Leadership retreat engages thinkers to look toward university’s future

David Wright is concerned about the economy. He believes that because of Wichita State’s urban setting, a bad economy will hurt it more than it would a university like Kansas or Kansas State.

On the plus side, he does think Shockers are more employable.

“At least we have a mascot that can get a job, opposed to others that can be dinner,” joked Wright, who is the assistant vice president for the Office of the Provost as well as a professor in sociology at WSU.

Wright said this to the more than 400 people that attended the Strategic Planning Retreat on Sept. 5 in Koch Arena, hosted by WSU President John Bardo.

The near three-hour long session was designed to bring people together to discuss WSU and it’s future. The participants were broken up into dozens of small focus groups and asked to answer one of five questions pertaining to the university.

“It’s not just what it means to me, it’s what it is going to mean to the university,” said Charlie Burdsal, a psychology professor and director of the Social Science Research Laboratory. “If you involve everyone, it’s going to be a lot better direction.”

And including everyone was a goal of Bardo’s.

Among the people at Burdsal’s table were a real-estate agent, a plumber, an engineer, a businessman and a physical therapist.

“There are a lot of community leaders that have agreed to be a part of this and there are a lot of faculty that have agreed to be part of this,” Bardo said. “I’m really quite pleased with where we are and the kind of people who really want to take a leadership role and make things happen.”

Topics being discussed related to WSU’s mission, its core values, its strengths and weaknesses, goals for the next decade, and external threats and opportunities.

After discussion, Bardo went over each question and asked various people to talk about what their table came up with.

“My sense was people were actually having fun talking to each other,” Bardo said. “You could hear the buzz in the room.”

The true purpose of the retreat was to share ideas and begin planning for the future.

Bardo sees this as the beginning of a multiple-phase plan to better the university. The first phase will end at the end of this academic year, and then move into phases two and three, which will be more internal, focusing on academic departments, enabling departments and student services.

“This is a continuous improvement process and you never really leave it,” Bardo said. “The fact that we had 400 (people) and involved community people was very important and will serve us well as we move forward.”