University of South Florida (Tampa)
PAE-2: Strategic Plan

Sustainability (specifically, “sustainable, healthy communities”) has been incorporated into the university’s Strategic Plan, http://www.ods.usf.edu/plans/strategic and “social, economic, and environmental sustainability” figures prominently as a core value of the new University System Strategic Plan, http://system.usf.edu/pdfs/USF_System_Strategic_Plan.pdf. Sustainable growth plays a strong guiding role in the Tampa Campus Master Plan and its annual updates, http://usfweb2.usf.edu/FacilitiesPlan/Campus%20Planning/plan.html. And a new institutional policy, http://generalcounsel.usf.edu/policies-and-procedures/pdfs/policy-10-051.pdf, remarks: “The mission of the University of South Florida - Tampa (hereafter “USF”) is to educate, research, design, and build sustainable, healthy communities and to create a community of learners together with significant and sustainable University-community partnerships and collaborations. The guiding values that empower this mission include social, economic, and environmental sustainability, which promote conserving resources, reducing waste, recycling and reusing materials, finding new sources of clean energy, increasing energy efficiency, and diminishing life-cycle impacts and our consumption of greenhouse gas producing materials.” The policy provides a formal definition of sustainability for the university: “the term sustainability refers to the capacity to meet the social, economic, and environmental needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Goal III of the four main goals outlined in the Strategic Plan focuses on expanding local and global engagement initiatives at USF to strengthen and sustain healthy communities and to improve the quality of life, through the following steps: Establish a unified institutional structure to facilitate and promote community engagement, social enterprise, and global collaborations in education, research and service learning, including mechanisms for managing fiscal and human resources for student exchange, study abroad and international field placement programs, and faculty research, teaching, outreach and professional development opportunities, Develop an up-to-date clearinghouse of information about all the engagement currently occurring at USF and develop institutional systems to measure community engagement. Encourage and reward faculty effort in community engagement; require an annual faculty impact statement and explicitly introduce community engagement into USF’s promotion and tenure guidelines. Encourage and reward student engagement in the community and explore the feasibility of acknowledging community engagement and other co-curricular activities on the official transcript.

Goal IV of the four main goals outlined in the Strategic Plan covers the enhancement of all sources of revenue, and the maximization of effectiveness in business practices and financial management to establish a strong and sustainable economic base in support of USF’s growth, through the following steps: Refine business practices to ensure a strong and sustainable economic foundation at USF. Promote and sustain a positive working environment, significantly improve service quality, and improve staff support through providing competitive salary structures, expanding professional development opportunities, and building cross-functional teams. Build USF’s fundraising enterprise and endowment to a level commensurate with that found at a pre-eminent research university by completing a comprehensive campaign to support capital projects, endowed professorships and scholarships, and to supplement operating need. Expand USF’s national identity through developing and implementing a comprehensive, cutting-edge branding campaign grounded in the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge; interdisciplinary collaboration; commercialization and economic development; and global engagement. Expand the commercialization of emerging technologies to enhance regional and state economic development, and Build a sustainable environment to support an expanded and improved teaching and research mission, a more engaged residential community, and a university-based global village.