry at the heart of what we do. The ability to think through and beyond problems, in order to achieve a stronger understanding of the community and our world, will assist us as we increase our capacity to add to the knowledge base for the benefit of future generations, engage in civic leadership, and help solve the world’s problems.

  We are committed to inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural efforts that ensure an intentional connection to others, nurturing and sustaining an inclusive community of scholars and citizens. Through our values and our culture, we are committed to making The Brockport Experience transformative for all students, faculty, staff, alumni, and any individuals and communities that come in contact with the University.

  • EXCELLENCE: We are committed to fostering a culture of excellence to maximize our potential.
  • COMMUNITY: We are committed to collaborative efforts to work to better our community and strengthen the communities around us.
  • INCLUSION: We are committed to fostering a sense of belonging in an environment in which every member is welcomed, valued, and celebrated.
  • TRANSFORMATION: We are committed to transformation, which requires critical inquiry and sustains deep and meaningful change for continuous growth.
  • ENGAGEMENT: We are committed to creating engaged, dynamic, intentional, and meaningful learning and working experiences.

• Message from President Macpherson

  Building a Better Brockport takes the concerted effort of all of our community: our students, faculty, staff, and administrators. Our commitment to continuous improvement is evident in all that we seek to achieve and in the ways that we support our students’ learning; our employees’ development and career paths; and our community’s needs. As a regional comprehensive University, we recognize our role as a value-added institution and as a steward of place.

  The development of the first iteration of Building a Better Brockport (2017-2022) included vision cafes, discussions and review with the University Leadership summit, town halls, and surveys. The Strategic Planning Committee worked to refine our mission and our Brockport Promise, to create a vision, and to develop the four values of community, engagement, excellence and transformation. The four goals of our 2017-22 strategic plan led to 33 measures of success, reviewed annually by Goal Groups, the Joint Planning and Budget Committee, and Cabinet. Each year, as we reviewed the work of the past year, we made changes as required, and continually focused on our goals of being an ever better University community. We updated the operational plan each year, and published an Annual Report that focused on our progress. Building a Better Brockport 2022-27 builds on this work.

  Over the last six and a half years, I have seen our community evolve, embrace change, focus on challenging societal issues, and cope with remarkable resilience during the COVID-19 world-wide pandemic. What this has taught us is that while we cannot predict all that the future will hold, we can be alert to opportunity, and understand our role as a value-added institution. We can be cognizant of programs, plans and policies that assumed an identity-neutral stance, and work towards better understanding how our individual and collective identities impact our ability to benefit from such programs. We have become wiser about our assessment methods and about how we track outcomes. We focus on continuous improvement and know that we will always be building towards a better Brockport.

  We are proudly part of the SUNY system. As SUNY changes, so do we change, though we stay true to our goals, our mission, our vision and our promise.

  I want to thank the current Strategic Planning Committee ^[1] for their hard work in consulting widely, listening to feedback, and revising the 2017-2022 plan with such diligence and care. We have adjusted our four goals, reduced our measures of success to 18, and, based on the overwhelming support by our community, added the value of Inclusion to our four existing values. We also simplified the language of the values.

  We present to you our collective efforts in Building a Better Brockport 2022-27.

  President Heidi Macpherson
  SUNY Brockport
  March 2022

  ^[1] Damita Davis, Keith Davis, Linda Delene, Debbie Eggebrecht, Dan Goebel, Jenny Green, Mehruz Kamal, John Keiser, Sara Kelly, Darson Rhodes, Taneika Thompson, and Jim Zollweg. Thanks also go to Julie Pruss for her facilitation of our meetings with clear minutes and well-organized events.

• Next Steps

  Each fall, departments will complete a template that outlines their plans to contribute to Building a Better Brockport, and each spring, departments will be asked to report out their progress against the objectives they’ve chosen.

  A new Strategic Planning Assessment Committee will be charged with reviewing and assessing progress against this plan. This committee will report in to the Joint Planning and Budget Committee and Cabinet.

Plan Timeline 2017-2022 Strategic Plan Office of The President