NSCS Board of Trustees set 2025 Strategic Plan

Gary Bieganski, Chair of the Board of Trustees, said, “The direction and priorities of our new strategic plan position the Colleges and our students well for the future. The plan builds upon the strengths of the State Colleges and continues our mission of offering high quality, affordable education for all students.”

“As a System, we must remain nimble and flexible to meet the needs of our students and provide high-quality programs that meet the needs of the communities we serve,” said Paul Turman, Chancellor of the Nebraska State College System. “Our goal is to prepare highly-skilled, critical-thinking, mission-centered graduates ready to fill the state’s employment and leadership needs.”

The 2025 Strategic Plan sets the following operational goals for the NSCS:

Student Success & Completion - Ensure all students receive necessary support and resources to enable successful progression and on-time degree completion.

Institutional & Academic Quality - Deliver an array of high-quality academic programs and curricular activities that successfully prepares students for the range of careers they will experience after graduation.

Workforce & Economic Impact - Expand capacity for colleges to produce graduates who meet the workforce needs of Nebraska and to strengthen their role as change agents for rural communities they serve.

Access & Affordability - Preserve the open-access mission by providing all students with equitable opportunity to pursue affordable undergraduate and graduate degree options in Nebraska.

Since April of 2019, a System Strategic Planning Task Force has been engaged in developing the strategic plan goals as well as identifying key metrics to measure College and System-level progress toward the established goals.

“We began this effort with more than 30 stakeholders across the system with a simple question: ‘What are the critical outcomes that the citizens of Nebraska expect for the investment they make into our three Colleges each year’,” said Turman.

Once the operational goals were identified, the Task Force narrowed a pool of nearly 100 possible metrics to a set of twenty metrics that directly impact the system's ability to achieve the four established outcomes. The preliminary recommendations were reviewed by the Board at their August Retreat, and based on feedback, the Task Force members assisted with finalizing the metrics for the System.