How CSULB’s Beach 2030 Strategic Plan readies campus for a decade of change

With the public rollout of its 7 University Action Plans, CSULB has officially launched its Beach 2030 Strategic Plan – a comprehensive roadmap of goals and actions to guide operations though this decade.  

The road to Beach 2030 began in 2018, with a vision for a future-focused strategic plan to meet the novel challenges of the approaching decade. With the promise of rapid change on the horizon – rising automation, climate instability, and budgetary concerns, to name a few of the project’s central themes – President Conoley and Provost Jersky sought the expertise and foresight of the entire Beach community to strengthen the university’s planning.

In Fall 2018, the Imagine: Beach 2030 online event drew the participation of thousands of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members in a robust, gamified discussion forum. Participants analyzed trends and projected the potential impacts of disruption in all areas of higher education, and imagined how CSULB may not only weather the effects of change, but be made stronger by them.  

With thousands of ideas cast, a set of Strategic Priorities – characteristics that define CSULB’s impetus as an institution – emerged. In the following two years, dozens of community-inclusive workshops synthesized the wealth of data from the Imagine event into 7 University Action Plans to pursue those Strategic Priorities.

The Action Plans represent bold new approaches and paradigm shifts in how the university serves its constituents – from rethinking faculty and staff, to scaling alternative modes of delivery, to reimagining services for the health, well-being, and culture of the campus community.

Many of the prescribed actions are already underway. In the project’s forward message, President Conoley relates how early efforts to develop remote work and alternative delivery infrastructure gave CSULB a crucial head start when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted campus operations – precisely the sort of novel challenge that Beach 2030 seeks to fortify against.

The newly re-launched Beach 2030 website provides detailed University Plans and will host division and college level action plans as they are published later this year. The website will also serve as a hub for emerging news and progress reports, and feedback from the community on all aspects of the project is welcome. Just as Beach 2030 was born from the expertise of CSULB’s constituents, it is an innate goal that the project continues to be driven by grassroots effort, and be a model of shared governance for a brighter future.

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