Dear Alumni and Friends,
The fall semester at South Dakota State University is full of excitement, and it has been wonderful to have our students and faculty around for another academic year. Our campus has been as vibrant as ever this year with hundreds of events and activities that attract thousands of people to campus every week from all over South Dakota and beyond.
Fall is a special time on campus. Jane and I are happy to see the campus buzz again with students walking across campus, study sessions in the University Student Union, students heading to the Miller Wellness Center to work out and throwing frisbees across the campus greens. We enjoy internationally known musicians performing on our campus, lectures, art exhibits, student choir performances and of course cheering for our Jackrabbits athletic teams. It is certainly an exciting time, and we look forward to many other wonderful events throughout the academic year.
This fall is also another milestone for our university as we enter the fifth and final year of our strategic plan, Imagine 2023. Strategic plans serve as a roadmap for universities to continue implementing practices that strive for continuous improvement in operations and academic offerings to achieve greatness. Imagine 2023 has been critical to the recent success of our university.
During this academic year, university leaders will conduct a process to refresh the plan. We will maintain our mission of offering a rich academic experience and the vision of being a premier land-grant university.
We will preserve our core values of being people centered, expanding knowledge through creativity, operating with organizational and personal integrity, remaining committed to the diversity of community and ideas, and excellence.
The refresh process will need input from everyone and will be an opportunity for a thoughtful and honest assessment of our strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for growth. Higher education is certainly experiencing a great deal of change. We must be prepared to meet the associated challenges and adjust in ways that meet our students’ needs, while maintaining the operational integrity of our university.
The process is being led by a steering committee co-chaired by Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dennis Hedge and Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Michaela Willis. Four subcommittees will focus on each of the plan’s goals, which are centered around academic achievement, community engagement, innovation and high performance. Faculty, staff, students and employees from the SDSU Foundation and SDSU Alumni Association will participate as part of the committees.
We look forward to sharing all the great work that will be done and how the refresh of Imagine 2023 will position SDSU for greatness during the next five years.
Thank you for being a Jackrabbit and being part of our great university. I hope to see you on campus soon.
Sincerely,
Barry H. Dunn
President
