Strategic Planning
December 12, 2024
To: John Jay Community Members
From: President Karol V. Mason
Subject: Strategic Planning
As we come to the end of our fall 2024 semester, I want to take a moment to wish our students well on their final exams and to share my profound thanks to the committed faculty and staff who dedicate themselves to ensuring the success of our students. This has certainly been a busy, and for some, a stressful semester, so I encourage you to make some time to care for yourselves over the break. I look forward to seeing you all again next semester, hopefully well rested and ready for the work that lies ahead.
As a College, a major effort that we have been engaged in for some months, and one in which we seek community wide participation this coming spring, is the development of a 2025-2030 strategic plan. John Jay’s 2020-2025 plan ends next year and I want to thank each and every member of the college community who helped develop our current plan. We have experienced significant improvements in retention and graduation and much of this can be attributed to the intentional work it guided.
Starting in the spring of 2024, the Strategic Planning Subcommittee (SPS) initiated a process to develop a new strategic plan. To date, the committee has conducted targeted strategic planning focus groups as well as forums for reviewing the College mission and values statements. They also inventoried and began reviewing dozens of studies, data sources, institutional and accreditation reports, and other documents that track student success and engagement; student, faculty, and staff experiences; and measures of operational effectiveness and efficiency. They are currently developing an environmental scan that will provide our College with information on the likely impacts of demographic trends, technological advances, economic and environmental factors, and the national, state, and city political environments on John Jay.
For those who have already participated in the 2025-2030 strategic planning process through targeted efforts, I want to thank you. I also want to make the community aware of opportunities to engage in the process starting this spring. While you can find a preliminary calendar here, please note the following:
- Forms requesting your input on the mission and values statements are available here. Please follow the instructions on the page to complete and submit your feedback. There will also be additional targeted mission and values forums in the coming months.
- Between January and early April, students, faculty, staff, and external groups will have opportunities to participate in focus groups on the priorities, goals, and objectives of the next plan. We are hoping to engage hundreds of members of our community in these focus groups.
- During February and May, we will share a progress update along with opportunities to provide feedback at college-wide forums.
- During the months of March and April, there will be college-wide forums, along with input forms, that will be used to create a vision statement for the College.
- During late spring and into the summer, there will be opportunities for governance bodies and the college community to assist in the drafting of the strategic plan.
The SPS will be hard at work analyzing and summarizing the information as it comes in and is looking forward to extensive engagement with the John Jay community, both in person and virtually, throughout the spring.
Moving forward, Christopher Shults, our Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness and Strategy and strategic planning chair, will share information about this initiative. We will add the dates for in-person participation opportunities to the John Jay calendar once they are finalized. Additionally, you will find new forms and other information on the strategic planning site – all of which will be detailed in future communications.
I want to thank you for your attention to this important message. I wish you, your families, and all your loved ones a safe, healthy, and restful break.
Thank you,
Karol V. Mason
President