Pres. Mortensen Updates Employees on Back-to-School Town Hall

Editor’s note: This message from USU President Brad L. Mortensen was sent to all university employees on Thursday afternoon.

Dear Aggie Family,

Thank you to everyone who came to our back-to-school picnic earlier this week. It was great to talk with so many of you and kick off another academic year together.

I’ve shared a brief recap of our town hall below, and the town hall recording and slide deck are available on the President’s Office website.

Our Mission and Strategic Pillars

Over the past nine months, we have heard from thousands of you through university-wide surveys, town halls, meetings, and conversations across the state. Some themes have come through consistently: keeping students at the center of what we do, protecting what makes Utah State special, providing greater clarity about our direction, investing in our people, strengthening our statewide impact, and communicating openly about decisions and change.

That feedback has helped shape our revised mission statement:

As Utah’s student-centered, land-grant research university, we expand opportunity and strengthen communities across the state through learning, discovery, extension, and engagement.

The mission statement will now move to the Trustees and the Utah Board of Higher Education for approval. The mission provides a foundation for our four strategic pillars:

• Utah Statewide Impact
• Student Success & Value
• Discovery with Purpose
• Civic-Mindedness

Over the next few weeks, teams from across our institution will participate in design labs to develop specific initiatives and measures around each pillar. We will hold a Strategic Plan Town Hall on Oct. 16, followed by conversations at our statewide locations Oct. 27-30.

Reflecting on the Last Nine Months

We also talked about the amount of change Utah State has experienced over the past year. We have had new university leadership, leadership transitions and organizational changes, new state requirements, a changing research environment, a legislative audit, new budget processes, and the beginning of a new strategic planning process.

Not all of that change has the same source. Some is required by state and federal requirements, the research environment, and financial realities. Some is responsive to what we are hearing from students, employees, and communities. And some reflects choices we are making to better align our institution and corresponding initiatives with where Utah State is today and where we want to go.

As we make changes, our focus is on whether the proposed changes will help us better fulfill our mission. We want to strengthen connections across the university, reduce barriers and silos, clarify roles and accountability, and bring together people and ideas that can have a greater impact across our state and beyond.

Our Focus for the Coming Year

We discussed several areas that we will work on together during the 2026-27 academic year:

• Strengthening our statewide impact through workforce and industry partnerships and a more intentional approach to statewide program alignment;
• Increasing student success for undergraduate and graduate students through scholarships, affordability, transparency, and expanded experiential learning opportunities;
• Growing discovery with purpose through research opportunities, innovation, commercialization, and stronger external partnerships;
• Launching the Center for Civic Excellence this fall;
• Building better data infrastructure so colleges and departments can more easily track key measures and progress, and make informed decisions; and
• Continuing to simplify our university processes.

Compensation Study

One of the clearest messages we have heard from employees is the importance of compensation, benefits, career ladders, and greater clarity about how compensation decisions are made.

Our university-wide compensation and benefits study is underway, and we anticipate it being completed by the end of the fall semester. The study is examining faculty and staff market competitiveness, compression and pay equity, job architecture and career paths, benefits, and how compensation is administered across the university.

This work builds on the job architecture initiative already underway at the institution.

Research and Innovation

There are some pretty great things happening at Utah State. Our faculty continue to earn significant research awards, and this year we celebrated 50 years of undergraduate research at USU, with record student participation.

At the same time, the research environment is changing. Federal research funding remains critically important, and we will continue competing for those dollars. Being student-centered and a leading research university are not competing priorities. Research, teaching, and student success can and should reinforce one another, just as basic and applied research can and should coexist. We also have opportunities to broaden our partnerships with industry, increase innovation and commercialization, and find new ways to translate USU research and expertise into impact for Utah and beyond. I’m excited to see what we do this next year.

Looking Ahead

As we begin the academic year, you can expect us to continue communicating openly and as early as we can, seeking out and considering different perspectives, and following through on the commitments we have made and will make. We will share what we are learning along the way and adjust when needed.

There is a lot happening at Utah State, and there is also a lot to be excited about. Across the state, our faculty and staff continue to do remarkable work on behalf of our students and communities.

Thank you for everything you have done to prepare for another academic year and for the work you do every day for Utah State. I look forward to seeing many of you as we start the fall semester.

Best,

brad