SUNY Oneonta Institutional Planning

2/23 Dialogue Session Notes, President's Office

Feb. 23, 2022 Dialogue Session Notes:

Challenges:

• We need to right size ourselves – we were getting too big
• Lack of awareness among students about financial aid support for experiential learning. Their knowledge of this could improve retention and graduate rates.
• We need to be more purposeful in explaining the values and skills gained from a liberal arts education.
• We need to establish customer service standards and practices across the board. The student opinion survey ranked us low on this.
• Morale is some of what impacts customer service – if someone doesn’t feel valued, they aren’t going to provide good customer service

Opportunities:

• Need to highlight experiential learning and separate ourselves as an institution where students can get their hands dirty
• Find out what students are most interested in & how we can best serve them. Bigger isn’t always sbetter
• Doing good things with net zero facilities planning – we are ahead of other campuses with our energy master plan.
• Become “College of the Catskills” seven larger regions in a variety of ways.
• We are a college in the community, not a community college
• Need to bring student affairs and academic affairs together for a conversation between necessary offices. Some offices are co-located but don’t communicate regularly. Need joint planning on a vision for experiential learning as a whole.
• Highlight success of alumni – students see college as a means to an end – to get jobs and earn money – not just to get a degree. We need to communicate alumni jobs and career paths to current and prospective students.
• Everyone in every office must be an educator of our campus. Every interaction is an educational process for students.