1. Ensure Student Success
- Increase retention, progression and graduation rates
- Support underprepared students
- Implement student success efforts
2. Expand Enrollment Strategies
- Identify programs and markets with growth potential
- Recruit top-performing students
- Enhance student development opportunities
3. Enhance Academic Instruction
- Cultivate pedagogical resources
- Harness academic program strengths
- Support retention, progression and graduation
4. Foster Greater Focus on Research
- Increase funded research programs
- Expand student and faculty research production
- Commercialize technological research initiatives
5. Bolster Economic and Community Partnerships
- Expand engagement opportunities
- Nurture mutually beneficial relationships
- Enhance economic development throughout the academy
6. Maximize Human Potential
- Recruit talented and diverse individuals
- Leverage faculty and staff expertise
- Retain high-quality faculty and staff
Achieving the Vision
Select Accomplishments
- Earning the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education R1 designation.
- Securing regional accreditation reaffirmation through the Southern Association of
Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, as well as maintaining individual accreditation
for a wide variety of specific academic programs.
- Enrolling the most academically talented students in the University’s recorded history,
while maintaining stable enrollment throughout the pandemic.
- Realigning USM’s academic enterprise through a comprehensive academic reorganization
to enhance the distinctiveness of academic programs and create a sustainable model
for academic program growth.
- Stabilizing USM’s overall financial position, which resulted in achieving compliance
with three new metrics prescribed by Board policy for the first time, while still
making critical investments in faculty and staff support.
- Enhancing the student experience through strategic investments in student life and
academic success support.
- Elevating USM’s role as a $663 million annual economic driver for the state of Mississippi.
- Reaching unprecedented milestones in private fundraising through relationship development
and cultivation with alumni, donors, and friends of the institution.
- Expanding USM’s operations all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, including launching
a USM-led research and innovation framework to enhance collaboration among research
scientists, federal agencies, industry partners, and entrepreneurs to advance Mississippi
as a leader in the global ocean economy.
- Securing a new $100 million regional class research vessel from the National Science
Foundation to conduct large scale research in the Gulf of Mexico as our nation’s third
critical body of water.
- Positioning USM’s athletics programs for future growth through conference realignment.
- Completing a wide range of construction projects to maximize the role facilities play
in student growth and development, faculty pedagogy and research, and overall workplace
productivity.