Planning: Strategic Planning Workshop for the CSU Desert Studies Center

The Desert Studies Center (DSC) is a residential field station located in the Mojave Desert operated by the California State University system. This facility supports research and education activities in a location that offers a unique wealth of living organisms geological features that are valuable for scientific field research. Over the past 48 years under the support of the California State University system, the DSC has ably served university and extension courses, workshops, and conferences. Currently the DSC supports several thousand overnight visits per year, though most users are visiting for educational purposes. The DSC has tremendous untapped potential for supporting research. This project supports the development of a five-year strategic plan for the Desert Studies Center to foster the development of research infrastructure and promote institutional sustainability. The development of the strategic plan for the DSC will be informed by a 1.5-day workshop to be convened early in 2024 at the Desert Studies Center. The workshop will be independently developed and implemented by an external evaluator who is experienced with institutional planning. Participants in this workshop will include DSC staff, regional stakeholders from partner agencies and organizations, current and potential users, and experts in field station research and operations. Several weeks before the workshop, all invitees will receive a detailed survey that will guide the development of the workshop and the planning effort, and after the workshop finishes, participants will be asked to provide feedback on the process and additional information to support the development of the strategic plan. After the workshop, with support of the evaluator, the steering committee of the planning effort will develop the formal strategic plan. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.