The Board of Visitors approved Old Dominion University’s Strategic Plan for 2005-09 at its December meeting. The plan includes the following seven major strategic goals for the five-year period, beginning Jan. 1:

n Increase undergraduate and graduate academic quality, retain faculty and gain a national reputation for excellence (to be among the nation’s top 100 public research universities).
n Create an agenda and a climate that encourage research and creative activity.
n Improve the quality and productivity of graduate programs.
n Create a viable, lively campus community.
n Integrate and improve academic and administrative programs and services.
n Make the university sensitive to the people and needs of the region and world around it.
n Find the means necessary to accomplish all of the above.

The board also approved adding a doctor of philosophy degree in public administration and urban policy. It will be a spinoff of the current Ph.D. program in urban services, which has existed for more than 20 years and has become outdated.

In other action, the board approved the appointment of Lawrence J. Hatab as the Louis I. Jaffé Professor in the College of Arts and Letters. A professor of philosophy, Hatab joined Old Dominion in 1976 and is in his 10th year as chair of the philosophy and religious studies department.

The board also approved granting the title of emeritus to three faculty members who retired effective Dec. 31: Victor A. Pickett, professor of art; Ann V. Schwarz-Miller, associate professor of economics; and J. Christian Wild, associate professor of computer science.