College community,

Greetings from San Diego, where I am joining SUNY Orange Foundation Executive Director Dawn Ansbro for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Conference for Community College Advancement. I am here at Dawn’s invitation, and I appreciate the Foundation’s support of my travel and attendance. I look forward to our return and sharing with you what we’ve heard and learned here.

But on to more official College business. At our Sept. 23 Assembly, I happily introduced Damon Ely and Likkia Moody as co-chairs of our Strategic Planning Committee.

It pleases me today to share the names of our colleagues who have agreed to lead the three Strategic Issues committees. You’ll recall that the committees will be charged with the heavy lifting of our yearlong strategic planning process. They’ll engage with as many constituent groups as possible, mine available sources of data, and forward suggested strategic goals/priorities to the Steering Committee. All of this must be completed in time for us to present a working draft of our proposed plan to the Board of Trustees in April for its review/comment, with an anticipated full approval of the SUNY Orange Strategic Plan 2020-2025 at the Board’s May meeting.

Leading our three committees (along with the issue that committee will undertake) will be:

Strategic Issue Committee #1 (Empower Student Success: Equitably Link Students with Their Aspirations): Nancy Boylan and Josh Lavorgna

Strategic Issue Committee #2 (Strengthen our Region’s Economic Future: Teach and Train for a Brighter Tomorrow): Bruce Roman and Meg Atwood

Strategic Issue Committee #3 (Sustain and Invigorate our Planned Future: Reimagine Human, Financial, and Physical Resources): Liza Fragola and Vinnie Marasco

I applaud these six for stepping forward to tackle the issues that will be most critical to SUNY Orange’s immediate and long-term futures.

Joining Damon, Likkia and the committee co-chairs on the Steering Committee will be ex-officio members Michelle Tubbs (Shared Governance) and Christine Work (IPAR), along with an as-yet-unnamed representative from the Board of Trustees and Vice Presidents.

The Steering Committee will be convening its initial meeting soon, and shortly thereafter the committee co-chairs will be developing the membership of their respective groups. The committees will likely be comprised of 10-12 members. If you are interested in volunteering to serve on a particular committee, I ask that you submit your name and preference to Damon or Likkia.

It is my great hope that Damon and Likkia will be flooded with names of volunteers, allowing the committees to include the widest possible representation from our College community. It is quite feasible that not everyone who volunteers will be selected for committee membership. If you are not picked, that doesn’t mean your input isn’t desired. It simply means the co-chairs need to make some tough decisions in order to ensure we have committees with great diversity of thought, experience, role, background and skills. But please stay involved, watch for any available forums or public input sessions and contribute in all ways you feel obliged.

We are on our way.

Kris