The ASCO Strategic Planning Committee continues to meet throughout the year, most recently in Boston in July. Led by ASCO President Dr. Karla Zadnik (OSU), the Committee is guiding the Board of Directors through the year-long process. In addition to Dr. Zadnik as Chair, the Committee members are Dr. Jennifer Coyle (PUCO), Dr. David Damari (MCO), Dr. Larry Davis (UMSL), Dr. David Heath (SUNY), and Dr. Lewis Reich (SCO).
To date, progress has been made in the following areas:
- Refining ASCO’s mission statement ‒ current draft: ASCO advances excellence in optometric education and research that promotes the health of the public
- Drafting ASCO’s first vision statement ‒ current draft: Focusing Optometry’s Future
- Identifying ASCO’s core values ‒ draft values under consideration: leadership, collaboration, excellence, innovation, effectiveness
- Developing what will be ASCO’s key strategic objectives for the next five years ‒ the five strategic objectives being considered:
○ create a highly-qualified, diverse applicant pool
○ establish and promote career and leadership development programs for faculty, administrators and students
○ serve as the primary resource and definitive voice for optometric education
○ develop and facilitate inter-institutional collaboration
○ develop systems to assure effective governance, responsible resource allocation and appropriate infrastructure development
We encourage anyone with additional ideas, suggestions or comments to share them with the Strategic Planning Committee via e-mail to ASCO’s Executive Director Dawn Mancuso.
The next steps in this process will be to finalize the mission and vision statements, the core values and the key strategic objectives. This summer, more will be done to further the process, including asking for feedback from stakeholders via one-on-one meetings with ASCO committees/SIGs as well as an online survey; developing measurable results, strategies and tactics for each of ASCO’s draft strategic objectives; and establishing budgets, timelines, milestones, assessments and communication plans.
Continued progress on the Strategic Plan will be featured in future editions of Eye on Education.