Dear Colleagues,

I hope that this finds you all safe and well.

This email is to formally announce the start of a new strategic planning process for the Faculty of Forestry. After a series of internal planning sessions with our senior management team in late 2022 / early 2023, we are excited to come together for a community-wide kickoff retreat on February 23 at 2:00 pm to start sketching out a framework for our next strategic plan.  We have engaged the services of UBC’s Strategy + Decision Support (SDS) team, who bring with them a great deal of experience and know-how in these sorts of strategic processes.

All faculty and staff are welcome and encouraged to attend. We will also be working with our student government societies to identify student representatives to participate in the retreat. Using some of what we heard from our recent discussions as a point of entry, we are hoping to use the February 23 event to: 1) share and celebrate the accomplishments realized in our current plan; 2) explore the drivers for a new strategic planning process; 3) present the project timeline and governance structure; and 4) explore big picture ideas that will help inform where we would like to go as a Faculty over the next five years.

The format for the retreat will be a mix of large group presentation(s) and small group work, with a focus on the latter. It is being planned as an in-person 2-hour event. For those unable to participate in-person, there will be ample other mechanisms for providing input.  Transparency and communication are very important to this process and to our community, so we will endeavour to communicate the key insights and takeaways as they emerge from this retreat and throughout the process.

For planning purposes, please RSVP by noon on February 21. You can do this by either accepting the forthcoming Outlook calendar invite, or by replying to this email (note: email was sent January 30, 2023).  On behalf of the senior management team, we very much look forward to these conversations and thank you in advance for devoting your time and effort to this important initiative.

All the best,

Rob

Dr. Robert Kozak
Professor and Dean