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New Strategic Plan approved by the Board of Visitors

Screen Shot 2013-12-12 at 9.44.57 AMWhat a great moment it was to see the George Mason University Board of Visitors unanimously approve our new strategic plan yesterday!

The plan, which is grounded in our recently adopted strategic vision, offers a roadmap for the future: university-wide goals, a framework to help us make choices on how to achieve those goals, and metrics to assess our progress.

More importantly perhaps, the plan offers our response to a fundamental question: How will George Mason University best serve our students, our community, and the broader global society over the next decade? Our innovative and entrepreneurial attitude and our culture of diversity and accessibility have served us well over the last four decades. These characteristics should also help us as we build a university for the decade to come.

Crafting Mason’s new vision and strategic plan has been an extensive and inclusive undertaking. This 10-year plan is the result of more than a year’s worth of work by over 150 people at Mason who spent countless hours analyzing external trends and evaluating the ideas and feedback of more than 3,000 members of our internal and external communities.  Special kudos to Vice Provost Michelle Marks who led the process masterfully with assistance from Carrie Klein, who acted as project manager.

We now have an ambitious and exciting set of goals and a shared narrative of the kind of university we are committed to building together.  Much work needs to be done to translate this framework into more specific plans and initiatives and to turn the plan into reality.  But as Laozi said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

As we move forward, our aspiration to be the best university for the world is solidly grounded in the confidence of past success. We face the future with enthusiasm and energy. Now, it’s simply time to get to work.

Thank you for all you do to support the mission of George Mason University.