Strategic Plan 2024-2027

Download the Strategic Plan 2024-2027

Introduction

Wallace State has developed this three-year Strategic Plan, not at a crossroads of spectrums of interests and movements, but on the banks of a mighty river of information. In this epoch of history, change and disruptions are an expectation. Even as Wallace State serves as an educational and workforce leader, it recognizes that even the quintessence of educational leadership has changed. In the journey of today, the college recognizes that the locus of leadership can shift at any time from the organizational core to the edges and back again as leaders with powerful and transformational ideas can emerge from anywhere.

The college begins a new journey on a pathway that is fraught with challenges, but that, more importantly, offers the exhilaration of new opportunities and innovations. For the first time, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, to cite just two examples, have entered the strategic landscape and what this means for the future of higher education is still something of a mystery. It is not the mission of the college to master innovation— this is hardly possible anyway—but to make innovation part of the definition of what Wallace State is.

The new plan is subtitled “Wallace State’s Journey into Our Best Future” because Wallace State is committed over the next three years to pulling from its immersion in the vast river of information all that represents the best and most significant future for its three key constituencies • Student Journey • Employee Journey • Community Journey 

The accomplishments of Wallace State have been exceptional, including being selected with other top colleges to lead the national implementation of the American Association of Community College’s Guided Pathways model, and being one of a select number of Leader Colleges in the seminal Achieving the Dream program. Achieving the Dream was begun by the Lumina Foundation and other organizations to enable more students to achieve the dream of realizing their own personal and professional potential, a step that often begins at the door of a community college.

Wallace State is beginning its new strategic plan with a sense of boldness and humility, boldness because of the power it possesses to create its own journey and humility because it recognizes and values the contributions of all its learning partners.

Our Mission

Wallace State Community College is committed to learning that transforms lives and communities.

Our Vision

Wallace State will facilitate learning without boundaries, will be committed to every student’s success, will exemplify the spirit of perpetual improvement, and will promote an overarching sense of community.

Our Process

In July 2024, Dr. Vicki Karolewics, President of Wallace State, commissioned a strategic planning task force to review the previous five-year plan and establish a framework for a new three-year plan that reflected its position as a regional and national transformational leader college. The Task Force was comprised of approximately fifty representatives of various campus and community constituencies.

The Task Force met in person at a planning summit at the Wallace State Workforce Training Center on the grounds of Rehau Manufacturing in Cullman. The summit began with remarks from the President and the College Dean Emeritus. The participants, divided into working groups, analyzed the College’s positioning in regard to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and submitted summaries to the President. In preparation for the summit, participants spent several months participating in a designated series of professional development sessions by a futurist, an economist, a demographer, and AI expert.

Parallel to these efforts were activities related to the College’s selection in 2024 as a Top-Ten Finalist for the Aspen Prize, a $1 million prize that will be awarded by the Aspen Institute in 2025 to the best community college in the nation. This journey began with a nomination in November 2023 and has continued to the present with several points of evaluation as the college eventually proceeded to being named a finalist, recognition that included a campus visit by a national selection committee in early September 2024. The visit included more than sixteen interviews with over 80 employees, students, community educational and business leaders, and members of the Alabama Community College System Board of Trustees. No college in Alabama has ever been selected as a finalist in the twenty-year history of the award.

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