2024-2030
Advancing
Student Affairs
Strategic Plan
The Division of Student Affairs supports the whole student by cultivating transformative experiences and environments that promote student well-being, sense of community, and success. Guided by this new mission, the Advancing Student Affairs strategic plan serves as a roadmap for advancing the student experience and aligning divisional efforts with the University's broader goals for student success.
The strategic plan is organized around three priorities:
1
Student
Well-being
Well-being
Increase access to essential needs, enhance students’ sense of belonging, and support student success.
2
Post Graduation
Preparedness
Preparedness
Integrate career-ready skills, enhance experiental learning and strengthen post-graduation success.
3
Building a Strong
Organizational Culture
Organizational Culture
Invest in staff well-being and growth, amplify communication and storytelling and maintain organizational agility.
Progress &
Objectives
January 2024-May 2026
This progress report highlights the accomplishments, initiatives, and outcomes achieved across these priorities. Together, they demonstrate our commitment to enhancing the student experience and transforming the strategic plan from vision into action.
Priority One 
Student Access,
Well-being, & Belonging
Objective
Provide resources, programs, and events to develop a sense of belonging for undergraduate and graduate students
Early Stage
- Initiated process for reviewing activities, policies, and operations for accessible practices
Making Strides
- Strengthening engagement platforms and signature programming (HogSync enhancements; A-Week and Welcome Week expansion)
- Reviewing and refining leadership and professional development pathways division-wide
- Formation of Class Councils
- Collaborations with GSIE to support graduate student engagement
Achieved
- Expanded student engagement footprint (50+ new RSOs; Voter Friendly Campus designation)
- Modernized and activated key student spaces (Engagement Hub renovation; Multicultural Center; First-Generation Lounge; Veteran and Military-Affiliated Student Center outpost; HPER renovation)
- Developed new Student Leadership Cohort Program that was piloted 2025-2026
- Created a matrix to highlight all student leadership programs in the Division to inventory a wide-range of opportunities
- Decentralized University Housing student leadership governance organizations, expanding opportunities for students to impact their communities through local engagement and improvement
Objective
Provide resources, programs, and services that prioritize and help develop and sustain a state of well-being for undergraduate and graduate students
Early Stage
- Preparing to launch a student basic needs survey in 2026-2027
- Forming a group of well-being changemakers who can respond to data collected to improve student services
Making Strides
- Assessing and refining embedded clinician models
- Working to provide short-term emergency housing for students
Achieved
- Advanced faculty partnership for well-being integration (faculty toolkit development)
- Expanded embedded mental health clinician support models with College of Engineering, Walton College and placement of a clinician in The CORD and the Sexual & Relationship Violence Center
- Built centralized well-being resource hub at wellbeing.uark.edu
- Evaluated student food insecurity via a survey
Objective
Develop resources that promote a sense of safety for students at all levels
Early Stage
- Advancing resiliency, risk management, and accountability education initiatives
- Inventory of BEAPs (Building Emergency Action Plans)
Making Strides
- Finalizing and operationalizing Incident Response Manual
- Enhancing visibility of campus safety resources
Achieved
- Strengthened 24/7 emergency infrastructure and coordination (resource inventory; travel tracking system)
- Formalized incident response structure (DOC restructuring; FEMA training; CE-CERT)
- Expanded preventative safety education and awareness (Safety Festival; Mental Health First Aid delivery; orientation integration; student employee training)
- Formed a trained group of staff to serve as student support for free speech events
- Hired a Director for Emergency Management
Objective
Reduce barriers to resources and information for undergraduate and graduate students
Early Stage
Making Strides
- Considering how to create a one-stop shop for best practices on campus
- Evaluating cross-campus coordinated use of student success software (Starfish) to document, share, and track student need
- Establishing translation and accessibility priorities
- Preparing for updated federal accessibility compliance
Achieved
- Streamlined divisional technology ecosystem (duplication review; centralized tool inventory)
- Strengthened accessibility and compliance standards (VPAT/HECVAT procedures; multilingual expansion)
- Centralized student employment access (Handshake integration)
- Talent search applications and communication offered in Spanish
- HogSync 101 resource developed for student and staff use
Priority Two
Post-Graduation
Success
Objective
Align all Student Affairs co-curricular and student employment opportunities with the UA's career ready skills
Early Stage
- Embedding badge and skills alignment across all co-curricular experiences
Making Strides
- Developing career-ready RSO toolkit and officer role alignment
- Expanding staff training and resource distribution
- Clarifying cross-unit roles in career readiness integration
