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The School of Continuing and Professional Studies will transform lives through engaged, lifelong learning. In doing so, we will thrive, both organizationally and fiscally, and we will be recognized for excellence in adult learning.
- Learner and learning centeredness
- Lifelong learning
- Liberal and interdisciplinary learning
- Experience-based learning
- Cultural competency
- Diversity, equity and inclusion
- Innovation
- Market responsiveness
- Sustainability
Goal 1. Position and advance the school as a university center of excellence for adult learning.
Goal 2. Generate and deliver innovative, quality and market-responsive programs.
Goal 3. Strengthen systems and services for students’ success across the learning lifecycle.
Goal 4. Define, differentiate, and promote the school’s value proposition.
Goal 5. Ensure sustainability through growth, efficiency, and personnel wellness.
CONTEXT FOR OUR STRATEGIC PLAN
On July 1, 2019, DePaul University unveiled the School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS). As inheritor of the programs, expertise, and successes of the former School for New Learning and Continuing and Professional Education, SCPS embodies DePaul's ongoing commitment to leading in the adult higher education market, as called upon in the university's strategic plan, Grounded in Mission: The Plan for DePaul 2024. Consistent with Goal Four, SCPS offers focus and visibility for a university-wide strategy to “serve the lifelong learning needs of all students," to “[s]ecure DePaul's position as a leading provider of … continuing professional education," and to “[c]reate … programs … responsive to the needs of adult learners."
The faculty and staff of SCPS respond to this call through this strategic plan: Transformation for Success: The Plan for 2019–2022. We offer a collective vision for the school's leadership in the adult, continuing, and professional education markets, thereby seeking to realize the university's objectives and goals in this area. Our tripartite vision and set of five priorities emerged from months of conversations that engaged members of our part-time, full-time, and emeriti faculties, staff, students, alumni, and external stakeholders, both at DePaul and beyond. The ideas of those conversations comprise the agenda for the school, and they inform a vision meant to inspire our strategic work through 2021–2022 and beyond.
“Transformation" is a motif that recurred in many of our conversations, a concept applying not only to the school and its position within DePaul and the broader market, but also to the students we serve who are fundamentally core to our mission and beneficiaries of our collective efforts. Grounded in DePaul's mission and rooted in Vincentian values, the School of Continuing and Professional Studies distinctively honors the dignity of diverse adult learners, whose lives consist of the constant interaction of school, work, community, and family, and yet represent a richness of experience, a source of knowledge, and the platform upon which transformative learning must occur. In embracing this strategic plan, we embark on a course that will ensure success, both for DePaul and the students we serve.