This strategic plan is in effect for 2024-2028 and was adopted on April 5th, 2024.
Mission and Vision Statement
CAHSS supports and develops the capacity of students, faculty, and staff to interpret the past, understand the present, and shape the future. To this end, CAHSS fosters an open intellectual environment where faculty, students, and staff pursue inquiry through wide-ranging research, scholarship, and creative activity. As a result, CAHSS graduates, faculty, and staff are lifelong learners, educated professionals, and engaged members of their communities who respond with integrity and intelligence to an ever-changing world.
Core Values
CAHSS supports the capacity of students, faculty, and staff to interpret the past, understand the present, and shape the future. To achieve this intention, we are guided by the following core values:
- Academic Freedom and Integrity - We are committed to promoting and sustaining academic freedom and integrity in our teaching, learning, and research for our faculty, staff, students, and wider community.
- Justice - We are committed to making our college an equitable, inclusive, and accessible environment for all.
- Sustainability - We are committed to ensuring that the college and its various units conduct their operations in a manner that is fiscally, socially, and environmentally sustainable.
- Engagement - We are committed to ongoing dialogue throughout the college as well as with our partners in the university and the wider community to make productive contributions to an ever-changing world with intelligence, integrity, and empathy.
To put these values into action, these five goals will guide our strategic decision making over the next five years:
Goals
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Goal #1: Student Success (UMD Goal #1, Goal #5, Goal #3) (MPact Commitment #1)
Through the delivery of a diverse array of programs, promote and sustain an environment in which students receive high-quality learning experiences that prepare them to be active and engaged members of their community and which implement best curricular and co-curricular practices for students’ benefit.
- Continue to implement and develop high-impact educational practices across the curriculum to ensure that each student has the opportunity to engage in a variety of such experiences.
- Examine opportunities for unique interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate education programs in CAHSS in light of our collective expertise, resources, and the university’s broader mission.
- Further strengthen our contribution to UMD’s Liberal Education curriculum, drawing on our unique areas of strength.
- Develop the skills and knowledge of our students to prepare them for employment, service, further schooling, and membership in a larger community.
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Goal #2: Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) (UMD Goal #2)
Cultivate an environment in which students, staff, faculty, and community members can thrive and in which we take active measures to eliminate structural and systemic barriers.
- Draw on our unique strengths to center JEDI in curricular and co-curricula programming.
- Recruit and retain students, staff, and faculty from under-represented backgrounds.
- Identify and actively work to overcome structural barriers and constraints that limit the ability of all members of the CAHSS community to thrive.
- Celebrate & elevate JEDI work.
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Goal #3: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (UMD Goal #4) (MPact Commitment #2)
Empower faculty, staff, and students to engage in creative problem solving to address complex challenges with intelligence and integrity in an ever-changing world.
- Foster collaborative research and creative endeavors between and among faculty, staff, students, and the wider community.
- Provide funding and time for faculty and staff to undertake professional development activities.
- Promote participatory, community-engaged research and creative opportunities at the local, national, and global levels.
- Develop and promote opportunities for students, staff, and faculty to share their research and creative endeavors in public settings.
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Goal #4: Cultivating Community (UMD Goal #5, #1) (MPact Commitment #4)
Foster an environment which promotes faculty, students, staff, and community members learning together to work together on collaborative problem solving.
- Support and sustain co-curricular opportunities for students that allow them to apply their knowledge, develop leadership skills, and work collaboratively with colleagues.
- Strengthen connections with our alumni.
- Build, strengthen, and solidify appropriate and respectful connections with community partners to support community-engaged learning and research.
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Goal #5: Resource Stewardship (UMD Goal #6) (MPact Commitment #3)
Ensure that the college and its departments utilize our resources for long-term sustainability that furthers CAHSS’ mission and vision.
- Diversify our revenue sources to support student scholarships, faculty and staff professional development, and innovative initiatives.
- Ensure budgetary transparency.
- Invest in our faculty and staff and expand support for students, faculty, and staff.
- Conduct our collegiate operations in an environmentally sustainable manner.
- Encourage applications for grant and other external funding mechanisms and provide college-level support to operationalize external grants in accordance with funders’ requirements.