- Making efforts to transition some student employment positions to more robust internship experiences
Achieved
- Established shared career-ready skills framework, common language and facilitation guide
- Standardized student job descriptions division-wide
- Launched Career-Ready Badge initiative
Objective
Integrate post-graduation planning conversations into Student Affairs co-curricular, student employment, and student service experiences
Early Stage
- Embedding systematic post-graduation dialogue across all 1:1 student interactions
Making Strides
- Increasing intentionality in career transition conversations
- Exploring hosting case-study professional development workshops where units that have been intentional about having post-graduation preparation conversations share their experience with other units
Achieved
- Built supervisor community of practice around student employment
Objective
Equip students with the skills to articulate the value of their co-curricular engagement and student employment experience
Early Stage
- Institutionalizing skill articulation practices across engagement platforms
Making Strides
- Developing RSO role descriptions aligned to transferable skills
- Launching reflection and skill-audit assessment tools
- Expanding career articulation practice opportunities (Career Fair Preparty)
Achieved
- Created UARK Career-Ready Skills Alignment Worksheet
- Hosted Career-Ready Job Description workshops to standardize all Student Affairs student employee job descriptions and align them with career ready skills
Priority Three
Building a Strong
Organizational Culture
Objective
Assess how staff define a sense of value and develop corresponding opportunities
Early Stage
- Assessing professional association engagement and benchmarking opportunities
Making Strides
- Advancing communication, inclusion, trust, and recognition initiatives
Achieved
- Administered assessment to better understand staff's sense of value and top contributing factors
- Continued assessing staff sense of value annually with a 10% increase since 2024
- Launched Division awards and recognition program
- Transitioned to Communities of Practice model, which are employee led groups grounded in shared professional stages or interests to foster shared knowledge
Objective
Provide talent development opportunities that allow staff to develop skills and pursue career pathways for growth and potential progression
Early Stage
- Conduct a Human-Centered Design Workshop to establish a division-wide approach to career development that enables staff to build skills, understand pathways for growth, and advance their careers while strengthening a high-performing culture supporting continuous improvement
- Offer an on-campus conference opportunity for skilled trades staff from the Arkansas Union and University Housing
Making Strides
- Develop an onboarding toolkit that compliments the Division's new hire orientation and provides direct resources for reference
Achieved
- Offer half-day summits focused on developing specific competencies
- Instruct unit leaders to budget for staff professional development
- Host a leadership training series for managers
Objective
Build a mindset of evolving information sharing at all levels
Early Stage
- Establish a Student Programming Collaborative to improve communication, collaboration and event quality across units
Making Strides
- Expanding cross training and collaborative learning
- Provide unit leaders with a simple communication framework and cascade toolkit for delivering information
- Train and equip leaders to effectively translate organizational decisions into local meaning
Achieved
- Established consistent divisional communication cadence (weekly and monthly VC updates, bi-monthly SA Sit Downs, bi-monthly VC Dialogue Circles, and quarterly All-Calls)
- Centralized program visibility through HogSync
- Set a clear leadership expectation and built the skill through development sessions
Objective
Tell the story of the Division of Student Affairs
Early Stage
- Formalizing an influencer-based storytelling strategy
- Increase the amount of original, UARK specific content in the Parent & Family Newsletter
Making Strides
- Developing a storytelling website with dashboards and success narratives
- Refining how we use HogSync as a system of record to help evaluate student engagement
- Guiding units to write measurable objectives and tactics that align with the Division's strategic plan
- Developing a social media plan for @uarkstudents for Fall 2026 and beyond
- Strengthening divisional marketing and social media analytics strategy
Achieved
- Strengthened data visualization and reporting infrastructure
- Created guidance for unit annual reports to help identify what data is most relevant when communicating long-term impacts
- Created an enhanced shell of content for the new faculty orientation Blackboard module that contains need to know information about the Division and resources provided
- Provided regular updates at the academic colleges' deans meeting
- Prepared customized guidance for academic college deans with data points about their students
Objective
Ensure the divisional structure is adaptive to the needs of the student population and university priorities
Early Stage
- Formalizing role description review and structural evaluation processes
Making Strides
- Integrating survey insights into divisional planning cadence
- Evaluating shared services effectiveness
- Intentional review of personnel to ensure staff resources are deployed effectively
Achieved
- Built multi-year financial dashboard for strategic forecasting
