Thank you for your enthusiastic participation in Creating the Future II.

Last Friday was a key day in university planning efforts. More than 300 business leaders, politicians, faculty, students, staff, alumni and friends gathered for the Creating the Future II summit at the Royal Park Hotel.

 

When I announced Creating the Future II last July, I outlined three main objectives of the initiative: 

• Create a partnership of corporate and civic leaders joining together with university faculty and staff to shape the university’s direction as a key community resource.
• Demonstrate how Oakland University can address economic, health, energy, business and other global issues.
• Ensure that Oakland University fulfills its distinctive role among Michigan public universities by steadily enhancing an intellectual and ethical environment that prepares students to lead and serve in the local and world communities.

I can tell you unequivocally that we accomplished all three objectives last Friday.

At the summit, we benefited from the enlightening research conducted and presented by Lansing-based Public Sector Consultants, and we also heard from Tecker Consultants about the importance of branding Oakland University. Results of a pre-summit survey were analyzed and compared to the results of live polling done at the summit.

Participants were asked to discuss and prioritize major themes of significance to Oakland University. The most commonly discussed themes were innovation, health care, the changing economy and energy.

We will soon receive a summary of the discussions from our outside consultants. From this, we will choose popular and important themes and subject them to a broad interdisciplinary discussion with a cross section of faculty, staff and students.

The opportunity to get the region’s key strategists and best thinkers together with the rich, intellectual resources the university offers was truly a unique experience. The summit yielded many tremendous ideas, all of which are being cataloged and will be shared in the coming weeks.

I will share more details with you soon.

Thank you to all of you who participated in Friday’s event, and also to all of you who support our continuing efforts to forge a successful future for Oakland.

Sincerely,