Universities across the nation are striving to make themselves “student ready”. NKU determined that its strategic planning process was the perfect place to ensure that students were at the center of all university planning. Looking beyond traditional strategic planning methodologies and lengthy development timeframes, NKU decided to use Design Thinking across the campus to create a strategic plan that was both ambitious and nimble.
The result is Success by Design, a strategic plan with a singular focus on student success. The framework was purposefully designed to align resources, decisions, and processes around prospective, incoming, and current learners.
Success by Design is the strategic framework consisting of three pillars: ACCESS, COMPLETION, and CAREER AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT. The pillars guide the work as the campus as it determines how NKU delivers support, services, and programs to all learners — not just traditional students — by meeting the learners where they are in their educational journey.
This site is designed to share the progress of this journey and includes information on the planning structure, events, timelines and news. A pivotal part of the process was to determine where to begin. After campus wide input, all proposed initiatives were narrowed down to the most important First Five Initiatives.