The Plan: Approval and Implementation

Five months of consultations, more than a hundred meetings, more than eleven hundred survey responses, a Discussion Paper, three open forums, and more than three hundred written responses to the Discussion Paper went into the creation of the University of Regina’s new strategic plan.

The plan is entitled mâmawohkamâtowin: Our Work, Our People, Our Communities. The Cree word mâmawohkamâtowin means "co-operation; working together towards common goals".

With the approval of the Strategic Plan, the focus has turned to implementation over the five-year period 2009-14. Consistent with ethos of the plan creation, implementation is a highly consultative activity, engaging individuals and units across the University and reaching out to the University’s many partners and other parties with an interest in the success of the institution.

Implementation continues the approach used during plan development with intensive communications: of the plan, of implementation activities, of progress, and of outcomes. The web presence for the Strategic Plan and its implementation has been continued.

The University Executive Team is acting as the overseeing implementation team, reflecting the very high priority of plan implementation. The 2009 and 2010 annual retreats of the University Leadership Team (the president, vice-presidents, and their direct reports including deans and associate vice-presidents), held in late August, have focused on plan implementation, brainstorming such matters as implementation priorities and actions, performance measures, and engagement strategies.

All U of R members of the University Leadership Team (ULT) have responsibility for plan realization; their annual personal goals now include relevant aspects of the strategic plan and their annual performance reviews will address achievements with respect to the plan. President Vianne Timmons will assume personal responsibility for certain over-arching themes in the Strategic Plan such as community engagement and First Nations and Métis relation-building.

The budget submissions of units, the University’s Operations Forecast, and the university budget, and other processes, are being structured around the strategic plan’s goals, implementation and achievement. The objective is a results-based management framework.

All academic and administrative units should by now have created new unit strategic plans that detail how the unit will contribute to the realization of mâmawohkamâtowin: Our Work, Our People, Our Communities.

A new Saskatchewan - new in a cultural, economic, and demographic sense - is coming into being around us. Our plan will position the University of Regina at the centre of this new Saskatchewan, rooted in and responding to the needs and aspirations of all our partners, and reaching out to the world around us.