Three times each year, following the September, December and April Board of Trustees meetings, the university will release via Marquette Today a status update on strategic plan implementation housed on the Marquette 2031 Strategic Plan Teams Site. (The Teams site and its files are restricted to those with Marquette email addresses.)
Each report will feature an initiative description, a list of implementation team members and a status report for each of the initiatives across the plan’s three themes: Thriving Students, Healthy Campus and Care for the World. This is the first of such updates.
Following are some of the recent highlights of strategic plan progress. The full September 2025 status update is available on the Teams site.
Thriving Students
- Student Success Initiative — Launched the Marquette Advisor Academy to a pilot group in July; rolled out a faculty advisor pilot in the MySuccess CRM program with the College of Business Administration and Diederich College of Communication in September.
- Campus Climate Study — The report of survey findings was finalized and an overview of results was presented at a Campus Climate Town Hall on Sept. 11. Post-town hall, the Campus Climate Implementation Team will conduct focus groups to gather further feedback on the climate at Marquette and explore opportunities for improvement. The feedback will be used to develop recommendations to share with university leadership by December.
Healthy Campus
- Securing our Future: Specific Actions — Through continued strong engagement and commitment across the University Leadership Council, Securing Our Future Specific Actions are making an impact, with almost $4 million of expected annual budget improvements in FY26 and $11 million by FY31.
- Undergraduate Enrollment Strategy — The Enrollment Tactical Committee has initiated a broad range of strategies designed to accomplish the key metrics of the multi-year enrollment strategy for the Fall 2026 cohort and beyond (i.e., increased campus visitors, increased application volume, reduced acceptance rate and grew tertiary markets).
- Reorganization of colleges and academic departments — Acting Provost Sarah Feldner and University Academic Senate Chair Dr. Paul Gasser proposed a process to develop models and sought feedback from UAS. They will present approaches and models to campus constituents for feedback and seek financial analyses of the models, and they have invited campus stakeholders to participate in reviewing and refining models.
Care for the World
- Research communities — Research community council members, with the support of University Advancement, are currently participating in a series of workshops to develop one-page general audience descriptions. A Research community logic model was published, along with a simple rolling application process for new communities; two new communities are set to launch this fall semester.
- Post-award grant support — A stakeholder survey was completed by external evaluators in this past summer; results are being used to set priorities for FY26. The Office of Research and Innovation and the Post-Award Committee recently hosted a campus town hall event on the grant administration services improvement process and updates.
Related content: Marquette 2031: Spring strategic plan implementation highlights
Strategic plan initiatives to be streamlined by December 2025
Marquette 2031 strategic plan initiatives are reviewed annually as the plan evolves. The most recent review showed that some of the original 19 initiatives have completed their initial scope of work, become part of the university’s standard operations, or demonstrated enough overlap with one another that consolidation was necessary.
To that end, the university will begin rolling out a revised set of 10 initiatives by December. Importantly, none of the work occurring in the 19 initiatives is being discontinued or deprioritized. Further, the new set of initiatives now allows Marquette to elevate aspects of the strategic plan that were not initially prioritized. More details will be shared in the December strategic plan status update following the next meeting of the Board of Trustees.
The following 10 initiatives — and their respective leaders — will be in place by December (*denotes new initiative):
Thriving Students
- Student Success Initiative (Dr. John Su)
- Advancement of Teaching and Learning* (Dr. John Su)
- Student Belonging and Well-being* (Dr. Chris Navia; Luis de Zengotita)
Healthy Campus
- Employee Belonging and Well-being* (Troy Dennhof; Luis de Zengotita)
- Undergraduate Enrollment Strategy (Brian Troyer)
- Alumni Engagement and Philanthropy Plan (Tim McMahon)
- Operational Excellence* (Dr. Sarah Feldner; Joel Pogodzinski)
Care for the World
- Community Partnership Development* (Kelsey Otero)
- Mission-focused Research Communities (Dr. Jeanne Hossenlopp)
- Enhancement of Research Infrastructure (Dr. Jeanne Hossenlopp)
