Building on our UM Strategic Plan: A message from President Michael Benarroch and Provost Janice Ristock

Usually, the arrival of a new president and vice-chancellor signals the start of extensive strategic plan consultations with faculty, staff, students, and the broader community. While nothing is "usual" these days, circumstances over the past year have allowed us to spend significant time listening to our UM community.

After a difficult year that also included many hard-won successes-thanks to the incredible work by our faculty, staff, students and administrators to fulfill the academic mission of our University-we are excited to begin a community consultation process for building on our existing UM strategic plan.

A full renewal of the strategic plan will be launched in 2022, under the leadership of incoming Provost and Vice-President (Academic), Dr. Diane-Hiebert-Murphy. For now, while respecting the fundamentals in Taking Our Place 2015-2020https://umanitoba.ca/sites/default/files/2020-06/um-strategic-plan-2015-2020.pdf, our existing strategic plan, we want to provide some specific short-term guidance and are launching an engagement process to seek your input.

In imagining the path we set forward for ourselves, we remain committed to academic and research excellence, an accessible, inclusive and supportive environment on our campuses, and engagement and Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and communities. We also continue in our commitment to consulting our entire UM community for strategic direction.

The University's mission, vision, values and the five strategic pillars within the current Strategic Plan also will continue to guide us.

They are:

* Inspiring minds through innovative and quality teaching * Driving discovery and insight through excellence in research, scholarly work and other creative activities * Creating pathways to Indigenous achievement * Building community that creates an outstanding learning and working environment * Forging connections to foster high impact community engagement

Our success will continue to be supported and built on the success of the Front and Centrehttps://frontandcentre.cc.umanitoba.ca/ campaign and enhanced by big, bold ideas to inspire the highest levels of philanthropic support for our academic, research, and engagement mission.

Various discussions with the Board of Governors, Senate, Provost's Council and UM Alumni Council have led us to a few focused areas of priority across the pillars to guide the University's progress over the next 18 months. We also want to give all members of the UM community the opportunity to share your own views on those priorities and on our path forward.

We want to hear from you. You may offer your feedback by responding to a series of questions at the following link: Building on our Strategic Plan: Community Consultation 2021https://cssrp.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3eiT24ux3G3rWbs.

Your participation in this important engagement exercise is completely voluntary, but we encourage you all to share your input. Your responses are held in the strictest of confidence. Answering these questions will take approximately 15 minutes of your time.

On behalf of entire President's Executive Team, thank you for your ongoing commitment to our University's success. We look forward to hearing from you.

Michael Benarroch President and Vice-Chancellor

Janice Ristock Provost and Vice-President (Academic)