Strategic Plan Implementation
The Baruch College Strategic Plan 2023-28, Together, We Are Unstoppable, is the blueprint for our success. It guides us every day, as we work to fulfil our overarching goals of creating opportunities, demanding excellence, and delivering outcomes for our students.
The Plan is also our strategy for the future. We continue to work as a team—students, faculty, and staff—to ensure our engaged, vibrant, diverse community only becomes stronger. By incorporating ideas and feedback from across the College, we can meet our commitment to innovative teaching, research, and collaboration to transform every community we touch.
At the close of each academic year, and at the midpoint of the plan, we report our progress and share what we have learned that will allow us to be even more effective as we move forward.
Read more about our progress below. Please take a moment to share your thoughts at StrategicPlanning@baruch.cuny.edu.
We look forward to hearing from you,
S. David Wu
President, Baruch College
College Focused Goals for Academic Year 2026–27
I am pleased to share our College Focused Goals for Academic Year 2026–27 (CFGs). These annual goals translate Baruch’s 2023–28 Strategic Plan, Together, We Are Unstoppable, into specific actions and measures of progress that guide our work across the College.
This year’s CFGs advance all four strategic priority areas: student success, research and teaching, community, and operations and infrastructure. They also make explicit how that work connects to the four college initiatives introduced in the Midpoint Addendum:
- Next Level Student Success: Strengthen advising and coordinated student support; expand experiential and paid work-based learning; and make Baruch easier for students to navigate.
- Baruch AI Leadership Initiative: Support student learning and academic integrity; expand faculty development; and establish the AI Learning Commons and Applied Intelligence Lab.
- Campus Facilities Master Plan: Finalize and publicly launch the plan while advancing priority improvements to campus facilities, accessibility, and learning environments.
- One Baruch: Strengthen collaboration, shared governance, belonging, and transparent communication across the College.
As One Baruch is shaped through community input this fall, the current goals reflect alignment with its proposed framework. Additional goals for strengthening our collaborative and engaged community will be added once the initiative is fully defined.
Across these efforts, the CFGs emphasize practical improvements—from better support for faculty research to more effective campus services—and measures that help us assess results. Establishing baselines and near-term targets will allow us to track progress this year while continuing to monitor longer-term outcomes, including retention and graduation.
I encourage you to review the goals and consider how your school, department, or unit can contribute. Achieving them will require shared responsibility and collaboration across academic and administrative units. Thank you for the ideas, expertise, and care you bring to Baruch. I look forward to what we will accomplish together.
Sincerely,
S. David Wu
President, Baruch College
Strategic Plan Midpoint Addendum: Town Hall Recap and Next Steps
Dear Baruch Community,
On September 23, we held a virtual college-wide town hall to discuss our Strategic Plan Midpoint Addendum and the four initiatives that will guide our next phase of work. Thank you to everyone who joined and contributed to the conversation. Whether or not you were able to attend, I want to share the main themes, explain what these initiatives mean for our community, and outline what comes next.
At the midpoint of our Strategic Plan 2023–28, Together, We Are Unstoppable, we have much to be proud of—and important work ahead. Over the past few months, we have taken an honest look at our progress, the challenges ahead, and where we need to adjust. Through surveys, focus groups, and campus-wide meetings, you shared what is working, where you encounter barriers, and what would make your experience at Baruch better.
Your insights, together with research and planning, informed the Addendum. Its four initiatives build on our mission, vision, values, and existing strategic priorities.
Turning Priorities into Action
The annual College Focused Goals (CFG) process remains our main means of translating strategy into action. In the coming days, you will receive more information about the 2026–27 CFGs. Please review them and share your ideas through upcoming surveys, focus groups, and campus-wide meetings.
Our progress depends on the work we do together and on our willingness to learn and adjust along the way. Thank you for helping make Baruch a place where our students and our entire community can thrive. I look forward to continuing this work with you.
Sincerely,
S. David Wu
President, Baruch College
Implementation: Year 3 and Midpoint Addendum
Over the past three years, the Baruch community has made significant progress toward the goals of our Strategic Plan 2023–28, Together, We Are Unstoppable. I am pleased to share two documents that mark an important midpoint in our Strategic Plan:
- The Strategic Plan Year 3 Report to the Community documents the significant progress our community has made over the past year and recognizes the collective effort behind it.
- The Strategic Plan Midpoint Addendum explains what we learned from our midpoint review and how we will focus our work through 2028.
Long-term plans become stronger when we pause to assess what is working, listen carefully, and adjust our course. From January through April 2026, students, faculty, and staff participated in listening sessions, town halls, a midpoint summit, and digital surveys.
The review confirmed real progress and strong confidence in Baruch’s mission. It also made clear that we can do more to strengthen collaboration, communication, belonging, and shared responsibility across the College. Faculty and staff want stronger structures and practical support for working across traditional boundaries. Students want more opportunities to connect beyond the classroom and an institution that is easier to navigate.
