We hope that you had a nice holiday break and Happy New Year!

We wanted to update the University community about the Sustaining Excellence project that Fr. Engh spoke at length about in his convocation address last September and more recently in an email to our community in December. As you may recall, Fr. Engh is interested in developing a comprehensive and thoughtful plan to ensure SCU's success in the future that involves improved efficiencies, cost savings, and enhanced revenues consistent with our mission and values. These goals are for the long term (not short term) in order to maximize excellence at SCU for many years to come.

During the winter term, a series of working groups, with faculty and staff representatives from across the campus, will brainstorm together and gather information on best practices. These working groups are organized by themes that include:

·         Benefits

·         Campus Services and Procurement

·         Facilities Utilization, Management, and Operations

·         Institutional Advancement and Community Engagement

·         Non-Academic Administrative Structure

·         Academic Administrative Structure

·         Non-Degree Academic Programming.  

During the brainstorming phase, all members of the SCU community are encouraged to offer their thoughts and suggestions. We sincerely hope that you will give some careful consideration to how SCU can do what we do better and let us know what you think. You can contact anyone associated with the project as well as place suggestions on our project web site (which will be up and running soon).

Once the brainstorming process is complete, the steering committee (again with faculty and staff representative from across campus) will review all of the suggestions and organize and distill them into workable recommendations to present to Fr. Engh for his consideration. We hope this phase will be completed by the end of the spring term. Then, Fr. Engh will evaluate them with consultation from the Board of Trustees and the University governance structures to come up with action plans based on these recommendations.

In this process, we will communicate frequent updates without overwhelming your email inbox.

A leading educational consulting firm from Boston (Teibel Education Consulting) will help us every step of the way. They have facilitated similar process with other universities, including numerous Jesuit institutions.

At the end of the day, we all want SCU to thrive and be the best university it can possibly be. We hold our mission and values near and dear to our hearts and want to do all that we can to sustain and enhance our excellence for many years to come. We really appreciate your help in doing so.

Thanks everyone.

Best wishes,

Tom Plante & Lisa Kloppenberg

Co-chairs, Sustaining Excellence Project