The 2026 Forward Strategic Plan emerged from a year-long, collaborative, iterative, and data-informed planning process designed to align institutional mission, measurable value, and long-term sustainability. Throughout 2025, students, faculty, student affairs educators, professional staff, alumni, friends, and partners of Bemidji State University and NTC, collaborated with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) to guide a structured, inclusive approach to institutional planning that balanced aspirational vision and long-term institutional sustainability.
From the outset, the process was grounded in two commitments: first, that strategy must be measurable and actionable; and second, that it must be shaped by the people who live out the mission every day and who carry the responsibility for its success across both campuses and throughout the communities we serve.
Partnership with AASCU and the Postsecondary Value Framework
In early 2025, BSU and NTC engaged AASCU consultants to facilitate a multi-phase strategic planning process. This partnership provided external perspective, structured facilitation, and alignment with national best practices in public higher education strategy while ensuring that institutional decisions were informed by both data and lived experience and were responsive to the unique context of Northern Minnesota and its workforce and community needs.
A central component of this work was integration of the Postsecondary Value Commission (PVC) Framework. The framework helped the campus community examine institutional effectiveness through the lens of access, affordability, completion, and post-completion prosperity. Rather than treating “value” as an abstract concept, the framework required the institutions to anchor their mission in measurable indicators, systematically examine equity gaps, and address institutional practices that were not yet producing equitable student success.
During AASCU’s April 2025 visit, 48 participants – including faculty, student affairs educators, staff, and senior leaders – participated in a campus-wide Postsecondary Value Framework session. A pre-session survey informed discussions and surfaced perceptions about institutional strengths, policy barriers, and opportunities for improvement. These conversations reinforced the importance of pairing mission-driven aspirations with measurable indicators of student success and economic return. The conversations also affirmed the need for transparency in how outcomes are tracked and reported.
This work ultimately shaped the Strategic Plan’s North Star: Advancing Social Mobility, supported by defined Key Performance Indicators and economic return metrics that anchor the plan in measurable impact.
Phase I: Environmental Analysis and Strategic Framing
Pre-work for the planning process launched in March 2025 as AASCU consultants guided the Executive Cabinet through working sessions focused on environmental scanning and strategic framing. Using the G-O-A-L-S framework (Governance, Organizational, Academic Programming, Learning, and Strategic Context), Cabinet members evaluated national, state, and regional higher education trends, workforce demands, demographic shifts, and financial realities to better understand both risks and emerging opportunities that would influence institutional sustainability over the next several years.
This analysis balanced aspirational goals with practical constraints. Discussions centered on institutional differentiation, enrollment pressures, workforce alignment, and operational effectiveness. Through structured dialogue and SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis, Cabinet members began identifying potential strategic priorities and differentiators that would define BSU and NTC in an increasingly competitive higher education environment while preserving their shared mission and regional identity as institutions rooted in place and partnership.
Phase II: Campus-Wide Listening and Engagement
rom both campuses. Across these sessions, 198 participants shared perspectives on institutional strengths, challenges, and future direction. Participants were asked:
- What should this Strategic Plan accomplish?
- Where are the greatest opportunities for growth?
- What operational or infrastructure barriers hinder student success?
- Where do performance gaps require urgent attention?
These conversations surfaced recurring themes related to transfer pathways, workforce alignment, student belonging, financial sustainability, institutional identity, and the need for measurable accountability. To ensure broad participation beyond in-person sessions, a campus-wide survey was launched March 14-28, 2025. The survey generated 66 responses. Importantly, these discussions and survey responses revealed strong alignment around the desire for clarity, focus, and institutional cohesion across BSU and NTC.
Survey findings were compiled and analyzed to identify patterns and priority areas. Results were summarized and shared with Executive Cabinet and AASCU consultants, informing the refinement of strategic priorities and identifying areas of consensus and tension that required further deliberation before priorities were finalized and formally structured within the emerging strategic framework.
