Strategic Plan 2005-08
'A Special Time … For A Special Place'
A Three Year Strategic Plan for the College of Health and Human Development
The Pennsylvania State University
View the entire Strategic Plan 2005-08 (.pdf format)
This document represents the strategic plan for the College of Health and Human Development (HHD) for a period of three academic years beginning July 1, 2005. As we enter this next phase of our development as an academic entity, the College is well positioned for continued success. During the last strategic planning period, the College achieved several notable accomplishments, including
- Amplifying the quality of the HHD undergraduate experience by strengthening the first year experience through JumpStart, developing an alumni mentoring program in all nine academic units and creating a Women’s Leadership Initiative
- Increasing undergraduate enrollment, while achieving all-time highs in the number of multicultural students and in the number of HHD students co-enrolled in the Schreyer Honors College;
- Significantly expanding and upgrading stipends for HHD graduate students by reallocating approximately one-half million dollars – resulting in the enrollment of more high-quality applicants;
- More than doubling our portfolio of externally funded research and diversifying the base of our support; and
- Expanding the sphere of influence of the College by developing new World Campus offerings, building an urban community partnership with Harrisburg and creating an international partnership with the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (Germany).
Building on this record of accomplishment and success, the College of Health and Human Development has established three goals to guide us during the next three years:
Goal #1: Recruit the best and promote their success.
Goal #2: Strengthen external collaborations.
Goal #3: Pursue emerging opportunities.
Each of these goals is described and elaborated in the main section of this report. For each goal, we list the strategic actions that will be undertaken to achieve that goal and briefly comment on measures that will be used to determine our progress toward achieving the goal.
These three goals have emerged from discussions with the academic leadership of the College and represent the collective vision of the next steps that need to be taken to maintain and expand our reputation as one of the best colleges of this type in the nation. The College of Health and Human Development, however, like other academic units on campus, is a collection of programs with common interests and complementary goals. Therefore, in order to represent the full-range of activities and initiatives on which we will focus during the next three years, we also have included an appendix that contains brief outlines of the strategic plans for each of the nine academic units administered by the College of Health and Human Development.
The main section of this report – augmented by the plans of the individual academic units contained in the appendix – represents the strategic plan for the College of Health and Human Development for the next three years. We have focused our attention on new initiatives and actions rather than describing business as usual. As a consequence, much of what we do on an everyday basis is not represented within these pages. Similarly, in our constant quest for excellence as it relates to the Penn State missions of teaching, research and service, during the next three years we will implement a myriad of smaller actions that are intended to improve our performance. In this strategic plan, however, we have focused our attention on the “big picture.” Thus, the three goals that we describe represent overarching priorities that we believe to be essential to the future of our College.
Finally, we view this plan as an evolving document, not one that is cast in stone. Thus, as we move forward we will constantly review and refine both our strategic actions and our progress on each goal and will make adjustments as necessary. Although other additional strategic actions might be added as circumstances arise or opportunities present themselves, we will not retreat from these three priority goals.
View the entire Strategic Plan 2005-08 (.pdf format)