Interim President Ashish Vaidya
St. Cloud State University has a long rich history of serving the people of Minnesota and a core mission that has stood strong for nearly 150 years. Our 100,000-plus successful alumni and friends remind us of this every day.
We are a university grounded in a tradition of providing post-secondary education opportunities to improve the economic, social and cultural vitality of Minnesota and its people. In 2013, the Minnesota State board reaffirmed this core mission.
Having evolved our degrees and structures to remain responsive to the needs of the state and our students, work began under the leadership of President Earl H. Potter III to re-envision our mission and create a forward-looking educational environment that prepares students with the knowledge and skills for life in the 21st Century.
I am proud to continue to carry this work forward and respond to the increased expectations of our students and communities by sharpening our focus and reimagining how we deliver on our mission in this changing environment.
To that end, our 2017-2022 Strategic Action Plan repositions St. Cloud State within the higher education marketplace, leveraging our strengths to expand our areas of excellence, increase our competitiveness and maximize our potential.
The plan challenges us to “build the 21st Century engaged university” through three primary themes: Engaging students, engaging the campus and engaging our communities in achieving increasing levels of student success and to contribute to a prosperous Minnesota.
We are calling it a refresh because we believe that our fundamental mission and vision are sound. But we needed to bring focus and clarity to our strategies and integrate our changing environment into our thinking.
St. Cloud State is positioned to do its part in restoring public confidence in Minnesota’s higher education institutions. Our Strategic Action Plan answers the call to become an entity more than it is today — more responsive to changes in the world, more oriented toward student success, more accountable to community partners, and more engaged in the success of our state and its people.
Continuing our work together, we have crafted a new iteration of our original mission that was created nearly 150 years ago — to become Minnesota’s 21st Century Engaged University.
