Marquette 2031: Spring strategic plan implementation highlights

The university in October 2024 announced the 19 initiatives within the Marquette 2031 Strategic Plan: Guided by Mission, Inspired to Change, that will move forward for FY25 (which ends June 30, 2025). Significant progress has been made since then. As we approach the end of the fiscal year, below are some highlights from each of the three strategic plan themes: Thriving Students, Healthy Campus and Care for the World. 

The full list of initiatives is available on the Marquette 2031 Strategic Plan Teams site. (The Teams site and its files are restricted to those with Marquette email addresses.) 

THRIVING STUDENTS

Student Success: 

  • The fall 2024 first-year students achieved the university’s highest first-to-second semester retention rate (98%). 
  • Access to student data for professional advisers has been improved to help them engage with students earlier. 
  • The university will expand access to a new tool called MySuccess for viewing student data and tracking advising notes. 
  • Advisers will receive more professional development, including additional training in effective academic advising.  

Learn more: Taking student success to the next level 

Campus Climate Study: 

  • Data collection for the 2025 Campus Climate Study is complete. 
  • More than 3,400 responses were collected from students, staff and faculty. 
  • Campus Climate Study results will be released during the fall 2025 semester, and will include opportunities for broad campus input on recommendations. 

Learn more: Real data, real change — Key to Marquette’s 2031 Strategic Plan, Campus Climate Study provides opportunity to inform university learning, living, working environments 

HEALTHY CAMPUS

Securing Our Future: 

  • Actions and initiatives from the Securing Our Future initiative that are designed to help support future investments in strategic plan priorities. 
  • The Strategic Implementation Team is tracking FY26 commitments for specific Securing Our Future actions. 94% of the FY26 Securing Our Future specific actions are on track. 
  • The Strategic Implementation Team is also tracking progress on the nine longer-term transformative actions that are incorporated under the Healthy Campus theme: 
    • Undergraduate enrollment strategy 
    • Program sustainability review 
    • Reorganization of college and academic department structure 
    • Teaching efficiency 
    • Investment in research 
    • Centralization of services 
    • Campus master plan and housing study 
    • Policy review, enforcement and creation 
    • Sustainable financial model for athletics 

Enrollment strategy: 

  • The university has experienced 29% growth in undergraduate applications over the past two years. 
  • The enrollment management team is implementing a sustainable, mission-aligned, multi-year enrollment strategy. 
  • Undergraduate Admissions this spring hosted the largest ever Admitted Student Day. 

Learn more: Applications, test scores, campus visits reach new benchmarks for Class of 2029 

Staff compensation:  

  • This spring the university invested to bring staff employees whose salary was below the minimum of their pay range into their range. 
  • In addition to the merit pool for FY26, as an additional investment in compensation as outlined in the Marquette 2031 strategic plan, Guided by Mission, Inspired to Change, the Executive Leadership Team also approved a $1 million pool for market adjustments to staff, tenured/tenure-track faculty and participating/NTT faculty salaries. 
    • Additionally, the university is investing in market adjustments for select staff and NTT faculty.  
    • This $800,000 investment includes recently distributed staff market adjustments and an additional amount for select NTT faculty. 
    • This is in addition to more than $3.3 million invested in improving tenured/tenure-track faculty compensation over the past few years.   

Learn more: Staff Compensation Structure Project concludes following new salary structure implementation

CARE FOR THE WORLD

Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement: 

  • Marquette’s re-classification application was submitted this spring. 
  • Through the process, the Carnegie Classification team has assessed and benchmarked community engagement activities and created opportunities for staff to engage in partnerships. 
  • The Carnegie Classification team will learn from community partner data to inform future work and new partnerships. 

Learn more: Carnegie Classification process reveals Marquette’s deep collaborations with partners in Milwaukee and beyond 

Research: 

  • The university received a $1.2 million NSF grant to establish MU POST, which supports faculty management of research and development funding by enhancing and operationalizing post-award practices and processes.  
  • Kuali’s data was migrated to dataMarq to generate Power BI reports to bring this service in-house and improve the user experience. 
  • New account requests and approvals are now available via DocuSign forms. 
  • Salary authorization streamlining is in progress. 
  • Council of Research Communities created to bring together leadership from the initial pilot research communities and plan for workshops and activities to assist in research community growth. 
  • Application for new research communities posted online 

Learn more: Marquette reports record-breaking research and development expenditures for FY24 

The 19 strategic plan initiatives currently being implemented, which were chosen by the Executive Leadership Team based on feasibility, readiness, and alignment across the strategic plan’s objectives and priorities, span the plan’s three goal themes — Thriving Students, Healthy Campus and Care for the World. Although each initiative is at a slightly different stage in its implementation, each has a:  

  • Leader  
  • Working group/committee  
  • Charge  
  • Timeline(s)  
  • Deliverable(s)  

Watch Marquette Today for updates.