About Edson College

Beginning in 2021, Dean Judy Karshmer established a five-year strategic planning process for the college, collectively known as Edson College 2026. The process is designed to serve as not only a roadmap for where the college is headed, but also to outline the underlying reasons for why we choose to pursue certain goals. Edson College 2026 is also designed to provide a forum and mechanisms for not only reporting progress, but to discuss progress and pitfalls on a regular basis.

There are 14 areas in which the college has articulated its goals:

• Enrollment (retention, progression & graduation)
• Student Body (demographics, AZ v non-resident, international students)
• Academic Program (curricula, core, new programs, format)
• Faculty & Staff Composition (demographics, minimal preparation)
• Global Reach
• Life-long Learning (non-credit education, stackable credentials)
• Sponsored Funding
• Research & Discovery
• Learn to Work (internships, OPT, clinical outreach)
• Local Impact (partnerships, outreach)
• Financial Performance
• Alumni Success (employment, scholarship, accomplishments)
• Philanthropic Giving
• Marketing, Media, & National Ranking

Read more information here about the specific benchmarks related to each goal.

Serving as a broader framework for the goals, the Edson College 2026 Values, based on the ASU Charter, the college mission and work from previous progress groups informed the development of the goals and provide context and rationale for why certain goals were chosen.

These 6 values are outlined in detail below.
Values: a set of guiding principles that shape behavior and decision making

• Discovery is the act of finding something that had not been known before; the act or process of sighting or learning the existence of something for the first time; the awareness of anomaly.

• Diversity includes all the ways in which people differ, and it encompasses all the distinct characteristics that make one individual or group. It is all-inclusive and recognizes everyone and every group as part of the diversity that should be valued.
• Equity assures access, opportunity, and advancement for all people, while at the same time striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of some groups.
• Inclusion authentically brings traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities and decision/policy making in a way that shares power.

• Excellence is a commitment and expectation that advances a continuous process of individual and collective effort that fosters mission-based change and innovation and is marked by objective & narrative indicators.
• Inspiration is an energized condition of engagement that drives purpose, idea creation, thoughts, feelings and actions. Excellence and inspiration are both an action and a state and are positioned within our shared cultural understanding

• Entrepreneurship includes identifying a gap where there is one, and understanding what/who it takes to fill that gap and create. An entrepreneur has a spirit that anything can be achieved. 
• Innovation is creating, developing, and implementing new and existing ideas, methods or products to provide value to an end-user or stakeholder. 

• Interprofessionalism is an evolutionary process that involves the attainment of awareness, knowledge, and skills that reflect, promote, integrate and evaluate collaboration, teamwork, mutual respect, psychological safety and effective communication within and across diverse health and social care-oriented education, research and practice environments.

• Well-Being is a state of whole-person well-being in which every individual experiences life-long growth and capacity-building, adapts to emerging challenges and adversities, lives fully and fruitfully, and experiences a sense of belonging and meaning within their community.