BACU's Strategic Plan

Our mission is to fully prepare students for their future professional practice and citizenship. We aim to create opportunities for people to grow as professionals and individuals. We do so by creating an applied transformative educational experience for students focused on deep disciplinary understanding; problem solving; leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills.

EXCEL IN EDUCATION

Provide students with an excellent applied education

Strategies to provide an excellent applied education include:

Map the delivery of undergraduate and graduate education to the current learning modalities
Align tailored academic pathways with the skills needed to thrive in a range of career contexts
Provide students with state-of-the art facilities
Expand opportunities for students to engage in hands-on, practical experiences linked with leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship to match their passion
Deliver comprehensive diploma, under graduate and post-graduate programs with intellectual challenges that inspire students to expand their horizons

Cultivate a high-achieving and diverse student population

Strategies that bring about a diverse student population include:

Provide an inclusive environment, inside and outside of the classroom, that values diversity of thought and experiences
Expand outreach and recruiting programs to diverse populations to increase interest and broad participation in different applied education offerings
Enhance programs and opportunities to attract student communities with common interests and experiences
Expand our geographic reach to increase engagement and brand recognition

Recruit, foster, and graduate a student population that will succeed in the real world.

Strategies to graduate a successful student population include:

Provide an environment (in and outside the classroom and lab) that embraces practical experiences.
Engage industries to determine unmet workforce needs to align the College offerings and program learning objectives.
Enhance the outreach and recruiting programs both nationally and internationally.
Expand efforts for internship experiences with leading industry and national partners.
Foster an academic culture that promotes innovation and entrepreneurship.

To be nationally recognized for applied education and innovation

Strategies to establish leadership in applied education and innovation include:

Provide high-impact, cost friendly undergraduate education that prepares students to be leaders for the 21st century and beyond
Produce graduates prepared to contribute to the knowledge, innovation and creative economy
Develop and adapt innovative pedagogies and institutional technologies to maximize educational impact on students
Enhance resources (facilities, faculty, and staff) to meet the growing demand for education and innovation.

Foster an Environment Focused on Student Success

Strategies to establish an environment focused on student success include:

Increase access to resources (e.g., peer mentors, study groups, online learning, etc.) that foster student success.
Integrate classes to provide real-world examples and hands-on-experience to motivate learning.

Prepare students for thriving applied careers in Engineering, Computing, Innovation, and Business.

Strategies to prepare students for thriving applied careers include:

Increase opportunities for students to practice the skills needed for thriving applied careers.
Expand professional development programs to increase awareness about different career paths.
Increase assistance and guidance for pursuing careers in Engineering, Computing, Innovation and Management.
Offer a range of educational programs for our diverse learners, including non-credit, professional development programs, badges, and other micro-credentials.

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT

Pivot to Preeminence

Strategies to recruit, retain, and develop faculty who are or have the potential to be leaders in their fields include:

Identify strategic areas for investment to recruit, retain, and develop faculty.
Recruit highly-qualified PhD graduates from top schools.
Hire senior faculty in strategic areas and hire faculty clusters around them to build globally competitive research teams.
Create effective mentoring programs to retain faculty.
Establish a leadership program to develop faculty leaders.
Build large-scale teaching and research facilities to recruit and retain faculty.
Provide high-achieving faculty members financial incentives.

Build a Community with a diverse Group of Faculty

Strategies to achieve a diverse faculty include:

Proactive targeted recruitment of underrepresented minority and women faculty.
Aggressively pursue partner placement efforts to attract new faculty.
Foster a strong mentorship program and promote cluster-hiring practices to retain faculty.
Establish an environment that welcomes and encourages all faculty to develop and succeed.

Foster development opportunities

Strategies to promote development opportunities include:

Create and foster a mentoring program.
Leverage technology to provide specialized training and a wide spectrum of training courses.
Use development plans and performance evaluations to align the relationship of assigned tasks with organizational goals and assign associated development opportunities.

Increase Program Rankings

Strategies to elevate faculty visibility include:

Expect and incentivize faculty to publish in high local press impact research venues.
Promote faculty success stories in prominent public mediums and through social media.
Establish a mechanism for identifying faculty for prominent internal and external awards.
Develop think tanks that generate position papers on new technologies.

Promote an organizational environment that values development, diversity and growth opportunities

Strategies to promote staff development, diversity, and growth include:

Elevate the importance of staff development opportunities to department heads and managers.
Establishing training with incentives
Provide career paths inclusive of development plans that include benchmarks and KPIs.

Provide individuals with the resources to respond efficiently and effectively

Strategies to enable staff to respond to demands in a dynamic environment include:

Develop curriculum for certification programs and/or role specific trainings.
Establish unique learning opportunities and avenues suitable to staff workload and environment.
Monitor staff development programs and adjust focus areas based on input and strategic initiatives

RESEARCH & INNOVATION

Produce Highly Ranked Research Contributions

Strategies to attain high rankings in research output include:

Improve success rates with research proposals through targeted submissions, mock reviews and forming winning teams.
Retool faculty research portfolios and establish collaborative partnerships through engagement with national bodies and other local governmental entities.
Establish an environment for collaborative research to address multidisciplinary challenges.
Provide financial and logistical support for faculty who lead large-scale proposal efforts.
Provide seed funding to spur research in multi-disciplinary emerging areas.
Enhance the exposure of research by providing travel support for faculty members to present their work at conferences and workshops.
Resource mid-career faculty to reassess and pursue newer research areas.
Enhance the ability create and define new research avenues.

Enhance and Promote Multidisciplinary Research and Collaboration

BACU recognizes that the skill sets required to address future research problems will require a team of researchers. Strategies to promote multidisciplinary research include:

Organize networking events to promote collaboration and multidisciplinary research.
Encourage and incentivize junior faculty to become involved in multidisciplinary collaborations from an early stage in their careers.
Develop promotion and annual review policies to recognize and reward multidisciplinary research.
Provide technical and administrative assistance to faculty who are leading large multidisciplinary research proposals.

Adapt to Changes in Research Opportunities

Strategies to make faculty adaptable to changes in the research opportunity landscape include:

Increase efforts to develop industry partnerships and funding sources.
Assist faculty to reorient their research and communication skills to successfully engage with industry.
Establish communication platforms to gather input from industry partners for their research needs.

Enhance Research Infrastructure and Scholarship

Strategies to enhance research infrastructure and scholarship include:

Establish facilities and laboratories in areas of strategic importance (e.g. smart manufacturing, 3D printing …).
Recognize faculty contributions and impact in multi-principal investigator research grants during promotion and annual performance review considerations.
Assemble a list of high quality journals in each research area with the expectation that faculty will publish in those publications.

Enhance Engagement in Innovation

Strategies to promote a creative and innovative culture include:

Recognize and credit the impact of technology commercialization activities and products in annual review and promotion considerations.
Continue efforts to develop and foster an ecosystem for an innovative culture to succeed including the establishment of an innovation center and IP protection support.
Expand opportunities for students to become involved in innovation-related activities and projects.

Adapt our programs to facilitate the modification of our offerings that align with the changing needs

Strategies to align our programs to meet the needs of our communities include:

Develop a systematic approach to integrating constituent analysis in program planning and development.
Increase agility by reducing the lead-time for program implementation.
Measure the success of implementations and cycle feedback data into the development loop.
Facilitate increased interaction between students and employers by creating additional internships, co-ops and research engagements.
Increase outreach to industry partners for applied research and development needs based on education opportunities.