Cleveland State University President Laura Bloomberg, Ph.D., hosted a Zoom webinar Tuesday to discuss CSU's development over the next four months of a strategic plan for the campus.

Bloomberg started off the meeting by welcoming everyone to the webinar and giving a brief overview. While the overview only included the plan for the next four months, Bloomberg described the report made Tuesday as not “heavily detailed.”

“This is a strategic framework around which the divisions and departments and colleges all across the university can then also identify their strategic priorities,” Bloomberg said. “As they relate to the overarching plan.”

Tuesday's presentation follows recognition by the university of the depth of the crisis CSU is facing, with student numbers plummeting in recent years and a $40 million budget gap that must be plugged under Ohio state law. In its initial moves to address the crisis, Cleveland State has canceled or shuttered dozens of programs and let dozens of staff and faculty go since the end of the spring 2024 semester.

Following her remarks, Bloomberg introduced Paul Friga Ph.D., a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill who has been tasked with transforming Cleveland State University over the next six years. Friga works with the Association of Governing Board of universities and colleges of America, or AGB Consulting group. 

In his report, Friga introduced a diagram that listed the words strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). Friga then reintroduced President Bloomberg to discuss how SWOT affects the CSU Campus.
 

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Bloomberg listed important key factors that were important to the CSU task force relating to SWOT.

“What we wanted to do is to look at the key things that rose to the top for the trustees, the cabinet, the deans, and now the task force,” Bloomberg said. “We don't need a laundry list.”

After listing the factors relating to SWOT, Bloomberg handed the microphone back to Friga to discuss strategy statements. 

Friga introduced the strategy statements as another diagram. These statements referred to CSU’s mission statement, vision statement, values at CSU, and priorities of the university.
 

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To clarify these statements, Friga introduced Carol Olszewski Ph.D., another member of the CSU task force. Olszewski provided the audience with some further explanation for each category. 

Towards the end of the meeting, Friga asked attendees to fill out a survey. Participants were asked questions, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree, regarding SWOT and the strategy statements, while also asking for comments, suggestions and reactions in the survey.

Provost Nigamanth Sridhar, Ph.D., closed the meeting, saying that the task force will review the surveys collected and revise SWOT and the strategy statements over the next four months.

Sridhar explained that there is a web page on CSU’s website that the task force will keep updated for anyone to follow the entire process. He also mentioned that on Oct. 9, there will be a faculty senate meeting where the task force will update their progress and anyone can attend.