Phase III: Priority Definitions
Following the initial engagement phase, the Executive Cabinet narrowed the emerging themes to a focused set of strategic priorities designed to have direct impact on enrollment stability and financial sustainability. The Cabinet identified the scope and intent of each priority; identified lagging indicators of success; brainstormed high-impact initiatives; and aligned recommendations with institutional data to ensure coherence between strategy, resources, and measurable outcomes in support of both Social Mobility and Financial Vitality.
During AASCU’s April 21-23 visit, additional 90-minute working sessions engaged 87 participants in deeper discussions around challenges, opportunities, and implementation considerations. These sessions marked a shift from conceptual direction to operational clarity and strengthened cross-campus ownership of the emerging priorities.
Phase IV: Refinement, Validation, and Implementation Readiness
Throughout late spring and summer 2025, AASCU provided assistance to the Executive Cabinet as it refined language, defined metrics, and addressed barriers to implementation. This iterative cycle ensured that priorities were not only aspirational, but measurable and executable within the fiscal and structural realities of both institutions and aligned with existing governance processes. Summer work centered on sharing planning results to date with external stakeholders to secure their input regarding the themes that emerged from campus constituents.
In early fall 2025, AASCU’s final campus visit focused on operationalizing the plan. Discussions centered on aligning institutional structures, identifying resource implications, and establishing accountability mechanisms. On October 9, 2025, four campus-wide planning conversations were held across BSU and NTC, engaging 71 participants. These engagements served as final validation before draft completion and reinforced a shared commitment to implementation and long-term accountability.
Draft Circulation and Shared Governance Review
In December 2025, the draft Strategic Plan was shared with bargaining union leaders and distributed campus-wide through Division Vice Presidents and Senior Leaders. In early January 2026, President Hoffman presented a near-final draft of the plan during the BSU and NTC Spring Opening Breakfasts, outlining the proposed priorities, strategic threads, and measurable goals while inviting continued input and feedback from campus stakeholders prior to final adoption.
Feedback from individuals, bargaining union leadership, and various campus departments was collected through mid-January 2026. Input was compiled, evaluated, and incorporated where appropriate, strengthening clarity, alignment, and shared ownership prior to final adoption in February 2026.
Data Integration and Measurable Accountability
Throughout the process, quantitative institutional data informed decision-making. These included:
- Enrollment trends and Financial Health Indicators
- Instructional cost per FYE
- Retention, course success, and graduation rates
- Equity gap analysis
- Economic return metrics aligned with the Postsecondary Value Commission
The final Strategic Plan embeds these metrics within a defined KPI dashboard structure and calls for the establishment of an Office of Strategic Institutional Research and Effectiveness to support long-term monitoring and transparency and to ensure that progress is routinely reported and assessed across both campuses.
A Collaborative and Continuous Model
The development of 2026 Forward was intentionally broad in scope and inclusive in design. Students, faculty, staff, student affairs educators, senior leadership, and bargaining union leaders each contributed perspectives that shaped the plan’s direction. Engagement occurred through facilitated sessions, campus-wide surveys, working groups, open forums, and shared governance reviews.
More importantly than the number of sessions held or responses gathered, the process modeled the values reflected in the plan itself: collaboration, measurable impact, shared governance, and accountability. Strategy was not developed in isolation, nor was it limited to a single moment of decision-making. Instead, it unfolded through dialogue, reflection, refinement, and validation across both campuses in a manner consistent with the culture and governance structures of BSU and NTC and reflective of our shared institutional identity.
The adoption of 2026 Forward marks not the conclusion of strategic thinking, but the beginning of an ongoing, iterative cycle of implementation, monitoring, and continuous improvement. Designed without a fixed end date, the plan emphasizes agility, responsiveness, and institutional learning. In both its design and its development process, 2026 Forward reflects the shared commitment of BSU and NTC to advance social mobility, strengthen financial vitality, and build a sustainable future for the students and communities of Northern Minnesota.