In preparation for Murray State’s centennial, Jay Morgan, provost and vice president of Academic Affairs, has implemented a task force to discuss plans for the University’s academic future.
“When I came in as the new chief academic officer, I realized we needed to have a strategic plan or visioning plan for Academic Affairs,” Morgan said. “I called the plan very simple, MSU:100.”
Morgan said MSU:100 will essentially be a road map for the University that includes plans for where faculty and staff would like to see Murray State in three years, five years and in eight years in 2022, the University’s 100th anniversary.
The task force is made up of 24 active members, faculty from every college, staff members and a few at-large individuals.
Morgan said when selecting members to be on this task force he wanted to have a diverse group as possible to allow for the most encompassing plan to be created.
“I wanted to have a broad-based group across campus representative of faculty and a couple staff from all the academic areas,” Morgan said. “I’m trying to make it very simple, very straightforward, very shared governance oriented and our sum goal in the end is to try to have a very nice document with some goals, targets that Murray State would like to hit in the next couple of years.”
These members will be meeting every month for the next six to eight months and hope to have a completed set of goals for Murray State to follow by March or April.
Morgan said the task force will discuss what academic areas they would like to see be promoted in the future, what new academic areas to introduce and which of Murray State’s features to emphasize. He said the group will deliberate on questions such as whether to add more undergraduate or graduate programs and if they should implement more doctoral programs.
“I’m just trying to capture all that feedback about where our faculty and staff feel like our University needs to be,” he said.
While it was Morgan who charted this group, he said the ideas will be predominately generated by the gathered faculty and staff.
Tim Todd, dean of the Arthur J. Bauernfeind College of Business, acted as facilitator for the event.
The group held its first introductory meeting on Monday. The focus was more aimed at orientation and organization of the participating individuals, he said, although they did begin brainstorming general ideas of things they’d like to see in Murray State’s future.
Morgan said the atmosphere of the meeting was very positive and that just from listening to the people who attended, he could tell they were very appreciative of the chance to chime in on and help potentially shape the University’s academic future.
The MSU:100 task force will next meet Oct. 21 where Morgan said the real work will begin.
Story by Ben Manhanke, Assistant News Editor
