Goal 4: A High-Performing University

Strategic Plan Home

Assure the long-term strength and stability of the University by preserving, caring for and developing human, intellectual, financial, structural and marketing resources.

Build human capital
- Enhance workplace conditions to recruit, retain and reward all UW employees and encourage innovation and commitment
- Implement career ladders for staff
- Provide and incentivize participation in professional development that enhances technical skills of employees
- Develop mentoring and leadership programs for faculty and staff
- Increase the number of endowed faculty positions, including new types such as distinguished professorships, or state engagement professorships
- Hire strategically to ensure robust disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship and to support academic and co-curricular opportunities that meet the needs of 21st century students

Strengthen marketing effectiveness
- Effectively communicate UW’s opportunities to prospective students, regional partners and national and global markets
- Institute a centralized plan that tells our story and positions UW for recognition in all of these contexts
- Develop a comprehensive branding, public relations and marketing campaign

Enhance financial resources
- Stabilize, diversify and enhance revenue streams
- Launch a substantial and strategic capital campaign
- Develop a coordinated plan for managing intellectual property, entrepreneurship and technology development and transfer
- Drive operating efficiencies to save costs while maintaining services
- Analyze tuition and fee structure

Enhance institutional operations and planning
- Build a more highly functioning university by embracing transparency at all levels of administration and operations as well as by streamlining, updating and consistently implementing governing regulations and policies
- Create and implement university-wide plans such as a campus master plan, housing plan, capital and fiscal plans
- Create and implement metric-based strategic plans for all university units
- Honor UW’s commitment to the environment by instituting sustainability initiatives in daily operations, renovations and new construction

Metrics

Goal 4: Assure the long-term strength and stability of the University by preserving, caring for and developing human, intellectual, financial, structural and marketing resources.

PERFORMANCE INDICATORS	BASELINE	2022 TARGET
Campus climate and environment	Fall 2018 campus climate survey	TBD from survey data
Employee job satisfaction	Participate in Chronicle of Higher Education “Great Colleges” job satisfaction survey	Improvement from 2017 baseline
Number of endowed faculty positions	36	60
Total annual university revenue	$505.6 M	$555 M
Growth of university endowment	$450 M	$650 M
Deployment and full utilization of Enterprise Management Systems	Underway	Completion
Implementation of an incentive-based, decentralized budgeting system	Beginning	Completion
Review and update of all university regulations and policies	Underway	Completion
Campus Sustainability Ranking (STARS)	Not designated	Bronze

Jo Chytka

When Jo Chytka first came to the University of Wyoming as a freshman from Riverton, Wyo., in 1975, she had no idea what path her career would take. Now it’s her job to help incoming freshmen think about their interests and career aspirations early on—to find the right majors and experiences to get them where they want to go.

As the director of the Center for Advising and Career Services, now called ACES—Advising, Career and Exploratory Studies—Jo Chytka helps students on their path from college to career.

“Attending UW is what set me up for my life,” Chytka says. After she earned her bachelor’s degree in marketing, she worked for a bank, returning to UW for her MBA and again working in the private sector before landing a job at UW. At UW, she advanced to director of the Center for Advising and Career Services, now called ACES—Advising, Career and Exploratory Studies—in 1986.

“I have a great job working with students and hopefully making a difference in their lives and helping them see what the future might look like,” she says. “I help connect them with opportunities and employers—working with great faculty and staff across campus to make things happen. It’s been totally rewarding.”

The center provides resume help, internship and mentoring connections, and hosts job fairs, among other things. ACES will also play a key role in some of the university’s strategic plan initiatives.

“Our goal is to move to a first-year advising experience that infuses career,” Chytka says. Instead of being undeclared, students can take exploratory studies tracks, and ACES will help them think about where they want to go, what they want to do and their strengths so that they can make informed decisions on the best majors as well as build up their resumes.

“We’re creating strong partnerships with the alumni association and strong partnerships across campus to get students experiential opportunities,” she says. “Even more, we help students articulate what they’ve done.

“There’s so much opportunity in online tools,” Chytka adds. These include EPIC, which helps students prepare for their career, and the new Handshake platform, which includes mentoring options for students via UW alumni. “Students will be required to go through our EPIC platform to learn how to do informational interviews, and then through Handshake they’ll connect with alumni. I’m very excited about that.”

As part of the strategic plan, ACES will also track where students are working in the years following graduation (previous surveys were done at graduation and three months out). “We are looking at ways to get better data three years out or five years out to help us see who are the employers in the state, what skills are they hiring, what degrees are they hiring and then to help shape the diversification efforts,” Chytka says. This could result in new majors and partnerships to help UW meet workforce needs.

“I think it’s a really exciting time,” she says. “I think the strategic plan is going to be so impactful.”