Strategic Plan Update, August 2026

Two years ago, Furman University launched “FUture Focused,” our 2024-2029 Strategic Plan. Over the last year, our community has rallied around the strategic plan and worked to move toward our common goals – a university of innovation and impact grounded in the liberal arts, connecting rigorous inquiry and experiential learning with a culture of mentoring and reflective practice; our commitment to building thriving communities both inside and beyond our campus; and the pursuit of a sustainable and strong future for our next hundred years and beyond.  

At this moment during our bicentennial celebration, we are happy to report that numerous working groups made up of Paladins from all areas of our campus community have contributed to advance this work. Thank you for these efforts. Your commitment drives Furman forward. Our hope for the next three years is that every employee can participate in this work and feel more deeply connected to Furman’s mission, vision, and community.  

This update is a celebration of your work over these last two years, and we are indebted to the leaders, visionaries, contributors, and implementers who continue to bring the strategic plan to fruition. 

At this point our data suggest that the plan is around 12% complete – a stellar number for these early days of implementation. But, that number is a moving target in this living document, and a better picture of our work can be found below, in a detailed account of the early successes of the plan. 

Our initiative owners meet in August 2026 to chart our course for the 2026-2027 academic year, and we invite you to jump in. For those who want to learn more, the strategic plan is available on the Furman website. And, for those on our campus who want to be more involved in this work, we welcome your participation and input. You can always email the team at strategicplan@furman.edu with questions, comments, suggestions, or ideas. 

Thank you again for your contributions as we continue to focus on our future together. 

 

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A Brief Summary of Progress toward Strategic Initiatives in 2025-2026

In Priority One – “A University of Innovation and Impact” – many of the 2025-2026 strategic plan milestones focused on structuring offices and services inside the university for maximum impact. Our goals in this priority are robust and surround (1) Furman’s foundation in the liberal arts, (2) Furman’s integrative pathways in undergraduate education, and (3) community engagement and partnership initiatives. Highlights of this structuring work and next steps for each include:  

• Liberal Arts in Action
  The CURIC report is the result of a year spent listening to and responding to faculty and students’ thoughts about the liberal arts and its future. Faculty Council tasked CURIC (the curricular initiatives committee) with this effort, led by Bronwen Forbay and Diane Boyd. The resulting report offers five specific avenues for our collective work in the liberal arts: (1) Redesign GER Categories to Map to Mission, (2) Make Team Teaching a Signature Pedagogical Practice, (3) Revise CLP Policy to Prioritize Active & Thematic Engagement, (4) Transform Campus Space for Collaboration & Reflection, and (5) Amplify Community-Embedded Projects with Real-World Stakes. Additionally, the AI Taskforce explored Furman’s connections to Artificial Intelligence and has made recommendations on how we might respond as a community.
  Next steps: The campus can use the bicentennial moment and the influence of AI as calls for a timely discussion of our commitment to an overarching philosophy surrounding the liberal arts. This work calls for faculty to fully engage #s 1, 2 and 3 in the CURIC report this year. Faculty Council plans to work with chairs of APC, CURIC, and other relevant committees to establish a task force to lead a one-year project on this initiative, beginning with an understanding of Furman’s mission and philosophy tied to the liberal arts as articulated by CURIC and honed by ALT and SAT.
• Student Integrative Pathways
  For decades, Furman has demonstrated its commitment to vibrant four-year pathways for students through the transformative experiences of The Furman Advantage (TFA) in undergraduate research, internships, and study away combined with excellence in advising and mentoring programs. Furman’s focus on integrative pathways now combines these strengths with an exploratory ecosystem (including Pathways, the Cothran Center, Clifton Strengths, Mentoring and Advising, and First and Second Year experience).  This coordination and integration of student pathways allows Furman to harness and connect the success of the Pathways Program, the excellence of engaged learning through TFA, and the strengths and promise of industry- and field-specific career, professional, and graduate school advising. A new investment in “The Furman Network” hosted on the PeopleGrove platform provides enhanced capabilities to expand existing alumni engagement in student pathway mentoring.
  Next steps: The newly combined unit begins its work to enhance and promote student pathways, provide students with more comprehensive support as they explore career and professional pathways , and refine and leverage a signature exploratory framework focused on individualized student discovery and reflection.
• Community Engagement & Partnership Initiatives
  • Community Engagement Initiatives are external-facing efforts which operate at the intersection of student engagement, community impact, and thought leadership. A four-year project, beginning before the current strategic plan has reached significant financial milestones: All of Furman’s institutes (Riley, Hill, IACH, and Shi) are self-sustaining offices, giving back to Furman’s undergraduate students through programming, research, internships, and community engagement. Additionally, Graduate Studies has made a multi-million-dollar shift in these four years, moving from a net deficit unit to a revenue producing unit that now supports other units and programs through faculty salary reimbursement, cost sharing efforts, and operating support. New graduate offerings continue to harness strong alignment with Furman’s liberal arts approach and deepen our commitment to developing purposeful lives and thriving communities. Furman’s OLLI program continues from strength to strength, enrolling record numbers of students with a well-balanced financial portfolio and expanding our notions of what it means to be a student, how we connect with friends of Furman, and why community impact matters.
    Next steps: These initiatives align with Furman’s liberal arts approach through innovative programs that broaden Furman’s audience in the community and develop opportunities for student experiential learning. With financial goals met, this unit is poised to integrate its work strategically into the undergraduate student experience, amplifying existing nodes of (borrowing language from the CURIC report) “community-embedded projects with real-world stakes.”
  • Partnership Initiatives include community, corporate, and government partnerships, which continue to be a complex venture for Furman. To bring together cross-campus efforts on this opportunity, Furman established an Office of Community Engagement and Strategic Partnerships and named a Vice-President for Community and Government Relations (Liz Seman) to convene this work. The university established the Corporate & Community Engagement Steering Committee made up of representatives from Academic Affairs, Alumni, Student Life, Event Services, and Athletics to oversee collaborations on community partnerships. In the corporate education space, the Center for Innovative Leadership is in year two of a four-year launch to provide individual and corporate learning opportunities which expand and further Furman’s goals of supporting a thriving community in Greenville. These timely partnerships also complement the ongoing work of the Federal and State Working Group in broadening our connections with state and federal legislators and policy makers.
    Next steps: The community partnerships team will continue to work collaboratively to build strong regional partnerships that benefit Furman and our community. Through collective effort rather than dispersed efforts, our plan is to develop trusted partnerships that provide opportunities for undergraduate students, develop sponsorship opportunities that benefit campus initiatives and community-embedded practices, and connect Furman strategically in conversations impacting higher education and the issues most salient to our local and regional interests.
    