These needs have become even more important as enrollment remains near capacity, artificial intelligence reshapes learning and work, and space constraints affect daily campus life. At the same time, our progress over the past three years shows that Baruch has the people, ideas, and momentum to respond.
The Midpoint Addendum concentrates that momentum around four institution-wide initiatives:
- Next Level Student Success Initiative: A coordinated and proactive support system that will help students navigate Baruch from their first interaction through graduation. This initiative is ready for implementation.
- Baruch AI Leadership Initiative: A shared institutional capacity for responsible AI learning, applied experience, faculty and staff development, and external engagement. This initiative is ready for implementation.
- Campus Facilities Master Plan: A sequenced plan to improve the capacity, functionality, accessibility, and coherence of the spaces where our community learns, works, and connects. This initiative is ready for phased implementation.
- One Baruch: A proposed College-wide framework for stronger cross-unit collaboration, shared ownership, belonging, voice, and communication.
The first three initiatives have been developed with a great deal of community input and are ready to move into implementation. One Baruch is intentionally different. We are sharing its conceptual framework now so that students, faculty, and staff can help shape its priorities, boundaries, ownership, and measures before we finalize it as a College initiative. Community participation will be part of its design, not simply part of its rollout.
Together, we are unstoppable.
Sincerely,
S. David Wu
President, Baruch College
Midpoint Review: Assessment and Recalibration
The academic year 2025-26 brought us to the midpoint of our strategic plan. Over many months, we worked with students, faculty, staff, and leaders across the College to share successes, gather feedback and ideas, and develop a roadmap to carry the Plan through the next phase. We used surveys, focus groups, and campus conversations and held a Strategic Plan Midpoint Summit where people from across the College community came together for an all-day, in-person session.
On May 6, we hosted a Strategic Plan Midpoint Town Hall where we reflected on our shared progress and looked ahead to the next phase of implementation. More than 100 people participated.
This information-gathering work will become an addendum to the 2023-28 Strategic Plan that will present what we have learned and will guide a recalibration of the implementation of the plan going forward. By early Fall 2026, we will share our adjusted approach, areas of renewed focus, and new or emerging initiatives.
Throughout the process, we were reminded that implementation is more than completing initiatives. It must also include building and maintaining the culture, systems, and habits that allow those initiatives to succeed.
Implementation: Year Two
I am pleased to share the accomplishments we have achieved at the completion of the second year of our five-year strategic plan, Together, We Are Unstoppable. This plan is our roadmap to fulfilling our commitment to our students, faculty, and staff, and reimagining higher education in response to our rapidly changing world.
The Strategic Plan Year 2 recap [PDF] report provides a detailed, comprehensive look our progress across the four pillars of the plan:
- Maximizing Student Success
- Promoting Excellence in Research and Teaching
- Strengthening Our Collaborative Community
- Optimizing Operations and Infrastructure
In Spring 2026, the mid-point of the plan, we will ask evaluate our progress and determine how we can achieve our goals in a way that is responsive to constant, rapid change.
I appreciate the consistent dedication of the entire Baruch College community as we work together to deliver a world-class, affordable education to our students while setting new standards for access and achievement.
S. David Wu
President, Baruch College
Implementation: Year One
When we committed to our five-year strategic plan, Together, We Are Unstoppable, we also committed to achieving an annual set of College-Focused Goals that build from year to year, guiding us as we foster our diverse community built on Baruch’s values—collaboration and connection, excellence, impact, innovation, and inclusion.
Today, I am thrilled to unveil the update on our achievements during our first year, Strategic Plan 2023-28 Year 1: Report to the Community. The report [PDF] details our progress on four strategic priority areas:
- Maximizing Student Success
- Promoting Excellence in Research and Teaching
- Strengthening Our Collaborative Community
- Optimizing Operations and Infrastructure
Each priority is ultimately achieved by meeting a number of key initiatives that ensure our continued commitment to providing a place where students, faculty, and staff can transform their futures, professions, and communities.
Please take a moment to watch our overview video, then spend time reading the report. I’m sure you will be delighted to learn how we are implementing programs and processes to support our growth—and to see where you have played a vital role.
For a complete listing of every detailed key initiative in support of our four priority areas, we have created an appendix to the report [PDF].
It is worth noting that the well-designed report and the video were produced in house by our own Office of Communications, Marketing, and Public Affairs team.
In the coming days, I will share the College’s goals for AY 2024-25. We have so many achievements to be proud of, and those have established the foundation for what I know will be another banner year. I am truly grateful for the support and dedication shown by our entire community as we sustain Baruch’s lasting legacy.
Sincerely,
S. David Wu
President, Baruch College
Feedback?
Please email StrategicPlanning@baruch.cuny.edu. We look forward to hearing from you.