The University of Iowa has reorganized its approach to achieve goals outlined in the UI Strategic Plan through restructuring the Path Forward teams.
In an announcement last week, the UI announced the operations and strategy implementation teams will be replaced with the Path Forward Steering Committee.
“The previous Path Forward teams helped us build and begin implementation of a robust Strategic Plan,” UI President Bruce Harreld said in the announcement.
RELATED: Strategic ‘draft’ for UI surfaces
The committee will meet monthly and will be co-chaired by interim Executive Vice President and Provost Sue Curry and Senior Vice President for Finance and Operations Rod Lehnertz. It will include UI faculty members and representatives of the university undergraduate and graduate and professional student governments.
On the operations and strategy implementation teams, there were more than 50 seats on the teams combined with many people holding seats on both committees. With the new Steering Committee, there will be 10 members, including Curry and Lehnertz.
“The university is expected to announce the work team captains later this month with the full work teams announced in December,” UI media-relations director Anne Bassett said in an email to The Daily Iowan.
On the committee, there will be four work groups focusing on areas of the UI Strategic Plan: student success, research and discovery, engagement, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and collaboration.
This will replace more than 20 subcommittees that existed on the two teams that covered specific areas falling under the four categories outlined in the UI Strategic Plan.
The purpose of these groups is to identify tasks outlined in the Strategic Plan and develop a work plan each year. The groups will also collaborate with campus partners and make recommendations for changes to the university.
According to the UI, both the operations team and the strategy implementation team were formed in the spring of 2016 to collaborate in order to support the university’s vision and goals in the Strategic Plan. The teams met for the first time in February 2016 and met monthly until April, when they held their final meeting.
“This new Steering Committee will help us be more nimble and focused as we continue to work toward the goals we’ve set for ourselves,” Harreld said.
The operations team was also created to support objectives developed by the strategy implementation team and work to review different responsibilities for the institution, state Board of Regents, and the state as well as recommend initiatives for the UI on a shorter timeline of 0 to 18 months.
The strategy implementation team, on the other hand, was created to identify, prioritize, and recommend actions on UI initiatives with a longer timeline of one to five years. The team also coordinated with the President’s Cabinet as well as the operations team.
“We came together as a campus and declared where we wanted to be in five years,” Curry said in the announcement. “We must continue working together to realize that shared vision. I am proud of the work we have already accomplished, and I am excited to see what innovative strategies we develop as we move forward.”