 

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In Priority 2 – “Thriving Community” – the 2025-2026 strategic plan milestones focused on supporting student wellbeing and belonging, advocacy for employee support, developing a culture of discourse and dialogue, and continuing our commitment to sustainability practices. These efforts were led by a variety of offices including Student Life, the Center for Interpersonal Connections, the On Discourse Initiative, the Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities, and Human Resources, and included a student group through a faculty-led design initiative. Highlights from this priority include the following successes: 

• Implementing facets of the Okagnan Charter, signed by President Davis in 2025, to enhance student wellbeing 

• Refining use cases of the AI Wayhaven Project for student wellbeing 

• Developing frameworks for high-impact, NACE-aligned student employment opportunities 

• Developing student voice in campus design through a place-based assessment of high-traffic student areas through Dr. Karen Allen’s EST 301 course 

• Formalizing skills and dispositions expected in “On Discourse” initiatives 

• Reporting the successes of “On Discourse” programming through an impact report 

• Utilizing the Federal and State Working Group to inform campus about policy changes and recommendations facing higher education 

• Increasing transparency with employees about salary and benefit decisions  

• Reaffirming commitment of the Board of Trustees to compensation planning for employee salary increases 

• Implementing streamlined processes into Workday systems for employee performance evaluation and professional development 

• Providing and broadly communicating employee wellbeing programming 

• Formalizing communication reporting to employees from Board of Trustees meetings 

• Initiating town hall meetings to inform all employees about progress toward Furman’s specific enrollment and financial goals 

• Employing “On Discourse” to formalize opportunities for discussion and dialogue with new campus partners 
• Establishing a Sustainability Working Group to advance the work of campus sustainability practices
  

 

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In Priority Three – “Sustainable and Strong Future” – Furman continues to pursue a focused enrollment growth strategy, strengthen philanthropic support, and maintain disciplined fiscal stewardship. The divisions of Academic Affairs, Development, Admissions and Enrollment Management, Finance and Facilities, University Marketing and Communications, and Athletics have all collaborated on this effort through the leadership of the Senior Administrative Team (SAT). Successes in this area for the 2025-2026 strategic plan milestones include: 

• Achieving robust enrollment numbers for the Fall 2026 entering class 

• Realizing the fundraising goals of the “Clearly Furman” Campaign 

• Implementing a Campus Visit Solution Group to assess and leverage the campus visit experience 

• Developing faculty-led efforts to envision new majors in Finance-Business, Finance-Economics, and Data Analytics 

• Building and utilizing working groups to focus on and strengthen communication around pre-health, pre-law, humanities, and other multi-departmental efforts. 

• Designing corporate sponsorship opportunities in Athletics and across campus 

• Utilizing Timmons Arena for Furman programming 

• Crystallizing strategies for athletic ticket sales  

• Assessing and revising practices in procurement across divisions 

• Refining financial contribution opportunities for revenue-producing areas of the university including space use, programming, and partnerships 

• Refreshing the Hartness Welcome Center