Pitt’s Strategic Plan: Working Groups to Set Action Plans to Meet Goals

The University of Pittsburgh’s strategic planning process has moved into its final stage, defining how the plan will be implemented. 

Pitt’s senior leadership has appointed five working groups to outline how the University will reach its five strategic goals: preparing students, advancing knowledge, strengthening communities, supporting success, and embodying diversity and inclusion. (See full listing of goals, page 9.)

The five “strategic goals and supporting initiatives will advance our vision of what this University can be. We will define our success by our progress toward these goals,” Pitt Chancellor Patrick Gallagher told the Board of Trustees as he unveiled the goals during a June 19 board meeting.

The strategic plan addresses Pitt’s performance over the next five years through 2020. Gallagher’s senior leadership team and the University’s Council of Deans developed the strategic plan framework that was presented to the Board of Trustees in February. Three town hall meetings followed in March. The feedback garnered from those meetings and other interactions formed the basis for the University’s five strategic goals. 

“The working groups will develop action plans for reaching each of our goals,” said David DeJong, Pitt’s vice provost for academic planning and resources management. 

For example, DeJong said, if a working group is assessing Pitt’s ability to partner—part of Strategic Goal No. 4, Supporting Success—it will look “at the University’s practices, policies, and procedures. Working group members will ask, ‘What are the barriers to partnering with Pitt?’ and then devise an action plan to remove or ease those barriers.”

DeJong stressed that participants have worked hard to keep the planning process transparent and nimble. “I would say we are respectfully humble in understanding that things can change. The entire process has been one highly consultative with the University population and highly visible. That will continue.”

The working groups are expected to propose action plans for each of the five strategic goals by October.