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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2026, Page 87

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS
grow its national visibility by increasing faculty and student features in media, highlighting alumni achievements, and consistently
delivering Christ-centered messaging across platforms.

B.2. Strengthen financial health through
increases in enrollment, retention, and
auxiliary services

Central to ensuring stability, sustainability, and reinvestment
capacity, CUC aims to increase annual revenue through a balanced
portfolio of tuition, room and board, the Early Childhood Education Center, auxiliary services (conferences, camps, events), grants,
and philanthropic support. Our strategic plan sets goals for operating surplus, cash flow, and reduction of long-term debt. These
financial outcomes are supported by robust enrollment strategies:
growing traditional undergraduate enrollment, expanding online
undergraduate programs, increasing graduate enrollment, and raising residential participation through enhanced co-curricular, athletic, and faith-based engagement.

B.3. Growing philanthropy
To ensure CUC can sustain scholarships, reduce tuition dependence, and invest in facilities, we will continue strengthening donor
relationships, expanding alumni-donor engagement, and increasing
unrestricted annual support to underwrite university operations
and programs. Advancement operations will be enhanced with improved customer relationship management tools and donor analytics to personalize engagement.

•

Started La Mesa Ministries to reach out to CUC’s Latino students; engage them in meaningful conversations, prayer, and
Bible studies; foster collaborations between the Latino Student Union and the student-led campus ministry (Spiritual
Life); and promote bilingual chapel services.

•

Implemented a Faith Delegates program to connect residential students more effectively to campus ministry events and
worship.

•

Initiated a program of pre-game prayers, allowing Spiritual
Life to improve and build relationships with the athletics department and student athletes.

C.2. Increase fiscal strength and agility
Through data-informed decision-making, a commitment to enrollment management best practices, the development of new programs, and fiscal discipline, CUC worked to ensure student completion and our university’s future by:
•

Reducing long-term debt by 45 percent over the last two
convention cycles (12/31/2019 to 12/31/2025).

•

Utilizing a $7.7 million state capital grant to improve and
maintain our historic campus.

•

Investing in facilities and staffing for a new nursing program, which resulted in increased enrollment while furthering our mission.

•

Adopting a customer relationship management tool, which
has led to cost savings while enabling graduate and online
undergraduate admissions to bring more communication in
house.

•

Increasing retention of first-year, full-time freshmen from
fall-to-fall by 9 percentage points from 2021–24.

C. Performance Analysis
While the goals shared in section B of our report outline the
objectives of our newest strategic plan, they build upon the themes
of our prior plan, F2: Focusing Our Future 2025. Because that plan
brought us to the end of 2025, we are sharing select updates on our
university’s performance relative to Synod’s constitutional objectives, bylaw purpose, and triennial priorities, organized according
to our F2 themes.

C.1. Provide a formative student experience
CUC promotes academics, co-curricular activities, and pre-professional experiences that emphasize truth, freedom, and vocation
in forming students for lives of influence and service. Over the last
triennium, we:
•

•

Crafted new University Essential Learning Outcomes that
provide direction to our curricula for undergraduate and
graduate students. Curricula must seek learning outcomes
based on our pillars of truth, freedom, and vocation in the
pursuit of lives of faithfulness to God and service to neighbors.
Initiated the Classical Lutheran Educator program as one of
our six church work programs. Students are formed through
Lutheran doctrine and practice as well as a classical, Socratic pedagogy that engages ancient languages and primary
source materials through the lenses of the virtues.
Invested in campus facilities to enhance learning and the
student experience, including a state-of-the-art nursing simulation lab for our fast-growing BSN program and a new
welcome center for prospective students and other visitors.
Established an Apologetics Boot Camp for CUC students to
prepare them to defend and promote the true faith and the
inspiration of Scripture.

C.3. Foster partners for mission and excellence
We established new partnerships and strengthened existing ones
to benefit our partners, university, and the common good.
•

The new Office of Church Relations and Mission (OCRM)
builds relationships with LCMS districts, congregations,
schools, and their people.

•

The Advance with Purpose tuition discount launched in 2025
to provide a 50 percent tuition discount on any of CUC’s
graduate programs for full-time employees of the LCMS, its
entities, and its recognized service organizations.

•

The university’s Centers of Excellence work to bring our Lutheran identity and Christian ethos to outside communities
and partners. These centers serve God and neighbor for the
common good and include the following:
o

College of Health, Science, & Technology’s Center
for Gerontology

College of Education’s Center for Christian Education

College of Business’s Free Enterprise Center

College of Theology, Arts, & Humanities’ Center for
Church Music

C.4. Develop our vibrant, unified community
Together, we developed, lived, and shared a common vision for
our work.
2026 Convention Workbook