In a meeting held on March 18, Saint Louis University’s Staff Advisory Committee collaborated with the Strategic Planning Committee to unveil their current progress and several future initiatives for the SLU community.
At this meeting, it was explained that the SPC, alongside SGA, will launch four new “planning groups”, each in charge of a different aspect of President Feser’s action plan, designed specifically to collect information that will guide future initiative implementation.
Each of these groups is being headed by a member of the SGA executive board, each appointed by current SGA president Grace LoPiccolo and a professor or leader in a head office, along with a group of students and staff.
These four groups are centered around enrollment, student success, research/scholarship and athletics. The faculty leading these groups are Dr. Jennifer Giancolo, Dr. Steven Sanchez, Dr. Ellen Barnidge and Dr. Anthony Breitbach, respectively. Each professor was chosen based on their experience at SLU and their standing with their respective departments.
The SGA members joining each of them will be Lucy Billadeau, Mason Badey, Richa Kulkarni and Ben Militti. Militti is the only non-SGA member leading a group, but is the current president of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee. Full committee lists can be found on the SLU strategic page.
These plans have been in progress since last November, starting at the beginning of inauguration week. In a statement released via email to the SLU community on Nov. 3, President Feser announced that he would begin the development of a strategic plan, intended to outline SLU’s priorities and identity over the next four years into 2030.
“Our strategic plan will put our aspirations into action,” Feser wrote.
SLU as an institution has experienced many challenges over the past few years, including concerns surrounding international student enrollment and research funding, despite a recent promotion to R1 research status in Feb. 2025. There have also been issues affecting student morale, including tuition increases and heightened political tensions.
To address these student concerns, a newly established Strategic Planning Core Management Committee invited students to speak at several meetings that took place from Dec. 2025 to Feb. 2026. Surveys were also sent out to the student body for those who couldn’t attend.
On their newly published page, the committee wrote: “These four teams will facilitate substantive community engagement so that the strategic plan embodies the insights and aspirations of the SLU community.”
The committee also released a timeline for future updates, with the next step being to present a report to the SLU Board of Trustees in May of 2026. This report will highlight key challenges and potential initiatives to solve issues found by each group.
In the coming months, each planning group will collect research, speak with students and workshop several possible solutions to the issues of the campus.
More information can be found on SLU’s strategic plan page.
