Hello friends and colleagues, 

Thank you for taking a couple minutes to join me for an update. This is the first of many quarterly updates that I plan to share with everyone going forward.

We have just put an extremely challenging and unprecedented academic year behind us. We could not have done this without your flexibility, resilience and dedication to the Corporation and the university. I want to acknowledge and thank all Corporation staff members for their work. You adapted to successfully support your colleagues and Cal Poly students, faculty and staff.

When I connected with many of you about your experience this past academic year, two recurring questions were present in our discussions: What’s ahead for us over the next year? What have we learned over the past year? 

Our teams have been planning for the upcoming year and our return to campus. As we envision our path forward, it was clear we needed to define our strategic direction and goals. Our newly updated Strategic Plan captures our key goals for the next 12 to 36 months. The plan establishes our direction, goals and objectives and revolves around three strategic areas: purpose, people and perform.

As we plan our return to campus this fall, it will be with a heightened focus on key events and objectives, including successfully and safely welcoming back students, parents and supporters, and faculty and staff. We will define this success during our Fall Kickoff in August. We will also provide a Return-to-Campus Roadmap as more of our teams return to campus. This roadmap is built upon our experiences over the past year and provides information on a telework pilot that begins this July. This 12-month pilot will help us gather information and feedback to create a formalized telework plan for 2022-23.

A large part of our success over the past 80 years has been built on community. It was the relationships we developed, the meals we shared or the stories from our weekends that brought us together. This will be critical to our future and was a part of a recent conversation with Jennifer Wharton, Alan Faz and myself. To honor this tradition, this August we will launch Corporation Community, a 10-event series throughout the year created to enhance engagement with our colleagues. These events will begin with the Fall Kickoff.

Finally, we’re going to focus on creating a better digital experience for everyone. This not only means an easier teleworking experience for staff, but also a smoother shopping experience for the entire campus. This past year saw a huge influx of Grubhub purchases for Campus Dining. We need to lean into this trend by creating more e-commerce opportunities for many of our commercial services. The Strategic Plan and Return-to-Campus Roadmap provide some of the immediate ways we will adapt to improve our experiences with our students and our teams.

Looking back, this unique academic year has been challenging but has prompted us to adapt and grow. As we turn the page and kick off a new year with new opportunities, it is an exciting time to be a part of this organization.

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to email me.