Our Strategic Plan
Strategic Planning evolves from collaborative engagement with the campus, local, and regional communities to articulate a shared mission, vision, and set of values that drive all decision-making at Arizona Western College. The Strategic Plan that develops out of this process is dynamic and provides a flexible but focused framework for our future.
Connection of Strategic Plan 2028 & Vision 2026
Strategic Plan 2028 Objectives
- 1. Establish and fund a Center for Emerging Technologies to vigorously implement AI, data tools, and other disruptive technology across all areas of the college.
- 2. Accelerate the growth of the Entrepreneurial College by radically expanding the agility of college practices and resources and incenting novel methods to support students, regional industry, and other external partners.
- 3. Develop and implement a centralized student-centered, data-driven schedule of course offerings to improve access, retention and timely degree / credential completion, and increase fiscal efficiency.
- 4. Commit to following the principles of Excelencia by creating a college culture that supports all students, recognizes and celebrates the extraordinary advantage of multilingualism / internationalism among both students and faculty / staff, and embraces language learning across the curriculum.
- 5. Expand access to an AWC education by implementing targeted outreach and support to Early College, OTA (returning students), incarcerated populations, and Spanish-speaking students.
Vision 2026 Objectives
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Team 1 — Student Success & Belonging
Connection to Strategic Plan 2028: #4 Excelencia, #5 Expand Access
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Team 2 — Academic Innovation & AI
Connection to Strategic Plan 2028: #1 Center for Emerging Technologies & AI, #2 Entrepreneurial College, #5 Expand Access
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Team 3 — Workforce & Rural Innovation
Connection to Strategic Plan 2028: #2 Entrepreneurial College, #5 Expand Access
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Team 4 — Strategy & Fiscal Sustainability
Connection to Strategic Plan 2028: #1 Center for Emerging Technologies & AI, #3 Centralized student-centered, data-driven class schedule
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Team 5 — Continuous Quality Instructional Improvement
Connection to Strategic Plan 2028: #4 Excelencia, #5 Expand Access
AWC Strategic Plan Pillars
As selected in May by AWC President Dr. Daniel Corr, the three pillars for the AWC Strategic Plan 2028 are:
Excelencia
The word is in Spanish as a nod to our desire to meet our responsibilities as an HSI by creating excellent learning opportunities and outcomes for all students through a persistent use of data. 77% of our students are Latinx and many of those are first generation students. We are striving to reduce the achievement gap for these students, particularly but not exclusively. There will be a halo effect on all AWC students as we:
- Level up how we use data to improve learning outcomes, like course-level success, retention, degree completion or transfer
- Make data available more equitably and on-demand to teams working across the district to serve both students and each other
- Use data to measure our effectiveness across all areas and then execute a plan to improve
Access
Removing barriers to awareness of college offerings, enrollment, retention and completion and strengthening the ways community partners utilize college offerings. This could include dual credit, corporate training, new markets, or any number of things. Access will be improved for all our communities and students when we:
- Closely consider how do we serve distinct populations, from Dual Enrollment/ Concurrent to non-traditional students, including returning students with some college but no degree.
- Examine how we leverage multilingual and multicultural resources to serve our students.
- Increase access to wrap-around services to increase enrollment, successful outcomes, and partnership.
Disruption
Disruptive change management is innovation elevated. It responds to disruptive trends in the industry, even supply-side disruptive trends (i.e. what are our students and industry partners requiring of us that our current systems / processes can’t supply?). Disruption will serve our students and communities partners when:
- We prepare ourselves for what is just over the horizon from the way we operate today.
- We closely examine what firmly held practices would yield better results for our students, employees, or community if we modified them.
- We take lessons from the innovative ‘laboratory environment’ created by the Arizona Western Entrepreneurial College.