Summary of Strategic Planning Survey Results

Survey Overview

• Continuing to strengthen UMass Lowell's branding, admissions processes, and academic programs and supports, to recruit, admit, and retain students through successful graduation and beyond.
• Expanding the availability of paid research, co-op, internship, and other experiential learning opportunities as central to the undergraduate experience, in partnership with corporations, community-based organizations, and government entities.
• Prioritizing continued efforts to strengthen our research profile relative to peers, leveraging UMass Lowell's current trajectory to join the top category of U.S. research universities (R1).
• Embracing diversity, equity and inclusion as a core principle touching all academic and operational aspects of the campus.
• Leveraging our community as a strength by partnering with city government, neighborhood organizations, regional businesses, and non-profits to collectively work to communicate the positive impacts of learning, living, and working in Lowell.
• Reinvigorating our on-campus community and in-person connections among faculty, staff, and students, while strategically evaluating workplace flexibility experienced during the pandemic.
• Embracing environmental sustainability and carbon mitigation as a core principle touching all academic and operational aspects of the campus.
• Emphasizing “hands-on” learning and social interaction as the fundamental benefits of an in-person, on-campus educational experience, while continuing to provide the flexibility of on-line and hybrid course delivery models to reach a broader diversity of students.
• Aligning student mental health services and programs with a campus culture that elevates wellbeing as a campus value, reduces barriers of access to mental health treatments, and destigmatizes the need to seek mental health support.

• Broad support across respondents for all interconnected priorities.
• Cost and adequacy of infrastructure are concerns across many of these areas. 
• Workload concerns for faculty and staff emerged as a concern across many of these themes.
• Some tensions within and between these various priorities emerge. This is partially related to resources, but also a deeper question of our identity as an institution.

• Highest proportion of faculty named critical priorities as Enrollment (66%) and DE&I (53%)
• Highest proportion of staff/administration named critical priorities as Enrollment (77%), DE&I (59%), and Mental Health (58%)
• Highest proportion of undergraduate students named critical priorities as Mental Health (56%) and Paid Experiential Learning (55%)
• Highest proportion of graduate students named critical priorities as Research Profile (60%) and Paid Experiential Learning (53%)

• 346 faculty
• 559 staff/administration
• 42 other non-student
• 782 undergraduate students
• 254 graduate students
• 615 alumni