All organizations depend on some form of planning to develop overall goals and a way to achieve them. Strategic planning helps an organization's people step back from day-to-day operations and existence to ask, "where are we headed and what should our priorities be?"
Like most storied and venerable institutions, NSCAD developed various plans over the past few decades to address the concerns of the day, most important of which were sustainable sources of earned revenues. While well intentioned, these plans invariably had little long-term impact on the university's ability to identify emerging opportunities and realign its activities holistically.
Recognizing the interdependencies between the components of sustainable success and rallying our community behind an implementation plan to unleash its potential has never been more essential to NSCAD's future. To that end, the NSCAD Board of Governors approved on June 27 the Seriously Creative 2024-2030 Strategic Plan.
"With the Seriously Creative Plan (SCP), we are charting a bold new era for NSCAD to reestablish our prominence and place as one of the foremost, highly regarded art and design schools in the world," says NSCAD President Dr. Peggy Shannon. "We are sending an unmistakable message to ourselves and to the world that we are evolving through a vision and blueprint to make the university, by 2030, a global destination for art and design education."
President Shannon notes that the release of the SCP marks both the culmination of an extended period of thoughtful collaboration between faculty, staff, students, governors, alumni, and creative thought leaders, and the beginning of forward-thinking initiatives that will elevate NSCAD and enable its communities to prosper.
"The plan is deeply informed by our signature past as we collectively move towards an exciting future," she says. "We are laying the groundwork to move to a consolidated campus, ignite programmatic innovation, grow enrolment, meet student housing needs, create an equitable and inclusive environment, and maintain fiscal sustainability and strength."
The SCP is founded on three institutional pledges (student-centred art and design education; an equitable and inclusive NSCAD; a destination campus for creatives) and four, long-term objectives to achieve by 2030:
- NSCAD will transform into a new, unified campus at the Halifax Seaport
- NSCAD's student body will flourish to 2,000 students
- 15 per cent of all NSCAD students will be housed in university residences
- 25 per cent of NSCAD's revenue will come from diversified sources other than tuition and the university's provincial operating grant
Four campus committees and one working group will work with NSCAD leaders to focus on institutional issues to address points needing immediate attention, evaluate the effectiveness of processes and identify improvements, and review outcomes and adapt as needed to drive the SCP's continued progress and success.
Read the full Seriously Creative Plan at seriouslycreativeplan.nscad.ca.
