The University's new strategic plan accepts every connection at the same weight rather than asking whether it is material, publishes the resulting register, and replaces required withdrawal with a note on the decision record.
The Strategic Plan 2026-2031 puts every declared connection on a public register and keeps the person who declared it in the room
Slop University will stop asking its people whether a connection is worth mentioning. Under the Strategic Plan 2026-2031, released today, that judgement is replaced by a single public register which accepts every declared connection at the same weight, lodged before a decision is taken rather than recalled once it has been.
The plan is the largest commitment of the coming period to the University’s own integrity settings, and the Office of the Vice-Chancellor has put it as the record the institution’s assurance has always assumed and never actually held. Its second provision is the one the University expects to be asked about most often: a declared connection removes nobody from anything. Required withdrawal leaves the delegations framework in favour of a note on the record, on the reasoning that standing a person aside takes the person who knows the matter best out of the room.
The volunteer committees we worked alongside had something workable running before we did, which tells you the instrument was never the hard part of this. The University is in their debt for showing us that.
— Dr Ronja Oyelaran, Senior Lecturer, School of Emergent Priorities
Five priorities carry the work to 2031, opening with the register itself and closing with the lodgement habit and the tooling under it. The register’s schema will be lodged with the Indicator Commons, and the map derived from it published on the same cadence.
Development ran through twelve months of facilitated workshops with staff, research candidates, alumni, Council members, and community committees, each participant lodging a connection statement beforehand. Dr Iben Chikere, Lecturer in the School of Emergent Priorities, said the consultation’s own register had filled faster than anyone present expected, and that the same template now goes out to any club or committee that wants one.
The plan draws on work supported under the Anticipatory Capability Fund. The full plan is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.vdhi9g.