Message from the Dean: Our Strategic Planning Process

Dear Faculty, Staff and Students,

It seems hard to believe, but it has been a year since I first shared with you with our strategic plan. Our commitment to this strategic effort has not only laid a pathway for our future here at DUSON, but has already produced benefits for us through the alignment of resources, prioritization of choices, and the creation of new partnerships.

During the past year, more than 120 members of our staff and faculty began implementing our priority strategies, and the evidence of their work can be seen throughout the School - what a year it’s been!  In addition to the accomplishments across the plan we are seeing, we have also enjoyed unprecedented success with virtually all of our rankings in NIH-funded Research, On-line Education, our access for Veterans, not to mention our #1 Best Graduate Nursing School ranking. The timing of our efforts couldn't have been more perfect.

Perhaps you are being asked the same question that I am, “how we will stay #1?”  For me, my response is simple—we have a path to excellence in our Strategic Plan – and implementing it with commitment and focus will ensure our successful future. Our goal is excellence; the rankings will sort themselves out.  

This year we had a strong start to our implementation of the strategic plan. We all should be proud of the progress we’ve made. Together we learned how to roll up our sleeves and work toward shared goals in new and exciting ways. As we expected, some strategies were completed this year, others need more time to complete, but teams have gathered information and laid the foundation to meet their goals next year, or the year after.  

In the early fall, during my State of the School presentation, I will share with you our first year’s progress and some examples of how we have become even closer a school community.

Although there are several People & Environment teams with building momentum who wish to continue work over the summer, I do want to encourage you to enjoy the summer semester as a break from strategic plan work. We will come back to it in a few months with renewed energy and new challenges to meet.

I want to thank each of the executive sponsors, strategy leads, and strategy teams for a job well done. As ambitious as our strategic plan is, I never doubted our ability to dig into the work and help shape the future of DUSON. 

Thank you for an excellent year of progress towards our goals.

Marion E. Broome, PhD, RN, FAAN Dean and Ruby Wilson Professor of Nursing, Duke University School of Nursing Vice Chancellor for Nursing Affairs, Duke University Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs for Nursing, Duke University Health System