By Kerrin Murray
News Editor

By Kathleen McDonough
Interim News Editor

This Wednesday, Feb. 1, President Timothy Flanagan hosted the second All University Meeting of the year to update faculty, staff and students on FSU’s progress and plans for the future.

The last All University Meeting took place on Sept. 15, when Flanagan put in place a plan for “four Ps” – philanthropy, people, planet, and planning. “Today is in the form of an update of where we have come in the last four or five months in relation to those four Ps, and where we hope to be by the time May 20 rolls around at the end of the semester.”

According to Flanagan, the philanthropy aspect of the plan includes the university’s first comprehensive fundraising campaign in its history. He said that in order to “prepare ourselves as an institution to the point where we can undertake a major fundraising campaign … it will involve a couple of important components.” These components include leadership from both inside and outside the university, developing a compelling case for why the university deserves support, finding potential prospects for financial support and “the most important piece of it” – a plan.

“We have a couple of benchmarks in mind in the year 2014. On Jul. 3, 2014 to be exact, the university will celebrate its 175th anniversary, and we intend to mark that important anniversary in ways that are consistent with the work on the campaign,” said Flanagan.

The school is currently contracting with an organization called CCS Incorporated, headed by Lindsey Humes, the company’s vice president, to help in the design phase of the fundraising campaign.

Flanagan announced that the university hired a new executive director of advancement and alumni relations, Eric Gustafson, from Anna Maria College in Paxton, Massachusetts, where he was the director of development. He will be working with Humes on the fundraising campaign plan, said Flanagan, until the summer, when “we will sort of take the training wheels off and we will undertake this hard work and activity on our own over the next couple of years.

“It is far too early to talk at this point about the dollar value of the campaign. That’s precisely what we’re studying in this design task force, but as the semester goes on, we will get a clearer picture of what the potential is,” said Flanagan.

In terms of people, the second “P,” Flanagan said the two objectives from the September meeting were to inventory and set goals for everything the university does for employees regardless of job title. “So, whether you are driving a pickup truck and you are on the custodial staff, or you’re a professor of physics, we want to make sure we have you on our radar.”

Associate Director of Human Services Erin Nechipurenko reported that “an overwhelming majority of departments have had a place to participate in professional development activities. However, it appears that some departments have done so on a more regular basis than others.”

Dean of Students Melinda Stoops introduced a campaign, called “Live Safe,” for which she is now recruiting faculty, staff and students. The campaign recognizes that college-age students take risks and engage in regrettable behaviors, but will “focus on safe choices, bystander intervention, and helping other people make safe choices.” The campaign, which is “really about behaviors,” will roll out in the fall.

The planet was the third “P.”  Flanagan discussed the school’s sustainability initiatives and progress in meeting the Climate Action Plan goals, such as the opening of a green building, North Hall. Flanagan said that although it was a “gigantic battle” about to eliminate of trays in the cafeteria a few years ago, and “we thought the world was going to end.” Two classes that have gone through the dining halls without trays “all seem to have survived.”

Warren Fairbanks, director of facilities, updated the forum on where the school is in terms of planet initiatives. He said that the school has already “made some great strides on the hard side of it,” the technical aspects of the Climate Action Plan including measuring green house gas and carbon dioxide emissions, reducing energy consumption, cutting down on water use and recycling, which Facilities has been pushing forward.

He said it is going to be difficult to make the next step, which is a change in the “social” and “behavioral” aspects of the Climate Action Plan. Fairbanks said this is changing the way people act “like turning off the lights when you leave the room, putting on a sweater and wearing short sleeve shirts in the summer.”

According to Fairbanks, FSU is a leader, ahead of a lot of other universities in energy efficiency, and is in the middle of a $6-7 million conservation project, of which $2.7 million was given to the university by a grant from the commonwealth.

Flanagan said that the strategic planning process is important because it brings together all aspects of the university’s improvements. The last strategic plan in 2008 included 95 specific recommendations “to move the campus forward,” said Flanagan, which the university has improved upon in the last few years.

However, one of the recommendations from the last strategic plan was to create a new mission statement. New vision and mission statements were created by the FSU community based on a “set of bedrock principles that will help to support the strategic plan going forward,” said Flanagan.

“Our last strategic plan was highly conspicuous by the complete and virtual absence of an academic plan, which is more than a little ironic in an academic institution,” said Flanagan.

He added that the Division of Academic Affairs drafted an academic plan over the last eight months “that will really drive the rest of the university going forward.”

Flanagan said that the university has input from the community to “think about strategic planning 2.0,” but that they “desperately need more faculty to get involved in the budget planning committee.”

Dale Hamel, executive vice president, discussed the process of strategic planning to “develop functional plans, weave them together as a cohesive whole and identify priorities.”

The strategic plan will be presented to the Board of Trustees in May and will cover the fiscal year 2013, which starts July 1 of this year, and the next five years. There will be two student open forums specifically on the planning process on Feb. 15 and a date to be announced in May. There will be two more All University Meetings on March 26 and April 30 before the presentation of the strategic plan to the Board of Trustees.