After three years of planning and rewriting drafts, a new task force on the MU campus has until March 31 to come up with a plan to help students graduate in three years. The plan is a part of One Mizzou: 2020 Vision for Excellence, a program designed to better MU by 2020.

“I first got involved as one of the faculty members of the committee that created the initial draft of the plan,” said Pat Okker, Strategic Planning and Resource Advisory Council chairwoman. “That draft was then revised after many different groups had a chance to review it.”

According to the task force’s website, the plan was designed to help MU respond to challenges it might face in the future.

“In days of diminishing resources and increasing responsibilities in public higher education, it is appropriate that we take charge of our own future and shape our own destiny, as this plan intends,” Chancellor Brady Deaton said in a letter on the task force website. “And as our world, our nation and our state respond to rapid change, so will this plan evolve, while supporting the values for which MU stands: respect, responsibility, discovery and excellence.”

The strategic plan has three main goals to expand and strengthen programs that improve the lives of the citizens of Missouri, the nation and the world. Each goal also has objectives and goals within them, with detailed descriptions of how each goal needs to be met and what organizations are in charge of making sure the goal is met. The plan is [managed and outlined on its website](strategicplan.missouri.edu).

“We envisioned a website where one can say, ‘I’m interested in this school. Here’s the actions that are needed,’” Progress Committee Chairman Tom Phillips said. “You click on it and it says, ‘Here’s what we’ve done on that.’ The website would be updated at least annually, if not more frequently.”

MU Faculty Council Chairman Harry Tyrer said members have begun planning how they will provide solutions to a number of objectives. The plan will also help ensure that MU is a good steward of the funds it receives from taxpayers and students’ tuition, he said.

“We are examining many of the aspects of university life,” Tyrer said. “We’re going to try to make education better for students.”

Although Deaton has said he brings brochures and information on the task force with him when he visits universities across the country, some MU students are in the dark as to what the plan will bring to MU’s future.

“I’m not really sure what Mizzou is trying to gain from the plan,” freshman Chanel Fisher said. “I’ve barely heard anything about it.”

According to the website, the plan will build investments by launching an ambitious new strategy, the Mizzou Advantage, which has five targeted initiatives that will bring recognition and new resources to the university through “unique interdisciplinary programs of teaching, research and service.”