The CSUDH Strategic Plan, Going Far Together, consists of five pillars: (1) Thriving Educators, (2) Thriving Students, (3) Culture of Care, (4) Equitable Access, and (5) Pillar of the Community. Since the Strategic Plan’s launch in March 2022, the Strategic Plan Pillar Work Groups have been hard at work, striving to meet the goals and activities outlined in each pillar.
The work groups have amended the plan along the way to ensure CSUDH remains responsive to evolving needs. One amendment is updating the pillar “Equitable Access” to be split into two components – Cost of Attendance and Campus Services – to ensure sufficient attention will be paid to the goals and activities associated with each area.
In another effort to amend the plan to align with campus needs, in October of 2023, the Strategic Plan Work Groups gathered for a two-day retreat, titled Centering Equity in Going Far Together, facilitated by Dr. Bobbie Porter, Vice President and Campus DEI Officer. As she shared in the 2023 State of Diversity Address, given the social justice tenets throughout the plan, rather than writing a separate diversity strategic plan for the university, with more specificity and appropriate metrics, GFT could stand on its own as the university’s diversity strategic plan.
With this, the purpose of the retreat was to explore this idea of doubling the plan’s use and discuss ways to intentionally center equity in implementing Going Far Together (GFT), while maintaining the university’s commitment to a structured, intentional, and accountable approach to the work.
At the retreat, the work groups reviewed EAB’s assessment of the strategic plan as a diversity strategic plan and agreed to move forward on the report’s recommendations to utilize common diversity-related language. The groups also answered questions such as: Should this goal be accomplished, how would it advance social justice at CSUDH? Additionally, attendees explored what actions our campus could implement to reach our equity goals.
These efforts have continued throughout this semester with the work groups participating in a series of coaching sessions on common language and centering equity in the plan implementation process. Each pillar work group has been charged with reassessing and updating its respective goals and activities. The pillar work groups reconvened in March of 2024 to share their updates and to continue cross-pillar work group collaboration.