MARSHALL — Southwest Minnesota State University interim president Dr. David Jones identified areas of concentration to focus on in the university’s strategic plan during his year of service, and on the final year of the current plan.

“Our SMSU strategic plan will expire here at the end of the spring semester,” Jones said at the annual university address on Oct. 10. “The timing of that is actually really good for an opportunity for new leadership to come in, and work with the campus and build the next strategic plan.”

The current strategic plan has been in place from 2021 to Spring 2026, as university leadership will continue working on setting the new plan over the next year.

Jones reaffirmed the six elements on the current plan that SMSU has been focusing on, to which he noted the university is continuing to make great progress on and the Higher Learning Committee commended SMSU on the plan’s execution during their visit last year.

The six focuses of the plan have been “Affirm and support diversity, equity and inclusion,” “inspire academic success through innovative teaching, research, student support services and other high-impact experiences,” “Foster civic engagement,” “Support student engagement and leadership development,” “Ensure effective institutional operations and community well-being” and “increase enrollment and improve retention.”

As Jones will lead SMSU over the next year in his interim term, he identified three specific initiatives to propel success even more.

“In [the summer], the Cabinet had a retreat and we sat down [looking at] our strategic plan. We looked at the reality, ‘You have an interim leader for a year, what makes sense to put our energy in and focus this year that could not only be helpful for this year, but for years going forward?'” Jones said. “Within that strategic plan, we boiled down on these three areas of concentration. The first is data-informed decision making. The second one is facilities planning. The third is student experience and retention.”

Data-informed decision making

Jones identified the use of data in making university decisions as an important topic to focus on, to continue narrowing down strengths and needed improvements across the school.

“Institutional data are a strategic asset of Southwest Minnesota State University, and the appropriate management use of data is critical to the university’s operations and data driven decision making. We need to make sure we have good information to help us make the best decisions possible. That’s what this is really about,” Jones said. “We’ve created a data governance Task Force, being co-chaired by a top team member as well as an administrator … They’re going to help us start to establish a common data culture across the campus.”

“A consistent, reputable and sustainable approach to data governance is therefore necessary to protect the security and integrity of the university’s data assets, as well as the university’s brand and reputation,” Jones added. “In short, we have data sources across the university and will benefit from normalizing the access and presentation of this information to allow end users to make the best decisions possible.”

Facility planning

Another area of focus for Jones this year will be beginning the process of new facility planning, by bringing together university departments and students to hear about improvements to consider.

“We do have a very beautiful campus, but like your home, it needs some investment to continue to take care of [it],” Jones said. “Our next master campus facility plan will be created in 2027, so we’re right at the end of a 10-year plan. What we’re going to do this year is invite the entire campus community to participate in an initial brainstorm within their area to identify both short term and long term needs for their area.”

Jones said through these conversations, he will be able to identify some needs that SMSU can apply to put on the state bonding list for investment, as well as what to put in the Request for Proposals, as the school hires an architectural firm to help with the making of the next 10-year campus plan.

“As I’ve had conversations throughout campus and starting to meet groups, the facility needs keep popping up,” Jones said. “We’re going to put energy into that.”

Student experience and retention

SMSU’s enrollment has been flourishing in recent years, with the university seeing its highest total-headcount enrollment this semester. Along with that, Jones will also be continuing to put an emphasis and making progress with retention.

“We’re going to do a couple of different things to help us be successful and understand the student experience, to improve retention,” Jones said. “The first is, we are going to complete implementation of Slate, the software package that we bought as a campus. We use it for recruiting, but we also have the opportunity to use it to help communicate, navigate and track our students when it comes to their advising and working with faculty to help them be successful. We expect to have that fully implemented by this spring.”

Jones also noted the university will be conducting two surveys, one to understand more about student-employment decisions to see where SMSU may have an opportunity to provide more resources, and another survey asking and specifying campus experiences that will allow the university to see how they can improve experience and what is working well, in terms of student success.

SMSU has seen solid retention rates, with Jones also looking at areas where it could be better.

“Our first to second year retention rate of first-time, full-time students is in the second year in a row [where] it’s in the 70-percent, 71.6% specifically. That’s tremendous. We’ve made great progress as a university to get up into the 70s. We need to do more, and we need to make sure we’re providing all the resources and support to help students continue to make their way through each semester,” Jones said. “Our four-year graduation rate hasn’t really changed over quite a bit of time at this point, so it’s something we need to look at and try to figure out the characteristics associated with it.”

SMSU’s six-year graduation rate also continues to improve, Jones noted, and is moving in an upward trend.